Antiquated Drug Laws Cost Us Plenty

by Diane Dimond

Come sit down with me. Let’s have a chat - a meaningful and productive chat. You comfortable, you want some tea?

Here’s what I’m thinking. With all this change in the air, this idea that we really can shake up the status quo and attack our nation’s problems from a different angle - we probably should take a look at our drug laws. Don’t you think?

Remember back in 1969 when President Nixon declared a “War on Drugs”? We were going to wipe out the illegal drug trade that stopped so many of us from being productive citizens! Wow, that sure sounded like a great plan. But, here we are 40 years later and we’re still struggling with what to do about those who either sell or get addicted to illegal drugs.

It’s important to make the distinction here. Drug addicts vs. drug dealers. The first are surely breaking the law but no one aspires to become an addict, right? They’re sick and in need of medical and mental health attention. The dealers, of course, are felons making loads of money off the weak. Yet we lock up both groups as if they are the same kind of criminals. That doesn’t seem right.

Now, I don’t want to make this a political conversation, you know, Democrats vs. Republicans, liberal vs. conservative. I want to talk about what’s best for our country, our economically strapped country.

Since that “War on Drugs” declaration we’ve gone way past the billion dollar mark to somewhere in the trillion dollar area. I read the other day that it costs us a collective 69 billion dollars each year to keep up this war. Why do we keep doing the same things over and over if it’s not getting rid of the problem?

It costs society so much in terms of court and prison costs, lost productivity and damage to families. So sad, isn’t it?

We’ve spent years tinkering with prison rehabilitation for convicted addicts. There’s been no great breakthrough. Maybe we need special hospitals just for them. I wonder if we could do that for less than 69 billion a year? As for the drug dealers, well, we keep slapping them with mandatory and harsh sentences and as fast as we lock ‘em up there are more arrested every day. Our prisons are bursting at the seams!

We’ve got a federal Drug Enforcement Administration and each state has a drug task force, and local law enforcement has undercover operations to try to smoke out the bad guys. Drugs continue to stream across our borders, mostly from Mexico but also from Canada. Countless homegrown drug labs dot the country’s landscape. The problem never seems to end. We don’t have a handle on it – it has a handle on us!

You know, there’s a group of 11 thousand law enforcement types, called L.E.A.P., Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, that says if we just legalized all drugs the massive profit margin would disappear. They liken it to 1933 when the prohibition on booze stopped and put Al Capone out of the bootlegging business. L.E.A.P. thinks drug kingpins would find the government taxes and regulations so stiff they’d just fold their tents.

I’ll have to have another cup of tea and think about that. I don’t think I’m for legalizing all drugs. But, it sure would be a tempting new tax revenue stream, wouldn’t it?

Look, I don’t pretend to be smart enough to figure out the whole big national drug problem but, you know, we’ve got to start somewhere. I’ve been thinking that one way to cut down our costs is to weed out (pardon the pun) those 872,720 Americans who the FBI says were arrested for marijuana in 2007. There might have been a million marijuana arrests last year – the figures aren’t in yet.

I mean who are we kidding? Millions of Americans admit they’ve smoked grass, ganja, pot - whatever you want to call it – including at least two of our Presidents, CEO’s of top companies, Olympic athletes and countless other productive members of our society. Spending all this money to arrest and prosecute these cases seems to be getting us nowhere. Isn’t it weird that we approve using marijuana for medical purposes but not for those who’d like to substitute it for a glass of vodka once or twice a week?

Yep, that’s what I’m thinkin’. We have to start somewhere and so we might as well de-criminalize things for all those Americans who, despite the law, are smoking marijuana anyway.

It sure is nice to be able to chat about this without someone going off accusing the other of being a kook or a commie or some other name. Want some more tea?

Now, let’s talk about changing the I.R.S. …

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Prioritize = Legalize

by Robin Sax

It’s no secret that I take crime very seriously. I am all about tough sentences and putting the bad guys away. But, come on, people. Is possession of a bong really worth ruining a guy’s career, livelihood, and reputation? I’m as tough on crime as the next guy, but suspending Michael Phelps from competitive swimming for 3 months for taking a bong hit (if he even really took the hit; all we know for sure is that he was photographed with a bong in hand). A possible prosecution for a picture of him holding a bong? Kellogg, allowing a major endorsement to expire because, “Michael’s behavior is not consistent with the image of Kellogg”?

I am not suggesting that Michael Phelps should be treated any differently than anybody else. I am not here arguing that Kobe Bryant was wrongfully accused, or that we are overly harsh with our sports stars (just ask Lawrence Philips what he thinks of me). What I am actually saying is that we need to have priorities in our criminal justice system.

Not all crimes are equal, just as not all drugs are equal. And courts, prosecutors, and cops don’t have the time or the resources to deal with the nonsense involved in simple possession of marijuana case. So, if that’s the case, why are the authorities making an example of Michael Phelps? Why are we using tax dollars to prosecute and incarcerate weed smokers?

Is it to deter kids from using and/or abusing pot? Well I think not. As Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) aptly states: “Regardless of one’s view of marijuana use as normal or immoral, healthy or unhealthy, the fact is that over 70 years of government prohibition has done little to nothing to achieve the long-stated public goals of increasing youth perception of harm from marijuana use, reducing youth access to untaxed and unregulated marijuana, increasing treatment for marijuana abuse and marijuana-related emergency room visits, and incarcerating users and dealers.”

Successful entrepreneurs and business people know that they must be effective time managers. And in order to be an effective time manager, they realize that they simply cannot do everything available to them. They have to be selective with their limited time, and consciously choose to spend it on what is most important to them.

So why does it seem that time management and court management mentioned in the same sentence seem like an oxymoron?

Why isn’t it cost effective and productive to prosecute simple marijuana cases? Because the penalties are minimal! Why is the law lenient on marijuana ? Because more than half of the American population thinks that marijuana should be legalized!

Citizens are not alone on this, by the way. In fact, last year, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced H.R. 5843: "To eliminate most Federal penalties for possession of marijuana for personal use." This a bi-partisan measure introduced by Rep. Barney Frank [D-MA] and Rep. Ronald Paul [R-TX] on April 17, 2008. The bill’s goals was to remove Federal penalties for personal possession, or non-profit transfer, of up to 100 grams of marijuana.

And while those who want to legalize marijuana have a long list of arguments supporting the legalization of pot, I suggest that we use the business model of prioritizing to make a sound, well-thought-out decision. As C. Ray Johnson states in the final chapter of his book, CEO Logic: How to Think and Act Like a Chief Executive: "Prioritizing is the answer to time management problems - not computers, efficiency experts, or matrix scheduling. You do not need to do work faster or to eliminate gaps in productivity to make better use of your time. You need to spend more time on the right things. . . ."

In the criminal justice system, the “right thing” is to prosecute people who hurt others, who abuse, rape, molest, batter, use weapons, steal, stalk, or terrorize—not those who are photographed with a bong in hand.

This post and all posts by Robin Sax do not reflect the opinion of he Los Angeles County District Attorney or the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.

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