The parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today. As FDR did back then, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade.
Marijuana prohibition is a core cause of the nation's economic problems. It now costs the U.S. more than tens of billions per year to track, arrest, try, defend and imprison marijuana consumers who pose little harm to society. The social toll soars even higher when we account for social violence, lost work, ruined careers and damaged families. In 2007, 775,137 people were arrested in the U.S. for mere possession of this ancient crop, according to the FBI's uniform crime report.
Like the Prohibition on alcohol that plagued the nation from 1919 to 1933, marijuana prohibition (which essentially began in 1937) feeds organized crime and a socially useless prison-industrial complex that includes judges, lawyers, police, prison guards, prison contractors, and more.
A dozen states have now passed public referenda confirming medical uses for marijuana based on voluminous research dating back 5,000 years. Confirmed medicinal uses for marijuana include treatment for glaucoma, hypertension, arthritis, pain relief, nausea relief, reducing muscle spasticity from spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, and diminishing tremors in multiple sclerosis patients. Medical reports also prove smoked marijuana provides relief from migraine headaches, depression, seizures, and insomnia, according to NORML. In recent years its use has become critical to thousands of cancer and AIDS sufferers who need to it to maintain their appetite while undergoing chemotherapy.
The ban on marijuana has been extended in the U.S. to include hemp, one of the most widely used agricultural products in human history. Unlike many other industrial crops, hemp is extremely prolific in a natural state, requiring no pesticides, herbicides, extraordinary fertilizing or inappropriate irrigation. Its core uses include paper, cloth, sails, rope, cosmetics, fuel, supplements and food. Its seeds are a potentially huge source of bio-diesel fuel, and its leaves and stems an obvious choice for cellulosic ethanol, both critically important for a conversion to a Solartopian renewable energy supply.
Hemp was grown in large quantities by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and many more of the nation's founders, most of whom would likely be dumbfounded to hear it is illegal in the United States (based on entries in Washington's agricultural diaries, referring to the separation of male and female plants, it's likely he and his cohorts raised an earlier form of "medicinal" marijuana as well).
The growing of hemp was mandatory in some circumstances in early America, and again during World War II, when virtually the entire state of Kansas was planted in it. The current ban on industrial hemp costs the U.S. billiions of dollars in lost production and revenue from a plant that can produce superior paper, clothing, fuel and other critical materials at a fraction of the financial cost and environmental damage imposed by less worthy sources.
In 1919, fundamentalist crusaders help pass the 18th Amendment, making the sale of alcohol illegal. The ensuing 14-year Prohibition was by all accounts a ludicrous failure epitomized by gang violence and lethal "amateur" product that added to the death toll. Its only real winner was organized crime.
FDR's support was critical to passing the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition. It ended a period of gratuitous social repression and gave the American economy a substantial boost.
Marijuana prohibition has escalated substantially since Richard Nixon's 1970 declaration of the War on Drugs. There was a brief reprieve when Steve Ford, the son of President Gerald Ford appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone barefoot and claiming that the best place to smoke pot was in the White House. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter's last year in office, only 338,664 were arrested for marijuana possession. Following Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush recorded a low of 260,390 marijuana possession arrests.
Ronald Reagan renewed the War on Drugs and declared his "Zero Tolerance" policy, despite his daughter Patti Davis' claim the Gipper smoked weed with a major donor. This utterly failed reactionary crusade has resulted in millions of incarcerations costing billions of dollars with, again, whose only real beneficiaries have been organized crime and the prison-industrial complex that is its twin.
On a percentage basis, more American high school students (who report virtually unlimited access to marijuana and a wide range of other drugs) smoke more pot than students in Holland, where it is legal. Because so many Americans use it, and it is so readily available, marijuana prohibition can only be seen as a virtually universal assault on the basic liberties of our citizenry.
In a 2005 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey, more than 97 million Americans admitted to having tried pot, like Barack.
Barack Obama has made it clear in his book Dreams From My Father, he has smoked -- and inhaled -- marijuana (he is also apparently addicted to a far more dangerous drug, tobacco). In the long run, marijuana should be taxed. Like alcohol and tobacco, a minimum age for legal access should be set at 21.