Twenty years ago I would never have envisioned myself where I stood last Friday, serving as Master of Ceremonies for a local non-profit fund-raising event and roasting thirty contestants in a History Bee -- proof positive that skills which one thinks are alien to him can, with boldness and practice, be acquired (excepting, at least in my case, those which demand a modicum of hand-eye coordination).
The best public speakers are those who, through some subtle combination of sparkling wit, provocative wisdom, and empathetic warmth, entertain as well as instruct, who effortlessly render their preachments as pure performance, who stalk their podiums and platforms like seasoned soliloquists -- attributes which explain the seamless transition of Ronald Reagan from thespian to politician and of any number of stand-up comedians from night clubs to the silver screen.
My own brief acting career was hardly a harbinger of future stage presence. Seeking an antidote to low self-esteem and a broader social network, with no prior experience, I tried out for the E.C. Glass 1965 Senior Play -- which, I believe, had something to do with Henry Aldrich -- surmising that, with ten male speaking parts up for grabs, I could surely land one of them. Alas, so did eleven of my classmates, and, when the music stopped, the gamesman left without a chair was none other than your faithful chronicler.
When the drama teacher, the legendary, ceremonious spinster, Ms. Virginia Wiley, apparently taking pity on this dejected outcast, offered me the consolation prize of serving as understudy to the lead, Russell C., a perennial star whose talents had won him the favor and company of a bevy of beautiful girls, I scorned the fruitless exercise of memorizing hundreds of lines and haughtily declined, preferring instead to work as Ms. Wiley's superfluous assistant.
I got my comeuppance two weeks later, however, when poor Russell was injured in a car accident and the starring role -- which, except for my stubborn pride, would have been mine -- devolved upon a close friend of mine, Macey R., who had another part and already knew most of the lines. (Don't ask who got his part; it wasn't me.)
Years later, another friend scolded me for portraying myself as the victim of this cruel turn of events, when, in fact, the one who suffered most was the wounded Russell C.
From then on, my feeble attempts at public speaking coughed and sputtered like the recalcitrant starter on the 1983 RX-7 I finally sold last month after innumerable towings and repair bills. I tried debating in high school but foundered under a plethora of detail and a lack of spontaneity. I muddled through a course at Washington and Lee taught by the venerable, voluble, beady-eyed William Chapin, but could never quite summon the poise and rhetorical polish to make effective, convincing presentations. I remember trying to roast a college roommate at his rehearsal dinner with some grotesque tale about his passing out in a bathtub -- only to see it drown in incoherence and pathos.
When drafted to toast my father in front of thirty Schewel managers at a semi-retirement luncheon held for him after his cancer diagnosis, I even butchered the tired story of the quick-witted, young grocery clerk who runs to his boss cursing the eccentric customer who wants to buy half a banana, is startled to realize the customer has followed him and overheard his deprecations, and adroitly recovers with the enthusiastic riposte: "And this fine gentleman wants to buy the other half."
My father was well aware of my reluctance to speak in public. When he received the ADL Torch of Liberty Award in 1988, one year before he died, he selected my brother Jack -- ten years my junior -- to represent the family before an audience of two hundred. Jack has an understated, creative sense of humor, and entertained us all with some witty tales of growing up in a household with the remarkable Bert Schewel.
While delivering the eulogy at my father's funeral -- which I wrote about two months ago ("The Power of Love," April 4, 2009) -- led me to believe that, if prepared, I could speak with candor, self-confidence, and relevance, my first real attempt at humor came a few years later at the behest of a very talented roastmaster, a physician friend who asked me to co-host a fund-raising event. I think he saw me as a straight-man foil to his biting commentary, a Southern Jewish counterpoint to the Yankee Italian persona he reveled in.
Not wanting to embarrass myself, I labored diligently, compiling over two thousand words of canned jokes, original quips, and provincial satire, most of which I couldn't use, because there was no opportunity for a monologue and my partner took up most of the time roasting me and members of the audience and auctioning off door prizes.
For source material, after quickly exhausting my own imaginative powers, I turned to a joke book (I now own four, although they have lately been displaced by the Internet, where, with the click of the mouse, one can find a joke on any conceivable subject plus pages of late-night Letterman and Leno humor) and to my father's archives -- a drawer full of speeches which he gave over a period of twenty years, wisely preserved by me when I moved into his office in 1989.
Since my sidekick was a Catholic and a gastroenterologist, three of my father's favorite jokes -- two of which he frequently told about a friend who was a proctologist -- fit the occasion.
"I was late getting here this evening," I said, "because a priest stopped me in the lobby. 'Aren't you Marc Schewel?' he asked. 'Yes, Father, I am, but I don't believe we've met.' 'We haven't,' he said, 'but I've heard a lot about you. Your name comes up in confession all the time.' "
"I found out how Dr. C. gets a lot of his patients. Last week he invited me over to his house for dinner and fixed me a drink consisting of Philips Milk of Magnesia, Welch's Prune Juice, and Smirnoff's Vodka. 'What's this called, Doc?' I asked, to which he replied, 'A piledriver.' "
And then, in a joke which dates itself, since the company mentioned is no longer around, I announced that Dr. C. and I were going into the furniture business together and would be forming a company called "This End Up."
Years later, in introducing Dr. C., I reprised and embellished an old joke I used that night. "Dr. C. is one of the few doctors I know who still makes house calls. Just yesterday he called his house at Wintergreen, his house at Smith Mountain Lake, his house on the north corner of Paddington Court, and his house on the south corner of Paddington Court."
And I thought this remark, which I lifted from a tee shirt given to me because of my fund-raising work for the United Jewish Appeal, captured the essence of Dr. C.'s profession: "After I finally convinced Dr. C. to increase his sponsorship to tonight's dinner, he retorted, 'Okay, Marc, I've upped my pledge; now, up yours.' "
I rarely turn to my father's files these days, although an occasional perusal brings back bittersweet memories. Many of his jokes were topical and timely, and even those that weren't don't read nearly as well as he told them.
Although my father could speak extemporaneously -- and comically -- on a multitude of subjects, I find it instructive that he wrote out his speeches -- or, more likely, dictated to a secretary who typed them up -- and that he saved them all for future reference -- two habits religiously adhered to by his successor.
Inventing jokes is no easy task -- it entails long periods of gazing at the four walls of one's office intermixed with bursts of inspiration -- and my father had a gift for it as well as applying the canned variety to attendant or recognizable individuals and to contemporaneous situations. He would seek out familiar faces in the audience and make them the object of such comments as: "I'm glad to see George here tonight; he always looks good in cheap clothes." Or,"George comes from very humble beginnings. One day I saw him with only one shoe. 'George,' I said, 'did you lose a shoe?' 'No' he said, 'I found one.' "
Schewels strategy of opening stores in small towns gave my father the opportunity to mock places like Williamston, N.C., "which is so small that the City Hall is over a car wash, so small that McDonald's has a sign that says 'only four sold,' so small that the Masons and the Knights of Columbus meet in the same building; they are called Mason-Knights."
As my burgeoning involvement with various non-profit organizations required that I speak or preside before large groups, I began to experiment with injecting my own brand of humor into the proceedings. Most manuals discourage the practice; not every one can tell a joke, or choose one to fit the occasion. While I am certainly no expert, I have developed a basic philosophy which usually serves me well.
Most audiences, at least initially, are conditioned to respect your presence, your willingness to risk your reputation to stand and deliver, and will be attentive to your message. Even if they don't find all (or any) of your remarks funny, they will appreciate your well-intentioned efforts to make them laugh -- especially if you employ a dash of originality.
I write out every speech word-for-word, including the jokes. A joke can rise or fall on the precise arrangement of the words used.
Any joke can flop, which is why I plan several. Chances are at least one will strike a chord with the audience. Besides, I don't have to make every one laugh; a few loud guffaws can arouse the whole crowd.
I try to keep my jokes short and simple. Stand-up comedians make their living off one-liners -- because they avoid hushed anticipations. When I resort to a lengthy canned joke, I edit it down to the fewest possible words.
Relish the moment. Like a runner's high, nothing invigorates me more than establishing a sensory connection with my listeners, knowing that I possess the power to affect their emotions, projecting a love for them that is reflected back upon me.
Speakers, especially those who are going to tell jokes, must be fearless, and never intimidated by deathly silences or the thought of failure. I have always regretted backing away from the following story I wanted to tell several years ago about George W. Bush when it was announced he was coming to the opening of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.
"He was planning to fly by commercial airline to save money after signing off on his big tax cuts -- until he discovered that a round-trip ticket from Washington, D.C., to Lynchburg, Virginia, on U.S. Airways cost $4635, with intermediate stops in Pittsburgh and Charlotte.
"Then he decided to fly over on Air Force One. His team conducted a trial run at the Lynchburg Airport. The plane touched down safely -- but by the time it came to a full stop, it was in front of the Vines Center on the campus of Liberty University, where stood Reverend Jerry Falwell asking for a contribution to his newest faith-based initiative.
"Next, President Bush did what so many of us do when going to and from Lynchburg; he decided to drive. He directed the FBI to draw up the best route (at the time, the FBI was under fire for a series of egregious errors), and, wouldn't you know it, he ended up in Bedford, Massachusetts. On top of that, the FBI lost the speech he was supposed to give.
"Finally, the President decided he would fly in by helicopter -- until it was ascertained that the only helicopter landing pad in Bedford County was atop the roof of the Jefferson Forest High School." (At the time, it was common knowledge that the roof -- in fact, the entire school -- was in dire need of repair.) "Since landing there didn't seem too good an idea, I am sorry to report that George W. Bush will not be coming to Bedford, Virginia."
I did muster enough courage to tell this joke about Reverend Jerry Falwell (he was alive then) when I received a Chamber of Commerce Award at a breakfast held at Liberty University.
"I was really curious to see the new Thomas Road Baptist Church when it first opened, so I came to a Sunday Service. Afterward, I went up to Reverend Falwell and said, 'Reverend, you have a helluva fine church here.' He replied, 'Thank you, Marc, but I would appreciate it if you wouldn't use profanity in the Lord's House.' 'I'm sorry, Reverend,' I said, 'but I couldn't control myself. And that was a helluva fine sermon you gave.' The Reverend replied, 'Marc, please, I cannot allow you to talk this way in the Church.' 'Sorry, Reverend,' I said, 'but I just wanted you to know that I was so impressed with all I saw and heard today that I put $10,000 in the collection plate.' Dr. Falwell's eyes widened and he exclaimed, 'Marc, that is a damn fine contribution.' "
Finally, I try to prepare my remarks well in advance, to give them time to percolate, to roll around in my brain, to leave openings for sudden flashes of brilliance -- which came to me one week before a scheduled talk at the YWCA Women of Achievement banquet while I was sitting in Randolph College's Smith Hall, ostensibly listening to President John Klein's Inaugural Address.
The context of my opening lines is that, only a month earlier, Presidential candidate Barack Obama had visited Lynchburg and spoken at E.C. Glass High School. When the Democratic organizers had asked Jerry Falwell, Jr., to allow overflow parking at the Plaza, he had refused, supposedly for security reasons.
Thus, I explained to my audience, "This YWCA event had originally been slated for E.C. Glass High School. And, when it was announced that I was to be the keynote speaker, a very large crowd was expected, more than could be accommodated in the parking lot. The YMCA contacted Jerry Falwell, Jr., to ask if the overflow could park at the Plaza. Is anyone surprised that he refused?
"He might have relented if he had known that I, traditionally a Democrat, am voting Republican this year, along with two of my Democratic friends on City Council, Joan Foster and Bert Dodson. Why? Because John McCain has promised to buy up every bad mortgage in the United States, and City Council and I couldn't be happier about that. We are both investors in Bluffwalk -- and if there was ever a mortgage that needed a bailout, that's one." (Of course, after the election, the Obama Administration implemented several programs to assist imperiled mortgage-holders.)
"I see where Jerry Jr. finally broke down and agreed to let a representative of the Obama campaign appear at Liberty University. I thought I would be more likely to snow ski down Liberty Mountain in July than see a Democratic governor speaking on the Liberty campus." (Liberty is building an artificial year-round ski slope.)
"And finally, I'm only here tonight because the YWCA's first choice, Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, couldn't make it. She accepted the invitation but while driving down to Lynchburg from Northern Virginia, she took the Charlottesville bypass. Someone forgot to tell her it was the Road to Nowhere."
Sometimes a throw-away line gets the biggest laugh. When I received the NCCJ Humanitarian Award in 1999, I began my acceptance speech with the innocuous (and honest) comment that I had been on the committee that had selected all the honorees, including myself. It brought down the house.
Conversely, for the aforementioned YWCA dinner, I had composed a painstaking revisionist history of Lynchburg, inventing eight famous females who had made significant contributions to its past -- including my piece de resistance, Reverend Geraldine Falwell, "a true visionary, who launched her career on television, hosting the Old Time Good Smell Hour, a cooking show during which she shared her favorite recipes. She always delivered a moving prayer before partaking of her selected delicacy. One day a viewer called in and said, 'Geraldine, your prayers are a lot tastier than your dishes. Maybe you should take up preaching full-time.' And the rest is history."
Alas, not one of these cleverly-conceived mini-biographies elicited even a chuckle.
My most memorable engagement took place four years ago when I joined Governor Mark Warner, former Attorney-General Jerry Kilgore, and WSET anchorman Jeff Taylor at the Holiday Inn Select to roast local Virginia delegate Preston Bryant, a Republican who had bolted the party ranks to craft a budget agreement with Governor Warner which included a tax increase.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to skewer not just Delegate Bryant, but the other dignitaries in attendance -- as well as a host of local personalities.
"And what was I doing in that illustrious group? Well, Crisis Line (for whose benefit this event was being held) wanted at least one person at the podium who would pay his own way."
I chastised the Governor and Delegate Bryant for their tax increase, explaining to them that their compensatory sales tax reduction on food didn't do me much good, "because I don't buy that much food. I'm like a politician; someone usually buys me lunch and dinner. If you lawmakers really wanted to help the workingman, you should roll back the sales tax on furniture."
I announced that "our City Fathers have decided to name the long-awaited Crosstown Connector" -- which still hasn't been built and probably never will be -- "in honor of Martin Luther King. Of course, by then, it will be called the Martin Luther King VI Highway."
I told Delegate Bryant why his Republican comrade, State Senator Steve Newman, was boycotting the celebration. "He became very suspicious when he heard it was a gala event. 'None of them are getting married, are they?' he asked."
Since candidate Kilgore had proposed a statewide referendum on taxes (An absurd non-starter; who's going to vote for higher taxes?), I told him that "I conducted a poll of the audience prior to dinner and found only two persons who favored higher taxes -- and they were both sitting beside him. We could take care of that easily, however: just gerrymander them into Tennessee. These two fellows are too weird for Virginia anyway; they actually like roads, bridges, schools, and garbage collection."
I told Kilgore that our mayor -- who was under investigation for fraud and nonpayment of taxes -- was disappointed in his proposal to cap property taxes at five per cent. "He was hoping for a moratorium."
Then I turned to Governor Warner, "whom I had the honor of meeting tonight for the first time. It's not easy meeting a person of power and influence -- but he handled it well.
"Governor Warner, some people get you mixed up with that other Virginia Warner, John. In fact, I did a survey of the audience tonight and found out that fifty per cent voted for you because they thought you were John Warner and fifty per cent voted against you because they thought you were Marc Schewel."
And in a joke which didn't go over as well as I thought it would, in reference to our current mayor's problems, I said about Governor Warner (whom some suspected would run for President; he never did, of course) that there has been a lot of speculation as to what he intends to do after leaving office, and, therefore, "after our conversation over dinner, it gives me great pleasure to reveal tonight that in 2008 he will be following in the footsteps of past Virginia statesmen and announcing his candidacy for . . . Mayor of Lynchburg." (Former Governor Doug Wilder had recently been elected Mayor of Richmond.)
I cautioned Governor Warner not to get too excited about all the good press he had been receiving. "I know you were recently named Public Official of the Year by Governing Magazine, but that just shows what kind of year it's been. And isn't this the same magazine which named Ken Lay (remember Enron?) Executive of the Year in 2000, Michael Jackson (remember his youthful playmates?) Big Brother of the Year in 2001, and Martha Stewart Investor of the Year in 2002?"
Moving on to the guest of honor, Delegate Preston Bryant, I drew a connection between his efforts to rescue last year's budget and the evening's host, Crisis Line.
"An audit of Crisis Line calls from January 1st, to April 15th," I said, "disclosed that 3248 out of 6159 calls came from the General Assembly or the Governor's Office. Records also indicate that for 90 per cent of those calls Crisis Line's recommendation was: Jump off the Rivermont Bridge." (site of a couple of recent suicides)
And, satirizing a ridiculous and ill-advised bill to ban drooping pants, I sunk to a new low when I launched the following scatological diatribe: "Far be it from me to be so cheeky as to make any wisecracks about this bum bill. Briefly speaking, if you ask me, some of our legislators are just behind the times. As a furniture salesman, I've been fighting this problem for years. Because when you get past fifty, you get the furniture disease; your chest falls into your drawers."
When it came time to roast Delegate Bryant, I pounced on his reputation for being a smart guy, which had been supplied by his wife Liz, "an assessment I realized was as accurate as the weather predictions she used to make in WSET, where she is no longer employed.
"Delegate Bryant," I said, "you've made some mistakes this year. And if it's true that we learn from our mistakes, you'll be the best at your profession.
"One mistake was the picture of him his mother had plastered all over the walls of the Lynchburg Mammography Center where she works. When I asked her about this, she said, 'I look at boobs all day, and I thought Preston would fit right in.'
"Another mistake was collecting a spate of speeding tickets while cruising back and forth from Lynchburg to Richmond in your brand new BMW -- a habit which has once again brought you into conflict with your Republican associates. For while Steve Baril, candidate for Attorney-General wants to add one hundred state troopers to the law enforcement roster, you want to fire one hundred.
"I voted for you once, Preston," I said, "when you told me you were pro-choice. But I found out that meant you would choose between raising the income tax or raising the sales tax.
"Once again, Delegate Bryant proved how smart he was when he signed Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Only Preston thought that was a pledge to distribute condoms to college seniors throughout the Commonwealth." (a controversial issue at the time)
I applauded Bryant's actions on the House Human Services Committee, when, "after a bill to anesthetize fetuses prior to abortion was rejected, he introduced a bill to anesthetize lawmakers prior to each legislative session."
To illustrate Bryant's salesmanship skills in engineering the budget compromise, I closed with the story of the country boy who applies for a sales job at a big-city department store. It's too long to reproduce here; you can find it online at landbigfish. com / jokes / default. cfm under "Fishing for a Sale."
The History Bee is a concept I developed initially as an Executive Spelling Bee, in which any number of local businesses would put up $1000 to sponsor a participant, ideally the CEO, although most declined to appear on stage and designated a surrogate. Ticket sales covered most of the expenses of a cocktail buffet, and, thus with thirty sponsors, the beneficiary, the Alliance for Families and Children, would reap $30,000.
To make the event more entertaining, I volunteered to offer up humorous introductions (mini-roasts) of the contestants, based on brief questionnaires I asked them to fill out.
After loquacious physician and City Councilman Scott Garrett identified as his favorite event in history the first documented use of anesthesia at the Boston Medical Center in 1846, I told the audience that "when Scott was a practicing surgeon, he didn't use traditional anesthesia. Instead, he laid his patient on the operating table and started talking, without pause or interruption. In a matter of minutes, the patient had lost consciousness."
When Jimmy C., quotations manager for Ferguson Enterprises, submitted Winston Churchill as his favorite historical figure, I said that I indeed called Ferguson Enterprises and asked Jimmy for a quote. "His response was 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, sweat, and tears.' "
Introducing George D., CEO of our local hospital, I said, "It was good thing for him that our teams were chosen at random. The doctors and insurance companies didn't want to sit down with him. Businesses and ordinary citizens were angry about the hospital's exorbitant rates. The only person who was satisfied with the work he was doing at the hospital was Chris T., Tharp Funeral Home."
And when Chris reported that his hobby was body surfing, I asked him, "Is that your body or someone else's?"
I said that retired history teacher, Marie Waller, couldn't lose. "Either she would win the History Bee or she could claim she had been defeated by a former student. It won't be the student, however, whom she was reprimanding for failing to learn the Presidents. 'When I was your age,' she said, 'I could name every President and Vice-President.' 'No big deal,' said the young man. 'When you were my age, there had only been sixteen.' "
In a joke that lit up both me and the audience, I questioned how well Greg K. was going to do. "I had obtained a copy of a history test he had taken in high school. When asked who Ferdinand Magellan was, he wrote, 'Ferdinand Magellan circumcised the world with a hundred-foot clipper, which was very painful to all men.' As for Socrates, 'he died from an overdose of wedlock, which is apparently poisonous.' "
And, of course, I had to compliment my assistant, Liz P., representing Schewel Furniture Company, for thinking like her boss. When asked for her favorite event in history, she correctly answered, "the birth of Marc Schewel."
About a year ago I was asked to present a brief history of the 110-year-old Schewel Furniture Company, as part of a local lecture series. Having worked in Downtown Lynchburg for thirty-five years -- and at the site the business has been located since 1958 -- and not willing to forgo an opportunity to add levity to the occasion, I opened with, and will close with -- a la David Letterman -- the top ten reasons why I love Downtown Lynchburg.
I love to drive fast, and am able to do so twice a day when I speed down those two one-way racetracks -- Church Street in the morning and Main Street in the evening.
I like to collect orange traffic cones -- and am always able to pick up a few every time I come Downtown.
Downtown Lynchburg is the only place where the City Fathers would spend millions of dollars to streetscape and beautify its main thoroughfare and then close it for some mysterious public works project.
In Downtown Lynchburg, a new restaurant opens every month -- and an old one closes. And usually it's the same one.
Downtown Lynchburg thinks retail. It's the only city I know where the streets are closed on Saturday for a Christmas parade.
Downtown Lynchburg brings people together -- like seven City Council members, six unpaid contractors, five impatient bankers, and twenty-five irate investors, including me, to meet with Bluffwalk visionary Hal Craddock, wanting to know where all the money went.
I own stock in two city planning consulting companies -- and Downtown Lynchburg keeps them in business.
I like the old Academy building just the way it is -- which is a good thing, since I am not likely to live long enough to see it look any different.
Only in Downtown Lynchburg would the City Fathers stick a fifty-foot metal pipe in the river, shoot a stream of water through it -- and call it a fountain.
And the number one reason I love Downtown Lynchburg is that you can't see the Liberty University logo on the top of Candler's Mountain from anywhere in Downtown Lynchburg.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Smoke Detectors
Something strange is in the air.
Soothing and sweet, twitching the nostrils of the millions of Americans who at some time or another in their lives have blissfully inhaled, a cohort which numbers among its members (at least) two Presidents and excludes only the most steadfast unsophisticates, it wafts ominously through the bustling corridors of schools high and low, including our own E. C. Glass, blankets crowded courtrooms coast-to-coast like early-morning fog, shadows celebrities and sports heroes to their secluded residences and private parties, and incites whole countries to vicious gang wars, senseless violence, brutal killings, and widespread corruption.
I'm speaking, of course, of the pestilential plant, the wicked weed, the sinfully seductive substance known as marijuana.
Four tenth-grade girls are on their way to school one morning when one suggests that they detour to McDonald's, which, for those unfamiliar with Lynchburg geography, is about three blocks away. Instead of an ordinary Egg McMuffin or sausage biscuit, they purchase some pot -- in the parking lot, I presume, although not having frequented a McDonald's in ten years, I'm not sure what delicacies may be served up behind (or under) the counter these days.
An hour or so later, a teacher or administrator -- exhibiting some very talented and highly developed olfactory nerves -- detects the telltale aroma. A search reveals only one girl in actual possession -- according to an attorney friend consulted by another girl's parents -- but suspicion and proximity trump physical evidence and due process and earn all four the maximum penalty: a 365-day suspension -- never mind that only one girl confesses, two take the Fifth (Ammendment, that is), and the fourth vigorously professes her innocence.
That the latter boasts a straight-A report card, a sterling collection of track-and-field trophies, and an unblemished behavioral record is irrelevant; she is destined to spend a year rehabilitating herself at the Pride Center for delinquent youth -- unless a School Board Panel of Appeals, in a rare display of compassion and leniency, should decide to moderate her sentence.
She may have already been tested for drugs -- and passed -- in compliance with a peculiar and discriminatory school policy which subjects school athletes to random drug tests, but no other students. Apparently, smoking marijuana disqualifies one from playing football and basketball but not from participating in school plays, band concerts, or spelling bees.
For four years Amherst County High School student Peter Rose is "the perfect kid," to quote a local television station. He leads the school to two Group AA state football championships, throwing for 1133 yards, rushing for 1790, accounting for 40 total touchdowns, and winning state player-of-the-year honors his senior year. He carries a 3.0 grade-point average, his school's prom-king crown, and the Mr. Amherst County nameplate. A fabulous future awaits him as he prepares to attend Virginia Tech on a full scholarship and play defensive back.
That is, until the Amherst County Sheriff's Office -- determined to root out and punish all criminal elements in its jurisdiction -- launches an elaborate (and expensive?) undercover investigation into drug trafficking. A law enforcement officer posing as a student twice purchases a quarter-ounce of marijuana from Rose (and similar amounts from six other current and former students) and saddles him with two misdemeanor and two felony charges, the latter for selling marijuana within 1000 feet of a school. Within days -- the guilt of the accused a foregone conclusion -- Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer strips Rose of his scholarship, stating that it has always been contingent upon the recruit maintaining high standards of conduct in his community, in his school, and on the football field.
Why would a young man with the world at his feet test the treacherous waters of illicit entrepreneurship and risk it all? Why indeed -- except for the lure of some extra spending money, the same profit motive that drives this thriving billion-dollar international underground industry at every level of distribution. (A stand of 300 mature marijuana plants can produce $1,000,000 at wholesale. Marijuana sells on the street for anywhere between $50 and $200 an ounce, while a deadly ounce of tobacco retails for two dollars.)
At his sentencing hearing, Rose testifies that his family has always struggled financially (and while colleges like Virginia Tech will reap millions from the exploits of Rose and his teammates on the field, the players will continue to go uncompensated -- but that's fodder for another blog) and that he saw an opportunity to make some easy money by dealing drugs. A sympathetic judge reduces Rose's jail time to fifteen days and dismisses the felony charges, provided he completes one hundred hours of community service, undergoes a substance abuse assessment, and remains on good behavior. Rose has a chance to redeem himself and earn another college scholarship -- but not at Virginia Tech.
A friend of mine who is a local Commonwealth's Attorney derided the generous sentence, claiming that athletes are often shown favoritism. But I'm not so sure.
Consider the hysterical reaction to the photograph taken of Michael Phelps smoking a cannabis bong at a University of South Carolina house party -- which, while confirming that the fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist is indeed a pothead, appears to dispel the canard that marijuana is demotivating and performance-diminishing.
Finding such behavior "not consistent with the image of Kellogg," the 103-year-old cereal maker drops its sponsorship of Phelps. Although stopping short of termination, another sponsor, Subway, censures him. USA Swimming releases a public reprimand, withdraws financial support, and bans the swimmer from competition for three months. A politically-ambitious County Sheriff threatens an arrest, until he is bluntly reminded by the Public Defender's Office that in twenty-one years no one has ever been charged with drug possession based on photographic evidence and an admission of non-specific wrongdoing.
If there is a double standard in play here, it is not between athlete and non-athlete; it is between marijuana and alcohol. Four years ago, when Phelps was arrested for drunk driving, he was allowed to continue swimming and did not lose a single endorsement.
In the words of Orlando Sentinel sportswriter Mike Bianchi: "What's worse -- taking a bong hit at a college party or getting snookered and putting yourself and others at risk by getting behind the wheel of your Hummer?"
Meanwhile, a drug war rages south of the Rio Grande, ignited nine years ago when the Mexican government implemented a crackdown on major distributors of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines. Trafficking cartels, which had previously relied on bribery and corruption to maintain a peaceful co-existence, turned on the authorities and each other to protect their territories.
The violence kills 400 Mexicans a month, 10,000 since 2005, and now spills across the border like a wildfire out of control, to Vancouver, Phoenix, Birmingham, and Atlanta, the new staging ground for the drug trade, where 43 Gulf Cartel members are arrested -- to name only four of the 270 North American cities where Mexican cartels and their affiliates maintain drug distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors. (Randal Archibold, New York Times, March 23, 2009)
With anywhere from 25 to 50 per cent of the 15,000 metric tons (33 million lbs.) of marijuana consumed annually in the United States smuggled from Mexico, it seems only logical that peace-loving prohibitionists would tout the moral rewards and life-saving effects of smoking less pot. In fact, as recently reported in the Wall Street Journal, several anti-drug groups are now preaching the conscience-laden message that "every bit of marijuana someone smokes is giving more power and more money to the drug cartels in Mexico" and is increasing that country's death toll. (Ellen Gamerman, Wall Street Journal)
It's a fatuous argument, and easily refuted. First, aficionados of the weed contend that the home-grown brand is more organic, more tasty, more pure, and more sought after than the imported product. And rational thinkers like me understand that it's not the drugs that are causing this intractable problem; it's drug prohibition and all the deleterious consequences.
People have smoked marijuana -- the chopped flowers, leaves, or stems of the cannabis plant -- at least since 600 B.C., when the Chinese first recorded its psycho-active effect; and no amount of exhortation, demonization, excoriation, or incarceration is going to change that.
Readers of this blog may remember (One-Year Wonder, January 1, 2009) that my sole experiment with marijuana was an abject failure; never having smoked a cigarette, I was clueless as to how to inhale -- and thus speak with hardly a modicum of credibility as to the allurements of illicit drugs. I never even bothered to broach the subject to a college roommate of mine who spent fifty per cent of his junior and senior years on a glorious high induced by marijuana and the mystical melodies of Jefferson Airplane.
Therefore, I must assume that people smoke marijuana for the same universal reasons they drink alcohol -- which, not being a total prude, I have occasionally and moderately indulged in since the tender age of fifteen -- to release their inhibitions, to facilitate social interaction, to experience sensory pleasure. Or, for some, maybe it's just the taste.
Which is why government attempts to suppress the demand for marijuana by punishing users and dealers are about as hopeless as trying to eradicate speeding and can not succeed. According to psychopharmacologist Ronald Segal, the desire for intoxication in human beings is innate and as basic as other urges.
Some find intoxication in sports, sex, gambling, music, or religion, but "socially-approved ways of intoxication are unavailable or don't work for many . . . The lure of a chemically-assisted high is powerful in America, where many persons consistently and with society's blessing get intoxicated on alcohol or hourly fixes from cigarettes." (Stephen B. Duke and Albert C. Gross, "America's Longest War," pp. 218-219)
In spite of federal and state governments spending upwards of $60 billion annually on the War on Drugs and arresting more than 750,000 individuals every year for marijuana possession alone, there were still 14.5 million users of marijuana in the United States in 2007 compared to 14.6 million in 2002. One in four sixteen-to -seventeen-year-old youths used marijuana in 2007. An estimated 100 million persons (one-third of the U.S. population) have smoked marijuana at some time in their lives, including such notables as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Margaret Mead, Carl Sagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg, and Newt Gingrich.
With the weed enjoying such broad and bipartisan popularity, the question arises: how and why have we reached the grievous state of affairs wherein we spend billions of dollars on repeated failures, sanction millions for participating in a relatively harmless activity, and inundate our courtrooms with thousands of non-violent malefactors?
Marijuana had been exempted from the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, in which Congress, responding to pressure from four interest groups -- physicians and pharmacists wary of drug addiction, pragmatic reformers, anti-vice crusaders, and missionary witnesses to the Far East opium trade -- authorized regulation of cocaine and opium derivatives. By 1922, the Act, modified by court rulings, had evolved into a prohibition law, eliminating legal sources of the aforementioned substances and, of course, spawning a criminal black market to supply them.
Enter one Harry Ainslinger, first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, established in 1930, after revelations of corruption in the Narcotics Division of the Treasury Department.
Eager to garner publicity and funding for his nascent organization, Ainslinger launched a crusade against marijuana, cleverly preying on the fears and prejudices of a gullible public to link the purported dangers of the drug to its principal users: Mexican migrants stealing depression-era jobs from white workers and black ghetto social outcasts and speak-easy jazz musicians. The press, particularly the Hearst newspaper chain, took up the charge, blasting marijuana as "a killer drug" which transformed the blacks and Mexicans who smoked it into sexual predators, madmen, and murderers. (Martin Booth, "Cannabis," p.182)
Speculation persists that DuPont petrochemical interests -- which saw hemp, a product of the cannabis plant, as a competitive threat -- were ardent, if silent, supporters of the anti-marijuana campaign.
Ainslinger and his accomplices were successful. In April 1937, Congress initiated hearings on the Marijuana Tax Act, summoning the Commissioner as its chief witness.
Ainslinger regaled his audience with thinly-substantiated narratives of heinous crimes drawn from his extensive "police-blotter" files -- including the case of a twenty-one-year-old boy who slaughtered his family with an axe. "The evidence showed he had smoked marijuana," said Ainslinger, failing to mention that the boy had previously been diagnosed as mentally unstable and afterward was found to to be criminally insane under psychiatric analysis. (Booth, p.184)
Meanwhile, Congressmen belittled or ignored testimony by Assistant Surgeon General William Treadway, who wrote, "As to social or moral degradation associated with cannabis, it probably belongs in the same category as alcohol," and by AMA representative Dr. William Woodward, who stated, "We are told that the use of marijuana causes crime, yet no one has been produced by the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of persons who have been found to be addicted to the marijuana habit." (Mike Gray, "Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out," p.80)
The Marijuana Tax Act took effect October 1, 1937. Constitutionally, Congress could not ban marijuana. Instead, it required any person cultivating, transporting, selling, prescribing, or using marijuana to be registered and imposed a levy of $100 an ounce on every transaction (this in the days when a new Ford Model-Y cost $205). (Booth, p.188)
In the early 1950's, with a new international enemy on the horizon, Ainslinger shrewdly sought to link marijuana to heroin, and both to Communism. He painted heroin as part of a Communist plot to poison American values; marijuana became the heroin addict's introduction to drugs, from which he graduated to more dangerous substances.
In 1951, a U.S. Senate Committee blessed the bogus "gateway" theory when it declared that marijuana led to the use of other drugs. Five years later, the Daniel Committee officially confirmed Ainslinger's worst suspicions when it concluded that "subversion by drug addiction is an established aim of Communist China."
In 1971, Richard Nixon declared drug abuse "public enemy number one." With crime the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda, he identified not just drug dealing but also drug addiction as a major source of crime. Among his initiatives was the consolidation of a number of drug agencies into the supersized Drug Enforcement Agency, which was granted the extraordinary power to organize wire taps and postal inspections, to search without warrants, to confiscate property, to freeze assets, and to arrest on suspicion.
With each successive administration the War on Drugs intensified.
In June 1982, President Reagan announced, "We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts. We're running up the battle flag." The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 increased federal drug penalties, made it a federal offense to distribute drugs within 1000 feet of a school, and even criminalized owning a roach holder or a packet of rolling papers.
In his first televised address to the nation, George H. W. Bush proclaimed that "the gravest menace facing our nation today is drugs" and called for "an assault on every front" -- including drafting the U. S. military into his anti-drug efforts. In 1986 drug trafficking was officially identified as a threat to national security, and by 1989 Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had made interdiction of the Latin American drug trade a high priority mission of the Department of Defense.
In 1994, when Clinton Surgeon General Jocelyn Elder (whom he subsequently fired) made the "nutty" (to quote former drug czar, William Bennett) suggestion that drug legalization should be studied, Congress responded by getting tougher. The Crime Bill of 1994 established "criminal enterprise" statutes mandating drug sentences of from twenty years to life. The 1998 Higher Education Act disqualified students who had ever been convicted of marijuana possession from receiving federal aid for college -- even though no such disqualification applies to convictions for robbery, rape, or manslaughter. (Gray, p.21)
And yet it's all gone for naught -- all the threats, promises, preachments, penalties, legislation, and expenditures. Illicit recreational drug consumption remains constant. The supply is plentiful; the undaunted users merrily puff away.
The problem with drug prohibition is that it is inherently flawed. The strategy of restricting supply artificially inflates prices to a level which generates tremendous profits and continually motivates suppliers to enter and remain in the market, yet which is not high enough to deter use or suppress demand. Secondly, like the mythical hydra, the sea serpent that Hercules battled, the drug trade is self-reproducing. Stamping it out in one locale simply encourages new recruits or veterans to set up operations elsewhere.
Making war on marijuana users is no less problematic and has produced equally dismal results. In addition to the impossibility of stifling our permanent, insatiable appetite for intoxicating drugs, one is confronted by the improbability of a user ever being caught. Fifteen million Americans smoking a joint six times a year equates to 90 million annual usages; collaring 750,000 of them yields an arrest rate of 0.8% -- very long odds indeed.
Furthermore, drug laws attempt to prohibit conduct that is consensual and victimless; since no one is harmed, there is no victim to press charges or to testify at a trial. Consequently, to detect these crimes, law enforcement must resort to methods ripe for abuse, corruption, and the infringement of civil liberties -- like carrying on systematic surveillance, employing paid informants, or deploying undercover agents who set up entrapment operations.
In fact, drug prohibition has produced a host of harmful consequences which have impacted individuals and society in ways which its proponents could hardly have anticipated and which, even when confronted with the unpleasant truth, they refuse to acknowledge.
It has criminalized the three per cent of the American population hauled into court each year for pursuing what is, for the most part, innocuous, diversionary behavior. For minor convictions, many have suffered significant hardships: probation, mandatory drug testing, loss of employment, loss of child custody, loss of federal student aid, loss of voting privileges, and revocation of driving licenses.
It has undermined the moral message of the law by defining as a crime an activity practiced by a large portion of the public without punishment.
It has consumed tremendous amounts of physical and human resources -- making them unavailable for the investigation, prosecution, and incarceration of rapists, burglars, and murderers.
It has driven the drug business underground, where rival gangs regularly turn to violence and intimidation to defend their turf -- and kill innocent bystanders and potential witnesses in the process.
It has bred corruption in the criminal justice system, affording law enforcement officers myriad opportunities to trade influence for drug profits, by selling information on undercover and surveillance operations, by bartering favorable testimony at hearings and trials, by robbing dealers without fear of reprisal, and by fencing seized assets or drugs -- all of which engender contempt and cynicism for government institutions.
It has fed the money laundering industry -- which converts drug proceeds into spendable cash or usable assets, often enticing honest organizations and individuals into criminal activities.
It has fueled the growth of a prison-industrial complex -- quadrupling the number of those imprisoned since 1980 to 2,300,000, one in every 138 Americans, with federal prisoners leading the way, growing 90 per cent in the last decade, 55 per cent of whom are serving time for a drug offense, compared to 11 per cent for a violent crime.
It has intensified racial mistrust and hostility, sending blacks to prison at seven times the rate of whites, for longer average terms than whites who commit comparable crimes, and disenfranchising thousands of black drug felons. It has created lucrative incentives for drug dealers to saturate urban black ghettos, where substandard housing, pervasive poverty, poor health, and limited job opportunities make fatherless children, school dropouts, homeless people, and individuals facing bleak and hopeless futures avid customers for any means of escape.
It has eroded our Bill of Rights protections, as courts have upheld a multitude of egregious measures: search warrants issued on the flimsiest of suspicions; citizens accosted in cars, airports, trailers, or buses; wiretapping and eavesdropping applications granted as a matter of routine; undercover operations and putative conspiracies validated with a blind eye; judicial discretion sacrificed at the altar of mandatory minimum sentences; and assets forfeited without a criminal conviction, sometimes without a criminal charge.
It has stigmatized and stereotyped illicit drug users as moral pariahs instead of recognizing them as victims of medical, social, or psychological problems -- which discourages their seeking out medical care, forgos the health benefits of drug regulation, thwarts treatment programs that might help the drug dependent, and immerses non-violent drug offenders in the violent culture of prison society.
It has prevented access to therapeutic substances -- like marijuana, which, it has been demonstrated, can alleviate the nausea of chemotherapy, reduce the intraocular pressure of glaucoma, relieve surgical, migraine, and menstrual pain, control multiple sclerosis spasms and some epileptic seizures, and combat depression and insomnia.
The lure of its unconscionable profits has, at one time or another, substantially corrupted the entire governments of Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, and, most recently, Mexico, and sustained native criminal elements which have rent the social fabric of these countries.
And finally, argue the philosophers, drug prohibition is an infringement upon an individual's right to own property -- and assume the risks attendant upon that ownership -- and his right to make choices which may be harmful to himself, as long as those choices do not harm others. Drug users, anti-prohibitionists contend, do not violate others moral rights, and most never do harm to others (unlike users of alcohol or tobacco).
All these consequences might have some justification if marijuana were so dangerous to our well-being that it needed to be outlawed at all costs. But science long ago shattered that myth.
In 1938 New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, skeptical of Harry Ainslinger's exaggerated claims about the effects of marijuana, commissioned a pharmacological study, a clinical study, and a sociological study. The report, released in 1948, "concluded that marijuana was not addictive, did not seriously disturb mental or physical functioning, and did not lead to violence or harder drugs." (Gray, p. 85) To this assessment must be added its potential as a medicine and its value and versatility as a commercial crop.
Today marijuana is condemned and prohibited not because it is harmful but in defense of a specious public morality. "If health were the issue, tobacco and alcohol would have been banned long ago. To accept cannabis is a cultural decision, not a political one." (Booth, p. 401)
It's time to make that decision, to end our seventy-year-old exercise in futility and irrationality, to reverse a portion of this interminable war's destructive consequences, to disable forever the expensive and ubiquitous smoke detectors that invade our privacy. It's time to legalize marijuana.
Soothing and sweet, twitching the nostrils of the millions of Americans who at some time or another in their lives have blissfully inhaled, a cohort which numbers among its members (at least) two Presidents and excludes only the most steadfast unsophisticates, it wafts ominously through the bustling corridors of schools high and low, including our own E. C. Glass, blankets crowded courtrooms coast-to-coast like early-morning fog, shadows celebrities and sports heroes to their secluded residences and private parties, and incites whole countries to vicious gang wars, senseless violence, brutal killings, and widespread corruption.
I'm speaking, of course, of the pestilential plant, the wicked weed, the sinfully seductive substance known as marijuana.
Four tenth-grade girls are on their way to school one morning when one suggests that they detour to McDonald's, which, for those unfamiliar with Lynchburg geography, is about three blocks away. Instead of an ordinary Egg McMuffin or sausage biscuit, they purchase some pot -- in the parking lot, I presume, although not having frequented a McDonald's in ten years, I'm not sure what delicacies may be served up behind (or under) the counter these days.
An hour or so later, a teacher or administrator -- exhibiting some very talented and highly developed olfactory nerves -- detects the telltale aroma. A search reveals only one girl in actual possession -- according to an attorney friend consulted by another girl's parents -- but suspicion and proximity trump physical evidence and due process and earn all four the maximum penalty: a 365-day suspension -- never mind that only one girl confesses, two take the Fifth (Ammendment, that is), and the fourth vigorously professes her innocence.
That the latter boasts a straight-A report card, a sterling collection of track-and-field trophies, and an unblemished behavioral record is irrelevant; she is destined to spend a year rehabilitating herself at the Pride Center for delinquent youth -- unless a School Board Panel of Appeals, in a rare display of compassion and leniency, should decide to moderate her sentence.
She may have already been tested for drugs -- and passed -- in compliance with a peculiar and discriminatory school policy which subjects school athletes to random drug tests, but no other students. Apparently, smoking marijuana disqualifies one from playing football and basketball but not from participating in school plays, band concerts, or spelling bees.
For four years Amherst County High School student Peter Rose is "the perfect kid," to quote a local television station. He leads the school to two Group AA state football championships, throwing for 1133 yards, rushing for 1790, accounting for 40 total touchdowns, and winning state player-of-the-year honors his senior year. He carries a 3.0 grade-point average, his school's prom-king crown, and the Mr. Amherst County nameplate. A fabulous future awaits him as he prepares to attend Virginia Tech on a full scholarship and play defensive back.
That is, until the Amherst County Sheriff's Office -- determined to root out and punish all criminal elements in its jurisdiction -- launches an elaborate (and expensive?) undercover investigation into drug trafficking. A law enforcement officer posing as a student twice purchases a quarter-ounce of marijuana from Rose (and similar amounts from six other current and former students) and saddles him with two misdemeanor and two felony charges, the latter for selling marijuana within 1000 feet of a school. Within days -- the guilt of the accused a foregone conclusion -- Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer strips Rose of his scholarship, stating that it has always been contingent upon the recruit maintaining high standards of conduct in his community, in his school, and on the football field.
Why would a young man with the world at his feet test the treacherous waters of illicit entrepreneurship and risk it all? Why indeed -- except for the lure of some extra spending money, the same profit motive that drives this thriving billion-dollar international underground industry at every level of distribution. (A stand of 300 mature marijuana plants can produce $1,000,000 at wholesale. Marijuana sells on the street for anywhere between $50 and $200 an ounce, while a deadly ounce of tobacco retails for two dollars.)
At his sentencing hearing, Rose testifies that his family has always struggled financially (and while colleges like Virginia Tech will reap millions from the exploits of Rose and his teammates on the field, the players will continue to go uncompensated -- but that's fodder for another blog) and that he saw an opportunity to make some easy money by dealing drugs. A sympathetic judge reduces Rose's jail time to fifteen days and dismisses the felony charges, provided he completes one hundred hours of community service, undergoes a substance abuse assessment, and remains on good behavior. Rose has a chance to redeem himself and earn another college scholarship -- but not at Virginia Tech.
A friend of mine who is a local Commonwealth's Attorney derided the generous sentence, claiming that athletes are often shown favoritism. But I'm not so sure.
Consider the hysterical reaction to the photograph taken of Michael Phelps smoking a cannabis bong at a University of South Carolina house party -- which, while confirming that the fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist is indeed a pothead, appears to dispel the canard that marijuana is demotivating and performance-diminishing.
Finding such behavior "not consistent with the image of Kellogg," the 103-year-old cereal maker drops its sponsorship of Phelps. Although stopping short of termination, another sponsor, Subway, censures him. USA Swimming releases a public reprimand, withdraws financial support, and bans the swimmer from competition for three months. A politically-ambitious County Sheriff threatens an arrest, until he is bluntly reminded by the Public Defender's Office that in twenty-one years no one has ever been charged with drug possession based on photographic evidence and an admission of non-specific wrongdoing.
If there is a double standard in play here, it is not between athlete and non-athlete; it is between marijuana and alcohol. Four years ago, when Phelps was arrested for drunk driving, he was allowed to continue swimming and did not lose a single endorsement.
In the words of Orlando Sentinel sportswriter Mike Bianchi: "What's worse -- taking a bong hit at a college party or getting snookered and putting yourself and others at risk by getting behind the wheel of your Hummer?"
Meanwhile, a drug war rages south of the Rio Grande, ignited nine years ago when the Mexican government implemented a crackdown on major distributors of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines. Trafficking cartels, which had previously relied on bribery and corruption to maintain a peaceful co-existence, turned on the authorities and each other to protect their territories.
The violence kills 400 Mexicans a month, 10,000 since 2005, and now spills across the border like a wildfire out of control, to Vancouver, Phoenix, Birmingham, and Atlanta, the new staging ground for the drug trade, where 43 Gulf Cartel members are arrested -- to name only four of the 270 North American cities where Mexican cartels and their affiliates maintain drug distribution networks or supply drugs to distributors. (Randal Archibold, New York Times, March 23, 2009)
With anywhere from 25 to 50 per cent of the 15,000 metric tons (33 million lbs.) of marijuana consumed annually in the United States smuggled from Mexico, it seems only logical that peace-loving prohibitionists would tout the moral rewards and life-saving effects of smoking less pot. In fact, as recently reported in the Wall Street Journal, several anti-drug groups are now preaching the conscience-laden message that "every bit of marijuana someone smokes is giving more power and more money to the drug cartels in Mexico" and is increasing that country's death toll. (Ellen Gamerman, Wall Street Journal)
It's a fatuous argument, and easily refuted. First, aficionados of the weed contend that the home-grown brand is more organic, more tasty, more pure, and more sought after than the imported product. And rational thinkers like me understand that it's not the drugs that are causing this intractable problem; it's drug prohibition and all the deleterious consequences.
People have smoked marijuana -- the chopped flowers, leaves, or stems of the cannabis plant -- at least since 600 B.C., when the Chinese first recorded its psycho-active effect; and no amount of exhortation, demonization, excoriation, or incarceration is going to change that.
Readers of this blog may remember (One-Year Wonder, January 1, 2009) that my sole experiment with marijuana was an abject failure; never having smoked a cigarette, I was clueless as to how to inhale -- and thus speak with hardly a modicum of credibility as to the allurements of illicit drugs. I never even bothered to broach the subject to a college roommate of mine who spent fifty per cent of his junior and senior years on a glorious high induced by marijuana and the mystical melodies of Jefferson Airplane.
Therefore, I must assume that people smoke marijuana for the same universal reasons they drink alcohol -- which, not being a total prude, I have occasionally and moderately indulged in since the tender age of fifteen -- to release their inhibitions, to facilitate social interaction, to experience sensory pleasure. Or, for some, maybe it's just the taste.
Which is why government attempts to suppress the demand for marijuana by punishing users and dealers are about as hopeless as trying to eradicate speeding and can not succeed. According to psychopharmacologist Ronald Segal, the desire for intoxication in human beings is innate and as basic as other urges.
Some find intoxication in sports, sex, gambling, music, or religion, but "socially-approved ways of intoxication are unavailable or don't work for many . . . The lure of a chemically-assisted high is powerful in America, where many persons consistently and with society's blessing get intoxicated on alcohol or hourly fixes from cigarettes." (Stephen B. Duke and Albert C. Gross, "America's Longest War," pp. 218-219)
In spite of federal and state governments spending upwards of $60 billion annually on the War on Drugs and arresting more than 750,000 individuals every year for marijuana possession alone, there were still 14.5 million users of marijuana in the United States in 2007 compared to 14.6 million in 2002. One in four sixteen-to -seventeen-year-old youths used marijuana in 2007. An estimated 100 million persons (one-third of the U.S. population) have smoked marijuana at some time in their lives, including such notables as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Margaret Mead, Carl Sagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg, and Newt Gingrich.
With the weed enjoying such broad and bipartisan popularity, the question arises: how and why have we reached the grievous state of affairs wherein we spend billions of dollars on repeated failures, sanction millions for participating in a relatively harmless activity, and inundate our courtrooms with thousands of non-violent malefactors?
Marijuana had been exempted from the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, in which Congress, responding to pressure from four interest groups -- physicians and pharmacists wary of drug addiction, pragmatic reformers, anti-vice crusaders, and missionary witnesses to the Far East opium trade -- authorized regulation of cocaine and opium derivatives. By 1922, the Act, modified by court rulings, had evolved into a prohibition law, eliminating legal sources of the aforementioned substances and, of course, spawning a criminal black market to supply them.
Enter one Harry Ainslinger, first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, established in 1930, after revelations of corruption in the Narcotics Division of the Treasury Department.
Eager to garner publicity and funding for his nascent organization, Ainslinger launched a crusade against marijuana, cleverly preying on the fears and prejudices of a gullible public to link the purported dangers of the drug to its principal users: Mexican migrants stealing depression-era jobs from white workers and black ghetto social outcasts and speak-easy jazz musicians. The press, particularly the Hearst newspaper chain, took up the charge, blasting marijuana as "a killer drug" which transformed the blacks and Mexicans who smoked it into sexual predators, madmen, and murderers. (Martin Booth, "Cannabis," p.182)
Speculation persists that DuPont petrochemical interests -- which saw hemp, a product of the cannabis plant, as a competitive threat -- were ardent, if silent, supporters of the anti-marijuana campaign.
Ainslinger and his accomplices were successful. In April 1937, Congress initiated hearings on the Marijuana Tax Act, summoning the Commissioner as its chief witness.
Ainslinger regaled his audience with thinly-substantiated narratives of heinous crimes drawn from his extensive "police-blotter" files -- including the case of a twenty-one-year-old boy who slaughtered his family with an axe. "The evidence showed he had smoked marijuana," said Ainslinger, failing to mention that the boy had previously been diagnosed as mentally unstable and afterward was found to to be criminally insane under psychiatric analysis. (Booth, p.184)
Meanwhile, Congressmen belittled or ignored testimony by Assistant Surgeon General William Treadway, who wrote, "As to social or moral degradation associated with cannabis, it probably belongs in the same category as alcohol," and by AMA representative Dr. William Woodward, who stated, "We are told that the use of marijuana causes crime, yet no one has been produced by the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of persons who have been found to be addicted to the marijuana habit." (Mike Gray, "Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out," p.80)
The Marijuana Tax Act took effect October 1, 1937. Constitutionally, Congress could not ban marijuana. Instead, it required any person cultivating, transporting, selling, prescribing, or using marijuana to be registered and imposed a levy of $100 an ounce on every transaction (this in the days when a new Ford Model-Y cost $205). (Booth, p.188)
In the early 1950's, with a new international enemy on the horizon, Ainslinger shrewdly sought to link marijuana to heroin, and both to Communism. He painted heroin as part of a Communist plot to poison American values; marijuana became the heroin addict's introduction to drugs, from which he graduated to more dangerous substances.
In 1951, a U.S. Senate Committee blessed the bogus "gateway" theory when it declared that marijuana led to the use of other drugs. Five years later, the Daniel Committee officially confirmed Ainslinger's worst suspicions when it concluded that "subversion by drug addiction is an established aim of Communist China."
In 1971, Richard Nixon declared drug abuse "public enemy number one." With crime the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda, he identified not just drug dealing but also drug addiction as a major source of crime. Among his initiatives was the consolidation of a number of drug agencies into the supersized Drug Enforcement Agency, which was granted the extraordinary power to organize wire taps and postal inspections, to search without warrants, to confiscate property, to freeze assets, and to arrest on suspicion.
With each successive administration the War on Drugs intensified.
In June 1982, President Reagan announced, "We're taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts. We're running up the battle flag." The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 increased federal drug penalties, made it a federal offense to distribute drugs within 1000 feet of a school, and even criminalized owning a roach holder or a packet of rolling papers.
In his first televised address to the nation, George H. W. Bush proclaimed that "the gravest menace facing our nation today is drugs" and called for "an assault on every front" -- including drafting the U. S. military into his anti-drug efforts. In 1986 drug trafficking was officially identified as a threat to national security, and by 1989 Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had made interdiction of the Latin American drug trade a high priority mission of the Department of Defense.
In 1994, when Clinton Surgeon General Jocelyn Elder (whom he subsequently fired) made the "nutty" (to quote former drug czar, William Bennett) suggestion that drug legalization should be studied, Congress responded by getting tougher. The Crime Bill of 1994 established "criminal enterprise" statutes mandating drug sentences of from twenty years to life. The 1998 Higher Education Act disqualified students who had ever been convicted of marijuana possession from receiving federal aid for college -- even though no such disqualification applies to convictions for robbery, rape, or manslaughter. (Gray, p.21)
And yet it's all gone for naught -- all the threats, promises, preachments, penalties, legislation, and expenditures. Illicit recreational drug consumption remains constant. The supply is plentiful; the undaunted users merrily puff away.
The problem with drug prohibition is that it is inherently flawed. The strategy of restricting supply artificially inflates prices to a level which generates tremendous profits and continually motivates suppliers to enter and remain in the market, yet which is not high enough to deter use or suppress demand. Secondly, like the mythical hydra, the sea serpent that Hercules battled, the drug trade is self-reproducing. Stamping it out in one locale simply encourages new recruits or veterans to set up operations elsewhere.
Making war on marijuana users is no less problematic and has produced equally dismal results. In addition to the impossibility of stifling our permanent, insatiable appetite for intoxicating drugs, one is confronted by the improbability of a user ever being caught. Fifteen million Americans smoking a joint six times a year equates to 90 million annual usages; collaring 750,000 of them yields an arrest rate of 0.8% -- very long odds indeed.
Furthermore, drug laws attempt to prohibit conduct that is consensual and victimless; since no one is harmed, there is no victim to press charges or to testify at a trial. Consequently, to detect these crimes, law enforcement must resort to methods ripe for abuse, corruption, and the infringement of civil liberties -- like carrying on systematic surveillance, employing paid informants, or deploying undercover agents who set up entrapment operations.
In fact, drug prohibition has produced a host of harmful consequences which have impacted individuals and society in ways which its proponents could hardly have anticipated and which, even when confronted with the unpleasant truth, they refuse to acknowledge.
It has criminalized the three per cent of the American population hauled into court each year for pursuing what is, for the most part, innocuous, diversionary behavior. For minor convictions, many have suffered significant hardships: probation, mandatory drug testing, loss of employment, loss of child custody, loss of federal student aid, loss of voting privileges, and revocation of driving licenses.
It has undermined the moral message of the law by defining as a crime an activity practiced by a large portion of the public without punishment.
It has consumed tremendous amounts of physical and human resources -- making them unavailable for the investigation, prosecution, and incarceration of rapists, burglars, and murderers.
It has driven the drug business underground, where rival gangs regularly turn to violence and intimidation to defend their turf -- and kill innocent bystanders and potential witnesses in the process.
It has bred corruption in the criminal justice system, affording law enforcement officers myriad opportunities to trade influence for drug profits, by selling information on undercover and surveillance operations, by bartering favorable testimony at hearings and trials, by robbing dealers without fear of reprisal, and by fencing seized assets or drugs -- all of which engender contempt and cynicism for government institutions.
It has fed the money laundering industry -- which converts drug proceeds into spendable cash or usable assets, often enticing honest organizations and individuals into criminal activities.
It has fueled the growth of a prison-industrial complex -- quadrupling the number of those imprisoned since 1980 to 2,300,000, one in every 138 Americans, with federal prisoners leading the way, growing 90 per cent in the last decade, 55 per cent of whom are serving time for a drug offense, compared to 11 per cent for a violent crime.
It has intensified racial mistrust and hostility, sending blacks to prison at seven times the rate of whites, for longer average terms than whites who commit comparable crimes, and disenfranchising thousands of black drug felons. It has created lucrative incentives for drug dealers to saturate urban black ghettos, where substandard housing, pervasive poverty, poor health, and limited job opportunities make fatherless children, school dropouts, homeless people, and individuals facing bleak and hopeless futures avid customers for any means of escape.
It has eroded our Bill of Rights protections, as courts have upheld a multitude of egregious measures: search warrants issued on the flimsiest of suspicions; citizens accosted in cars, airports, trailers, or buses; wiretapping and eavesdropping applications granted as a matter of routine; undercover operations and putative conspiracies validated with a blind eye; judicial discretion sacrificed at the altar of mandatory minimum sentences; and assets forfeited without a criminal conviction, sometimes without a criminal charge.
It has stigmatized and stereotyped illicit drug users as moral pariahs instead of recognizing them as victims of medical, social, or psychological problems -- which discourages their seeking out medical care, forgos the health benefits of drug regulation, thwarts treatment programs that might help the drug dependent, and immerses non-violent drug offenders in the violent culture of prison society.
It has prevented access to therapeutic substances -- like marijuana, which, it has been demonstrated, can alleviate the nausea of chemotherapy, reduce the intraocular pressure of glaucoma, relieve surgical, migraine, and menstrual pain, control multiple sclerosis spasms and some epileptic seizures, and combat depression and insomnia.
The lure of its unconscionable profits has, at one time or another, substantially corrupted the entire governments of Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, and, most recently, Mexico, and sustained native criminal elements which have rent the social fabric of these countries.
And finally, argue the philosophers, drug prohibition is an infringement upon an individual's right to own property -- and assume the risks attendant upon that ownership -- and his right to make choices which may be harmful to himself, as long as those choices do not harm others. Drug users, anti-prohibitionists contend, do not violate others moral rights, and most never do harm to others (unlike users of alcohol or tobacco).
All these consequences might have some justification if marijuana were so dangerous to our well-being that it needed to be outlawed at all costs. But science long ago shattered that myth.
In 1938 New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, skeptical of Harry Ainslinger's exaggerated claims about the effects of marijuana, commissioned a pharmacological study, a clinical study, and a sociological study. The report, released in 1948, "concluded that marijuana was not addictive, did not seriously disturb mental or physical functioning, and did not lead to violence or harder drugs." (Gray, p. 85) To this assessment must be added its potential as a medicine and its value and versatility as a commercial crop.
Today marijuana is condemned and prohibited not because it is harmful but in defense of a specious public morality. "If health were the issue, tobacco and alcohol would have been banned long ago. To accept cannabis is a cultural decision, not a political one." (Booth, p. 401)
It's time to make that decision, to end our seventy-year-old exercise in futility and irrationality, to reverse a portion of this interminable war's destructive consequences, to disable forever the expensive and ubiquitous smoke detectors that invade our privacy. It's time to legalize marijuana.
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