By Peter Lawrence Kane
Probably the most depressing thing about majority opinion coming around to same-sex marriage is how it doesn’t necessarily drag other progressive causes up with it. For instance, 52 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal “under certain circumstances,” which is three points lower than in 1978. And because 54 percent of people support gay marriage, that means many millions of folks are down with women making the choice to marry another woman but are not OK with them making the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Support for same-sex marriage grows year over year while support for legal abortion remains horizontal. Oh, well.
Thankfully, personal marijuana use follows different trendlines. For the first time, according to Gallup, a clear majority of Americans (58 percent) now favor legalized marijuana. Whether it’s abject horror at the racist prison-industrial complex, the studies that demonstrate again and again that alcohol is much worse for you, or whether people just collectively chilled the fuck out around 2011, we might never know. But almost eight decades after the lurid green miasma in Reefer Madness, it’s become apparent that the rabidly anti-weed crowd has calmed down with the ridiculous lies some — even though it’s still trippy to read that many cops want pot fully legal but many growers don’t.
Since lots of people still relish the delicious tingle from breaking federal law as they inhale, you should know that rolling a joint is still very much against the rules. California came pretty close to changing those rules, though. Three years ago, Prop 19 would have permitted an ounce of possession for personal use in your home or in a “public place licensed for cannabis consumption,” and would have set up a bureaucratic apparatus to tax and regulate it. That went down to defeat by only 53–47 (which is quite the noble failure when you factor in how much whiter, older, and generally more conservative actual voters are relative to the general population). Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and the ACLU of Northern California are teaming up to try again, maybe with another ballot measure in 2016.
They’d do well to clear up the confusion. While it’s pretty easy to get a prescription, California doesn’t know what to do about the dispensaries that currently exist, typically treating them like those sex offenders who have to live under a bridge. And Oaksterdam University is a shadow of its former self after getting raided last year by US Marshals, the DEA, and (naturally) the IRS. No charges were filed but the resulting legal limbo did some damage. Washington State and Colorado passed measures in 2012 to legalize pot, the latter going even further this year to make the state the world’s first regulated market for adults, beyond even the Netherlands. (The resulting savings and revenue were good for the state budget, but that’s the dorkiest argument possible in favor of decriminalization).
It would be nice to have some clarity, but California being California, it’s complicated. Both Oakland and San Francisco are ahead of most jurisdictions, having ordered law enforcement to deprioritize cannabis possession and treat walking with a J more or less like jaywalking (as long as you’re not actually caught transacting a drug deal in public). Oakland’s Prop Z also stipulated that the city would license and tax sales — once state law allowed that, which of course it currently does not. Nor is the Obama Administration much of a font of simplicity. After initially coming down hard on the 18 states that permit smoking pot in some fashion, the feds have reconsidered. Marijuana possession is still illegal under the Controlled Substances Act, but they’ve basically said they’re going to look the other way when it comes to Ziploc baggies holding less than an ounce, in states that permit your bedside drawer to contain them. In short, if you live in the Bay Area, no tier of government is actively coming for you, but you’d be smart to keep your drug use to yourself unless you’re the crusader type. Even Willie Nelson still gets arrested from time to time.
Because few politicians have the courage to speak up on behalf of stoners or admit that they too like to get high — Barney Frank came out in 1987, but didn’t confess to being a pot smoker until safely out of office — it’s probably going to be awhile before American follows Uruguay to the land of commonsense and sanity, even if public approval hits 70 percent, which it very well might. When that first day of full legalization dawns, we should probably issue an amnesty for anyone ever busted for possession. But we’ll probably just have a heated, irrational national conversation about how newly legal marijuana should be advertised on TV, and then potsmoking will officially be uncool.
Photo by Don Bayley
