[420 Girl]

Maybe because it happens so infrequently, but it seems that every time a Democrat gets elected President, Americans of a certain persuasion get psyched that maybe marijuana use could become legalized.

Jimmy Carter was considered to be a reformer regarding the herb, but he quickly disabused Americans of that notion when he endorsed the Mexican government’s use of the herbicide paraquat on marijuana fields in Mexico in 1977.

Bill Clinton infamously smoked but didn’t inhale in his halcyon days, and of course, Barack Obama infamously admitted in his first memoir Dreams of My Father that in his confusing days in high school, “Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it.”

But when asked about legalizing pot at his town hall Internet meeting last month, the president was quick to dismiss such thoughts, saying he had no intention of doing so.

But that’s hardly stopped the national conversation on the matter. In fact the subject is all the rage in mainstream media these days. In Politico last month, George Mason University professor Jeremy Meyer wrote that the issue is now ‘smoking hot’. And in the current TIME, Joe Klein argues that California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s plan to decriminalize pot in the Golden State would be a financial bonanza in a state that desperately needs money and should be duplicated nationally.

But it’s not just baby bombers and their scions who think now is the time to relax the penalties in the war on this particular drug.

Dr. David Krahl is the former deputy director of the Drug Free American Foundation. In a recent essay, Krahl admitted that he previously supported the prohibition of marijuana as medicine. But now, he says, he’s had an epiphany:

“After seriously investigating the issue, and getting beyond the rhetorical arguments of both sides, I began to realize that the prohibitionist viewpoint against the use of marijuana as medicine largely ignored three things, which are so embedded in the fabric of American society and reflective of our cultural values that their truth is almost self-evident.”

Those three things, Krahl writes, are that medicinal marijuana should be a states rights issue, that it’s an issue of the relationship between the physician and patient, and that it’s an issue regarding the greater domain of a citizen’s right to privacy.

Melbourne resident Jodi James feels the same way. James sits on the board of directors of the Florida Cannabis Action Network. She says that medical marijuana is a decision that absolutely should not be made by law enforcement.

As she told me on Friday, “What we do know about medical marijuana is that it’s not new, it’s not scary, it’s not something that Californians came up with a decade ago to be unique. This is something that’s tried and true for hundreds of years. This is not something that needs new FDA approval because your grandparents were using this.”

I was interviewing James to get her take on a new effort here in Florida to get medical marijuana on the ballot next year.

It’s (pardon the expression) a grass-roots effort led by Orlando citizen Kim Russell, founder and chair of the nascent group People for Medical Marijuana.

Russell is spearheading an effort to try to get over 700,000 signatures on a petition to the Secretary of State’s office by next February, to get a measure on the ballot giving Floridians the opportunity (with a 60% margin, of course) to decide whether the Sunshine State should join the growing chorus to at least allow for pot to be legal and accessible for patients ailing and in pain.

Russell says she doesn’t consume the evil weed herself. She says the idea came to her after learning that her father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and she believes it would help him eliminate his tremors, and possibly allow him to avoid having brain surgery.

“I spoke with my representatives, and it didn’t sound like it was going to happen soon….so I decided that I had to go ahead and get my dad the help he needs.”

The Florida Cannabis Action Network’s Jodi James says she’ll actively support the medicinal marijuana initiative, but says her eyes are on “the big picture, ending the war on drugs in general.”

That debate will go on, but although President Obama isn’t giving the advocates any satisfaction, his Attorney General, Eric Holder, is. Holder declared that the Drug Enforcement Administration would stop raiding users and dispenser of medicinal marijuana unless they violate both state and federal law.

That reverses Bush AND Clinton doctrine on going after such clubs, particularly in California, the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana in 1996.

Whether this might provide moral suasion in the moderate state of Florida is something that will be interesting to see play out in the next year and a half.

But the issue has serious ramifications. Florida, like many other states, has serious prison overcrowding issues. And many of those people are in jail for marijuana-related offenses.

That’s why, although it’s understandable that our first black president, who gets whipsawed by the conservative media on a daily basis, won’t touch the issue with a 3-foot bong, other Washington politicos might not feel so cowered.

Virginia Democratic U.S. Senator Jim Webb (along with Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter) has introduced legislation that would involve a year and a half study of the criminal justice system. When asked by the Huffington Post if that means legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana, the former Navy Secretary under Ronald Reagan said, “I think they should do a very careful examination of all aspects of drug policy.”

Still, back in the Sunshine State the odds remain daunting against Kim Russell and her supporters. But even getting it on the ballot might be a victory of sorts, for those who think the matter deserves the consideration that Tallahassee-based politicians seem afraid to present on their own.


http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...legalized.html