[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 4, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1274-S1276]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, the legalization of marijuana is an
issue that has generated significant media attention in recent months.
Last year Colorado and Washington State became the first jurisdictions
in the world to legalize the production, trafficking, possession and
use of marijuana for recreational purposes. The consequences of
legalization are only beginning to be understood. But one thing is
clear. Legalizing marijuana does not make it any safer. Marijuana
remains a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act.
According to that designation, it is a substance that presents ``a high
potential for abuse.''
Colorado's previous experience legalizing medical marijuana suggests
that the consequences of full-on legalization could be dire for public
health and safety. From 2006 to 2010, the number of Colorado drivers
involved in fatal car crashes who tested positive for marijuana
doubled. The number of Colorado students who have been suspended or
expelled for marijuana use has increased considerably. Nearly three-
quarters of Denver teenagers in drug treatment reported obtaining
marijuana from a ``medical marijuana'' user. Colorado has become a
source State for the distribution of marijuana throughout the United
States. Law enforcement in my home State of Iowa reports that the
percentage of marijuana interdicted there that originated from Colorado
has increased from 10 percent in 2010 to 36 percent in 2012.
Against this backdrop, the Obama administration has recently sent
mixed signals, especially to young people, about the dangers of
marijuana use. President Obama recently stated that in his view,
marijuana use was no worse than drinking alcohol. The Department of
Justice declined to challenge State laws that have legalized marijuana,
despite the obvious conflict with Federal law. Additionally, the
Department issued guidance to prosecutors concerning the enforcement of
the Controlled Substances Act and Federal money laundering laws that is
plainly intended to permit marijuana businesses in these States to grow
and flourish. These actions have caused confusion and uncertainty about
whether using marijuana is really something that should be discouraged
because it is harmful.
However, many community anti-drug coalitions, healthcare
professionals, public health officials, and law enforcement groups are
speaking out about the dangers of marijuana use. One such group, Smart
Approaches to Marijuana--or Project SAM for short--has recently begun
to confront the marijuana legalization movement head-on.
One of Project SAM's cofounders, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy,
has been outspoken in his efforts to fight the marijuana legalization
movement. He has appeared on numerous television and radio shows,
including ones where audiences may disagree with his views against
legalization. He has bared his own struggles with addiction, offering
himself up as a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming addicted
to marijuana and other substances. And he has broken with many in his
party by speaking out against the President's permissive attitude
toward marijuana use and the Obama administration's failure to enforce
the Controlled Substances Act. Indeed, all former DEA Administrators,
appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents alike, have joined
with Project SAM and others to
[[Page S1275]]
oppose the Obama administration's policies in this area.
According to a recent article from NBCnews.com, an article I ask
unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, Project SAM recently
launched a serious counter-offensive to the marijuana legalization
movement. The organization began by placing a billboard near the Super
Bowl stating that ``Marijuana kills your drive.'' Project SAM launched
a website dedicated to tracking public health incidents linked to
marijuana use in Colorado and Washington to highlight the consequences
of legalization in those States. It is also launching websites that
will allow current or former marijuana users to share their stories
about how marijuana has damaged their lives.
Project SAM has also been active in my home State of Iowa. The
organization recently co-hosted town hall meetings with local community
anti-drug coalitions, highlighting the risks of legalizing marijuana.
Project SAM has also briefed State officials about the dangers of
legalizing marijuana.
It is not every day that I have the occasion to praise a Democrat.
However, Congressman Kennedy is to be commended for his courage in
coming forward and participating in this debate by publicizing the
dangers of marijuana use and opposing the Obama administration's
failure to enforce Federal law in this area. His voice is a welcome one
for those of us who believe that the legalization of marijuana is an
unwise policy that will have a profoundly negative effect on public
health and the lives of many young people.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From NBCnews.com, Feb. 14, 2014]
Treatment or Jail: Patrick Kennedy Wages Fierce Anti-Pot Crusade
(By Tony Dokoupil)
As a hard-partying teenager, Patrick Kennedy met President
Reagan at a fundraiser for the JFK Library, a meeting
captured in a photograph that the former Rhode Island
congressman now hangs in his home office. He used to think of
it as a funny episode, a collision of Camelot's cocaine kid
and America's foremost opponent of illegal drug use. But
Kennedy took his last hit of anything in 2009, and he's since
honed an anti-drug message that sounds a bit like Reagan with
a Boston brogue.
Kennedy believes there is ``an epidemic in this country of
epic dimensions when it comes to alcohol and drugs. He'd like
to treat it all, but he's convinced that the single biggest
threat to America's mental health is free-market marijuana.
So even as Democrats favor the legalization of pot--by a 34-
point margin, according to the latest WSJ/NBC News poll--the
scion of America's most famous Democratic family has broken
ranks, criticized the White House, and aligned with the likes
of Newt Gingrich to warn voters against trying to tax and
regulate today's psychoactive chlorophyll.
``I don't think the American public has any clue about this
stuff,'' says Kennedy, after welcoming guests with a choice
of Gatorade or bottled water.
The ``stuff'' in question is modern marijuana, of course,
which gets pumped into snack foods and candies, and carries
more THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical that gets you
high) than the ditch weed used by the hippie generation.
Kennedy calls legalization ``a public health nightmare
because he believes it will warm more people to a dangerous
drug, and lead inevitably to ``Big Marijuana,'' a blood-
sucking vice industry dependent on converting kids and
selling to heavy users--same as the tobacco and alcohol
industries.
``The science tells the story,'' he says, breaking into an
attack on the idea that marijuana is safer than alcohol. He
ticks through studies showing that smoked marijuana is
``associated with'' or ``linked to'' IQ loss, psychosis, and
self-reported dissatisfaction with life. ``It takes you to
the same place as cocaine or heroin,'' he often adds. ``It
just takes longer.''
``Incarceration is a powerful motivator,'' says Kennedy,
who after a prescription drug-addled crash in 2006 spent a
year urinating in front of a probation officer three times a
week.
Last January Kennedy went public with his beliefs,
launching Smart Approaches to Marijuana, or Project SAM, a
campaign to keep marijuana illegal and address the failings
of the drug war through other means. But what other means?
Kennedy has sometimes been vague, promising ``a fresh
approach that neither legalizes, nor demonizes marijuana,''
but never quite clarifying what makes him different from
Reagan-era prohibitionists.
Not anymore. In a series of interviews, Kennedy and his
cofounder Kevin Sabet--a former senior advisor to the Obama
administration on drug policy--previewed SAM's aggressive new
posture for 2014. It's not a new War on Pot, but it might be
the most potent campaign since Nancy Reagan made marijuana
the centerpiece of her ``Just say no'' tour three decades
ago.
As Kennedy and Sabet cut a path between the poles of
legalization and prohibition, they seem to list toward the
status quo. They would make the simple possession of
marijuana a civil infraction, like jaywalking, which could
take 750,000 annual marijuana arrests down to zero, and
alleviate the disproportionate burden that prohibition puts
on people who are nonwhite and poor.
But instead of handcuffs, Kennedy and Sabet propose a
mandatory screening for marijuana addiction, according to the
``Legal Reform'' section of their website. That could lead to
``marijuana education,'' and ultimately a year in a
``probation program to prevent further drug use.'' And if the
pot smoker still insists on getting high? It's handcuffs
time.
``Incarceration is a powerful motivator,'' says Kennedy,
who after a prescription drug-related car crash in 2006 spent
a year urinating in front of a probation officer three times
a week. He faced a jail term if he relapsed. ``That does it
for a lot of people,'' he added. ``That's the turning point:
hearing that judge say treatment or jail.''
``I think Madison Avenue has proven that it can get around
more rules and be more ruthless than any Mexican drug
cartel,'' adds Sabet.
Kennedy and Sabet can also sound old-school on medical
marijuana. As a member of Congress, Kennedy voted in favor of
allowing patients access to pot but now says he was wrong.
He'd like to repeal every law that treats smoked marijuana as
medicine. Instead he hopes to see pharmaceutical-grade
cannabis satisfy an FDA approval process and sell as a patch
or pill. ``We don't smoke opium for morphine,'' as Sabet
explains, ``we don't need to smoke pot for medicine.''
SAM's opponents argue that legalizing weed would raise tax
revenue, allow law enforcement to chase more serious crime,
and undercut Mexico's violent drug cartels. Kennedy and
Sabet sharply dispute all this--and so much more--but
they're particularly unapologetic about championing the
continued existence of a black market. They say it's
mostly nonviolent on the American side, and will create
fewer public health problems than allowing advertisers to
flog for Big Marijuana.
``There is no way to minimize the greed and profit motive
in promoting a dangerous substance,'' says Kennedy. When it
comes to pushing a product, adds Sabet, ``I think Madison
Avenue has proven that it can get around more rules and be
more ruthless than any Mexican drug cartel.'' He calls the
black market, ``better than having Joe Pot, heir to Joe
Camel, on a bus-stop where I'm going to be hanging out with
my kids before school.''
When Project SAM launched, opponents mocked the effort as
foolhardy, and they had a point. Voters had just legalized
marijuana by a landslide in Colorado and Washington. Polls
showed that a majority of Americans supported doing the same
nationwide, and Kennedy could do little at first but appear
on TV as the token voice of dissent.
Now, however, SAM is poised to launch a serious counter-
offensive. It began this month with a billboard outside the
Super Bowl.``Marijuana kills your drive,'' read the
carefully-calibrated text, which picked up national coverage,
spreading on a tide of the opposition's howls and guffaws.
It was crafted by Sabet, a 34-year-old prodigy of drug
politics, who launched his first anti-drug campaign (Citizens
for a Drug-Free Berkeley) while in college and is now, in the
opinion of Rolling Stone, the number one national ``enemy of
legalization.''
``Yep,'' he emailed after the ad launched. ``Game on.''
``My name is John and marijuana ruined my life,'' begins
one entry from a young man who says that marijuana took ``the
gifts and potential I was born with.''
The game continues this spring, with SAM planning a
response to ``We Are the Marijuana Majority,'' a web
compendium of legalization's best and most famous friends,
launched with a grant from the Drug Policy Alliance, a
leading advocate for reform. The SAM answer will be a
directory of--you guessed it--the anti-marijuana majority.
The precise URL and title is still under discussion, but
the webpage will feature opponents of legalization, an
infinite scroll of head shots and quotes from the likes of
Tina Brown, David Brooks, and Barack Obama (whose tangled
statements on the subject appear to have landed him on both
sites at once).
SAM's second website will take aim at Colorado and
Washington, the world's first state-approved markets for
marijuana, and to Kennedy and Sabet a slowly unfolding
disaster that will prove them right in the end. The Justice
Department has said it will shut down the state experiments
if the regulations fail or public health falters, which is
why SAM will use this site to track every known example of
pot gone wrong.
The third website is tentatively titled ``The Other Side of
Marijuana'' and it will collect stories from people who
believe marijuana damaged their lives. It's a counterpoint to
the notion that marijuana is a safe, non-addictive substance.
Based on a sample of entries, it's also likely to draw more
fire than anything SAM has done yet.
``My name is John and marijuana ruined my life,'' begins
one note from a young man who says that marijuana took ``the
gifts and potential I was born with.'' ``Most of my
daughter's former friends are in jail or
[[Page S1276]]
dead,'' adds the mother of an 18-year-old in residential
treatment for marijuana addiction. She is ``sickened'' by the
idea that marijuana will be the next big business in America.
In another note a therapist quits her practice in despair
after a rise in marijuana-related patients. ``I witnessed
first-hand too many of the problems,'' she writes, ticking
off ``anxiety, depression, irritability and psychosis.''
``This is the stuff of life,'' Kennedy says, trying to
explain his passion for drug policy, ``so you bet I'm
emotional about it.''
Not every pot smoker goes crazy or brainless, as Kennedy
admits, but SAM is about minimizing the risk to those who--
like him--start drugs young and are predisposed to break bad
for life. After he got married in 2011, in his early 40s, he
moved to his wife's hometown of Atlantic City, N.J. Now he is
the father of three kids under 5 (one is a step-child), and
he worries they will inherit his addictions. He can also see
the casinos from his backyard.
``The appetite for Americans to lose themselves is just . .
. '' Kennedy shakes his head and seems too pained to finish
the thought. His six-week-old daughter was fussy the night
before, and it was his turn to shush and pace. In the
hallway, near a stairway to where his 20-month-old son is
napping, there's a toy fire engine and Kennedy's eyes return
to it again and again. Suddenly, he seems to be on the brink
of tears.
``This is the stuff of life,'' he says, trying to explain
his passion for drug policy, ``so you bet I'm emotional about
it.''
The rollout of the new SAM continued this month at a
conference in Washington, D.C., where Kennedy and Sabet held
a standing-room-only rally for supporters. They celebrated
25,000 media mentions, and 22 states with SAM affiliates.
They aired footage of Kennedy telling CNN's Sanjay Gupta that
his ballyhooed endorsement of marijuana was ``shameful,'' a
ratings ploy that ``history will not remember well.''
So far, however, the legalization side seems to have an
edge in the war of ridicule. They charge Kennedy and Sabet
with 21 st century reefer madness, which the duo bats away as
a sign that the opposition is afraid to engage with the
facts. But while they can sometimes be unpopular at parties,
they keep going, fueled by those letters from the public, and
enthusiastic notes from past drug advisors.
``SAM is doing what no one else has done and doing a darn
good job of it,'' wrote Robert DuPont, Richard Nixon's head
of drug control, in a recent email to Sabet. ``Absolutely
brilliant presentation,'' Clinton-era drug czar Barry
McCaffrey added in a different note.
In a sense, nothing has changed since a teenage Kennedy
gave President Reagan a sly smile. To make the world a
healthier place, the anti-drug crowd wants to protect people
from their most dangerous appetites. The reform side supports
the same vision of health but wants to make drug use itself
safer, believing that insobriety is normal and indulgence
inevitable.
Neither side appears to be winning, because there's no such
thing as an ``objective'' position on marijuana policy. Would
legalization really be so bad? Or is it the panacea its
proponents claim? The honest answer is: nobody knows for
sure, because no modern nation has ever tried legalization
before--until now.
``Life isn't really in our control,'' says Kennedy, as
another sober day fades to night. ``There's a mover in the
universe, a higher power, so to speak, and we can't imagine
what we're going to find in our universe if we let go and
just let God lead us.''
____________________