If you walked around the Rhode Island state house last week, you might have heard something highly unusual. Drew Morrill has more.
At the statehouse, you typically hear about the sobering economy, record-setting unemployment and climbing energy prices. But now there’s talk of decriminalizing marijuana. On Tuesday, state legislators introduced a bill that would make possession of less than one ounce of pot a civil offense, rather than a criminal one.
If passed, the bill would benefit recreational drug users who currently put their criminal record at risk when they want to light up.
Mischa: “Marijuana use is very prevalent among students, especially college age students. And I don’t believe that those numbers would change in the least if we were to decriminalize it.”
That’s Mischa Steiner, a leading member of the National Board of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. He says young people in Rhode Island pretty much ignore the current drug laws, and would get behind reform.
Mishca: “I have a hard time finding any students in my immediate surroundings who are wiling to argue that marijuana should be illegal.”
On Wednesday, the state Senate convened a special panel to discuss the potential risks and benefits of decriminalization. The focus of the evening was a presentation by Jack Cole, a former undercover narcotics officer, turned political activist.
Cole: “What we do today is we tend to grab a lot of young people and pretty much try to destroy their lives because they want to put something in their bodies that I don’t want to put in mine.”
Cole is the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. For years, he’s been a vocal supporter of campaigns to decriminalize or legalize marijuana.
Cole: “If we legalize marijuana across the United States, there would be 835,000 people next year who wouldn’t have to be arrested, because that’s how many we arrested last year for marijuana violations.”
However, at least one member of the panel has a few concerns. Joseph Osediacz, the former chief of the narcotics division of the Rhode Island State Police, considers this state’s drug laws some of the toughest in the country. He says they are what they are for a good reason.
Osediacz: “There were many times that every person that the Rhode Island State Police arrested, that my division arrested, we had and we felt some type of compassion for that person. Not only for that person, but for that person’s family…We understood what these illegal narcotics did to our children, what they did to our families, and my position, right now, is I cannot see how legalizing marijuana in this state is going to make us a better state.”
Osediacz later emphasized that he has not yet made up his mind on the issue. But looser drug policies have plenty of opponents. Some recent medical studies suggest that using marijuana could pose several health risks, like panic attacks, paranoia, and psychosis, as well as increased risk of respiratory disease. Critics also frequently argue that marijuana is a “gateway-drug,” a perfect entry point for the use of other drugs.
Jack Cole – the former narc – disagrees, arguing that legalization could decrease drug use by making pot boring. But at Wednesday’s panel, he focused his appeals on compassion.
Cole: “We have a saying, ‘You can get over an addiction, you will never get over a conviction.’ A conviction will track you every day for the rest of your life. Every time you go to get a job…that potential employer looks at that record and says, ‘Hey druggy, we don’t want you.’ The only place that person is then wanted is right back in the drug culture, the very group we say we’re trying to save them from.”
Cole’s logic might resonate emotionally with drug users who feel they have been wronged. But this legislation is not about their feelings.
Dr. David Lewis, a panel member and Brown professor emeritus of Community Health, says the commission’s top priority is money. And that’s important- just weeks ago, governor Carcieri described Rhode Island as facing the most severe economic turmoil of the last 30 years.”
Regardless of how the economics work out, Ben Mossbarger of the RI Campaign for Informed Marijuana policy believes that scare tactics being employed by the bills opposition are long outdated.
Mossbarger: “The use of it is becoming acceptable. Everyone we know went through the DARE program, where its saying that if you use cannabis, you’re going to become a drug fiend and all of that, and people are just realizing that that’s not true. The reefer madness is being exposed as a lie.”
In Massachusetts, they decriminalized pot through a popular referendum back in 2008. But in Rhode Island, the bottom line is whether the state can save dough by easing up on the war on drugs. If lawmakers can hash out a compromise, they could be cashing out while their constituents light up.
With reporting from Eric Johnson, I’m Drew Morrill, WBRU News.
The BRU Brief airs weekly on 95.5 FM, recapping the week’s top local, national, and international stories, and taking a closer look at the issues of the day in Southern New England. Tune in on Monday nights at 11:00, or stream live at news.wbru.com.
The police always have some bogus lies. Just follow the money with the politicians, police and DEA.
A lot of them stand something to gain by keeping the laws exactly how they are – Primitive.
“Despite the enormous popularity of cannabis in the 1960s and 1970s in numerous Western cultures, rates of psychotic disorders haven’t increased since then in any of these societies. Individuals suffering from mental illness such as schizophrenia tend to use all intoxicants – particularly alcohol and tobacco – at greater rates than the general population. Not surprisingly, many of these individuals also use cannabis.” – Paul Armentano
“It is conceivable that excessive use of cannabis sometimes contributes to acute schizophrenic episodes. But it is difficult to believe that cannabis is a strong risk factor for this disorder, because there is no evidence that the incidence of schizophrenia has risen dramatically over the past 50 years, in parallel with the huge increase in cannabis use.
Young schizophrenic patients are often heavy cigarette smokers too, but no-one would suggest that tobacco causes schizophrenia.” – Colin Blakemore, PhD, ScD
“The onset of schizotypal symptoms generally precedes the onset of cannabis use. The findings do not support a causal link between cannabis use and schizotypal traits.” – Jason Schiffman, PhD
“There have been reports of psychotic ‘breakdowns’ occuring with rare frequency after marijuana has been smoked, but the causal relationship is in question.
The psychotic episodes are generally self-limiting and seem to occur in individuals with a history of psychiatric problems.” – Oakley Ray, PhD, Charles Ksir, PhD
“Cannabis use can lead to a range of short-lived symptoms such as de-personalisation, de-realisation, a feeling of loss of control, fear of dying, irrational panic and paranoid ideas…
The evidence that cannabis has a causative role in chronic psychotic or affective disorders is not convincing, although the drug may modify the course of an already established illness.” – Hollie V. Thomas, PhD
“Given that the incidence of schizophrenia declined substantially in Western societies in the 1970s, at the same time cannabis use was rising, it seems highly unlikely that marijuana causes schizophrenia in otherwise healthy people…” – Lynn Zimmer, PhD
‘We understood what these illegal narcotics did to our children, what they did to our families, and my position, right now, is I cannot see how legalizing marijuana in this state is going to make us a better state.”
Really? Thats sad.
I bet the world would have been much better with these people behind bars and a felony:
William Shakespeare
William Butler Yeats
The Who
Thelonious Monk
Steven Soderbergh
Stephen King
Sir Mick Jagger
Samuel Beckett
Salvador Dali
Rudyard Kipling
Robert Mitchum
Ray Charles
Oscar Wilde
Richard Feynman
Pablo Picasso
Miles Davis
Jack Nicholson
Francis Ford Coppella
Emperor Liu Chi-nu
Carl Sagan
Jennifer Aniston
Osediacz – The 1950’s called and want you back.
One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to the ongoing open season on hippies, commies, and darkies in the war on drugs. Cops get good performance reviews for shooting fish in a barrel. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and an evil prohibition. Canadian Marc Emery is being extradited to prison for selling seeds that American farmers use to reduce U. S. demand for Mexican pot.
The CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) reincarnates Al Capone, endangers homeland security, and throws good money after bad. Fiscal policy burns tax dollars to root out the number-one cash crop in the land, instead of taxing sales. Society rejected the plague of prohibition, but it mutated. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment.
Nixon passed the CSA on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies, but he underestimated Schafer’s integrity. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use. Former U.K. chief drugs advisor Prof. Nutt was sacked for revealing that non-smoked cannabis intake is scientifically healthy.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership or an act of Congress to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. God’s children’s free exercise of religious liberty may include entheogen sacraments to mediate communion with their maker.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law holds that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration. Liberty is prerequisite for tracking drug-use intentions and outcomes.
Cannabis is a very safe substance. It is impossible to die from consuming pot in any form. On the other hand, virtually every pharmaceutical drug has potentially serious side effects and thousands die from them every year. A visit to the National Center for Disease Control website proves it. Marijuana/cannabis is not even mentioned there.
As the debate rages, you may notice that the prohibitionists crying the loudest stand to lose a lot of money if pot is legalized; drug rehabs, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, lawyers, prisons, the DEA, ONDCP, NIDA and any police drug task force.
People who use cannabis as medicine shouldn’t have to be taxed, either.
Excellent comments. End the madness. End cannabis prohibition!