Our Top Six Marijuana Policy Goals
By James P. Gray
If you think about it, most good people have the same desire to reduce marijuana abuse and all of the harm and misery that can accompany it. Where we have disagreements is on the question about how best to get there. So here is a list of what I see as our top six marijuana policy goals—in order of importance—that would help us to reach that almost-universal objective. They are:
1. Reduce the exposure of marijuana to and usage of marijuana by children.
2. Stop or materially reduce the violence that accompanies the growing and distribution of marijuana.
3. Stop or materially reduce the corruption of public officials, individual people, companies and especially children, that now accompanies the growing and distribution of marijuana.
4. Stop or materially reduce crime both by people trying to get money to purchase marijuana and by those under its influence.
5. Reduce the harm to people who use marijuana.
6. Reduce the number of people we must put into our jails and prisons.
You might want to replace one of these goals with another, or readjust the order, but I anticipate that most people will basically agree with those top six goals.
If you think about it, you will see that passing Proposition 19 in November will actually accomplish each of those goals, and that pursuing our present policy of Marijuana Prohibition will never accomplish any of them. The last part of that comment has already been proved, because we have been actively pursuing our present marijuana policy since the early 1970s, and throughout that entire time, the entire situation has demonstrably only gotten worse.
If we were to allow each city in California the choice to devise a program for the growing and distribution of marijuana to adults, marijuana would soon become less available for children. Why? Ask our young people yourselves, and they will tell you that it is easier for them today to get marijuana, if they want to, than it is alcohol. And the reason is that today’s illegal marijuana dealers don’t ask for ID!
It would also almost completely stop the crime in the growing and distribution of marijuana, just as the repeal of Alcohol Prohibition put the Al Capones and Frank Nittis of the world out of business. Today, if one manufacturer of alcohol has distribution problems with another one, they don’t take guns to the streets to resolve them. Instead they file a complaint in court, and have it peacefully adjudicated by judges like me.
In a similar fashion, the corruption caused by the huge amounts of available cash in today’s illegal distribution of marijuana would virtually disappear. Why? Their market would be undercut by the government programs, at the same time that they would continue to face prosecution if they continued to try to sell it.
There is no question that marijuana can have some harmful effects upon users, but it is also true that the most harmful consequence connected today with marijuana usage is jail. But, fortunately, the numbers of people we would be forced to incarcerate would be substantially decreased under this new program for each of two reasons. The first reason, of course, is that the users would not automatically be criminals, which will free up a great deal of police and criminal court time that would be better spent prosecuting and incarcerating robbers, rapists and murderers. Furthermore, today we have thousands of people in state prison simply because they smoked marijuana while on probation or parole, so that source of prison overcrowding would be alleviated. Second, there would not be so many illicit marijuana dealers in business any more since most would be run out of business due to the lower price of the legally grown substance.
Finally, unlike alcohol, people who are under the influence of marijuana are generally not prone to violence, so the number of crimes committed by drug users, both to get money to purchase the drugs, and crimes committed while under their influence, would be substantially reduced.
Under this pending initiative, all crimes committed by people under the influence of marijuana would still be prosecuted, just like we do today with alcohol-related offenses. Holding people accountable for their actions, instead of what they put into their bodies, is a truly legitimate criminal justice function.
So if you really want to achieve these goals and more, vote in favor of the initiative this November to repeal the policy of Marijuana Prohibition, which has led us down the wrong path for decades.
James P. Gray is a retired Orange County Superior Court judge, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It and can be contacted at JimPGray@sbcglobal.net or through his website at www.JudgeJimGray.com.
