The Road to Legalization

The case of Matthew Zugsberger's arrest and conviction on charges of transporting three pounds of legitimately prescribed marijuana illustrates that the time has clearly arrived for the US as a nation to rationalize what has become a patchwork of laws tending irresistibly toward one ultimate goal: the repeal of marijuana prohibition, and its eventual recognition as a useful and potent substance. Freed of the illogical laws against its production, use, and storage, the criminality that those laws produce, and the attitude of shame that often pervades legitimate use because of, and only because of, irrational laws, we can not only move forward socially, in the direction of freedom, but, particularly in states like California which have favorable climates and legions of experienced growers, marijuana can assume its rightful place as a revenue producer, not for the evil cartels, but for governments which face ever greater resistance in providing basic services without going bankrupt.

A juror in the Zugsberger case told the Sacramento Bee that clarity is needed in the laws so that juries will be able to ascertain when and if a law has been broken, which is difficult as patients or other users move between jurisdictions, or even encounter peace officers within a single jurisdiction who interpret the melange of laws differently, but according to their best judgment, under sometimes trying circumstances.

The Bee's story focused on the disagreements between jury members, who finally decided that Zugsberger was guilty of illegally transporting 3 pounds of weed in his airline luggage. He maintained that he was planning to have the 3 pounds--which fall squarely within the guidelines of his home county, among the nation's most liberal--processed into edible forms of cannabis at his destination. Adding to the confusion, even Mendocino County's 25- plant, 5 pound limit has recently been declared invalid by California's Supreme Court, which in effect ruled that, with the 1996 adoption of Proposition 215 by California voters, the weed is legal in all forms and quantities, and the state has no business coming between a physician who recommends the drug, the producer who grows it, or the consumer who ultimately puts it to its proper use.

Elimination of a major, though completely imaginary, crime category will save states millions annually as they no longer have to pursue or incarcerate people who want to get high, either for pleasure or pain relief, and as can be easily seen, would also produce a major, sustainable revenue stream.

At the same time, we can forget about the demonization of people who really just want some relief from the stresses and often painful results of living in this world full of contradiction and conundrum.

Today, Zubsberger faces a sentence of as much as four years for the felony transportation conviction, a heinous result which in fact would mean much more than simple deprivation of freedom. Zugsberger, as the Bee story makes clear, suffers long-term pain as the result of a deep-sea diving accident incurred while he was working on an oil rig. There is of course little chance of his being properly medicated while in prison.

In the March 17 Sacramento Bee, we hear more silly palaver from the airhole of overstuffed columnist Marcos Breton, who exclaims, in a column critical of the patchwork of laws described above, that, since some people seem to enjoy getting high as well as gaining relief from pain, there is some sort of problem here. "For all the talk about medicine, dispensaries want to make money, and people really, really want to get high."

Breton never actually says there's anything wrong with getting high, rather he just sniffs indignantly because others are experiencing pleasure that he'd prefer they didn't.

Which, after all, is like a pig standing in the mud demanding that the pig standing on the dry ground drop his affectations of freedom and step back into the mud where they belong.