12:04 Benjamin Zhou (BZ) here. We are at Harvard Law School, preparing to blog on a session led by representative Barney Frank discussing federal drug policy at the American Constitution Society. Specifically, Mr. Frank will be discussing his opposition to federal bans on marijuana. Mr. Frank, who has served in Congress since 1980, has had an interesting and extensive history both within the legislature and as a speaker at Harvard, the latter of which he had a contentious engagement with a law student at a JFK Jr. Forum event back in 2009. I am joined by Daniel Backman, Sarah Siskind, and Corinne Curcie.
12:08 Daniel Backman (DB), starting things off. The goal is ending the federal prohibiting against marijuana in favor of state rights to determine drug policy. Is this the same as legalizing marijuana, or just opening up the possibility for it? The legislation is to remove federal criminalization, but would states necessarily follow?
12:09 Corinne Curcie (CC): Barney Frank is now speaking, discussing the legislation that he is sponsoring alongside with Ron Paul. The first piece of legislation is removing the restrictions on medical marijuana, and the second one is to remove the criminal penalties of marijuana at the federal level.
12:10 Sarah Siskind (SS): Two issues to which the voters of America are more enlightened than the politicians: legalizing marijuana and reducing defense spending.
12:11 BZ: As a former resident of Southern California, where Prop 19 recently made quite a splash, and a frequent Venice Beach visitor (as a tourist, honestly), it’s exciting to see somebody like Mr. Frank discuss federal and state marijuana laws.
12:12 DB: Frank clarifies confusion about liberal justices’ position that they support legalizing marijuana. Rather, they recognize the inability of states to control drug policy when federal policy overhangs – state laws are subordinated to federal. Frank believes that just because the federal government can prosecute for marijuana, this does not mean that they have to or they should.
12:12 CC: One of the problems about the legislation is the competition between the federal levels and state levels of government. Under Clinton, the federal government argued not to prosecute cases at the federal level, but under Bush the laws were again prosecuted, which led to a big upset in Congress.
12:14 CC: Rep. Frank just said there should be no federal prosecution for “smokin’ a joint.”
12:15 DB: Police often abuse their rights by asking people to remove things from their pockets and then charging them for displaying marijuana in public. This clearly violates individual rights.
12:16 CC: The frequent argument that the laws aren’t actually enforced is completely untrue – there were over 50,000 marijuana arrests in New York last year.
12:16 BZ: Rep. Frank has just discussed his belief that gambling should be legalized. He is trying to communicate that everything does not fall into a simply dichotomy between things that we make illegal and things that we encourage.
12:16 SS: Frank being frank: “The notion that you can arrest a whole lot of people because a small percentage may do something wrong is antithetical to any system of justice.”
12:17 DB: Barney Frank’s bipartisan initiatives with Ron Paul are not boding well for the latter’s presidential campaign. This is a classic case of people loving bipartisanship in theory but hating it when it actually happens. In other words, bipartisanship is great as long as your partisanship is giving way to mine.
12:18 CC: The argument being made is that the government does not have a lot of influence over a very large range of human activity, and that they have no standing to support or discourage many activities.
12:20 DB: Frank seems to claim that alcohol abuse has higher negative externalities for society than marijuana. The only negative externality: marijuana decreases people’s motivation to work hard, so this inhibits economic growth. This is similar to the argument against alcohol in the ‘20s. It was perceived then as a class conflict, and it could still be today.
12:20 BZ: Rep. Frank just compared a cop dealing with somebody who had just drunk alcohol to a cop dealing with somebody who had just smoked marijuana; the former would grab onto his baton, the latter would grab onto a bag of potato (pronounced “po-tay-teh”) chips
12:21 CC: The Nixon investigation into prohibiting marijuana use could not find any negative side effects of marijuana besides “limiting the entrepreneurial” instinct. Rep. Frank compares the prosecution of marijuana as prosecution of a “victimless crime,” which is why prohibition is ineffective.
12:24 BZ: Rep. Frank has done two things in the last two minutes: he has made the obligatory comparison between the marijuana ban and prohibition, and he has made the observation that race and age plays a significant factor in the prosecution of marijuana usage.
12:25 SS: “Currently, marijuana sellers are as tax exempt as a church.” The similarities probably stop there.
12:26 DB: Frank claims that the perception of marijuana as a gateway drug is due to the law’s treatment of marijuana as the same as other drugs like heroine and cocaine. This seems to suggest that other connections – physiological, psychological, etc. – between the drugs are nonexistent.
12:27 CC: Frank argues that the in a free society, you cannot prohibit adults from doing things that do not hurt others.
12:29 DB: Frank claims that if Congressman knew how people felt about marijuana – that it does not have the extreme negatives that many proponents of criminalization believe – then the laws would change. In other words, get off the Hill and smoke some weed with the common folk.
12:30 BZ: Representative Frank will now be opening this up to questions. Let’s see if there are any vehement critics in the crowd today.
12:31 DB: The bill removes the prohibition on the federal level. The states are then responsible to regulate production and prevent illegal activities. This is already the case with alcohol. He does not answer the question of how legalization will affect drug cartels in Mexico.
12:33 BZ: Question: “If you take that logic with respect to marijuana and say that it should be legal and regulated…what is different about other drugs that would not allow you support a similar approach to those drugs?”
Answer: Practicality. Of course, elaboration to follow.
12:34 CC: Marijuana is less physically addictive and less distorting to behavior than other drugs, even alcohol. “You have heard of ‘drunk and disorderly’ police calls, but when do you hear of someone being ‘baked and disorderly’?” Also, the principle of practicality is at stake too – they’re having a hard enough time getting marijuana laws repealed.
12:35 DB: Our liberty implies that we should be able to hurt ourselves. The question is what it does to our behavior – i.e. the externalities for society. Frank suggests that other drugs have much higher negative externalities.
12:38 BZ: I’m waiting for the obligatory question about Occupy Wall Street. With his beliefs on white collar crime and this discussion of marijuana, his response would be very interesting
12:38 CC: A question is being asked that makes the point that the marijuana law is just a tool in the belt of law authorities to go after groups involved in something worse which they can’t find evidence of. I wonder if Frank will talk about all the times when its used to go after people who are actually innocent just for their assets that they can seize.
12:40 CC: Rep. Frank doesn’t even see it as the government’s role to discourage the use of marijuana, other than having an age limit so that children wont be able to smoke.
12:44 BZ: “The whole truth? eh. Without a subpoena, not so much” – Rep. Frank, to the laughter of a crowd that enjoys making jokes about government transparency or the lack thereof.
12:45 DB: “The obstacles are more political than ideological” to the passage of this bill. I’d say the obstacle is that the ideological opposition is infecting the politically pragmatic step of giving states the rights to legislate on pot.
12:46 CC: “The states’ rights argument is not a one-way ratchet,” stating that you cannot allow states to decide, unless one state decides something the federal government doesn’t approve of.
12:50 DB: De-demonization of marijuana is key to decriminalization, says Frank. We should be emphasizing the positive, or lack of negative, aspects of pot use in order to pass the bill, but doesn’t that undermine the necessary educational efforts to discourage pot use?
12:53 CC: “As they crack down on the violators, they get a lot of people who aren’t violators. The screen isn’t that fine.” “Are you going to let them crack down on people who are in terrible pain and find it healing and helpful? I think they made the wrong choice about that.” – The closing statement of Rep.Frank.
12:54 BZ: With the last question answered, Rep. Frank ends a fantastic appeal for the legalization of marijuana. There is little doubt that these comments would likely face stronger criticism when left to the general public, as they were relatively safe this Law School crowd, one which was relatively to his proposals. Nothing truly revolutionary was said, but we were given more than enough incredibly interesting sound bites. In true Barney Frank fashion, the comments had a sense of humor and anger in then that often felt suited for the signs that grace the occupations around the country. With his expressed belief that victimless crimes should not be regulated, he will undoubtedly face many questions about how far this can be stretched. These concerns will certainly be introduced in debates against the proposed legislation.