Legalization of Marijuana Long Overdue

by William F. Buckley Jr.

"As for drug proscription, I don't think it's possible except by inaugurating a society in which we wouldn't want to live. Legalize drugs for those over 21, and execute anyone convicted of selling drugs to a minor. That will leave us with about $25 billion per year to spend on therapy and education and will reduce the crime rate overnight by more than 50 per cent".

- William F. Buckley, "National Review" magazine, Dec. 28, 1992, p 55

Legalization of Marijuana Long Overdue

In a recent encounter, Edward Koch reminded his interlocuter that many years ago, Rep. Edward Koch had sought backing for a congressional investigation into the marijuana laws. I had been reminded by the former mayor of New York that along about 1967-68, the typical congressman had to reflect that any law requiring one or five or 10 years in jail as a penalty for being caught using marijuana endangered his own sons and daughters in college. Koch got the support he sought.

But no meaningful reforms, if that is the word we are permitted to use, were enacted. In 1967, all drug arrests came to 121,000. Of these, marijuana arrests were one-half, 61,000. In 1991, all drug arrests were 1 million, marijuana 285,000.

Background data give us perspective. Sixty-six million Americans have smoked marijuana, and at least 10 million - perhaps many more - continue to do so regularly. Comparable figures? Twenty-two million have used cocaine, 1.5 million still do; 150 million have used tobacco, 50 million still do. In 1976, 12 percent of children age 12-17 had used marijuana during the preceding month. By 1990, this figure was down to 5 percent. Over age 26, the percentage had not changed: 3.5 percent in 1976, 3.6 percent in 1990.

The social vectors within the drug-law-reform movement have during the period since Koch asked for an investigation of federal marijuana laws moved as follows:

-The informed public is gradually willing to acknowledge a difference between marijuana and more lethal drugs.

-It is, however reluctantly, acknowledged that marijuana can have therapeutic uses, in particular to bring relief to those suffering from radiation or chemotherapy treatments for cancer.

-There is a gradual awakening of the moral sensibilities of the alert members of the public. My own belated arrival on the scene stings in the memory. It came with a letter from a father in his early 30s who neither smoked nor drank, who had three children, was gainfully employed, and engaged in civic-minded activity - but liked on Saturday nights, to retreat to his woodshed and smoke a joint. He was caught at it, arrested, his house seized, and is now in jail, and sentenced to 10 years. It is hard to understand the moral disposition of the prosecuter who asked for that sentence, and the judge who imposed it.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has a program, which is to bring on the legalization of marijuana by the year 1997. The president of NORML, as it is everywhere referred to, is a man of considerable literary and polemical skills. Richard Cowan is a graduate of Yale and a co-founder of Young Americans for Freedom. He is here and there given to hyperbole, as when he cites the support given to the Partnership for a Drug Free America (PDFA) by corporate America as "reminiscent of the support given the Nazis by German industrialists."

But Cowen is on to something, the root credentials of which are:

-However one feels about legalizing cocaine, the case for legalizing marijuana is an entire world removed from that question.

-The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an inposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy.

-The point must surely come when the American people acknowledge that the drive against marijuana is not proving anything at all, given the contnuing availability of the drug and its (relatively modest) patronage.

Richard Cowan makes a telling point, namely that the media are notoriously insensitive to the abuses of the narcocracy. "Most people are unaware of the nature of the marijuana prohibition in America today, the extent of its cruelty and injustice, and the threat that it poses to everyone's freedom. Ironically, many of those who are aware of the extent of the problem view it as being so great that they despair of being able to end it. Consequently, as an act of triage, they abandon it as a lost cause, to work on something which they view as at least possible." Like what? The rehabilitation of President Clinton?

[This news clipping was sent to me by my father, it's from a NJ newspaper, The Bergen Record, of August 4th. Apparently this is a syndicated column in which Buckley writes, called "From the Right"]

The DEA Retort on Marijuana Misses Point

A few weeks ago in this space, I argued that mounting evidence on the prosecution, indeed the persecution, of marijuana users increasingly substantiates a) that medical evidence doesn't justify treating marijuana as one would treat crack cocaine; b) that the time spent by law enforcement tracking down marijuana users is a waste of efforts; and c) the bloodlust by the Drug Enforcement Administration against marijuana users is being used to justify an abuse of civil rights and penology that in centuries ahead will bring to mind inquisitorial practices.

The column in question stirred the extensive objections of Wayne J. Roques of DEA of the U.S. Department of Justice. He is listed as "demand reduction coordinator" in Miami, and he took the pains to address his letter of complaint to all of the sainted editors who use this coumn.

Roques deserves a public reply to his public remonstrance, here undertaken on the understanding that is is not possible to cope with all the questions raised about marijuana use in a single column. But begin by acknowledging that the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, has never claimed that marijuana use is harmless, rather that it is no more harmful than the use of alcohol or tobacco or other over-the-counter drugs available to any adult.

Roques stresses the addictive quality of marijuana and cites the work of "many scientists," but gives only one name. Roques gave the names of five medical authorities whom he considers expert on the toxicity of marijuana. But four of the five cited are not associated with marijuana research.

But the current edition of the Merk Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy tells us that "there is still little evicence of biologic damage, even amoung relatively heavy users."

On the civil liberties front, Roques challenges my assertion that sentences for marijuana users are simply disproportionate. But he confines himself to federal penalties, which are severe enough.

Here is a report published by NORML in its journal, The Leaflet (March 1993): "Jimmy Montgomery was sentenced by an Oklahoma jury to life plus 16 years imprisonment for having two ounces of marijuana in his bedroom and two Colt revolvers under his pillow. The judge and D.A. thought better of it, and the sentence was reduced to 10 years. But the Beckham County prosecutor also filed papers to seize Jimmy's mother's house."

And apropos the question whether marijuana can be medically useful, the balance of the story: "The result of an accident 20 years ago, Jim Montgomery is paralyzed from the center of his chest to his feet and confined to a wheelchair. Thelma Montgomery, Jim's mother, testified that doctors at a spinal cord injury hospital recommended marijuana to her son for relief of muscle spasms. The spasms got so bad at times Jimmy couldn't sit in the wheelchair. 'When Jim smoked marijuana, he didn't have to stay belted to his chair," his mother reported.

The stories are endless. My own judgement is that it is as stupid for the person who does not use marijuana to experiment with it as it is for the non-smoker to take up tobacco. But those who don't take my advice should not be sent to Sing Sing.

-- William F. Buckley Jr.