UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION
THE MESSAGE THAT MADEMARIJUANA LEGAL IN COLORADO!
FOREWORD BY NORM STAMPER,FORMER CHIEF OF THESEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT
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chapter two
Pot 101: Understanding Marijuana
For more than three decades, Democratic senator Tom Harkin has served as a reasoned voice or the health and welare o America’s rural communities. While in Washington, he has spearheaded ederal eorts to expand unding or medical research and alternative energy programs. Among his peers and his constituents, Harkin is well known or his commitment to civil liberties—having successully championed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against those with mental and physical disabilities. By almost all appearances, Senator Harkin is a compassionate, well-educated, rational human being—just the sort o person that most Americans want representing them in Congress. However, bring up the topic o marijuana and a seldom seen side o Harkin’s personality rises to the surace—one that shares more in common with the “Reeer Madness” era o the 1930s than refects the situation today. In 2008, an Iowa NORML member wrote to Harkin and asked him to explain why he supports the criminal prohibition o mari- juana. The lawmaker’s reply: “[M]arijuana is not the recreational drug that many people believe it to be. [M]arijuana use oten has atal consequences.”
14th Choc: Mrjn v. alcohol
Within days, the senator’s over-the-top response was eliciting tongue-and-cheek media snippets nationwide. On the Internet, tens o thousands o Americans logged onto the Web site o Washington, D.C., gossip columnist Wonkette (Ana Marie Cox), who mockingly posted the headline: “Senator Tom Harkin: Marijuana Makes People Sell Their Children.”
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In the eyes o many, particularly those tens o millions o adults who use or had ever used marijuana, the remarks turned the onetime U.S. presidential candidate into an immediate laughingstock—the poster child or what some Americans
don’t
know about pot. Unortunately, such marijuana ignorance is hardly limited to one lone senator rom Iowa.Although marijuana is the most widely used illicit intoxicant in the United States (and the world), much o the public—and apparently some prominent politicians—still remain woeully ignorant about the plant’s multiple uses and its psychoactive eects. There are several reasons or this conusion. For starters, independent public opinion polls indicate that only about one-hal o the American population admits to having had rsthand experience with cannabis.
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Further, among those who have tried pot, some only experimented with the drug on a handul o occasions. Many others ceased their use altogether decades ago. Additionally, society is bombarded with varying, and oten contradictory, messages about pot. The White House Oce o National Drug Control Policy (more commonly known as the drug czar’s oce) has spent tens o millions o taxpayers’ dollars per year to produce print and television advertisements stigmatizing mari- juana—blaming its use or a host o societal ills. Conversely, national advocacy groups like NORML, SAFER, and the Marijuana Policy Project engage in national outreach and media campaigns rebut-ting many o the U.S. government’s widespread and ot-repeated claims—most o which are based on rhetoric and stereotypes rather than scientic acts.