I gave a phone interview yesterday to a local paper as part of my campaign for California State Senate -- and the reporter got more than she bargained for. First, I was impolitic enough to come out and say that California needed new revenues. The first three I mentioned were support for the compromise plan on taxes (millionaire's tax and 1/4% sales tax increase), an oil excise tax, and a "split roll" reform limiting the application of Prop 13 on some commercial property.
So already I was clearly a crazy-eyed radical, trying to solve our state budget problems this way rather than something respectable like ending public education or selling off the state beaches.
Then I came to my last revenue proposal and I told her that this one would be controversial: legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana and hemp. I think she managed not to giggle at a major-party-endorsed candidate actually saying this. She asked me what I thought think public would think about this proposal. She didn't say "strange and crazy" proposal -- and as a human being she may not think that it is either. As a journalist, though, she knows that that's what she's supposed to ask.
I told her that I did not smoke pot (I haven't for literally over two decades) and that I did not want my kids smoking pot, especially when they might be driving, but that I expected the public to think about the issue like adults. I said that if we were starting from the position of marijuana already being legal, we would never say:
let's give up the benefits of hemp, let's give up the tax money from marijuana, let's push more people to alcohol or meth, let's divert police resources from higher-priority items to concentrate on pot busts, let's take more of our kids out of school and put them into expensive jails, and let's leave the whole industry in the hands of murderous drug cartels.
This was such an odd thing for a candidate to say that I think she may do a second story about it later.
This diary isn't about these revenue measures, though -- it's about how discussion of marijuana policy seems to make otherwise adult Americans nervous, giggly, and stupid. And it's about how that stupidity is playing out right now regarding the Trayvon Martin case.
A reminder: the "♦" at the front of the title means that this is a diary for my campaign for State Senate, CA-SD-29. Even though this is not totally a campaign diary, it is about policy, so I am giving in to my friends' unanimous advice to include this boilerplate information. Again, my campaign announcement is here. You can like my Facebook page here. You can donate here (or write me for my campaign's mailing address). If you want to be rickrolled, you can click this link.
The news thundered forth yesterday:
Trayvon had THC metabolites in his system! I knew that it would be bad then, but I didn't know how bad.
This morning, while driving into a campaign meeting at my office, I got a whiff of how bad. A professor from Loyola Law School was talking about how some of the evidence yesterday could end up helping George Zimmerman's defense. Luckily, I was stopped at a light when I heard this codswallop, which I'll paraphrase.
"Of course, they'll be able to argue that the presence of THC in the victim's system meant that he had been smoking marijuana, which had made him violent."
You know what
I think can make a young man violent enough to break another man's nose?
When that man is stalking him with a gun, that's what! But even if that were not true, why do I have to put up with the ignorance on public radio of someone suggesting that smoking marijuana makes people
violent?
Meth or PCP or cocaine? Sure. Alcohol? Certainly could. Caffeine? Maybe. Sugary soda? Possible. But marijuana? Is there a single respectable study in the world that suggests that smoking marijuana makes someone violent? Hungry for Skittles, yes. Violent? Yeah, about as much as Nyquil does.
But she put that out there like it was uncontroversial, let alone plausible, rather than following up with something like -- "which is of course completely baseless."
But even if that were true, what she did not note -- maybe out of ignorance, maybe because she didn't think it important -- is that having THC metabolites in one's bloodstream does not mean that one's mind is actively being affected by THC. It's not like alcohol. The metabolites can stay in there for a while. It's not really even reason to think that Trayvon was high at the time. (It is a good reason to think that he was 17, but we already knew that.)
So that's two misconceptions that this respected professor reinforced with just one sentence. The notion that THC metabolites in Trayvon's system could in any way, any way at all, justify or excuse George Zimmerman's shooting at him is laughable. Laughable -- but unfortunately not laughed at. Instead, it's taken seriously.
This is why political candidates like me will be laughed at for proposing the rational policy of marijuana legalization taxation -- because proper adults can no more talk about marijuana seriously in public than they can talk about adult diapers or masturbation. To be serious about such topics is, paradoxically, to be *un*serious. And so people continue to suffer, people continue to die, our state drifts towards insolvency -- and a murderer like George Zimmerman could conceivably go free.
When you think about it, achieving that level of idiocy is quite an accomplishment.