The National Legalization of Marijuana Use: A Policy Whose Time Has Come? After almost a Century?"

"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)"

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Killerdrug. This poster says it all (except of course that marijuana is not a killer drug, although alcohol and tobacco products are).
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Note to the reader: The bulk of the text for this column is drawn from Chaps. 2 and 3 of my book Ending the "Drug War;" Solving the Drug Problem. It was published in 2016 by Punto Press Publishing, Brewster, N.Y. (Copyright, 2015). also, this column is very long, even for me.

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In early May of this year, a group of 18 Democratic Senators introduced a bill to legalize marijuana, only a day after news reports revealed that the U.S. government would reclassify cannabis under federal law. Why now? Well, as the Senate Majority leader, Chuck-from-Brooklyn Schumer (yes, he really does go by the name) said: "[W]e're reintroducing the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, legislation that would finally end the federal prohibition of cannabis while prioritizing safety, research, workers' rights and restorative justice." At this time, there is of course a good deal of analysis going on about the pros and cons of this legislation. This column, however, is about how we got here from the time in the 1930's, after the end of Prohibition, when marijuana first caught the serious attention of certain "law enforcers," who, as history has taught us, were looking with something to do with their post-Prohibition law-enforcement time.

As it happens, the bulk of users of what I call the Recreational Mood-Alerting Drugs (the RMADs) are those who use tobacco-products and drinkers of alcohol. Percentage-wise, there are relatively few users of marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. Of course, in recent years, Fentanyl has become a very serious problem and a significant killer, primarily because most fentanyl users don't know how much of the substance they are using, and unfortunately, in a significant number of cases, don't even know that they are using it all. (For further information on overall recreational mood-altering drug use in the mid-20-teens, please see chaps. 2 and 3 of my book Ending the "Drug War:" Solving the Drug Problem. Current information is available from the National Institute of Drug Abuse.)

As we have already seen, users of the illicits form a small minority of the RMAD-using population. For example, in 2011 (see the book), there were an estimated 68 million tobacco-product users, 133 million current drinkers of alcohol, 18 million marijuana users, 1.4 million cocaine users, 600 thousand or so heroin users, (and just under a million users of the hallucinogens). There were also about 6 million users of prescription psycho-active drugs on a non-prescription basis (also an illegal activity but not a target of the "Drug War") as well as 400,000-plus users of methamphetamines (sometimes referred to as the "White Heroin."

Now turning to marijuana, it first came on the national scene as a "Problem" in the 1930s, when certain law enforcers came up with the (artificial) concept of "reefer-madness." It has been at the base of the illegalization of marijuana since that time. The story of the development of the concept and the subsequent illegalization of an RMAD that is harmless for most people who use it is fascinating. Shortly after the end of Prohibition, came the beginnings of the modern "war on marijuana," which was directly linked to the "War on Alcohol" (which of course had ended with the end of Prohibition), then on to the "War on Drugs," e.g., heroin and cocaine. Both of the latter had been around since the end of the 19th century. Interestingly enough heroin was originally developed by German chemists as the "heroic" (non-addicting --- oops!) substitute for the addictive morphine, for use as a pain-killer, while in the 19th century cocaine, at least in small doses, was considered so harmless that it was a component of one of the first very popular "soft" drinks.

During Prohibition (1920-1933) when law-enforcers had plenty to do, marijuana received little attention. After all, since its effects were considered to be pretty mild compared with alcohol, and certainly the ill-effects of cigarette smoking were as suppressed as the tobacco industry could get them to be. (Interestingly enough, the first time the link between cigarette smiling and ill-health was essentially proven was by German scientists, in 1935 (that is during the Nazi Era. And, Hitler then instituted a national anti-smoking campaign, except for members of the armed services).

In the U.S., the first "war on marijuana" began with the newly passed Marihuana [old spelling] Tax Act, in 1937 under the direction of the then head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, a veteran of Prohibition (who just happened to find himself without much to do). The Act was used in part to criminalize the possession and use of marijuana. In its early days Anslinger's "war" received a good deal of publicity in re the "horrible effects" of the drug from a movie called "Reefer Madness." (It happened to have been characterized by some film critics as the "worst film ever made," but that didn't stop the anti-marijuana crusaders [and their crusade had a strong racist tinge to it] from using it widely.) The Marihuana Tax Act was eventually overturned as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but not until 1969. It was replaced in function by the much broader Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. It is this Act upon on which the whole national "Drug War," originally developed during the Nixon Administration, was based.

But just before that, another national political figure (that is one who would liked to have been a national political figure) New York's Gov., Nelson Rockefeller, came on the scene. It was about that time that the predictions of national doom, and other alarms like these, turned to the objects of the "Drug War." The identity of the enemy had again changed. Referring to heroin in 1968, Gov. Rock efeller put it this way: "Drug addiction represents a threat akin to war in its capacity to kill, enslave and imperil the nation's future . . . ." (Was he simply bringing forward a warning about tobacco[!] made by the Times in 1885, one wonders?) Already at that time, the otherwise "liberal Republican" Rockefeller, dealing with a party that had booed him off the stage at the 1964 Republican National Convention, was trying to bolster his "tough-on-crime" credentials so as to once more become a contender for the Republican Presidential nomination. Even though he did eventually become President Gerald Ford's Vice-Presidential candidate, after the resignation of Richard Nixon as a result of the Watergate scandal, the tactic didn't work.

However, what did work was truly awful, and its effects linger with us down to this very day. It positions taken like that one quoted above that led to the notorious "Rockefeller Drug Laws." Under that set, imitated by a number of other states, the penalty for selling two ounces (57 g) or more of heroin, morphine, raw or prepared opium, cocaine, or cannabis, or possessing four ounces (113 g) or more of the same substances, was a minimum of 15 years to life in prison, and a maximum of 25 years to life in prison [!]. One aspect of this approach is that it could be construed as an attempt to deal with demand: if one is caught possessing or using a prohibited substance, a long prison term was a prospect. First, this assumes that an addicted person is really going to stop to think about that possible outcome, and second, the alternate approaches that were already underway at the beginning of the National Smoking Cessation Campaign were not even considered.

We are still dealing with the highly negative outcomes of such laws. It must be noted that: a) they have had no noticeable impact on the use of the illicit drugs; b) they penalize possession and use, which until Prohibition's very late stages were not a target and then only indirectly; c) the definition of "drug addiction" as used by Rockefeller and numerous other drug warriors down to the present day has never spread to alcoholic beverages or tobacco products. (Population-wise, they of course are much more deadly than any target of the "Drug War." In 2023, alcohol-related deaths were increasing from previous annual levels, approaching 200,000 per year, while tobacco-product-related deaths, despite a wide variety of anti-smoking-related measures have remained ridiculously (and rarely mentioned) high, approaching 500,000 per year.) But they were not, and never have been in the Republican Party's determination to politically use "getting tough on crime," especially in re the possession and use of certain RMADs, that they had just happened to have arbitrarily defined as criminal. (Why the Repubs. go after certain relatively less-harmful recreational-mood-altering drugs and not others is a discussion to be left to another time, although you can read about it in Chap. 4 of my book.)

But then, in the early 1970s, another national perspective on the most commonly used illicit, a rather different perspective, came from a body called "The National Commission on Marihuana [old spelling] and Drug Abuse." It was created by the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. The Commission happened to have been chaired by a former Governor of Pennsylvania, Raymond P. Shafer, a Republican (although a member of a now-extinct sub-species of Republican, known as a "moderate.")

It is worthwhile including an extensive quote from the Wikipedia report on the Commission, which, based on my own reading of their reports some time ago, summarizes it well:

"The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse was created by the Controlled Substances Act to study marijuana abuse in the United States. While the Controlled Substances Act was being drafted in a House committee in 1970, Assistant Secretary of Health Roger O. Egeberg had recommended that marijuana temporarily be placed in Schedule I, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending the Commission's report. On March 22, 1972, the Commission's chairman, Raymond P. Shafer, presented a report to Congress and the public entitled 'Marihuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding,' which favored ending marijuana prohibition and adopting other methods to discourage use.

"The Commission's report acknowledged that, decades earlier, 'the absence of adequate understanding of the effects of the drug' combined with 'lurid accounts of [largely unsubstantiated] "marijuana atrocities" [like "Reefer Madness"]' greatly affected public opinion and labeled the stereotypical user as 'physically aggressive, lacking in self-control, irresponsible, mentally ill and, perhaps most alarming, criminally inclined and dangerous.' However, the Commission found that the drug typically inhibited aggression [emphasis added] 'by pacifying the user" and generally produc[ed] states of drowsiness, lethargy, timidity and passivity.'

"After the Commission's widespread study and analysis, it concluded that 'Looking only at the effects on the individual, there is little proven danger of physical or psychological harm from the experimental or intermittent use of the natural preparations of cannabis.' [Emphasis added.]

"Specifically, the Commission recommended 'a social control policy seeking to discourage marijuana use, while concentrating primarily on the prevention of heavy and very heavy use.' The report noted that society can provide incentives for certain behavior without prosecuting the unwilling, citing the example that 'the family unit and the institution of marriage are preferred means of group-living and child-rearing in our society. As a society, we are not neutral. We officially encourage matrimony by giving married couples favorable tax treatment; but we do not compel people to get married.'

"The Commission recommended decriminalization of simple possession [emphasis added], finding:

[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use. It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only 'with the greatest reluctance."

"The Commission found that the constitutionality of marijuana prohibition was suspect, and that the executive and legislative branches had a responsibility to obey the Constitution, even in the absence of a court ruling to do so:

"While the judiciary is the governmental institution most directly concerned with the protection of individual liberties, all policy-makers have a responsibility to consider our constitutional heritage when framing public policy. Regardless of whether or not the courts would overturn a prohibition of possession of marijuana for personal use in the home, we are necessarily influenced by the high place traditionally occupied by the value of privacy in our constitutional scheme.

"The Commission also found that 'the use of drugs for pleasure or other non-medical purposes is not inherently irresponsible; alcohol is widely used as an acceptable part of social activities'. . . .

Douglas McVay summarized the Commission's conclusions thusly:

"The commission concluded that marijuana should be decriminalized. This was not interpreted as a license to abuse substances. In fact, the Shafer Commission's overriding concern was reducing substance abuse. According to the report, 'On the basis of our findings, discussed in previous Chapters, we have concluded that society should seek to discourage use, while concentrating its attention on the prevention and treatment of heavy and very heavy use. The Commission feels that the criminalization of possession of marihuana for personal use is socially self-defeating as a means of achieving this objective.' "

How rational, how reasonable, how much based on scientific evidence rather than prejudice and totally politically-motivated policy-making. How similar in many ways (although not all, especially in how the criminal justice system would and would not be used) to the essence of the "Public Health Approach to the Drug Problem," presented in Chapter Five of my book. But we have seen over and over again in the United States how often science does not guide public policy. And, so often politics does . As it happened, during the life of the National Commission, President Richard Nixon's then Attorney General John Mitchell systematically short-circuited its at tempt to "systematically evaluate" the "underlying assumptions" of U.S. drug policy. Mitchell repu diated the work of the Commission even before it was published. Steven Wisotsky summarized Mitchell's policy: "Drugs are bad, enforcement is good, and let's not waste time questioning the matter." After all, politics had to come first.

When the National Commission's Report came out --- a report that came to the conclusion that certainly in comparison with widely used and sold tobacco and alcohol products, marijuana was pretty mild. But, and that's a big BUT, Nixon had already announced the commencement of the "Drug War." Most obviously, it was hardly based in science and epidemiology. Rather, it openly focused on Black "drugs" use. Thus, it quickly became part of Nixon's newly-developed "Southern Strategy," designed to gain for the Republican Party the Southern white racist vote that was looking for a home after the Democratic Party became, in the 1960s, the party of civil and voting rights and the drive to end of Jim Crow for African-Americans. For then, as now, it is thought by the political class that Southern white folks like nothing better than being "Hard on crime," especially when it is aimed at the "inner cities" (and you know who lives there). And there are still people n prison, on very long sentences, who still paying that "War's" price.

The National Commission's Report was summarily shelved, and the "Drug War" was launched. In 1982, ten years after Attorney General Mitch ell's pronouncement, President Ronald Reagan summarized then current Federal drug policy: "[Illegal] drugs are bad and we're going after them." Ten years of failure of the policy, in terms of controlling drug use, had taught the President nothing on that front. But his Administration knew that politically they still had a winner.

And now here we are, over 50 years later, with a "new" Federal health-services-related report, recommending essentially the same policy that the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommended in 1970! It was essentially killed by Republican Politics, at time centered in the Office of the President. One has to wonder if they will try again, and once again succeed, in killing a science-based approach to drug-use and addiction, this time including the two most commonly used, and thus by far the most dangerous, Recreational Mood-Altering Drugs, tobacco and alcohol. I wouldn't hold my breath (ho, ho, ho)on that one.