Democrats on Weed

By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet. Posted June 11, 2003.

The Bush junta's record on pot is abysmal. Some people hoped that as a Republican recovering alcoholic and cokehead, George W. might pull a "Nixon goes to China" on drug policy, but his performance in office has been more like Nixon bombing hospitals in Vietnam. From the crackdowns on medical marijuana and glass pipes to the threats to Canada if it decriminalizes pot, he's made cultural war on cannabis the center of his drug policy. So what are the alternatives? Well, as it's unlikely that the US will elect a Green or a Libertarian in 2004, that leaves the Democrats. Which isn't much. None of the nine candidates currently running is as extreme as Bush, but the ones who have criticized the Drug War the most are the ones considered least likely to win.

Except for Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, none of the candidates' campaigns returned phone calls. This is understandable. If they told us they support the current laws, they'd be telling several hundred thousand pot-smokers that they back the absurd, fascist policy of putting us in jail. But if they came out for legalizing even medical marijuana -- and quoted in HT to boot -- they'd risk being banished from the land of the "serious," caricatured as loopy-grinned space cases floating several feet off the ground while passing a bong to some tie-dyed burnout.

Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, who has met with several of the candidates, says all were willing to support a minimal agenda of lowering mandatory-minimum sentences, reducing the disparity between penalties for crack and powder cocaine, and "paying lip service" to treatment instead of prisons. But so far, there are no Gary Johnsons running. While Congress' most rabid Drug Warriors are mainly Republicans, Democrats often want to appear compassionate without risking being seen as "soft on drugs." That often results in positions like that of an Ohio Congressmember who, in a letter obtained by NORML, wrote a constituent that he understood how medical marijuana helped severely sick people -- but that legalizing it would send teenagers the wrong message about pot.

Some activists are more optimistic. "How does the Democratic Party define itself as different from the Republicans?" asks John Hartman of the Ohio Cannabis Society. "This is one issue where they could." Ben Gaines of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy says that depends on "if we can get the candidates to understand that it's beneficial for them to talk at least about medical marijuana." But, observes Nadelmann, despite the 70-80 percent support for medical marijuana in polls, the cannabis constituency hasn't organized to the point where politicians have to pay attention to it. Here's how the current presidential hopefuls roll up.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio)

Kucinich, a relative longshot, has taken the strongest stance of any Democrat in the race so far. He told reporters in May that medical marijuana should be available "to any patient who needs it to alleviate pain and suffering." He is not a cosponsor of Rep. Barney Frank's bill to let states legalize medical marijuana, but has signed onto a measure that would allow defendants in federal pot trials to claim medical use.

The former Cleveland mayor, who is campaigning as an antiwar, working-class liberal -- he advocates a Cabinet Department of Peace and a government-run universal health care system -- is a recent convert to drug-law reform; in 1998, he voted for a House resolution condemning medical-marijuana initiatives. "Dennis didn't come out of the closet until recently," says John Hartman.

Still, says Ethan Nadelmann, "Kucinich is the one who's jumping out." He's worked to repeal the Higher Education Act's ban on student loans for convicted pot-smokers, and his campaign Website declares that the War on Drugs "produces many casualties, but benefits only the prison-industrial complex."

"We're still developing our policy on 'the drug war,'" says a Kucinich campaign spokesperson, "but we are looking at the direction European countries and Canada have been moving in, and find that more rational than the ineffective criminal-justice approach in our country."

Sen. John Kerry (Massachusetts)

One of the race's leading liberals and top two fundraisers, Kerry told the New Yorker in 2002 that he had smoked pot a few times. But "he hasn't been supportive," says Bill Downing of Mass CANN, especially when compared to fellow Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank.

The Senator has told constituents he supports retaining the HEA's student-loan ban, notes Downing, and pushed for more interdiction during his 16 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He did vote against the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999 (which could have outlawed publishing pot-growing advice), and may have indicated some support for medical marijuana. However, according to Allen St. Pierre of NORML, Kerry would not answer Dr. Lester Grinspoon's repeated requests that he sponsor Frank's medical-pot bill in the Senate.

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