Reclassifying Marijuana Would Be Game-Changing

A patron at the library just let me know about a news blurb that came out a few days ago, so I went online and checked on the reports.

The federal agencies responsible for how drugs are classified for use - especially ones that can be addictive and harmful - are considering reclassifying Marijuana from Schedule I drug - listed as one of the most dangerous drugs out there - downward to Schedule II - which is harmful but not as criminally severe. Link to ABC News report on this:

Federal authorities have announced that they are reviewing the possibility of loosening the classification of marijuana, and if this happens, it could have a far-reaching impact on how the substance is used in medical settings, experts said.

Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning it is listed alongside heroin and LSD as among the "most dangerous drugs" and has "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse."

The Drug Enforcement Administration announced last week that it is reviewing the possibility of reclassifying it as a Schedule II drug, which would put it in the same category as Ritalin, Adderal and oxycodone.

Medical experts are welcoming the review, saying it could ease restrictions for researchers, so that they can better understand which compounds in marijuana could be used to help patients...

I'm amazed there hasn't been more talk about this in the major blogs or media outlets. This could be a major shift in not only medical research - which the article focuses too much on - but also our entire legal system and the 40-year-plus War On Drugs.

Marijuana (pot) is one of the more commonly used illegal drugs in the nation, and one of the more prosecuted by an aggressive legal system fighting that War On Drugs that shows no signs of ending. It's a drug that's listed among the worst of the worst, in a scheduled class containing drugs with a high incidence of overdoses and deaths such as heroin.

...And yet, marijuana isn't as lethal as heroin or even other lesser Schedule drugs like opoids (pain-killers). Here's a government website that's charting drug overdoses, listing even prescription drugs alongside cocaine and heroin. Notice anything? THERE'S NO CHART FOR MARIJUANA. There are no reported cases of overdose deaths (granted, there are some reports of overdosing related to pot but no-one's died from them).

In terms of the effects marijuana has on the human body, it's less harmful than alcohol. And yet we treat marijuana as a criminal offense while alcoholism - outside of DUI, which is a major public safety risk and deserves criminal treatment - is handled as a health care medical issue.

The reasons for marijuana being treated as a Schedule I has less to do with the facts and more to do with politics. It's even come out recently that the War On Drugs that began under the Nixon administration was purely political:

The April cover story of Harper’s magazine explains not just how counterproductive the drug war has been but also, and perhaps more importantly, its racist roots. Written by Dan Baum, the article lays out the case for legalization, which is worth absorbing on its own. But it begins with a startling revelation from John Ehrlichman, one of Richard Nixon’s close aides and a Watergate co-conspirator.

This quote is from 1994, when Baum was writing a book about drug prohibition. Baum tracked Ehrlichman down, hoping to get some insight into the drug war, which began in earnest during Nixon’s administration. Ehrlichman’s explanation was surprisingly blunt:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black people, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

What happened since the War started was a round of mass incarcerations, focused primarily on Blacks and to a lesser extent Hispanics and Asians, justified by the criminalization of certain drugs -marijuana - that those communities enjoyed over others. But marijuana had been vilified decades before - say hello to Anslinger - much to the extent that badly ill-informed movies about pot like Reefer Madness were made in the 1930s (if viewed objectively, the drugs the actors in that movie seem to be on is Meth or speed, not pot). By 1968, with the wave of civil unrest tied into a youth culture getting high, it was easy to exploit again.

The result has been long jail sentences for possession of pot for a large number of otherwise non-violent offenders that had led to overcrowded prisons and the downward spiral of the imprisoned into a life of crime (either to survive, or because their felony histories block them from meaningful jobs and livelihoods). The impact on entire communities - loss of employment, loss of income, loss of social aid, loss of voting rights - cannot be understated.

A lot of that is excused by having marijuana listed so high - erroneously, intentionally - as a lethal drug. So what happens if/when pot drops to the less-lethal Schedule II?

Actually, not a lot. The Federal government treats Schedule II drugs at about the same level of penalties as a Schedule I.

But this is where the medical aspect of the lesser Schedule comes into play: Making marijuana a Schedule II drug makes it EASIER for corporations and medical research facilities to access the drug for testing and pharma development. Most of what we know about marijuana's benefits are mostly anecdotal or on just-recent testing by other nations also loosening their penalties on pot. A more rigorous and thorough scientific research into the chemicals related to marijuana can quickly identify the medical/health aspects of cannabis consumption, and give cause to reduce the Schedule status for pot even further.

We'd have better scientific evidence that marijuana is no more harmful than alcohol, which we DO regulate with age restrictions, DUI laws, and other legal prohibitions. We'd have better evidence to drop marijuana even further into lesser Schedules that won't lead to automatic jail-time. And where we deal with alcoholism by treating it as a medical issue - and by creating social norms of alcohol consumption with moderation and common sense - we would treat any marijuana addiction as a health issue as well. And we wouldn't have a War On Drugs wasting everyone's time and money with needlessly excessive prison sentences.

Granted, this won't end the larger War On Drugs - there's still cocaine and meth and heroin and painkiller abuse to worry about - but dropping this one overwhelming part of that War could free up a lot of our resources, and bring some relief to our communities wrecked by an unjust pursuit against a mild substance.

Predicting Character: O'Malley By The Numbers

Perking up the Democratic side of the 2016 Slogfest, the expected announcement by former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley came... and went with about as much buzz/excitement as a new album release by (Insert Obscure Grunge Band That Nobody Knew Was Still Together And Touring).  Well, that's not entirely true: O'Malley's rally did get a response, just not the one he'd hoped.  Per the Daily Beast:

...O’Malley, 52, is a former Baltimore councilman, mayor, and, for two terms, the governor of Maryland. He is a proud liberal—under his watch, Maryland ended the death penalty, legalized same-sex marriage and passed the Dream Act. But despite his record and his sociopathically charming demeanor (he plays in an Irish band, too), he is not a star in the Democratic Party, for whom Hillary Clinton remains the obvious favorite for the nomination. O’Malley, who was a fervent supporter of Clinton’s 2008 campaign, has been publicly “considering” running for president for two years, traveling the country and fundraising for other Democrats, and is still barely at 3 percent.

...Jake Polce and Mallory Donaghue, both 18, told me they came because “it has to do with Maryland pride.” Donaghue said she liked what O’Malley stands for, but when asked to elaborate said, “I don’t know,” and asked Polce to intervene. Polce said ending the death penalty and passing the Dream Act were his main reasons for supporting O’Malley, but he admitted he knew little about the other Democratic candidates... 

...But as O’Malley delivered his remarks, a small group of others made their voices heard, too—and called to mind the criticisms of O’Malley’s record on crime and police brutality which came under scrutiny during the Baltimore riots earlier this month. 

A woman charged through the crowd holding a sign reading “Stop killer cops” and “say her name.” She shouted, “Black lives matter!” Someone else yelled, “We don’t need zero tolerance policies, O’Malley!” and “What about police brutality?” The protesters blew whistles, which drowned out O’Malley. 

Police and press surrounded them, and O’Malley just carried on as if it was not happening...

Most of the passion at the turnout was with the protestors, which is not a good sign.

By basic metrics, O'Malley would be the perfect candidate for the Democrats: experience as a popular governor, coming from a major Mid-Atlantic state, Catholic yet Liberal, who signed on for key social issues - immigration rights, gay marriage - that would hearten leftist Progressives.  Compared to the front-runner Hillary Clinton, O'Malley has few scandals dogging him that the Republicans could viably use against him (which won't stop the lying by Fox Not News and their ilk, of course).  Compared to the other official candidate Bernie Sanders, O'Malley is not as radicalized to where the pro-business Democrats would be terrified of his winning the nomination.

But the protests are a harbinger of O'Malley's greatest weakness: his failures as Baltimore Mayor (which he used as a stepping stone to the Governor's office) with regards to crime and race relations.

"The Numbers".  From The Wire (YouTube link won't play on this blog due to copyright block):

The stat games... that lie, it’s what ruined this department. Shining up shit and calling it gold, so that Majors become Colonels and Mayors become Governors; pretending to do police work while one generation fucking trains the next how not to do the job... - Daniels

People may forget that The Wire was not just a television show: it was based on real-life incidents and the ongoing national disaster that is urban blight.  Producer/Writer David Simon worked as a journalist in Baltimore during part of O'Malley's tenure as Mayor, and everything about the internal corruption in government - the obsession over crime statistics - was based on what he covered.

From the Marshall Project blog interviewing Simon:

Simon: It happened in stages, but even in the time that I was a police reporter, which would have been the early 80s to the early 90s, the need for police officers to address the basic rights of the people they were policing in Baltimore was minimized. It was done almost as a plan by the local government, by police commissioners and mayors, and it not only made everybody in these poor communities vulnerable to the most arbitrary behavior on the part of the police officers, it taught police officers how not to distinguish in ways that they once did...
S: The drug war began it, certainly, but the stake through the heart of police procedure in Baltimore was (O'Malley). He destroyed police work in some real respects. Whatever was left of it when he took over the police department, if there were two bricks together that were the suggestion of an edifice that you could have called meaningful police work, he found a way to pull them apart. Everyone thinks I’ve got a hard-on for Marty because we battled over “The Wire,” whether it was bad for the city, whether we’d be filming it in Baltimore. But it’s been years, and I mean, that’s over. I shook hands with him on the train last year and we buried it. And, hey, if he's the Democratic nominee, I’m going to end up voting for him. It’s not personal and I admire some of his other stances on the death penalty and gay rights. But to be honest, what happened under his watch as Baltimore’s mayor was that he wanted to be governor. And at a certain point, with the crime rate high and with his promises of a reduced crime rate on the line, he put no faith in real policing...
S: Originally, early in his tenure, O’Malley brought Ed Norris in as commissioner and Ed knew his business. He’d been a criminal investigator and commander in New York and he knew police work. And so, for a time, real crime suppression and good retroactive investigation was emphasized, and for the Baltimore department, it was kind of like a fat man going on a diet. Just leave the French fries on the plate and you lose the first ten pounds. The initial crime reductions in Baltimore under O’Malley were legit and O’Malley deserved some credit.  But that wasn’t enough. O’Malley needed to show crime reduction stats that were not only improbable, but unsustainable without manipulation. And so there were people from City Hall who walked over Norris and made it clear to the district commanders that crime was going to fall by some astonishing rates. Eventually, Norris got fed up with the interference from City Hall and walked, and then more malleable police commissioners followed, until indeed, the crime rate fell dramatically. On paper...

You need to read that article.  What happened in Baltimore pretty much well happened in St. Louis and Cleveland and Miami and New York City and everywhere else as politicians obsessed over making the numbers look good for them and to hell with civil liberties and actual policing that needed doing.

S: The second thing Marty did, in order to be governor, involves the stats themselves. In the beginning, under Norris, he did get a better brand of police work and we can credit a legitimate 12 to 15 percent decline in homicides. Again, that was a restoration of an investigative deterrent in the early years of that administration. But it wasn’t enough to declare a Baltimore Miracle, by any means. What can you do? You can’t artificially lower the murder rate – how do you hide the bodies when it’s the state health department that controls the medical examiner’s office? But the other felony categories? Robbery, aggravated assault, rape? Christ, what they did with that stuff was jaw-dropping.
Interviewer: So they cooked the books.
S: Oh yeah. If you hit somebody with a bullet, that had to count. If they went to the hospital with a bullet in them, it probably had to count as an aggravated assault. But if someone just took a gun out and emptied the clip and didn't hit anything or they didn't know if you hit anything, suddenly that was a common assault or even an unfounded report. Armed robberies became larcenies if you only had a victim’s description of a gun, but not a recovered weapon. And it only gets worse as some district commanders began to curry favor with the mayoral aides who were sitting on the Comstat data...
S: They cooked their own books in remarkable ways. Guns disappeared from reports and armed robberies became larcenies. Deadly weapons were omitted from reports and aggravated assaults became common assaults. The Baltimore Sun did a fine job looking into the dramatic drop in rapes in the city. Turned out that regardless of how insistent the victims were that they had been raped, the incidents were being quietly unfounded...

Christ.  All so O'Malley could run for Governor...

S: So Martin O’Malley proclaims a Baltimore Miracle and moves to Annapolis. And tellingly, when his successor as mayor allows a new police commissioner to finally de-emphasize street sweeps and mass arrests and instead focus on gun crime, that’s when the murder rate really dives. That’s when violence really goes down. When a drug arrest or a street sweep is suddenly not the standard for police work, when violence itself is directly addressed, that’s when Baltimore makes some progress...

But by then it was too late.  And you get excessive force and questionable arrests similar to what happened to Freddie Gray and so many others...

What happened to O'Malley has been happening - is happening - to politicians all over.  In order to prove effectiveness in office, you have to present evidence.  Statistics can be the best evidence to present as "factual," so if you have to said politicians will twist those statistics to favor them at the expense of reality.  It's not just crime reports, the obsession with numbers for politicians reach into job figures, education test results, anything with numbers...

What the politicians like O'Malley overlook is that each number is a life.  Someone being arrested for no honest reason just to boost a stat count.  Someone made a victim whose crime was under-reported to where no justice prevails.  Someone turned into zero.

And here's a sad thing David Simon himself notes in that interview if he had to, he'd vote for O'Malley: "It’s not personal and I admire some of his other stances on the death penalty and gay rights."

In short, better the devil you know than the devil likely getting nominated for the Republicans in 2016 (Because the Republicans have made it consistently clear that on race relations and crime and urban policing they will be worse).

The other thing about O'Malley is that - aside from the crime stats scandal - he's done good work as governor, and publicly appears level-headed and competent.  From The Atlantic:

In two terms as the governor of Maryland, he’s ushered in a sweeping liberal agenda that includes gay marriage, gun control, an end to the death penalty, and in-state college tuition for undocumented immigrants. He’s trim and handsome; he plays in an Irish rock band... He shows great zeal for improving things both large and small: during a recent visit to the Light House, a homelessness-prevention center in Annapolis that provides job training and other assistance, he said that he had, as governor, taken the state’s traditional Day to Serve and made it 17 days long. “I really enjoy progress, and making progress, and my joy comes from understanding that it happens one life at a time,” he told me, reflecting on the center’s work...

During his governorship, he was aggressive in pushing a package of tax hikes and budget fixes, via the Washington Post:

The new governor immediately set out to strengthen the middle class, boost public safety and education, and improve health care and the environment. He froze public university tuition and dramatically increased funding for school construction...

Legislative leaders cautioned against holding such an ambitious special session — particularly with no guarantee of success. But O’Malley pushed through his entire package, with some bills squeaking by after debates that stretched into the wee hours. He had established himself as a force to be reckoned with, even though some efforts — such as repealing the death penalty — didn’t succeed right away.

In the end, there was no major O’Malley initiative that didn’t make it across the finish line. In some cases, he showed a willingness to compromise that frustrated his allies — like slowing the pace of pay increases in a minimum wage bill...

It's still a question mark if his policies will work - his aggressive tax hikes created electoral backlash this past election cycle, and despite his efforts he left office with the state budget still facing shortages - but by some measures he kept Maryland afloat at a time most other states were collapsing during the Great Recession.

But those entries help paint the world-view - the potential Character - that O'Malley would bring if he follows through on his pursuit of the Presidency.  A further look into his formative years - per Professor Barber's review process - shows a child and young man involved with politics since his birth.  From Jill Lawrence's National Journal article printed June 2013:

...O'Malley's story is not like any of those. He's a smart, good-looking, white guy who grew up with two parents, two older sisters, and three younger brothers outside Washington in the affluent Maryland suburbs of Bethesda and Rockville. His political pedigree goes back generations. His grandparents were active in Democratic politics in Indiana and Pittsburgh. His parents met doing work for the Democratic National Committee. His father, who died in 2006, was a lawyer whom O'Malley says was an "Atticus Finch-type figure" to his four sons, all of whom became lawyers. His mother has been a receptionist for Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Maryland's Democratic senior senator, for more than 25 years.

O'Malley attended the Jesuits' Gonzaga High School in a checkered neighborhood near the U.S. Capitol, and then Catholic University a couple of miles away. The choice of Gonzaga in a sense foreshadowed the turn his life took later when he attended the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, then stayed in the city to work as an assistant state's attorney, marry a top state official's daughter, and run for a series of political offices...

...By (age 14), O'Malley was already an Irish history aficionado, a musician, and a budding politico. As a child, he followed election returns when his godfather ran for office, and he handed out leaflets for a family friend in another race. As a college student, he worked for Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign, including spending a few weeks in Iowa. As a law student, he ran the field operation for then-Rep. Mikulski's 1986 Senate campaign. It was a fateful job, in part because it afforded him his first glimpse of Katie Curran, his future wife...

...The year 1990 was seminal for O'Malley in two ways. He married Katie, and he made his first run for office--a primary challenge to state Sen. John Pica of Baltimore. O'Malley's brother Peter, seven years younger and a student at Catholic University, ran the campaign with help from Patrick, another brother, and Enright. They did their own opposition research. Peter O'Malley says he and Patrick combed Pica's voting records to discover that he had missed more votes than any other member of the state Senate. They also did their own polling, he says. Martin wrote the questions, and they all made the calls, using lists they bought to achieve a scientific result. (note: the early sign of stat obsession)

O'Malley spent less than $35,000 on the campaign and ended up losing by 44 votes, so close that his friends and family were elated. He says he realized belatedly, "I was the only dope on the campaign" who had expected to win. He was stung, but also encouraged. By the next year, he was working at a law firm by day and campaigning by night for a Baltimore City Council seat. He'd pick up his infant daughter Grace from Katie, who was taking an evening bar-review course, and go door-to-door as long as Grace would stand for it. He won the seat, and his course was set.

What was it about Baltimore that drew O'Malley? "There's probably a biography in the answer to that question," he responds. It started with what he calls his "immersion" into Mikulski's world of friends, family, and supporters. "I felt more at home in Baltimore after one year of law school and Barbara Mikulski's campaign than I ever felt in the Maryland suburbs of Washington," he says. "It is a city with a very unpretentious blue-collar work ethic. I just found something about it very attractive when I moved there for law school, and wanted to stay."

Baltimore has much going for it: top-notch sports teams, cozy neighborhoods, a burgeoning restaurant scene, a renowned symphony and university, and one of the nation's largest ports. Still, 25 years ago, beset by drugs, crime, and racial tensions, it was an odd place for a white Democrat to start building a life in politics. O'Malley says Baltimore's problems were compelling to him. In his 20 months at the state's attorney's office, he handled more than 70 cases and saw a lot of pain and addiction. He was frustrated with the criminal-justice system and wanted to try to make things better "at a higher level."

In short, he was a politician in search of a challenge.  The rest of his story plays out as Mayor, as Governor, and now as Presidential hopeful.

So how does this all translate into Character?  How would I list him on my charts, for his Positives and Negatives and on what he's likely going to be as a President?

Martin O'Malley - Governor, Maryland
Positives: Served two terms as governor in a politically powerful mid-Atlantic state.  Can govern, and campaign in tight, messy elections.  Fought hard on key liberal issues - school funding, ending the death penalty, supporting gay marriage, supporting immigration reform - that would appeal to the progressive base.  His raising taxes on higher incomes in-state - and campaigning on that issue nationally - can play as a welcome populist move as income inequality becomes a big issue.  Presents himself as a "better" liberal than Hillary can, yet isn't as left-leaning as the other candidate Bernie Sanders, which means O'Malley can have better appeal to the moderates by the general election.
Negatives: Suffering backlash from the stat-obsession tenure as Baltimore mayor that has left deep scars in that city.  His defense for higher taxes may play well with the progressive base but unless changes in Maryland show they worked - via improved social services and educational standards - he may lose middle-class voters worried that high taxation would hurt small businesses.  Despite the obviousness of him being a potential candidate - and anti-Hillary alternative - for the White House ever since 2010, still hasn't made a strong impression nation-wide.  In terms of fund-raising, Sanders is already well ahead and is currently higher in the polling.
Chances: He's got a solid chance due to outside factors - not enough challengers that can steal his thunder vs. Hillary - and may appeal to fund-raisers in the party wary of another Clinton era and worried that Sanders is a candidate too far Left.  But he's got way too much work ahead of him, and until the police brutality issue goes away - or he campaigns for legitimate reforms - he's got one hell of an albatross around his neck.
Character Chart: His actions as an elected figure shows an aggressive, constant persona with public (and private) agendas.  His work as Governor - pushing through bills against a reluctant legislature - hints at an Uncompromising world-view, along with the obsession over statistics and results that overlooks genuine empathy for the people he serves.  On the other hand, the issues and results he took - abolishing the death penalty, supporting gay marriage, supporting immigration - display a level of political courage that most Adaptive and out-going character types did in their lives.  The stat-obsession worries me that he can be an Active-Negative type: however, O'Malley has displayed enough Adaptive and Conciliatory traits to make me think he can serve as an Active-Positive.  Compared to his potential opponents in Hillary or ANYBODY from the Republicans, O'Malley is a clear A-P.

In this campaign run, O'Malley has one big weakness and many small advantages.  Whether he can turn those advantages into big ones is the big question.

Florida Ballot Amendments 2014: So Few Yet So Important

Another election cycle here in Florida.  Another round of Florida state amendments on the ballot for 2014 for the voters to decide.

Unlike previous ballots like 2012 and 2010 and 2008, this year we've got only three amendments to consider.  Could make for the smallest ballot sheet in recent history.  Deal is, these three are some of the biggest issues to vote on I've seen in ages.

Amendment One: Land Acquisition Trust Fund

The wording on this makes it so Florida has "to acquire, restore, improve, and manage conservation lands including wetlands and forests; fish and wildlife habitat; lands protecting water resources and drinking water sources, including the Everglades, and the water quality of rivers, lakes, and streams; beaches and shores; outdoor recreational lands; working farms and ranches; and historic or geologic sites, by dedicating 33 percent of net revenues from the existing excise tax on documents for 20 years."

What's at stake is funding for a state-founded land trust dedicated towards overall environmental management and protection.  Funding for that trust had been slashed back in 2009, and it seems the current legislature leadership isn't in the mood to find replacement revenues.

If you've never been to Florida, or just moved here, or if you've lived here for 20-40 years and just plain forgot, this state has a very fragile ecosystem and not a lot of room for growth.  Geographically, we're a mid-sized state but population has us as the fourth-most.  That means a lot of our limited resources are getting pulled in a lot of directions, above all our water.  Drinking water is important, as is our lawn maintenance and agricultural needs for water.  Not to mention our state's reliance on tourism with our impressive chain of beaches, rivers, lakes, and parks.  The risk of pollution to key waterways - especially the Everglades - is always high.

I don't buy what I've seen of the opposition's arguments: that this would force a constitutional solution to what normal legislation ought to handle, that it would cause an unbalanced budget, that it would kill job-creating funds.  On the first point, our current legislature hasn't been in any rush to resolve this matter, so we've got nowhere else to go to resolve it.  On the second, we have other ways of balancing the budget IF said legislature opened their fricking minds to the options available: besides, the Fiscal Impact committee that measures the cost benefits of all amendment proposals can't say if this will hurt or boost revenues.  On the third point, any time a Republican says anything will affect "job creators" I don't believe them, because their idea of "jobs creation" is "more money to the rich".

The overall purpose of this amendment is to protect our state's environment and conserve our resources in a way to ensure ourselves and future generations can LIVE HERE.  With regards to Amendment One, I vote YES.

Amendment Two: Medical Marijuana

This one is the doozy, the headache.  The major bout on the general election card this November (in some ways it's a bigger fight than the hotly contested Governor's race between Crist and Scott).  Just arguing over any kind of decriminalization of a drug... this can get messy.  So I'd like to start off simple.

This amendment sets out to allow "the medical use of marijuana for individuals with debilitating diseases as determined by a licensed Florida physician. Allows caregivers to assist patients’ medical use of marijuana. The Department of Health shall register and regulate centers that produce and distribute marijuana for medical purposes and shall issue identification cards to patients and caregivers. Applies only to Florida law. Does not authorize violations of federal law or any non-medical use, possession or production of marijuana."

What this means: marijuana can be used for medicinal purposes for individuals suffering in such a way that only marijuana's effects - usually pain-killing, appetite stimulus, and specific treatment for illnesses like glaucoma - can help them.  The use can only be signed off by licensed state doctors and caregivers (people who can lose such licenses if they're careless or law-breaking).  Treatment and distribution centers have to register and get managed by a state's oversight office, the Department of Health.  The amendment spells out that federal law, which still classifies marijuana as a major - Class I - narcotic, cannot be violated.  That means recreational possession or use of marijuana is a no-no.

Florida isn't the first state to pursue a medical marijuana protocol: both Colorado and Washington are the more recent states that have even legalized the manufacture and sale of marijuana (in Colorado's case even for recreational use).  There are 17 other states with some level of medical marijuana rights, or a decriminalization of pot use to where those arrested aren't jailed for it (they're fined and/or sent to outpatient treatment).  For what it's worth, the decriminalization efforts in other nations - Portugal for example - demonstrates that decriminalization does not lead to massive drug abuse (most drug abuse dropped in fact).

I do admit this amendment is a slippery slope towards an overall decriminalization of marijuana: if effective in showing the use of pot as a medicinal herb, the next argument is obviously how pot is "safe" as a recreational drug.  This is where the debate get worse.  Because there are a lot of people who fear the potential spread and abuse of marijuana as a recreational drug.  Because the keystone of our nation's massive War On Drugs has been a fight against marijuana use across the board, medicinal or otherwise.

Here's the thing: the War On Drugs has been a disaster.  The government is spending billions every year towards fighting it, it's led to the militarization of our police force to abusive levels, and it's led to the packing of our prison system at the state and federal level with a ton of non-violent drug offenders at a human cost of making them more hardened criminals.

It's been forty-plus years of the official start of the War On Drugs and the amount of drug abuse has not abated.  There is an aspect of human behavior we're just not going to be able to overcome with draconian policing and arrests.  The sad thing is that we've seen this all before: we called it Prohibition.

We tried policing human behavior under the good intentions of ending rampant alcoholism, which was viewed as a blight upon society.  The temperance movement in the United States got to be pretty powerful, and during an era of major social and political reform got the 18th Amendment - basically banning all alcohol - passed by 1920.  Rather than end the consumption of beer, whiskey, and other alcoholic drinks, all this did was drive the manufacture and consumption of alcohol underground, into speakeasies and gambling dens and criminal hideouts (and into country clubs, people's homes, other places where social types gather).  Criminal gangs that lived on the edge of society suddenly ran a profitable black market industry that boosted their financial and political clout.  Street wars erupted between these gangs.  The courts were flooded with Prohibition-related cases that clogged up our legal system for years.  Corruption became rampant.  In less than 14 years, we had to pass the 21st Amendment - and if you understand how hard it is to amend the U.S. Constitution, you'll understand how serious a problem this was - to repeal the 18th - we've never repealed an amendment since - just to do something to combat the violence and corruption.

Since then, our nation's fight against alcohol abuse has been more restrained and focused.  We go after direct risks such as Driving Under the Influence of alcohol (since drunk driving is a severe risk to everyone on the streets).  We place chronic drinking addicts into probationary counseling services - rehab clinics and group therapy - rather than jail.  We teach our kids in schools about the dangers of alcohol, and we have laws banning the sale or sharing of alcoholic beverages to the underage.  It's not perfect - we still have alcoholics, and we always will - but it's a good-faith effort, and it's more an effort to treat and save rather than jail and punish.

Instead of treating drug abuse as a crime, we ought to be treating it as a medical/health care issue.  We ought to focus more energy and funding into treatment and counseling, which have been effective means.  We ought to treat the overuse of drugs the way we treat alcohol addiction: as a medical problem, not a crime.

I'm not a drug user.  I don't use marijuana (although I've known people who have).  I don't smoke nicotine cigarettes (which is more lethal than marijuana yet regulated by the feds).  I don't drink any alcohol, not even wine (again, in excess alcohol can be lethal, yet is still regulated by the feds).  I don't want to see any substance abuse of any kind for kids under 18 (in alcohol's case, the age limit is 21).  These are personal preferences for me.  Yet I don't see the severe harm of marijuana.  The death rate from pot overdose is non-existent: the amount of ingested THC (the chemical that makes marijuana the weed we know today) needed to overdose is thousands of times higher than the regular rate of ingestion.  Nearly every pot smoker just smokes one a day: it would take 20,000 of those rolls in one sitting to kill one smoker.  Even pot brownies - arguably more potent - doesn't have enough THC in it to cause death (diabetes, though...)

I honestly don't see why pot is viewed as a Class I danger drug up there with heroin, which is deadly (along with cocaine and oxy, both of which deserve to be Class I but aren't): if anything marijuana ought to be classified a Class III alongside the synthetic THC drug Marinol.

I'll grant you one thing: The most severe problem with marijuana is psychological, the impact it has on the brain.  It can induce depression and cause memory loss, and it can adversely hinder kids' development during their growth into adulthood.  Any artificial drug/stimulant is going to have its' negative effects.  Alcohol can cause cirrhosis of the liver and affect depressive mood swings.  Alcohol in excess also causes violent mood swings that lead to a lot of other deaths (if anything, marijuana users tend not to trash the bar while high).  Smoking nicotine kills the lungs, causes cancer, and has been a major burden to our health care system.  Yet we regulate those drugs as best as possible to prevent kid and teen abuse: we regulate their sale and manufacture to try and reduce the health risks.  We can do the same with marijuana.

And that's not even getting into the legalization of industrial hemp, a cousin to the marijuana plant that's also been banned because of its' tenuous relationship (even though hemp barely contains any THC worth bothering).  At least our national government is making some sensible strides there.

For all these reasons - above all that this amendment is one more steps towards ending a War On Drugs we've already lost and that we can start treating marijuana use in a sensible productive fashion - I am going to vote YES on Amendment Two.

Amendment Three: Judicial Vacancies

This is the legislative-induced amendment proposal allowing the governor to set nominations for judicial vacancies, based off of a nominating committee list of no less than three names and no more than six.  Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

Hidden in this amendment is the change making it possible for a current sitting governor to nominate a candidate for a judicial vacancy before that vacancy even happens (the "prospective" part of the amendment's wording).

Say Rick "No Ethics" Scott is still the sitting governor if this amendment passes.  And he's there in office 2015 and he's looking at the State Supreme Court and sees there's three judges facing mandatory retirement in 2019, four years away and during the tenure of the next possible governor (due to term limits, Scott can't run for 2019).  Scott can use the power granted by this proposed amendment to nominate in 2015 three people to fill those eventual vacancies in 2019 even though those judges are still sitting there doing their jobs.  Worse, these nominations can't be overturned or blocked by the next governor, who would want to have the right and authority to nominate his/her own candidates for the office.  In fact, all seven seats on the Florida court can have their "vacancies" filled by a governor who'll be long gone from office by the time all of them are retired out (voluntary or not).

To call this "rigging" or packing a court is an understatement.  This amendment can easily grant a governor who'll be long gone from office the power to put people on any judicial seat without repercussion or any input from the future governor(s), even twenty years down the line.  It denies future voters the power to vote into office a governor that can represent their interests in handling of legal matters relevant to the state in those future times: we'd be stuck with a judge nominated ten or fifteen years ago whose political bias - and yes this is a thing to worry about - won't reflect the current mood or needs.  It doesn't matter if this is a power that can go to governors like Lawton Chiles or even Reubin Askew (arguably the greatest, most honest governor the state of Florida ever had): this is a power that can be abused without limit and can create long-standing animosity and acts of retaliation that would cause decades of legal chaos.

This would be like nominating a replacement Library Director for Broward County Libraries, even though that county system just hired a director and isn't due to retire for another 27 years or so.  In the meantime for those 27 years of waiting, the library system can easily change services, require different resources, respond to new needs for the public that calls for a new brand of leadership that the replacement Director just isn't suited to fill.  This denies the library system the chance to hire at the moment of need the best possible candidate, someone who is versed in that future: instead they're stuck with a rigid, outdated Director more than likely to pursue goals and agendas no longer relevant nor working.

This smacks of Rick Scott and his buddies in the state legislature looking to pack the courts with their pro-corporate, anti-government cronies as soon as possible: the potential shifts in population - even in aging old Florida - is making the Sunshine State more Democrat/Blue by 2020, when even gerrymandering can't save the conservative wingnuts.  Fearing the future, they're hoping to use whatever power they have in the present to rig the game their way for the foreseeable future.  This is an amendment that needs to go down in flames.  For the Love of God, VOTE NO on Amendment Three this year.

And, just one more thing: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT PEOPLE.  And for the LOVE OF GOD, please vote for Charlie Crist as Governor... get Rick "He's a Goddamn FRAUD" Scott out of office RIGHT NOW.

I thank you.  Stay focused this November, people.