Marijuana Advocates Continue Push For Legal Use

Washington, DC -- One by one, they came to the podium -- lawyers, doctors and business executives -- to confess publicly their years of marijuana use.

"I've smoked marijuana for 30 years, and inhaled too," Paul Kuhne, a Tennessee businessman, told a recent conference called by the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to explain the difficulty of smoking marijuana and being a social conservative at the same time.

Kuhne came to the conference to defend medicinal marijuana. His wife, who died recently, also used marijuana, he said.

"My business partner told me I had to stop smoking marijuana if I wanted to keep my job," he said. So he stopped. He drank martinis instead and wrote letters to newspapers calling for the legalization of marijuana, prompting police to raid his home after a surveillance operation.

There they found posters and leaflets calling for the legalization of marijuana. And again his partner warned him. "My business partner told me I had to take down those posters if I wanted to keep my job," he said.

Kuhne, with other successful middle-aged professionals, came to Washington to press for legalization of marijuana and for the day when adults would not be penalized for using it. According to the FBI's most recent Uniform Crime Report, state and local officials arrested about 700,000 people on marijuana charges in 1997. Activists want to cut this figure to zero.

MANY HAVE SMOKED, FEW ADMIT IT

NORML could not have timed its annual conference better. In the Nov. 3 elections more than 55% of voters approved measures legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

More than a quarter of all Americans have smoked marijuana at some point in their lives, according to polls conducted for NORML, but few have come to the capital to make a declaration, and fewer still in high office are prepared to put an end to what activists say is hypocrisy.

"Look where marijuana got Bill Clinton. Politicians confess their youthful indiscretions, then call for tougher drug laws," sniped Ethan Nadelmann, a professional activist against anti-drug measures. Clinton, in his first run for president in 1992, said he had tried marijuana but had not inhaled.

Other participants in the conference justified marijuana legalization by citing well-known figures such as Britain's Queen Victoria who allegedly ingested cannabis regularly. Some even showed their defiance by openly smoking the drug.

Irvin Rosenfeld, a stockbroker and one of a handful of legal users in the country who obtain their marijuana from the U.S. government for medical purposes, sat at the back of the conference hall puffing on one of his rationed joints.

"Law enforcement can't touch me," he explained with some relish as he flaunted a bag of marijuana cigarettes that he receives freeze-dried from the government.

Every year the Office of National Drug Policy reminds the conference that smoking marijuana is illegal. Only a handful of marijuana smokers are exempt, certified by an experimental 1978 program that the government is phasing out.

GOVERNMENT INSISTS MARIJUANA BAD FOR HEALTH

The government says it has not shifted from a long-standing line: "Smoked marijuana damages the brain, heart, lungs and immune system." It spent $17.1 billion this year to combat drugs, and the Education Department alone is spending $739 million to warn children off drug use.

Barry McCaffrey, head of the White House anti-drug office, said after the election that marijuana reformers ignore scientific principles in their drive to legalize the drug.

"The propositions (to legalize medicinal marijuana) are thinly veiled attempts to legalize marijuana for general use," McCaffrey said. "Marijuana advocates have mounted a well-financed, sophisticated public relations campaign to persuade Americans to their point of view. They use personal anecdotes rather than science to support their position."

Despite last month's approval of medical marijuana in five states, the federal government has maintained its opposition to the drug by denouncing the methods of medical marijuana activists and in one case by blocking election procedures. In Washington, D.C., exit polls by NORML showed that 69 percent of voters backed legalization, but a provision inserted in the budget by Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican, bars the district from using any funds to count the vote, so the referendum has no legal effect.

"These initiatives in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state are deceptive and dangerous," McCaffrey said. "Allowing a purported medication to circumvent federal approval does a great disservice to the American public."

'TIME FOR GOVERNMENT TO GET OUT OF OUR LIVES'

Marijuana activists reject federal interference in state initiatives, saying it only shows how out of touch with public opinion the government is. "It's time for the government to get out of our personal lives and let us as individuals decide ... how we conduct ourselves in the bedroom and whether we smoke marijuana or drink alcohol when we relax," NORML director Keith Stroupem said.

Activists do not agree on the best way to legalize marijuana, but all agree that the recent success of medical marijuana initiatives marks a watershed for their movement. Some believe medical marijuana should be the first goal and the acceptance of marijuana at a grass-roots level will lead ultimately to wider progress for personal freedoms.

"A modicum of discretion and a low-key approach is the key to success for medical marijuana," said Robert Raich, a lawyer for the Cannabis Co-operative in Oakland, California, where the city council declared a medical state of emergency when federal authorities ordered the co-operative to close on Oct. 20.

It has since reopened but Raich fears too much publicity galvanizes federal agents to file closure orders. "Vociferous and aggressive calls to legalize marijuana are not always good for the immediate cause of legalizing medical marijuana," he said.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

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