Tony Dokoupil posted:

It bears an aura of inevitability, the state-by-state fall of marijuana prohibition, starting with January’s debut of commercial sales in Colorado and Washington state.

Even as the legalization trend has spread, however, gathering momentum in at least 11 other states and setting up a prolonged clash with federal law, the issue has drowsed in the shadows of establishment conversation. It’s been officially ignored by major editorial boards, legal and medical societies, blue-chip companies and religious groups.

But the last time the reform movement was putting this much pressure on Congress — back in the 1970s — many of the staid institutions that are remaining silent now, noisily sallied forth and grooved to the issue of legal or near-legal weed.

The National Review, Washington Post and New York Times each urged “decriminalization,” an interim step involving the removal of all criminal penalties for the holding, using or passing of small quantities of marijuana.

Ann Landers, Dan Quayle and the corporate warriors of the Committee for Economic Development threw down for the same.

Ditto the doctors, lawyers and PhDs of the American Medical Association, American Bar and American Public Health Association.

Even teachers, rabbis and priests stood for looser marijuana laws in the 70s, bringing along the National Education Association, the Reform Rabbinate of America and the nation’s largest ecumenical organization, the National Council of Churches — all of which endorsed decriminalization.

The Consumers Union and the editors of Consumer Reports went furthest, calling for full legalization, the creation of a regulatory model (a la Colorado and Washington), and the immediate release of everyone in prison for marijuana possession. Such charges, they added, should be expunged from people's records.

“It is much too late to debate the issue,” argued the great defender of American wallets. “Marijuana is here to stay.”

This was after the pot-friendly findings of a Nixon commission on marijuana in 1972, and President Carter’s midterm attempt to roll back criminal penalties. But marijuana’s status remains unchanged under federal law.

Even as parts of America have launched the most liberal pot laws in the world, Congress and the White House have done nothing to revise the Controlled Substances Act or similarly phrased international treaties, and pot arrests continue at a pace of about one a minute in America.

But now, on the eve of the nation's first free-market experiment in marijuana, NBC contacted some of pot’s most important old friends, inviting them to repeal, revise or reaffirm their last public statements on the drug.

Here’s where they were then — and where they are today.

THE CONSUMERS UNION
In 1972 the Consumers Union and the editors of Consumer Reports — two of the most trusted bodies in America — called for the immediate repeal of all federal and state laws against marijuana. It was immediate front-page news and Little, Brown published the 632-page report as a book, “Licit and Illicit Drugs.” Although it also called for bans on cigarette and alcohol advertising, its marijuana recommendations dominated the coverage for days, raising what are by now familiar points about the costs and benefits of legalization.

The authors declined to call marijuana safe or harmless, but they felt a system of legal distribution like alcohol (sound familiar?) would take marijuana out of the black market and away from other hard drugs, protecting an estimated 24 million users in the process. It would “end the criminalization and alienation of young people,” they added, in a line that could be used verbatim in state campaigns today.

The authors got specific, too, urging laws to regulate the “cultivation, processing and orderly marketing of marijuana” and the creation of a national commission to track state progress and build “the best features” into a national plan.
None of that came to pass, of course, but today’s Consumers Union stands by the recommendation, albeit passively. “It's not a core issue for the organization,” deputy director David Butler tells NBC. It is, however, a position that still stands.

THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
The ABA, standard-bearer for the legal industry, took years to warm to marijuana. In 1972 its House of Delegates approved a vague resolution urging Congress and the states to relax “excessive laws” against marijuana.

In 1973, however, the organization went further. The San Francisco chapter concluded that “criminalization has failed” and helped lobby the national House of Delegates to agree.

At the organization’s annual meeting in Washington decriminalization was endorsed by a landslide, 122 to 70, prompting TIME magazine to wonder, “Can the rest of the nation be far behind?”

In 1977, the ABA went further still, caving to delegates who believed the ABA was still being “wishy-washy” on pot, encouraging more jail time for smokers in the process. In a joint press conference with the American Medical Association, the ABA released a statement, arguing “the time has come to liberal laws regarding the possession of marijuana for personal use.”

That statement survived the Reagan-era, but in a sign of shifting winds, it was rescinded midway through the first Bush presidency — a removal sponsored by the ABA's law student division, no less, which was trying to make the war on drugs a priority.

Today the ABA’s stance on marijuana legalization is defined by its absence. “We do not have a position,” says ABA spokesperson Rob Boisseau. In 1984, however, ABA endorsed the legalization of medical marijuana, according to Boisseau, and that remains in effect.

THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
It was President Jimmy Carter who pulled the AMA into the pot debates. “Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself,” Carter told Congress in 1977. “Therefore,” he continued, “I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.”

“We agree with President Carter,” the AMA announced that same year. “The possession of insignificant amounts for personal use should not subject the user to criminal charges.”

Last week the 527-member policy arm of American medicine voted to repeal that position after 35 years. In its place, the AMA called for laws that “emphasize public health based strategies to address and reduce cannabis use.” It also reaffirmed its opposition to state-level legalization, deeming marijuana “a dangerous drug” and “a public health concern.”

THE REFORM RABBINATE OF AMERICA
In the summer of 1973, the Reform Rabbinate of America called on state and federal officials to redraw marijuana laws to match a recent presidential report on the marijuana problem. The conclusion: there was no problem. “Neither the marijuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety," concluded the report's authors, led by then-Gov. Raymond Shafer of Pennsylvania.

Today, the reform rabbinate tells NBC that it still supports that position. “Our resolutions stand until and unless they are modified or repealed,” says Rabbi Rick Block, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, governing body of the reform movement.

“I have no doubt that if the matter were to be reconsidered, the CCAR would reaffirm the position articulated in the 1973 resolution.”

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
The National Council of Churches endorsed the findings of the same Nixon commission on marijuana. Its basic argument, according to a contemporary New York Times report, “is that marijuana is a victimless crime”; that “there is no medical evidence to suggest that significant harm is caused” by occasional use; and that “the overwhelming majority of marijuana users do not progress to dangerous drugs.”

Today, the NCC reaffirms their earlier position. “Certainly such decriminalization is implicit in the NCC's 1979 ‘Challenges to the Injustices of the Criminal Justice System,’ which remains in effect,” says Philip Jenks, president of the NCC.
Notably, none of the organizations which spoke in favor of more relaxed marijuana laws in the 1970s appears ready to support full legalization. The National Education Association actually went the other direction, back in 1984, dropping a policy of decriminalization in favor of renewed support for criminal penalties for possession of marijuana.

Still, polls show that most Americans are bending toward legalization — and many believe that their institutions are likely to follow.

“They’re tip-toeing,” says Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, and one of legalization’s most successful advocates. “They’re getting closer and closer.”

lol it's like the past 30 years never happened

libelous_slander posted:

lol it's like the past 30 years never happened

thats what happens when you waste your life smoking Weed

corn posted:

Lykuorgos

Hmmm... how suspicious

gastarbeiter posted:

weed legalization is the next gay marriage, more cosmetic / lifestyle bullshit that appeases liberals without fundamentally changing anything

gay marriage bans weren't used to give police an excuse to harass, arrest and imprison minorities.

HenryKrinkle posted:

Uruguay just legalized marijuana.

you go uruguay!... and i'll go mine

HenryKrinkle posted:

mass incarceration? war on drugs? meh more white liberal first world problems if u ask me.

I don't think your point is entirely incorrect but I reverse image-searched that and this is what the article says is this:

The report does suggest that legal reforms, in particular decriminalization, is effective at reducing overall arrest rates. Massachusetts decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2009, and arrests dropped an enormous amount:

...

But it's hard to make the case that decriminalization made enforcement more equitable. Indeed, as Stanford med school Professor Keith Humphreys notes, the states that have legalized or decriminalized marijuana to date all have smaller-than-average black populations. That suggests that whatever benefits casual marijuana users have received from those policies have mainly accrued to white smokers.

Lessons posted:

Indeed, as Stanford med school Professor Keith Humphreys notes, the states that have legalized or decriminalized marijuana to date all have smaller-than-average black populations.

geez it's almost as if the War on Drugs is motivated by a desire to criminalize the members of marginalized communities

HenryKrinkle posted:

Lessons posted:

Indeed, as Stanford med school Professor Keith Humphreys notes, the states that have legalized or decriminalized marijuana to date all have smaller-than-average black populations.

geez it's almost as if the War on Drugs is motivated by a desire to criminalize the members of marginalized communities

The entire US legal system is in a sense motivated by a desire to criminalize non-whites, but even that isn't the entire story, but the near-exclusive focus on the War on Drugs as the supposed cause is deceptive and myopic.

Lessons posted:

HenryKrinkle posted:

what does the study say about out-and-out legalizing weed? the stuff you posted so far seems to be about decriminalization.

It doesn't say anything, but there's something like 40k-50k people in prison for anything related to marijuana, out of a total prison population of nearly 5 million. Basically legalizing it would have a nonzero effect on prison population and would be a good thing, but it wouldn't even come close to ending the system of mass incarceration.

yeah

Lessons posted:

HenryKrinkle posted:

Lessons posted:

The entire US legal system is in a sense motivated by a desire to criminalize non-whites, but even that isn't the entire story, but the near-exclusive focus on the War on Drugs as the supposed cause is deceptive and myopic.

yeah, i sometimes worry that if the war on drugs is ever ended or significantly reformed we'll just start locking more people up for longer periods of time over property offenses and such.

This is sort of exactly what's happening now though. The drug war has contributed to the problem but the fact is sentencing has been increased across the board, and the vast majority of people in prison in the US are not there for drug crimes. The proportions are actually distributed fairly evenly between drug offenses, violent crime, property crime and public order offenses, (stuff like pedophilia and animal abuse). People like to focus on the drug war because they can make a plausible case that drug offenses shouldn't be crimes at all, but in doing so they fail to address the fact that sentencing needs to be reduced and alternatives to prison expanded across the board, even for things that are actually wrong.

the motives for criminal activity need to be eradicated, ie a basic income should be guaranteed and a propaganda campaign aimed at destroying the glorification of possessions and commodities should be carried out... jmo

gastarbeiter posted:

:choom:

weed legalization is the next gay marriage, more cosmetic / lifestyle bullshit that appeases liberals without fundamentally changing anything

Well it's real nice for a certain group of people and opens the door to further marginal reforms so it's better than nothing at all

aerdil posted:

probably puts universal healthcare back further since so much "effort" was expended into obamacare, it'll be at least another decade or more until any more reforms are attempted - except for the inevitable blacklash bills the republicans try to pass that'll just scale it back further

So isn't this exactly the kind of stuff Zizek says is necessary? (Finding the truth/symptom (that obamacare may have been a positive step) in the past, but only after we found the real cause (universal healthcare) in the future?) I'm thinking particularly "From Symptom to Sinthome", ch 2 in Sublime Object. Here's some passages http://zizek.livejournal.com/3848.html

we cry about liberal reforms but its not like there's a real alternative - when is the democratic party going to champion anything that would actually subvert/supplant capitalism?

of course Zizek is talking about "revolutionary acts", but again, this is only known from a subjective future position and so on and so on