The War on Marijuana -|- A Libertarian View
By Tracy Ryan

Anyone who follows the national media campaign waged with our tax money would think the only drug the federal government is concerned about is marijuana. This may strike people as odd, since as Hawaii residents have become all too aware, there are many dangerous and addictive substances widely abused. We have the so called "ice epidemic" for an example.

Yet three or more times per night expensive national television ads are run depicting how the infamous "devil" weed corrupts our children and advises parents how to stop it. I can't remember the last time the Feds spent money discussing any other drug.

Marijuana laws are among the toughest in the country. The Federal Government is now considering five year minimums for passing a joint to someone who may have been in drug rehabilitation facility or is under 21 years of age. That means almost half the kids in our universities can now face five years mandatory prison time.

If the kids are under 18 the sentence will be 10 years. Just to put this in perspective the average time served for rape is 7 years. Many murderers receive lighter sentences than people caught growing pot. The Federal campaign against medical uses of marijuana is particularly troubling.

In 1996 California, the largest state in the country with over 25 million inhabitants, passed a referendum allowing doctors to make the decisions about the efficacy of marijuana as medical therapy for their clients. National polls have consistently shown as much as 70 percent support for the legal use of marijuana in medicine. After all derivatives of opium and cocaine are an important part of the therapeutic inventory in clinics and hospitals all over the United States.

The government rationale is that marijuana is a dangerous drug with no medical benefits. No neutral scientific research supports this point of view. The fact that marijuana has not gone through the rigorous trials necessary for FDA approval does not establish that it lacks medicinal value.

For years the Feds have actively prevented research into the medical uses of marijuana by refusing to allow the scientific community an exception to laws criminalizing its possession. You can't do research on a substance if you don't have any to do research on. Most reputable scientists don't want to go to jail. Reports made on the potential uses of marijuana in medicine by government agencies can simply be overruled by the political appointees who head the agency. Science has become secondary to politics.

Marijuana has been used in the practice of medicine for over 2,000 years. It was a normal part of medical remedies in our country up until it became "the weed with roots in hell" and abolished by the Feds in the late thirties. Marijuana was the typical treatment for headache prior to the discovery of aspirin in the nineteenth century. People may debate its usefulness for the treatment of disease A or disease B, but shouldn't that debate be resolved by doctors and scientists rather than politicians and bureaucrats?

As for alleged dangers of recreational use, the Feds again paint a distorted picture. In contrast to studies aimed at finding medical uses of marijuana those aimed at proving it a health hazard have had lavish Federal support. In the last thirty years the Government has been happy to help anyone who thought they could set up an experiment that would show the dangers of marijuana use. The taxpayers have been forced to finance a long list of junk science as a result.

Virtually none of the work that suggests marijuana is a health hazard is accepted by the independent scientific community. How much of this malarkey is quoted in government publications? I am not suggesting in stating this that I view marijuana as harmless. Almost nothing in the world, including drinking water, is completely harmless. The point is the Government has a political agenda to distort science in order to support their law enforcement efforts. The prosecutions of medical marijuana patients in California have in many cases been barbarous.

Peter McWilliams was a gay man who suffered from both AIDs and cancer. He was a nationally recognized author, whose works included Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do. The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society. He joined the Libertarian Party on national television during their 1998 national convention.

As a medical marijuana patient of high visibility he became a top target of Federal law enforcement efforts. He was prosecuted in Federal courts for marijuana crimes. The judge would not allow him to present his defense of medical exception. With his right to defend himself stripped away he was convicted, sentenced, and denied further access to the marijuana he relied on to control the violent nausea he suffered from. Not long thereafter he was dead, chocked to death on his own vomit.

Undermining the first amendment rights of the opponents of Federal drug policy is part and parcel of the program. In the first case tax money is freely spent to disseminate government views on drugs throughout the country.

In recent years these views have turned sharply away from accepted scientific messages about dangerous drugs to political propaganda aimed at preventing marijuana to be reclassified as a less dangerous drug or even legalized. Up until a year ago the Feds were running television spots offering rebuttals to critics of their drug policy that said nothing about the drugs themselves. At least this exercise in pure politics seems to have stopped.

The Feds place anti-drug ads everywhere. They have even paid producers of network television shows to plant anti-drug themes in popular entertainment. Yet they have consistently tried to prevent critics of their policies from using media to present other opinions. City buses in most parts of the US are loaded with advertising. The Feds threatened to cut off all Federal transportation subsidies to cities that accepted advertising from marijuana legalization proponents or other critics of their policies.

The Feds have used "rave" laws to intimidate organizers of pro-marijuana political rallies from proceeding with their events. Under the "rave" laws the promoters could be held liable if any attendee to their event was found in possession of any illegal drug. What are the chances of holding a rally to legalize marijuana without having someone in the audience in possession of some?

Why should our government go to such lengths to undermine the rights of people to free speech and to free assembly? Why should they distort and politicize science and medicine? Why should they attack the constitutional rights of states by continuing to enforce laws that voters in those states have voted to not have enforced? Why should they spend so much tax money on television spots about marijuana instead of heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamines?

I can't say I know the answer. There are probably a number of considerations. Sadly the most obvious and likely is the simplest. Money! The vast majority of all illegal drug use in this country involves marijuana. If marijuana statistics are removed from calculations the problem to be solved becomes much smaller. That means loss of budget and civil service jobs for Federal agencies. Like all government programs drug enforcement has became an employment scheme.

There are more government agencies than I can name that have been cut into this lucrative pie. Like all government agencies they will fight like tigers to maintain their funding. That means they will do or say anything to keep marijuana laws from changing. It is up to you and I to see to it that the interests of bureaucrats don't destroy the gifts of liberty our constitution guarantees.

Tracy Ryan, chair of the Libertarian Party of Hawaii, can be reached by email at: mailto:tracy.ahn.ryan@worldnet.att.net