Congressman Polis Discusses Failed Marijuana Policy on MSNBC

Check out Congressman Polis' interview with Cenk Uygur on our country's failed drug war.


This Thursday, Congressman Polis was a guest with Cenk Uygur on MSNBC in a conversation about the the nation's failed war on drugs. He discussed the growing support in Congress for reforming marijuana laws and the Fearless Campaign's upcoming attempts to move us forward. 


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Welcome to NYC, "Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World" By John Del Signore - Gothamist

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Last year the NYPD arrested 50,383 people for low-level marijuana offenses, making low-level pot possession the number one cause of arrest in NYC. On average, nearly 140 people are arrested every day for marijuana possession in NYC, according to stats released by the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services and obtained by the Drug Policy Alliance. The announcement from the reformist group also comes with a friendly reminder that possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana was decriminalized 30 years ago. Not that this stops cops from arresting you for it. Here's how they do it, according to the DPA:

Possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana was decriminalized - that is, it was made a violation, with the first offense facing a maximum penalty of a $100 fine, not arrest and jail. Marijuana burning or "in public view" was made a criminal offense, a misdemeanor. Most people arrested for marijuana possession were not smoking in public; most simply had a small amount of marijuana in their pocket, purse or bag.

Possessing a small amount of marijuana in one's pocket or bag is a legal violation, not a criminal offense. But quite often, when police stop and question a person, they say "empty your pockets" or "open your bag." Many people comply with the officer's request. If a person pulls marijuana from their pocket or bag, it makes the marijuana "open to public view," a crime. The police then arrest the person for this misdemeanor.

So the solution's simple—if you're holding, just politely decline to empty your pockets. The officer will defer to your nuanced grasp of the law and respect your right to privacy, and you'll be on your merry way! Gabriel Sayegh at the Drug Policy Alliance elaborates: "A full search—in which the person stopped is required to empty his pockets, or where an officer puts his hands in an individual's pocket or otherwise goes beyond the pat down of outer clothing for the purpose of determining if there is a weapon (the 'frisk')—this requires probable cause, that is, enough evidence to justify an arrest.

"What is happening with many of the arrests is that police are ordering people to empty their pockets, discovering marijuana, and then arresting people for marijuana—but where was the probable cause for the arrest in the first place? Answer: There wasn’t any. If an officer has stopped someone and says, 'empty your pockets,' the person can ask, 'Am I under arrest?' If not, you are free to go. If the police say you’re being arrested, then they can go into your pockets (conduct a full search), but legally speaking, they have to have probable cause to arrest you in the first place and possession of marijuana isn’t a criminal act.

"In short, people can not empty their pockets, but the cops might get a bit miffed by this, and that could be more problematic than actually just cooperating. Either way, people should always say 'I don’t consent to a search.' " Especially if you've got a nice fat doobie in your trousers. But whatever you do, just don't run.

Why I Support Legal Marijuana by George Soros - Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2010

We Should Invest in Effective Education Rather than Ineffective Arrest and Incarceration.

Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.

Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition. The roughly 750,000 arrests they make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana represent more than 40% of all drug arrests.

Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. It also would reduce the crime, violence and corruption associated with drug markets, and the violations of civil liberties and human rights that occur when large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens are subject to arrest. Police could focus on serious crime instead.

The racial inequities that are part and parcel of marijuana enforcement policies cannot be ignored. African-Americans are no more likely than other Americans to use marijuana but they are three, five or even 10 times more likely--depending on the city--to be arrested for possessing marijuana. I agree with Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, when she says that being caught up in the criminal justice system does more harm to young people than marijuana itself. Giving millions of young Americans a permanent drug arrest record that may follow them for life serves no one's interests.

Racial prejudice also helps explain the origins of marijuana prohibition. When California and other U.S. states first decided (between 1915 and 1933) to criminalize marijuana, the principal motivations were not grounded in science or public health but rather in prejudice and discrimination against immigrants from Mexico who reputedly smoked the "killer weed."

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade--and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity. Some claim that they would only move into other illicit enterprises, but they are more likely to be weakened by being deprived of the easy profits they can earn with marijuana.

This was just one reason the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy--chaired by three distinguished former presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Caesar Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico--included marijuana decriminalization among their recommendations for reforming drug policies in the Americas.

Like many parents and grandparents, I am worried about young people getting into trouble with marijuana and other drugs. The best solution, however, is honest and effective drug education. One survey after another indicates that teenagers have better access than most adults to marijuana--and often other drugs as well--and find it easier to buy marijuana than alcohol. Legalizing marijuana may make it easier for adults to buy marijuana, but it can hardly make it any more accessible to young people. I'd much rather invest in effective education than ineffective arrest and incarceration.

California's Proposition 19, which would legalize the recreational use and small-scale cultivation of marijuana, wouldn't solve all the problems connected with the drug. But it would represent a major step forward, and its deficiencies can be corrected on the basis of experience. Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws. And just as California provided national leadership in 1996 by becoming the first state to legalize the medical use of marijuana, so it has an opportunity once again to lead the nation.

In many respects, of course, Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on Election Day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago. 

Cops to California Voters: Legalize It! by Charles Davis - Criminal Justice | Change.org

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Listening to the critics, you'd think the only people calling for an end to marijuana prohibition in California were a bunch of deadbeat, dirty stoners -- which, if true, might be cause for concern, as polls show most residents of the state support legalizing the much-maligned weed. But contrary to stereotype, a broad coalition supports Proposition 19, the initiative on the November ballot that would legalize marijuana, from labor unions to law enforcement, with dozens of retired cops and judges lending their support to the argument that it is prohibition -- not pot smoking -- that poses the real threat to society.

"I was basically a drug warrior until I saw what was happening in my own courtroom," James Gray, a retired Orange County Superior Court judge, told reporters on a press call Monday. "And then I started learning, seeing, watching, that the tougher we get with regard to non-violent drug offenses, literally the softer we get with regard to the prosecution of everything else, like robbery, rape and murder. Why? Because we only have so many resources in the criminal justice system."

Gray spoke to mark the release of a letter signed by more than 30 retired law enforcement officials in California voicing support for Proposition 19. Put together by the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the letter blasts the status quo as a boon to organized crime and calls "for new laws that will effectively control and tax cannabis," an effort signers say will dry up one of the leading sources of funding for the increasingly violent Mexican drug cartels.

Indeed, whatever one's views about the drug itself, the war on pot is "not working and it hasn’t reduced the use of marijuana," retired San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara argued on the call. Its illegality, meanwhile, "produces enormous funding for drug cartels and drug gangs and violence," he noted. "The violence is not because people are getting stoned on marijuana. It’s caused by the whole gangster syndrome that exists when you establish criminal prohibition and drive the profits and prices up."

That message -- that pot legalization is less about condoning its use and more about making our communities safer -- is echoed in the letter, addressed to the "Voters of California" and signed by former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper, among other notables.

"As criminal justice professionals, we have seen with our own eyes that keeping cannabis illegal damages public safety -- for cannabis consumers and non-consumers alike," the letter says. "If California's voters make the sensible decision to effectively control and tax cannabis this November, it will eliminate illegal marijuana distribution networks, just as ending alcohol prohibition put a stop to violent and corrupting gangsters' control of beer, wine and liquor sales."

The letter's release comes after all nine former heads of the Drug Enforcement Agency -- that is, the former heads of a bureaucracy with a vested interested in maintaining costly drug prohibition, regardless of its failure -- wrote Attorney General Eric Holder last month expressing "grave concern" about Proposition 19 and asking him to suppress the will of California voters should they embrace legalization. (See Firedoglake founder Jane Hamsher's response).

"The California proposition is not a close call; it will be a clear conflict with established federal law and in fact will also violate our government's treaty obligations ratified by Congress," the former DEA officials wrote, urging Holder to consider suing the state of California just as the Obama administration has sued Arizona over its controversial immigration law. "We would expect the Department of Justice to act just as swiftly and for the same reason."

Photo Credit: Dauvit Alexander

About New York - A Smell of Pot and Privilege in the City by Jim Dwyer - NYTimes.com

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The Bloomberg administration has quietly been fixing up its sons and daughters with cool summer internships, as reported Tuesday in The New York Times. Which is probably fine: It is hard to see nepotism as much of a sin when it is really just another chapter of Darwinism, the drive possessed by all creatures to finagle a better future for their offspring.

No matter how much Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg preached about meritocracy, no one expected that the laws of nature would be repealed when he was elected.


Sure enough, a Freedom of Information Act request showed that tucked among hundreds of summer interns picked through a competitive process were dozens of the children of City Hall insiders or of Mr. Bloomberg’s friends. They reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges.

In short, these are not residents of Stop and Frisk New York.
Mayor Bloomberg promised to lead a government that looked like the city; in reality, he leads one that looks like his mirror, an administration in which key managers are overwhelmingly white and male. It is one thing if this means the annual crop of interns is heavily salted with young Bloombergians.

It is quite another when those managers are shaping policies that wind up leading to the deprivation of liberty of people who do not look like them.

Among the biggest but least discussed expansions of government power under Mr. Bloomberg has been the explosive increase in arrests for displaying or burning marijuana.

No city in the world arrests more of its citizens for using pot than New York, according to statistics compiled by Harry G. Levine, a Queens College sociologist.

Nearly nine out of ten people charged with violating the law are black or Latino, although national surveys have shown that whites are the heaviest users of pot. Mr. Bloomberg himself acknowledged in 2001 that he had used it, and enjoyed it.

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the mayor lives, an average of 20 people for every 100,000 residents were arrested on the lowest-level misdemeanor pot charge in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

During those same years, the marijuana arrest rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was 3,109 for every 100,000 residents.

That means the chances of getting arrested on pot charges in Brownsville — and nothing else — were 150 times greater than on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

No doubt this is, in large part, a consequence of the stop-and-frisk practices of the Police Department, which Mr. Bloomberg and his aides say have been an important tool in bringing down crime.

Nowhere in the city is that tactic used more heavily than in Brownsville. On average, the police conducted one stop and frisk a year for every one of the 14,000 people who live there, an analysis by The New York Times found. More than 99 percent of the people were not arrested or charged with any wrongdoing.

Brownsville has the highest marijuana arrest rate in the city. The top 10 precincts for marijuana arrests averaged 2,150 for every 100,000 residents; the populations in those precincts are generally 90 percent or more nonwhite.

Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood has the lowest rate of marijuana arrests; the 10 precincts with the lowest rates averaged 67 arrests per 100,000 residents. The population in most of those neighborhoods was 80 percent white.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Bloomberg talked about proposals that would allow marijuana to be distributed for putatively medical purposes.

He said it was a Trojan horse for complete legalization.

“I mean, the idea of medical marijuana, we all know what that means: It means everybody is going to qualify,” he said. “The worst thing is the hypocrisy of saying it’s medical marijuana. If you want to legalize it, let’s have that debate, but that’s what you’re really talking about. It has nothing to do with medicine.”

In truth, in New York, the debate was over before it began.

For blacks and Latinos, it is very, very illegal.

But not in Mr. Bloomberg’s neighborhood.

Wayward Weed by Ava Chin Urban Forager - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com

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Cannabis sativa found in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, growing in a hedge next to dandelions and other weeds. Ava Chin for The New York Times

Recently, I was walking with a friend along a busy street in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, when she stopped suddenly outside a medical office and pointed to the bottom of a hedge. “Do you see that?” my friend asked, as a bus drove by.

In truth, I saw only the hedge, along with a dandelion rosette and a few short weeds growing amid some crushed tissues and candy wrappers. My friend has been foraging for decades and is sort of a mentor — years ago she taught me how to differentiate Queen Anne’s lace, or wild carrots, from poison hemlock — so I just assumed this was some choice edible that I had somehow overlooked in my foraging education.

She muttered something in Latin about a sprout near my foot. It was about midcalf high, with palmate leaves (like the fingers on a hand). She snapped off a leaflet and crushed it between her fingers. “Oh, yes,” she said, shoving it under my nose.

One whiff of the distinctive sweet, heavy odor, and suddenly I was transported to the last outdoor concert I’d attended — some long-weekend affair in New Jersey where I was surrounded by marijuana smoke and slow talkers.

How I could have missed this fine young cannabis plant is beyond me. It was so pretty, with those deeply grooved, perfectly pointed serrated leaves, that an artist could have used it as a model for a hemp flag.

Native to Central Asia, Cannabis sativa is an annual with a central stalk and multiple, serrated leaflets (five here, with smaller stipules hanging like an old-fashioned mustache). It can tolerate everything: poor soil, drought, high or low acidity or alkalinity, fungus, and the advances of more aggressive weeds. It has flourished so well in the United States that it is listed as a noxious weed in Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Cultivated for more than 4,500 years in Asia, and then spreading through Europe and Africa, cannabis has historically been used for fiber (rope, clothing, etc.), oil, and as a medicinal and recreational drug. It was prescribed by doctors for years as a painkiller, and even Queen Victoria took it as an analgesic. As a narcotic, it has many names, including marijuana, pot, weed, grass, hash, ganja, hemp, dope, spliff, reefer, blunt, chronic and, my favorite, Mary Jane. It is illegal in much of the world — to consume and to grow.

My friend and I tossed around the idea that this healthy Cannabis sativa could be cultivated medical marijuana — it was, after all, growing outside a doctor’s office. But green-thumbed doctors harvesting an illegal substance right in front of their building? Not likely. A quick scan of the other side of the hedge revealed only numerous non-weed weeds proliferating under the hot sun.

“Someone probably just tossed a bud into the hedges and the seed took,” my friend said.

Since marijuana is mostly seeds, buds and flowers, we probably should not have been surprised that this plant appeared streetside in Ditmas Park. And knowing how tenacious Cannabis sativa is, we’re likely to encounter more of it in the future.

Mayor Bloomberg (Still) Against Legalizing Medical Marijuana By Celeste Katz - Daily Politics - NY Daily News

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Sorry I didn't get to this a bit earlier, but Frank Lombardi of our City Hall Bureau sent along some of Mayor Bloomberg's comments on (not) legalizing medical marijuana today:

"Terrible idea, just a terrible idea. California's experience has not been good... I mean, the idea of medical marijuana, we all know what that means: It means everybody is going to qualify," he said.

"Okay, look, the worst thing is the hypocrisy of saying it's medical marijuana. If you want to legalize it [outright], let's have that debate, but that's what you're really talking about. It has nothing to do with medicine.

"All things considered, marijuana today is a more potent than it used to be and there is enough evidence that people abuse it and may lead to using harder drugs. Some people argue no, some people argue yes, but on balance, I think it's a terrible idea.

"New York has enough problems right now... You don't need more things that take away judgment and common sense."

As Mr. Lombardi has explained in the past on DP -- in the context of Bloomberg's super-groovy appearance with the cast of "Hair" at the Inner Circle Show -- this isn't the first time the mayor has bucked the idea of legalizing pot, even though he admitted during his first run for office to having partaken of a little wacky weed in his younger days.

Censored: Ad Criticizing Mayor Bloomberg for Out of Control Marijuana Arrest Policy is "Too Controversial" by Gabriel Sayegh - The Huffington Post

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Driving along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE), you'll see advertisements for just about everything, including alcohol, strip clubs and casinos. But there's one ad you won't see: a rejected billboard highlighting Mayor Bloomberg's marijuana arrests policies in New York City.

Most New Yorkers don't know that last year, the New York Police Department arrested close to 50,000 people for marijuana possession at a staggering cost of nearly $100 million. Even fewer know that possession of marijuana has been decriminalized in New York State since 1977. Yet over thirty years later, New York City has the dubious distinction as the marijuana arrest capital of the world.

To raise public awareness, the Drug Policy Alliance contracted advertising space on the BQE from TITAN 360, the world's largest transit advertising company. The billboard, criticizing Mayor Bloomberg for his out of control marijuana arrest policy, was set to go up this week in Brooklyn and run through the month of May. TITAN estimated the billboard would be seen by nearly 400,000 people per day.

Then last week, TITAN rejected the billboard. In an email exchange, the TITAN representative said the landlord refused the ad because of "political circumstances from the Mayor's office."

This was a stunning response. What political circumstances? Did the landlord have ties with the Mayor? Was the landlord worried about upsetting the Mayor? We inquired with TITAN--but got no answers.

The rejected ad (link) states: "Nearly half of all New Yorkers have tried marijuana--including Mayor Bloomberg. We can't arrest them all but Bloomberg is trying." The ad then states two statistics: "Marijuana arrests last year: 50,000. Cost to taxpayers: nearly $100 million."

Prior to 1997, the lowest-level marijuana arrests were one percent of all arrests in the city. Since 1997, marijuana arrests have averaged 10 percent of all arrests in the city. Bloomberg, it turns out, has overseen more low-level marijuana arrests than under Mayors Dinkins, Koch and Giuliani combined.

The vast majority of those arrested are young and an astonishing 87 percent are Black and Latino - even though whites have higher rates of marijuana use. This costs New Yorkers nearly $100 million, while we face severe cuts to services like education and the MTA.

Why are there so many people arrested if marijuana is decriminalized? Often it's because in the course of interacting with the police, individuals are asked to empty their pockets. That results in the pot being "open to public view" - which is, technically, a misdemeanor. Most of those arrested spend a day or two in holding cells before being released. But even a simple arrest for a minor drug offense can have profound collateral consequences, like loss of college financial aid, food stamps, public housing and, in some cases, even voting rights. For immigrants in our City--even legal immigrants--these arrests often lead to deportation.

DPA believes New Yorkers need to know about these arrests. So yesterday, we issued a press release about the rejected billboard and TITAN's explanation for its refusal to carry the ad.

Within hours, an aide from Mayor Bloomberg's office called. He angrily denounced our account of TITAN's rejection, and demanded we change our press release and send him a copy of the email exchange between myself and the TITAN representative. We did neither.

Later that day, TITAN's general counsel suddenly called with a new explanation. He explained the company had an internal policy which prohibits "attack" ads and ads that will create controversy. He said our ad, as is, cannot be placed by TITAN since it names Mayor Bloomberg. It was not the landlord's political concerns that caused the rejection, he said, but rather TITAN's own internal policy.

Most of the reporters who responded to our press release were, appropriately enough, looking for signs of direct involvement by the Mayor's office. When they didn't find any, their interest waned. As one reporter from a prominent daily told us, "Well, there's not really a story."

And so it goes. While the Mayor denies involvement and TITAN changes its reason for the billboard's rejection from "political considerations" to being "too controversial," the real story is being ignored: Why are Bloomberg's police unfairly targeting Blacks and Latinos for arrest when marijuana is decriminalized? Undoubtedly, the media's reaction would be different if the 50,000 people arrested every year were white.

We still hope to place the ad. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers continue to try marijuana. For white people, marijuana possession remains essentially decriminalized, while Blacks and Latinos continue to face questionable and outright illegitimate arrests for marijuana possession, spending 24-72 hours in a jail cell, and winding up with criminal records after being fingerprinted and photographed.

If the Mayor's office responded as quickly to the injustice of racial profiling as they did to TITAN's insinuation of political influence over a rejected billboard, we may not have a rapidly escalating marijuana arrest crusade in New York. Which is, after all, the point and the story.

Gabriel Sayegh is the director of the state organizing and policy project of the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org) .

Advocates Believe New York May Be Next to Legalize Medical Marijuana by Arun Venugopal - WNYC - News

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As of last month, when New Jersey signed it into law, there are 14 states that allow the use of medical marijuana. Some people think New York could be No. 15, and are watching as a bill winds its way through the state Senate and Assembly. WNYC's Arun Venugopal has more on the legislation and the people who would benefit.



Audio Time: 4:31

Dr. Nancy: High Time to Legalize Medical Pot? - MSNBC

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AMA Backs Medical Marijuana - CNN

The American Medical Association is backing medical marijuana. CNN's Elizabeth Cohen explains the issues. Clip Time: 02:26

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Winners of NORML Video Ad Contest - NORML

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Drum roll please!

Over 6,000 online voters cast their single ballots for their top three contest submissions.

Here were my two favorite award winners:

2nd Prize - Winner of $1000 - NORML Ad Contest by Nice Peter



3rd Prize - Winner of $750 - Dear President Obama by Eric Strom

Run Mitt Run...Current-tv

NY1: State Assembly Passes Bill Legalizing Medical Marijuana...

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The State Assembly passed a bill legalizing medical use of marijuana Wednesday, after about a decade of attempts to approve similar legislation in the state. “This would mean an awful lot to thousands of suffering New Yorkers,” said Manhattan Assemblyman Richard Gottfried. “The current prohibition in keeping them from that medical benefit is just political correctness run amok.” The bill allows caregivers and seriously ill patients with diseases like cancer or aids to register with the state to purchase up to two and half ounces of marijuana and grow up to a dozen plants. “I think it's important people, who that is the only thing that gives them relief, should have it available to them,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Now it's up to the Republican-lead State Senate to take on the controversial issue. The idea got a warm reception from Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno – but he says that the Assembly bill needs tighter controls. “The Assembly version doesn't work, in my estimation, in all due respect and we’re not going to do that,” said Bruno. “It’s too broad.” Sponsors of the Senate bill say it could be introduced as early as Thursday and could explore the option of having the state's Department of Health grow and distribute the marijuana. But that would require federal approval – a big leap and a possible court battle. The Assembly bill allows patients to get the drug through certified dealers. It would still be illegal for the user to re-sell the marijuana. Opponents say patients already have access to legal drugs to combat pain and nausea. The bill also faces critics in the Senate, who say lawmakers should be addressing more pressing issues. “It's inappropriately timed,” said State Senator Martin Golden of Brooklyn. “I think it’s the last five days of session and the last thing we have to be discussing here is medical marijuana.” If both houses can agree on a compromise bill, Governor Eliot Spitzer – a former critic – now says he's open to signing it into law.