Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis' responses in the 22 minute KATU News video entitled "Your Voice, Your Vote" by Steve Dunn, on the subject of the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act of 2012 concerning the legalization of recreational marijuana for adults ages 21 and over, are full of misinformation and outright falsities. The overall report was a bit weak on both sides, admittedly, but the "against" presented information that is untrue and ultimately misleading. The following is an attempt to correct this misinformation and provide counter-evidence to the claims of Mr. Josh Marquis.
Paul Stanford of the Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp (CRRH) opened by stating that he believes cannabis legalization would help create revenue for the state and virtually destroy the black market for marijuana, as has the legalization of alcohol all but destroyed that particular black market. He also states that it will help police focus on the harder drugs.
Josh Marquis then goes the stereotypical politician route by immediately blasting Stanford's claims, stating that this is basically a campaign to get Stanford "more millions" off of marijuana. He falsely states that Stanford makes millions off of medical marijuana and that 99% of patient applications that go through his offices are approved. He then goes on to compare Stanford's offices under this false statistic to having other medical facilities hand out oxycodone to 99% of people who ask for it.
Paul counters this by stating that not only does he make less than $100,000 a year, his offices reject about half the applications they receive because their symptoms do not match the legal requirement(which is essentially how other medical facilities treat other medications, such as oxycodone!). He then states that the goal of his campaign is to shut those places down that make a profit dispensing it and have adult marijuana users grow their own without a license and regulate the sales, thereby putting money into the pockets of local farmers and thus strengthening our local economies. Right now, the major money makers are Mexican drug cartel, Canadian black market growers and U.S. politicians. OCTA has reported that, with the taxation of marijuana in Oregon, coupled with the amount saved by police forces combating a harmless drug, this state would enjoy an estimated $200 million in extra revenue each year.
Dunn quotes a Facebook reply about how we should just legalize cocaine, heroin and LSD while we are at it. This viewer is basically saying the legalization campaign is nuts. While they teach in journalism that in order to write a good paper you must assume the reader knows nothing about what you are presenting, I am going to assume that if you are reading this then you have already seen the statistical comparison between marijuana and other drugs, from tobacco to heroin to alcohol[if not, google it]. What I haven't seen nearly as much and thus will not assume the reader knows is that, according to information based upon the years of decriminalization of ALL drugs by the people of Portugal since 2001, the idea of this Facebook response about legalizing all other drugs "while we're at it" has actually proved to be a resounding success in doing the stated goals of the war against drugs. Their numbers show that, across the board, when they began treating drug users as voluntary patients instead of criminals by legalizing drugs and allowing users to come into clinics to get safe doses with safe utensils and/or to receive addiction treatment, the amount of users of ANY drug either stayed the same or dropped substantially while the amount of people seeking rehabilitation either stayed the same or went UP substantially. Further, many former police chiefs who have joined the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) have provided evidence that the goals of the CRRH are aligned with what is likely to happen by showing examples of other successes as well as showing the complete failure of the War on Drugs. The goals I speak of include separating cannabis from the black market, as has been successfully demonstrated by Amsterdam, increasing public safety and creating thousands of Oregon jobs. They also stated that the amount of people in the U.S. using drugs has stayed the same since the War on Drugs began and that in cases where they have been legalized or tolerated, they either stayed the same or actually went down.
Marquis agreed with the Facebook reply, stating that if alcohol came into legal questioning today that it would be made at least a schedule 2 drug and thus would require a prescription to obtain. Although I agree that alcohol is a serious drug, I do not think that the people of this or any nation that has seen our history of failure with alcohol prohibition would think that making alcohol illegal once more would help anything, unless you are talking gang wars and black markets booming again. War is the most profitable machine on the planet, and the drug war is no exception, but the very violent and secular nature of these profit machines makes that profit undesirable at best, and appalling and degrading nonetheless.
Marquis also, in this response, asked if people really wanted to be coming back from a ski trip and know that the truck driver in the other lane just smoke a medical marijuana joint. This is a scare tactic and does not belong in this debate because a) driving under the influence of ANY prescription drug is illegal(Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants, or DUII) and b) the issue at hand is not about medical marijuana, it is about recreational marijuana. Even if it is legalized for recreational use, it will still be, like alcohol and other drugs, illegal to be driving while your are under the influence of cannabis.
After viewing a video response by a man saying that legalization would be no big deal, Marquis talks about marijuana as a weed, stating that when it becomes legal, everyone can grow it and so the money won't go into the pockets of people like Stanford, who run the dispensaries. This is a direct contradiction to his first statement that this is basically pushed by people like Stanford so that they can make "even more millions" off of marijuana, and Stanford himself stated plainly that his goal is to collapse those businesses in favor of supporting the local farmer. You see, Marquis alludes to the idea that it won't destroy the black market, and in a sense he is right, but not in a way that supports his argument because if people were growing and selling locally or through stores or growing for the pharmacies, the money would still stay right here in Oregon and would directly benefit our economy. [On a side note, about the use of the term weed by Marquis: while studying Permaculture design, this writer learned that the term weeds is not really a valid technical term in the way we think of it. You see, many of the things we call weeds are edible and/or medicinal. Even when they are not eatable, they are shown to have functions inherent within them that are crucial in the methods in which nature enriches soil content to create and enrich or restore forests and valleys. A little off topic, perhaps, but something which I felt needed some clarification.]
In another video response, a person stated that they don't like the idea of anyone having access to any drug, especially when the person is likely to abuse it. Well, one could argue that is just too damn bad because, if you follow the constitution, it states that we were born with inalienable rights, including, of course, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Being inalienable rights endowed to all at birth, the constitution is stating that everyone everywhere has these rights and that it is in the active interests of the U.S. government to make sure their citizens have access to these rights indefinitely(I'm not saying that they do this, only that they are supposed to do this). So basically one's opinion about someone else having the freedom to choose whether or not to do a drug is moot, as far as legal standards and rights goes(or should go). And to reiterate, in all the cases I've seen in the world of legalization of drugs, or at least tolerance, the trend is that less people, not more, end up abusing the drug and far more people end up seeking help to get off a drug when they are treated humanely as a patient rather than inhumanely as a criminal.
After that little video, Marquis began rambling yet again, this time about how when he was young an ounce of marijuana was called a lid and was way cheaper and less potent than it is now, and then carries it over into how Mexico is suffering from a drug war primarily against marijuana that gets many people killed. It is a wonder that this guy even takes himself seriously when his arguments against legalizing cannabis actually support the campaign's stated goals of making the growers and thus the market local, which dis-empowers the cartel and corrupt government officials who make the profits right now.
When Marquis claims that the OCTA's proposed law would violate international treaties that the U.S. is subject to, Stanford counters, explaining that the template for the proposed law was taken from those very treatise and are completely legal by their standards. He then goes on to explain a certain part of the Controlled Substances Act and how it explicitly gives the rights to any particular state to bypass the constitutional federal supremacy when it comes to making it's own substance abuse laws. So basically the legalization of cannabis for recreational use by adults in Oregon is valid under state, national and international rules and regulations, which is how it was designed to be.
After a break, Stanford states the projected $400 million in extra revenue projected over a two year period by Harvard economist Jeffrey Meyer would be available to the state of Oregon. Marquis's reply? He says that the purpose of the 1998 Medical Marijuana law passed in Oregon was never meant to generate money commercially. Once again, this fact is useless and a given. This guy seems to repeatedly forget that the subject they are talking about isn't the medical marijuana laws passed last century, it is about a proposed law that isn't enacted yet. Whether this is a purposeful tactic meant to get the uninformed viewers worked up against the new law or whether this guy really is this under-qualified to be discussing the subject, one can only guess. He also talks about how little his county is doing currently to prosecute marijuana offenders under current law and how available pot already is to the people of Oregon. He says he is mainly concerned that people won't get into trouble for having marijuana, saying that he encourages people to read the proposition because the penalties are lax. But isn't that the point? Aside from DUII laws, which would continue to be active, there would be a misdemeanor penalty against adults obtaining pot for minors, as with alcohol. Steve Dunn, the anchorman, then turns to Marquis and says, "If we're not really prosecuting now, then why not make it legal?" The response he gets is that it will send a message to the people that it is OK to use mind-altering substances. Well, if you look at the arguments of such intellectuals as Graham Hancock, Richard Alpert, Terence and Dennis McKenna, Alduous Huxley, Stanislov Grof, Rick Strassman, Paul Stamets, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, Alejandro Jodorowsky, even Joe Rogan, to name a very few, as well as the revolutionary works of people like Bruce Lipton, Richard Bandler, and Masaru Emoto, you will find that altered states of consciousness are an integral part of being human, and that the exploration of consciousness itself may be considered another inalienable right that expresses itself whether any established orders of society recognize this or not.
Eventually, Stanford touches upon how much of the debate had inadvertently been spent on the discussion of medical marijuana, and the idea of this current issue of recreational legalization is about, among other things, de-stigmatizing marijuana and allowing it to get recognized as a real drug that can be put into real pharmacies, which would allow people to make a living cultivating it for the medical industry in a way that is more focused into our local economy than the previous way for both medical and recreational use.
In the closing statement of Paul Stanford, he agreed with Marquis in that people should definitely read this law and come to understand that cannabis has been part of American culture since the days of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and that they would be turning in their graves if they saw people getting arrested for such things as possession of marijuana. He says that he believes that marijuana will be a "bellwether issue for the future of freedom" and "if the government can prohibit this harmless substance than the future of freedom is indeed dire." Intense, but well put.
And the final statement of Josh Marquis: "Coca-cola originally had cocaine in it, too. That's not a good reason to make cocaine legal." Well, you see Josh, there is a vast difference between a founding father for a country whose ideas of freedom became part of the very foundations of that country and his opinions on the rights to a natural plant, and a product of a company that uses it's power to exploit the people of entire nations for power and profit(watch "Blue Gold," a documentary about water and water rights, if you are unfamiliar with what I am referring to). Yes, cocaine was used medicinally. So was heroin. Heroin was made by Bayer, if I'm not mistaken, and was used to treat morphine addiction. But then science stepped in and showed that heroin metabolizes into morphine. And today, we have tons of science showing the benefits of cannabis, and none of it points to a single fatality. Again, Mr. Marquis, your tactics, or your knowledge, maybe both, have been compromised due to irrelevancy. You say that it shouldn't be pushed onto the public? Once again, look at the evidence of what decriminalization and tolerance has done in other places, as well as government statistics of drug dependency before and during prohibition for the U.S.(I believe it has stayed at around 1.3% of the population) and you will see that not only does prohibition NOT work, but legalization can potentially accomplish the goals of prohibition, or at least have the same amount of success as prohibition does. And for those who haven't seen a movie in the past couple decades, pot already has been pushed into public domain. Hasn't he seen Weeds?
A little research was all it would have took for Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis to have at least refrained from inadvertently supporting the OCTA 2012 goals as stated by Paul Stanford, but in the end, it seems ignorance has prevailed in the mind of yet another human "official." The information is out there, folks, and it seems, to me at least, to lead to the inescapable conclusion that the legalization of marijuana could be one of the most positive and influential moves by the American people in quite a while. If anything, as Steve Dunn pointed out, we must ask ourselves, "what's the harm?" If, in two years, it has shown to be a negative move, we can make steps to remove it. And if it doesn't get better or worse, as in the conclusions of the observations of LEAP, why not just keep it legal?
-Acro Star
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