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My Mother-in-Law's One High Day
By MARIE MYUNG-OK LEE
New York Times

WHEN my mother-in-law was in the final, harrowing throes of pancreatic cancer, she had only one good day, and that was the day she smoked pot.

So I was heartened when, at the end of last month, the governors of Washington and Rhode Island petitioned the Obama administration to classify marijuana as a drug that could be prescribed and distributed for medical use. While medical marijuana is legal in 16 states, it is still outlawed under federal law.

My husband and I often thought of recommending marijuana to his mother. She was always nauseated from the chemotherapy drugs and could barely eat for weeks. She existed in a Percocet and morphine haze, constantly fretting that the sedation kept her from saying all the things she wanted to say to us, but unable to face the pain without it. And this was a woman who had such a high tolerance for pain, coupled with a distaste for drugs, that she insisted her dentist not use Novocain and gave birth to her two children without anesthesia. But despite marijuana's power to relieve pain and nausea without loss of consciousness, we were afraid she would find even the suggestion of it scandalous. This was 1997, and my mother-in-law was a very proper, law-abiding woman, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College in the 1950s. She'd never even smoked a cigarette.

But then an older family friend who worked in an AIDS hospice came bearing what he said was very good quality marijuana. To our surprise, she said she'd consider it. My husband and I - though we knew nothing about marijuana paraphernalia - were dispatched to find a bong, as the friend suggested water-processing might make the smoking easier for her. We found ourselves in a head shop in one of the seedier neighborhoods in New Haven, where my husband went to graduate school, listening attentively to the clerk as he went over the finer points of bong taxonomy, finally just choosing one in her favorite color, lilac.

She had us take her out on the flagstone patio because she refused to smoke in her meticulously kept-up house. Then she looked about nervously, as if expecting the police to jump out of the bushes. She found it awkward and strange to smoke a bong, but after a few tries managed to get in two and a half hits.

And then she said she wanted to go out to eat.

For the past month, we'd been trying to get her to eat anything: fresh-squeezed carrot juice made in a special juicer, Korean rice gruel that I simmered for hours, soups, oatmeal, endless cans of Ensure. Sometimes she'd request some particular dish and we'd eagerly procure it, only to have her refuse it or fall back asleep before taking a bite. But this time she sat down at her favorite restaurant and ordered a gorgeous meal: whitefish poached with lemon, hot buttered rolls, salad - and ate every bite.

Then she wanted to go to Kimball's, a local ice cream place famous for cones topped with softball-size scoops. The family had been regular customers starting all the way back when my husband and his brother were children, but they hadn't been there since her illness. My husband and I shared a small cone, which we could not finish, and looked on in awe as my mother-in-law ordered a large and, queenishly spurning any requests for a taste, polished the whole thing off - cone and all - and declared herself satisfied.

We were of course raring to make the magic happen again, but it never did. The pot just frightened her too much. She was scared her friend would be arrested for interstate drug trafficking, that my husband and I would be mugged in New Haven; she was afraid she'd become addicted or (� la "Reefer Madness") go insane. It was difficult watching her reject something that had so clearly alleviated her nausea and pain and - let's admit it - lightened her mood in the face of the terrible fact that cancer had invaded nearly every essential organ. And it was even worse to watch her pumped, instead, full of narcotics that made her feel horrible. The Percocet gave her a painfully dry mouth, but even ice chips made her heave. We were reduced to swabbing her lips with little sponges dipped in water, and waiting out her agony.

My husband and I have dredged up the memory of that one good day many times since, how she smiled and joked, for the last time seeming a little like her old self.

After the funeral, saying goodbye to all the family and friends, supervising the removal of the hospital bed, bedpans and related paraphernalia, one of the last things my husband and I did, under the watchful eyes of the hospice nurse, was destroy her remaining Percocets. We opened the multiple bottles and knelt in front of the toilet to perform this secular water rite, wishing there had been other days, other ways, a softer way for her to leave us.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee, the author of the novel "Somebody's Daughter," teaches writing at Brown University.

Police Minister wants to decriminalize marijuana

Marijuana may soon be decriminalized in Belize and the strict penalty for being found with even small amounts of the drug may be greatly mitigated.

Minister of Police and Public Safety, Doug Singh, told The Reporter that the initiative is coming from his ministry, which is being assisted by a few persons outside.

The Ministry is currently preparing a paper that will be presented to Cabinet, Singh explained.

He said that in the first instance, his ministry is looking at decriminalizing a small quantity, and if Cabinet approves, police will no longer charge persons, who are found with the decriminalized amount.

The exact amount has not been agreed on as yet, but Singh said that he is looking at decriminalizing between 5 to 7 grams.

Singh reminded, however, that there is a difference between decriminalization and legalization, as he explained that it will not be a free walk in the park for those who are caught with that amount.

Singh said that persons who are caught with the specific decriminalized amount will be given a ticket to pay a small fine, but there will be no locking down of persons caught with a small amount of marijuana.

The Police Minister also added that after a certain period of time, persons who are charged criminally for marijuana will have their record wiped clean.

It makes no sense, Singh said, for a young person who made the mistake of being caught with a small amount of marijuana to have to go through life with a criminal record.

Nevertheless, until Singh gets his way, the Laws of Belize continue to be very clear when it comes to marijuana possession or cultivation: Cannabis sativa L, the scientific name for marijuana, is an illegal drug.

It is a criminal offence, if it is found in your possession. And, for even a very minuscule amount, you will be arrested, taken to court and charged a hefty fine, which if not paid, could land you directly in a prison cell.

But even if you don't go to prison after you have been found guilty, it is very likely that you would have a criminal record, which will follow you for the rest of your life.

But criminal offence or not, there has always been a robust marijuana business in Belize.

The drug is produced both for local consumption and for export.

In the 1980s, High Times Magazine dubbed marijuana that was being exported to the United States as "Belizean Breeze," and in one of its issues, the magazine took issue with the then Manuel Esquivel government, because it had allowed the deadly herbicide, Paraquat, to be sprayed on Belize's marijuana plantations.

There have been many changes in the world as far as marijuana is concerned over the decades since the 1980s. Marijuana is now legal in several countries and in the United Sates of America, marijuana can legally be used for medical purposes in sixteen states.

So not only has marijuana gained ground legally in many places, but Hemp, the lower level of the said Cannabis Sativa L plant, has been recognized as the fastest growing biomass in the world, with China being a leading producer.

While all these changes are occurring in the wider world, Belize remains unchanged with its archaic marijuana drugs laws.

But, once the Minister of Police and Public Safety is able to convince the Cabinet of Prime Minister Dean Barrow that the move to decriminalize marijuana makes social sense, this gloomy picture may very well change.

That change would be welcome news to Mr. Charles Bartlett Hyde, a former Speaker of the House of Representative, and former Post Master General, who has written several articles in the Amandala newspaper, making compellingly persuasive arguments for decriminalizing marijuana.

Mr. Hyde told The Reporter that decriminalizing marijuana makes perfect sense.

"This is a good beginning," Hyde said.

Mr. Hyde explained that he believes marijuana should be decriminalized, because the people who smoke it are not violent and almost all of them are productive citizens in all classes of society. But they have one thing in common, they are law-breakers and criminals under the present laws.

The marijuana cultivation law which carries the same penalty as drug trafficking, a fine of $10,000 or three years imprisonment is draconian, Mr. Hyde said.

"The majority of people who smoke marijuana are doing it for recreational purposes and for relaxation," Mr. Hyde pointed out.

Mr. Hyde said that he applauds the Minister of Police for his initiative.

The Reporter

75 Years of a Pointless, Disastrous War Against Marijuana
By Derek Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Posted on March 9, 2012, Printed on March 12, 2012
SOURCE

This year marks the 75th anniversary of federal marijuana prohibition in the United States. It only took 13 years for Americans to realize the futility of alcohol prohibition. Can you believe we've let 75 years of marijuana prohibition go by?

The marijuana plant has a long history of medical, religious and industrial uses dating back thousands of years. Yet few Americans had even heard of it when it was first federally prohibited in 1937. Today, it's the most widely used controlled substance in the U.S. and the world. More than 100 million Americans - about 42 percent of adults - admit to having tried it. The value of marijuana produced in the U.S. is estimated to be more than $35 billion, making it far and away the nation's largest cash crop. Despite its ubiquity, though, almost half of the roughly 1.7 million people arrested for drug law violations in the U.S. every year are arrested for nothing more than a low-level marijuana offense.

The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was essentially the beginning of federal marijuana prohibition. It imposed an excise tax on anyone who commercially produced marijuana and required a tax stamp to prove they were a valid producer. Once the law passed and someone wanted to apply for the stamp, though, they had to demonstrate they were a commercial marijuana producer. If they had the marijuana to prove it, they must have grown it without having the stamp, thus incriminating them.




A few states and localities passed some of the first laws against marijuana in the late 1800s, often with little public attention. Amidst a growing fear of drug use and criminality, several state governments petitioned the feds throughout the 1920s for a single act to unify laws and increase enforcement on narcotics. While drafting the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act, marijuana was included in its list of "habit-forming drugs" merely because it was previously listed as a narcotic in many state laws. The American Medical Association fought to keep marijuana available for medical purposes. But Harry Anslinger, who rose to power during alcohol prohibition as the assistant prohibition commissioner and first head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, made it his mission to impose harsh penalties for drug use and to criminalize a broad array of widely used substances.

In 1934, he started to publicly denounce marijuana as a serious threat to society. He created racist propaganda that associated blacks and Latinos with marijuana and blamed marijuana use for socially deviant behavior like murder and rape. In fact, "marijuana" was known to almost everyone as "cannabis" until Anslinger popularized the term common among Mexicans at this time. Anslinger also condemned jazz music - predominantly played by black entertainers - as Satan's music, and associated it with marijuana.

Coincidentally - or not - Anslinger launched his crusade only months after the repeal of alcohol Prohibition in December 1933. Anslinger saw tremendous political and economic opportunities in criminalizing marijuana; he could stigmatize Mexican migrant workers while eliminating hemp as a valuable resource, enabling his friend William Randolph Hearst to rule the paper industry.

The Marijuana Tax Act went pretty much unchallenged for 30 years until Timothy Leary was arrested for marijuana possession and his case was brought to the Supreme Court. In Leary v. United States (1969), the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional because it required self-incrimination, thus violating the Fifth Amendment. This decision helped prompt a congressional review of national drug policy and led to the dreadfully flawed Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and President Nixon's declaration of a war on drugs in 1971.

Law enforcement's overwhelming focus on marijuana arrests plays out in all kinds of sickening ways that are difficult to quantify. One recent example is Ramarley Graham, the 18-year-old who was chased into his home and fatally shot by police officers as he tried to flush a small amount of marijuana down the toilet. Every day thousands of young people in communities of color are subjected to invasive stop-and-frisks - ostensibly intended to remove weapons from our streets, but much more often resulting in low-level marijuana arrests. Thanks to policies like these, there are more black people under correctional supervision today than were enslaved in 1850 - and millions more are saddled with criminal records that relegate them to lifelong status as second-class citizens.

Perhaps the most peculiar hypocrisy of all this is that the federal government regularly supplies a handful of patients with marijuana produced by the National Institute on Drug Abuse - while telling the rest of the world there's no such thing as medical marijuana. Starting in the 1970s, the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program supplied medical marijuana to seriously ill patients until it stopped taking new applicants in 1992 and the few people in the program at that time were grandfathered in. Today, the DEA raids medical marijuana dispensaries operating legally under state law on a near-daily basis and our drug czar is statutorily required to oppose any efforts to change the legal status of marijuana or other illegal drugs, effectively impeding and undermining state and local governments willing to try a new approach to sensibly regulating marijuana.

While states and localities were responsible for initiating marijuana prohibition, today they are vital to repealing it. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws, while voters in Colorado and Washington will decide this November whether to regulate marijuana like alcohol. Let's make this 75th anniversary the beginning of the end of marijuana prohibition.

I AGREE!

Simply my personal experience and thoughts.....Hope this does not make you mad at me!

Currently living in Northern California on a lake near a park. Very upscale homes; everyday I have to chase off a bunch of pot smokers. The smell lofts through my open windows as I simply want the lake breezes....The RAP music blasts at top volume because they are too numb and dumb to hear....I call the police who tell me they can't do anything....I call the Feds and they come.....Yes, maybe medically, discreetly, privately between the patient and the doctor.....However, I would hate to see the same economic and cognitive destruction I have seen in California happen to the pleasant people of Belize. We don't see other people with medical ailments hanging out in groups taking their medication in public.

If Belize changed the law and decriminalized marijuana the US would be getting involved in changing it back!
Belize would have to be ready to 'Just Say No'to the US enticements/extortion to get Belize law changed back.
Like it or not the US influence is so strong that in order for Belize to have decriminalized pot the US would have to do it first.

I think we're back to "don't ask don't tell" on this one.

Elbert: If I agreed with you, we both would be wrong. The US could care less about consumption of drugs outside the US. Their focus is on the transport of drugs to the US. As long as Belize keeps up its feeble efforts to do that, the US will continue to provide aid no matter how many joints don't get people arrested in Belize.

JudyA, don't you know that Northern California is often referred to as the "Emerald Triangle?" Yes, we have had "economic destruction" here due to the world wide recession, but "cognitive destruction" might be over exaggerating.

I say they decriminalize it and tax it. Bet it would bring in a lot of revenue.

That's funny....No, I had not heard the Emerald Triangle Term...Sadly we have first hand experience in witnessing the Cognitive Destruction. Our business in California employs skilled labor in the Construction Industry.....Even in this high unemployment environment it's challenging to find skilled labor. Nearly 2 out of every 3 people we hire do not show up when we ask them to complete the drug screening. This is after several interviews through the process. We have lots of sad stories to include a staff member who started using POT after 6 years with us.....His labor skills declined and he became a danger when using power tools, in addition he suddenly could not think straight and had incredibly volatile mood swings. During a meeting he stated he 'preferred smoke over work'....That was his last day.....So sad to see and hear....Not to worry he collected unemployment on our dime for 24 months and now has filed for State disability.......I can't help but think if he had never started using drugs maybe he would still be working here.......We'll have to see how it plays out....