Back in those long-ago days of the 1960s, when I was in college, a whole lot of people would have sworn marijuana would be legal by now. That was because everybody in law school smoked dope.
When all those people became lawyers, judges, state legislators, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices and, yes, presidents of the United States, there was no way they could continue enforcing ridiculous laws against pot possession without giggling.
We all underestimated the tolerance of politicians for flagrant hypocrisy, especially when it comes to the unequal enforcement of totally unjust laws based on race and income.
So we’ve now arrived at that idyllic future we all envisioned, when presidents and Supreme Court justices could openly admit to smoking pot and even inhaling.
They all lived to tell the tale without frying their brains like eggs or being reduced to slobbering incoherence, with the possible exception of a few current Republican presidential candidates.
But more than half a century after people other than jazz musicians began regularly passing marijuana around, most elected officials are still terrified to take anything more than baby steps toward ending the prohibition of a far less dangerous substance than the legally accepted ones of alcohol and nicotine.
That’s not to criticize the recent vote of 10 to 3 by the Milwaukee Common Council to reduce the maximum fine from $500 to $50 for a first offense of possessing 25 grams or less of marijuana.
The effort led by Ald. Nik Kovac is one of the first rational political steps in the state toward reducing the widespread human damage that is caused not by pot, but by laws against pot.
Taking the next step requires similar intelligent thought and political courage by Republicans controlling the Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker, who is salivating to become a right-wing Republican presidential candidate, and no one really expects that.
Criminalization of Pot Is the Problem
The penalty for first-offense pot possession has never been the worst consequence for offenders. It’s the fact that a single conviction makes any subsequent charge of possession, no matter how minor, a felony punishable by incarceration.
State felony convictions for marijuana are the clearest illustration of the racial and income disparities of our criminal justice system around drug use. They also prove why outlawing something is the worst possible way to educate young people about the real-life damage of using drugs to excess.
The nonpartisan Public Policy Forum tracked felony marijuana convictions in Milwaukee County for second and subsequent offenses in 2013 and 2014.
Of 275 people convicted, only one escaped incarceration, 265 went to jail and the other nine went to state prison. Ugly as those numbers are, here are two uglier ones. Although the African American population of Milwaukee County is only 26% of the total population, African Americans accounted for 86% of those convicted of second or subsequent offenses of pot possession.
It’s been documented for a long time that whites and blacks use marijuana at about the same rate. Yet otherwise intelligent adults continue to try to justify those totally unjustifiable legal disparities.
Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn knows better than anyone that having his officers enforce marijuana laws is a total waste of manpower that’s better used protecting public safety.
“While we are certainly appropriately concerned with the potential for disproportionate incarceration, we are living in a world of disproportionate victimization, disproportionate calls for service, disproportionate fear, disproportionate disorder,” Flynn said, testifying against reducing penalties so dramatically.
He said disproportionate criminal arrests for marijuana were the result of neighbors complaining primarily in the city’s most violent neighborhoods. “I offer that the neighborhoods that are afflicted by violence know what’s in their neighborhoods’ interests,” Flynn said.
Well, not really. One possible strategy to reduce violent crime in the city would be to encourage violent criminals to smoke a lot more marijuana. The final stage beyond mellow is inert.
Seriously, it’s not the use of marijuana that creates violent neighborhoods. It’s the criminalization of marijuana and other drugs.
We saw exactly the same pattern during America’s prohibition of alcohol. The most deadly side effect of prohibition was the rise of organized crime as Al Capone and rival gangs from coast to coast shot each other in the streets, killing innocent bystanders to gain control of the illegal distribution of alcohol.
By outlawing drugs such as marijuana that are commonly used by all races, politicians today are responsible for creating the deadly drug wars over illegal markets that are killing innocent children playing in city neighborhoods.
That’s what makes so absurd the sanctimonious political rhetoric about legalization sending the wrong message to young people about drugs. Alcohol and drug laws have sent the wrong message to young people about drugs for decades.
That message is that you don’t have to respect the laws we pass. They mostly don’t apply to anyone who looks like us. Although every once in a while they do. Sorry about that.
