Biden Right on Marijuana Policy

President Joe Biden has finally taken initial steps to correcting both an injustice and bad health policy by instructing the Department of Justice to begin the process to issue full and unconditional pardons for citizens and legal residents with a federal conviction for simple possession of marijuana. This pardon will help thousands with prior convictions seeking housing, employment, benefits, and educational opportunities who are currently ineligible based on federal statutory or regulatory bars on individuals with prior drug convictions. The House passed a bill in 2020 that would have legalized and tax marijuana but the Senate never voted on it.

The President has asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to begin the administrative process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug, treated the same as heroin and LSD and more strictly than fentanyl and methamphetamine – the drugs driving our overdose epidemic. Changing how marijuana is scheduled would advance research and facilitate the appropriate medical use of marijuana.

Until 1916 marijuana was legal in all U.S. states, by 1931 29 states had outlawed it, then came the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 which outlawed it nationally over objections from the American Medical Association regarding medical usage. Most historians familiar with the topic agree that the scare tactics used to encourage making possession and use illegal even for well documented medical purposes were just cover for racism against Mexican and Black men who were the primary recreational users.  One way to know the laws and their enforcement are racist is that white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, a disproportionate number of people arrested and convicted are Black and brown. According to historian Eric Schlosser’s article in The Atlantic “Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a ‘lust for blood,’ and gave its users ‘superhuman strength’.” Apparently police aren’t any better witnesses than civilians as anybody who has been around a marijuana user will disagree with those characterizations. Lust for food maybe, but there’s much more evidence of alcohol fueled violence.

Laws and enforcement tightened further over the next three decades until middle and upper class whites started getting arrested at which point most states backed off due to political pressure.  Then in 1976 a parent's movement against marijuana began affecting public attitudes which lead to the 1980s War on Drugs. Mandatory sentences were re-enacted by President Reagan including the "three strikes you're out" policy, requiring life sentences for repeat drug offenders. The failed War on Drugs has persisted ever since.

I am particularly interested in the use of marijuana for treating chronic pain as my wife suffers from it and has been prescribed opiates like morphine and fentanyl which can both be highly addictive unlike marijuana.

President Biden has urge all Governors to follow his lead and issue pardons for state marijuana possession offenses. Just as no one should be in a federal prison solely due to the simple possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either. Gov. Abbott’s press office responded that he no intention of following Biden’s lead. Abbott’s Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, on the other hand says he’ll work to legalize marijuana in Texas and expunge the record of those convicted of possession.

Social justice, new treatments for pain and other ailments, and better use of criminal justice resources, all from one change in policy. I’m voting for Beto O’Rourke for Governor of Texas and I hope you will too.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 12, 2022

Wealthy Use Law to Maintain Their Wealth

Anti-drug laws, voter suppression and gerrymandering, and tax policy are all used by the wealthiest among us to maintain a fractured society. It’s in their interest to keep us at each other’s throats so we don’t turn our attention to their hoarding of assets and work together to develop a more equal and just society.

Using wedges to keep people with common interests separated has been a trait of the wealthy here since colonial times when plantation owners noticed that indentured servants were fraternizing with and sometimes escaping with slaves or running off to live with the Indians. In order to stop losing their enslaved workers the planters developed programs for the indentured servants wherein they would receive what was essentially a large bonus at the end of their servitude, assuming they lived through it. In addition they were made the supervisors of the black slaves and given the privilege of beating and otherwise abusing them.

Anti-drug laws such as the prohibition against marijuana were created expressly to enable the arrest and prosecution of black members of society since at the time of inception it was preferred over liquor and beer due to being cheaper because they could grow their own. The use of anti-drug laws has continued to be used for control as explained by former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman who was quoted in Harper’s magazine saying "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people, you understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, we could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Until the Voting Rights Act poll taxes and literacy tests were used to prevent “undesirables” so that the wealthy could continue to prosper at the expense of the lower classes. Now laws like Texas’ Voter ID bill seek to suppress the vote by only allowing forms of ID that tend to be held by wealthier white voters and not by poorer voters of color. Gerrymandering is used to prevent voters of color from electing officials who might be more sympathetic to their plight. Here again Texas is a prime example with a federal judge having found that the 2011 redistricting maps were intentionally discriminatory against voters of color.

Just look at Texas tax policy and the funding of public education. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick claims that property taxes are too high and he wants to set a maximum that cities and school districts can charge. Ironically he’s been instrumental in reducing the share of public school funding provided by the state thus requiring school districts to raise property taxes in order to provide an adequate education. The way this hurts people of color is that their school districts generally have overall lower property values so even if they could afford to raise the tax rates they’d still have less money to spend on educating children in their districts. Most of us would be very angry if our tax deduction for mortgage interest went away so it won’t but the people who get the greatest advantage out of it are the very wealthiest who buy multi-million dollar homes.

Nearly 400 years later and the wealthy still lead us by the nose.

Published in the Seguin Gazette July 14, 2017

End the big government boondoggle

Republicans constantly make the dubious claim that fewer regulations on businesses would increase profits and encourage them to hire more people. There is something we could cut regulations on that would reduce costs to our local, state and federal governments, increase employment, reduce both violent crime and official corruption and increase tax collections without raising tax rates. That something is legalizing marijuana then regulating and taxing it like alcohol and tobacco. On Saturday June 9, 2012 the Texas Democratic Party took a giant step forward by adding a platform plank calling for decriminalization of marijuana.

Every year the police in this country arrest more people of marijuana possession than they do for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and other violent crimes combined. After over 40 years of the “War on Drugs” marijuana use is more prevalent and the marijuana is more readily available than it was when President Nixon declared the war.

By any measure the prohibition of marijuana possession and personal use is exactly the big government boondoggle that conservatives so often complain about. It’s way past time that all our political leaders recognize that prohibition today is just as counter productive as it was in the 1920’s and 1930’s and repeal it. As one who doesn’t drink alcohol and doesn’t smoke tobacco or marijuana I have nothing personal to gain, I just want to see sensible public policy.

I’m proud to have led the effort to add decriminalization of marijuana to the Texas Democratic Party platform.

War on Drugs - epitome of big government waste

In “Say ‘no’ to pot” Wednesday, Bobby Traeger writes about the potential harmful effects of marijuana as though that alone is reason to keep it illegal. Well then why aren’t alcohol and tobacco illegal, after all they’re both harmful to health and addictive?

Alcohol was illegal in the 1919 to 1933 and look at what a debacle that was. Not only was there a dramatic rise in organized crime, violence and government corruption but Americans lost respect for law enforcement as well. We’re repeating the same process and losing once again.

The “War on Drugs” is nothing more than a big government money waster. Last month the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that nearly half of all its prisoners were being held for drug convictions. If you believe in small government eliminating the “War on Drugs” should be one of your biggest priorities due to the obscene cost in time and resources for police, prosecution and prisons.

If you’re interested in keeping teens healthy and safe take a lesson from how alcohol and tobacco are regulated and the success of education about the dangers of tobacco. We have successful models to use; let’s stop the insanity of repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

End to big government boondoggle known as the "war on drugs"

Senator Wentworth’s April 19 Viewpoint goes into some detail on the damage that drug cartels are doing to Texas. He fails to mention the even greater damage the overall “war on drugs” is doing to our society and that of our neighbors in Mexico where there were over 3,000 murders in Juarez alone in 2010.

At last weeks Summit of the Americas in Cartegena, Latin American leaders discussed reform and regulation to replace prohibition, even Canadian Prime Minister Harper conceded at a press conference that the drug war is “not working”.

A wider variety of more powerful drugs is more widely available at lower prices to younger people than they were prior to the “war on drugs”. Any criminologist will tell you that the point of outlawing something is to make it so expensive and so difficult to obtain that people just don’t do it. Based on that criteria; the “war on drugs” is a failure.

The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population while nearly one third of them are there over drug offenses. The cost to arrest, prosecute, incarcerate and probate these “crimes” is staggering.

It is time we recognized that the “war on drugs” is the same kind of counter-productive failure as Prohibition was in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Televangelist Pat Robertson and Congressman Ron Paul both believe that this big government boondoggle should end and so should anyone who believes their tax dollars should be wisely spent.

Wiggins controversy and opportunity to discuss the ineffectiveness of prohibition

Much has been said here about Mike Wiggins and whether or not he should resign his position as County Judge. Situations like this are often called teachable moments, we should all take a step back and look at the larger issue of whether or not marijuana should be legalized.

Marijuana has been used for 4,000 years, nearly as long as alcohol. Alcohol is 10 times more likely than marijuana to be a factor in an auto accident. Marijuana is addictive to 9% of users as compared to alcohol at 15% and tobacco at 32% so you can’t say it should be prohibited for health and safety.

Recreational use in the US wasn’t widespread until after it prohibited in 1937. Today almost any high school student will tell you they could get it if they wanted it so you can’t say prohibition is protecting our children.

The US wastes $15 billion per year on the “War on Drugs” without reducing availability or demand for marijuana making it the poster child for ineffective government programs. It’s time we regulate it and tax it like the other recreational drugs; alcohol and tobacco.

Albert Einstein once said “…nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.” While it’s past time to legalize marijuana as long as it is illegal as an elected official Mike Wiggins should resign otherwise he reinforces disrespect for government and the law of the land.