Weed Takes Root

California’s actions in 2010 year may greatly influence the speed of those campaigns.

Reefer activists readily acknowledge that the quickening pace of change raises risks of a backlash. Intense concern already centers on the poorly regulated mess in Los Angeles, where a confused and largely paralyzed City Council has allowed the proliferation of more than 540 medical-marijuana dispensaries without regard to zoning or other restrictions imposed elsewhere in California.

Richard Lee, president of Oaksterdam University, a trade school for the cannabis industry

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• Barack Obama
• Tom Ammiano
• Richard Lee
• Psychoactive Drugs
• Politics

Law enforcement was never amenable to legalizing pot, but the situation in L.A. — a black eye to reformers everywhere — can only galvanize the resistance.

John Lovell, a lobbyist for the 4,000-member California Peace Officers’ Association, fairly bristles when confronted with the argument that pot should be made legal because it’s no worse than booze. “What good comes of it?” he asks. “Right now we have enormous social and public-safety problems caused by alcohol abuse ... [and] by pharmaceuticals. What is the good of adding another mind-altering substance? Look at all the highway fatalities. Why do we want to create another lawful substance that will add exponentially to that?”

That line of thinking suggests that society today would be more sober and safe if alcohol or pharmaceuticals were banned — an argument U.S. history, particularly the era of prohibition, does not bear out.

Says Lovell, “I think everyone in law enforcement will take on this fight. I think people concerned about the social consequences of drug abuse will take on this fight. I think there will be a broad range of opposition.”

Out in the streets, the counterinsurgence is readily apparent. Marijuana arrests are up in California, despite the rising public tolerance. Activists theorize it is not just because more people are smoking the drug.

A similar spike has occurred in New York, even though it was one of the first states to decriminalize small stashes of marijuana, 34 years ago. In fact, if there is a world capital for cannabis busts, it is New York City, where 40,000 people were arrested on pot charges in the last year.

Queens College sociologist Harry G. Levine is an expert on drug-abuse patterns, and co-author, with Craig Reinarman, of 1997’s Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice.

“What we have in New York is what you could call an epidemic of marijuana arrests,” Levine says. “The No. 1 criminal offense in New York City is marijuana possession.”

How is that possible, when pot has long been decriminalized there?

Levine explored the question by interviewing veteran and retired police officers, legal-aid attorneys and jailed smokers, producing a scathing 100-page review of the NYPD. It became apparent, he says, that police — who have a vested interest in making as many arrests as possible — profit from pot, and often “trick” their suspects into violating a specific law against openly displaying the weed in public.

“Technically, [police officers] are not allowed to go into people’s pockets,” Levine says. “But they can lie to people. Lying to suspects is considered good policing. They say ... ‘We’re going to have to search you. If we find anything, it’s going to be a mess for you ... so take it out and show it to us now.’ ” As intimidated young people — most of them ethnic minorities — empty their pockets of a joint or a nickel bag, they’re charged with a misdemeanor.

Such busts are huge business for the police, Levine points out. Not only do they sweep potential bad guys into the system, generating vast databases of fingerprints and photographs, but the arrests also beef up crime statistics. Departments in big cities and small towns alike use the numbers to secure fortunes in federal funding. Street cops have an angle, too: They like to nab docile pot users — easy to find in poor pockets of town — at the end of their patrol shifts, when the extra hours filling out reports at the precinct house are charged as overtime. In the jargon, the practice is known as “collars for dollars.”

New York’s example suggests a system deeply invested in criminalization, one that is unlikely to back down. When contacted by L.A. Weekly for a response to Levine’s assertions, an NYPD spokesman demanded an e-mail query and hung up. Three were sent; none was answered.

Levine says his research has pointed to the same pattern in other American cities. “Atlanta and Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnatti, Cleveland, Chicago ...” He rattles off a long list. “The Southwest is really bad. Houston ... San Antonio.”

El Paso is another place where the ideological battle has flared dramatically. With cartels committing 1,600 murders in a year’s span just across the border in Juarez, Mexico, El Paso City Councilman Beto O’Rourke pushed a resolution last January calling for a discussion on legalizing drugs to undercut the illegal market. “Mind you, it was not to legalize anything, necessarily,” says O’Rourke, whose 10th-floor office overlooks the Rio Grande and the impoverished Mexican metropolis beyond. “Basically, it was a way of saying the current policy had failed; we need to put everything on the table and have a dialogue.”