Rick Steves: My Notes from a Drug Policy Reform Conference
(Posted on his Facebook page yesterday)
With a group of respected and caring citizens, I have co-sponsored Initiative 502 in Washington State (www.newapproachwa.org), which will legalize, tax, and regulate the sale of marijuana for adults. We worked very hard last year to gather more than 350,000 signatures. Last month, we turned them in, and last week, our state government certified that we had gathered enough good signatures. This means that (unless our legislature simply accepts the initiative outright), I-502 will be on the ballot in November of 2012.
I’m working with a wonderful group of activists who (like their counterparts did in the 1930s to end the prohibition against alcohol) endeavor to end the US government’s war on marijuana. We believe that it's not a question of if the USA will stop sending pot smokers to jail...it’s a matter of when. While there are many good reasons to be waging this battle, for me this is a matter of civil liberties and pragmatic harm reduction.
As with the laws against booze during Prohibition, people are realizing that the laws against marijuana are causing more harm to our society than the very drug they criminalize. When alcohol was finally legalized, no one was saying, "Booze is good." Rather, they were deciding that the law was bad, and that it made more sense to tax and regulate alcohol as a recreational drug and to take the money, violence, and crime out of the equation — to treat its abuse not as a crime, but as a health and education challenge. I believe that is what's happening now in our country with a reconsideration of laws criminalizing marijuana use. And I believe Washington State will become the first state in the country to actually legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana this November. I will be working hard between now and then to help make that happen.
I am excited and proud of our work. The people on our team see this not as a "pro-drug use" crusade, but as a "smart drug law" crusade. I’ve been a board member of NORML for ten years, and during that time I’ve attended many drug policy conventions around the country. I just returned from a very good conference put on by the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org) and co-hosts including the ACLU, Open Society Foundations, and the International Drug Policy Consortium. I thought you might enjoy an insight into what people discuss at such an event. So, for your interest, I’ve typed up some of my rough notes. I should stress that I don’t necessarily agree with all these points — I simply found them thought-provoking, and hope you might, as well.
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http://www.facebook.com/notes/rick-steves/marijuana-policy-behind-the-scenes-my-notes-from-a-drug-policy-reform-conference/10150516848699702
= new reply since forum marked as read
