The Unfiltered News

Fourteen states have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes; 13 more have medical marijuana ballot or legislative measures on the horizon. And medical pot has paved the way for all-out legalization; for the first time ever, polls consistently show that a majority of Americans — albeit a slim one — believe marijuana should be legalized for adults over 18.

Drug reform observers and activists are excitedly awaiting the results of the Tax Cannabis ballot initiative in California this November. While it is not the first time electorates will vote on marijuana legalization (Nevada and Colorado rejected similar measures in 2006; the city of Breckenridge, Colo. legalized it late last year), experts believe California is the first statewide initiative that stands a fighting chance, as AlterNet has reported.

Yet in spite of the positive trend, there are some ominous harbingers indicating that common-sense drug reform relating to marijuana still has a ways to go. Here are five signs that pot legalization faces government and corporate backlash (which may affect public opinion as well), in no particular order:

1. Federal Government and a Major Corporation Ban Marijuana Literature

This past Super Bowl Sunday, a man in Crozet, Va. who has for years made money selling copies of High Times magazine, a cult periodical dedicated to marijuana culture and industry, discovered his sales listings on eBay had been yanked with no advance warning. The kicker? Fred Carwile, the seller, says two separate eBay customer reps told him his listings were pulled at the request of the federal government.

High Times is sold in all sorts of mainstream brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country, including Barnes & Noble, noted an infuriated Carwile, who told his local paper, “The federal government cannot ban books. They’re pressuring a business to ban books.”

EBay says it’s always been company policy to prohibit listings that “encourage, promote, facilitate, or instruct others to engage in illegal activities.” The auction and marketplace site last made this sort of headline when it prohibited the sale of another genre of items: Nazi memorabilia.

2. DEA Raids on Medical Marijuana Facilities Continue

Soon after President Obama took office, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed to end Drug Enforcement Agency raids on legal medical marijuana facilities. The prior administration had a longstanding policy of raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in states where such facilities are legal, so the positive tone from the Attorney General’s office was great news to medical marijuana users and the industry that supports them.

But the raids on legal medical marijuana facilities have not ended. The DEA has raided at least a couple such locations in Colorado, where medical marijuana has been legal since 2000.

The DEA continues to employ the same justification for the raids as it did during the Bush era — that federal law supersedes state law. But as some have pointed out, this may very well contradict the Tenth Amendment, which states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

3. Drug Warrior Holdover Instated as Chief of DEA

Unfortunately, the problems with the DEA don’t end with the raids. And why would they? The person heading the agency, Michele Leonhardt, is a holdover from the Bush era, when she was the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Division. In that position, she effectively enforced the drug warring administration’s policy of shutting down medical marijuana entrepreneurs’ legal operations and made a habit of arresting medical marijuana patients.

Obama officially nominated her to the DEA chief position this January, signaling that the DEA won’t be changing its anti-drug legalization tone during her tenure as head administrator. It also signals that Obama’s campaign promises of ending a failed drug war were at best halfhearted.

With drug-fueled violence escalating on the U.S.-Mexico border, we can expect the DEA to remain rigid in its law enforcement tactics there. A clear-cut example of Leonhardt’s dogma includes a line she trumpeted last April: drug legalization “would be a failed law enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico.” Meanwhile, the bloodshed continues, as does our ineffective strategy to quell it.

4. Federal Drug Budget Continues to Favor Criminalization Over Treatment and Prevention

Further continuation of failed Bush policies is evidenced by the so-called federal drug war budget. At first, the drug reform community was hopeful when President Obama named Gil Kerlikowske as his drug czar. Kerlikowske was known to have pursued an incredibly successful treatment-over-incarceration policy during his tenure as Seattle’s police chief.

The day his appointment was announced, Kerlikowske said, “The success of our efforts to reduce the flow of drugs is largely dependent on our ability to reduce demand for them. Our nation’s drug problem is one of human suffering, and as a police officer but also in my own family, I have experienced the effects that drugs can have.” (Kerlikowske’s stepson has in the past been arrested on drug charges.)

But we were wrong to be so hopeful. Obama’s drug budget looks almost exactly like his predecessor’s. Despite official statements that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue, the federal budget currently sends almost twice as much money to law enforcement than to treatment and prevention programs.

5. Pro-Marijuana Legalization Talk Censored by Mainstream Media

In an era when so many Americans — at least a third — publicly admit to having smoked weed in their lifetimes, and an even larger number believe pot ought to be legalized, one would think the mainstream media would get on that trend train, as they do with most everything else.

In some ways they have. Showtime’s “Weeds” is readying for its sixth-season premiere; ladymag Marieclaire marveled at how high-powered women could smoke pot and remain high-functioning, contributing members of society; and mainstream shows such as NBC’s “Today Show” have related to their audience that weed is actually a lot safer than any other mood-altering substance, including legal ones like prescription drugs and alcohol.

But when it comes to actually discussing alternatives to the current policy on marijuana, the corporate media isn’t quite on board. Just this month, CBS executives axed a paid ad by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) that was to run on CBS’ digital billboard in Times Square. The 15-second ad asserts “that taxing and regulating the adult use and sale of marijuana would raise billions of dollars in national revenue.”

After working for months on the ad, the media company that manages the billboard for CBS told NORML that CBS would not approve the ad, adding, “If CBS changes their morals we will let you know.”

If the mainstream media won’t let pro-drug reform organizations get out their message, how can we hope to influence the conversation to the point where large-scale change can be enacted?

As many Americans sank deeper into financial trouble last year, a record number reported that they fell victim to schemes seeking to profit from their misfortune, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

Complaints data collected by the Federal Trade Commission from several U.S. law enforcement agencies show that distressed homeowners became particularly vulnerable to fraudulent practices by individuals or companies promising financial “rescue.” Companies that, for instance, offer mortgage modifications or foreclosure relief programs generated nearly 8,000 complaints in 2009.  Only one such complaint was officially recorded in 2008. The numbers are an indication of a much larger problem, since only a fraction of victims file formal complaints.

“These people are desperate and are unfortunately the perfect target for a scammer who has no conscience and is trying to take the last dollar out of these people’s wallets,” said David Vladeck, the FTC’s director of consumer protection.

The FTC collected more than 1.3 million complaints of all kinds last year, up from 1.2 million in 2008. Consumers reported losing more than $1.7 billion from fraud and various other schemes, with the largest concentration of complaints coming from Nevada and Colorado.

The complaints were not limited to mortgage swindles. This year, the most commonly reported problem was identity theft.

But as people increasingly lost their jobs and fell behind on mortgage payments last year, some of the most striking spikes in complaints related to credit schemes. Between 2008 and 2009, complaints about companies that offer advance-fee loans and promise to repair bad credit more than doubled to 41,448.  “Debt management” and “credit counseling” complaints also doubled.

The FTC, the U.S. Justice Department and state attorneys general have accused—and are prosecuting–dozens of companies for fraudulently using the recession to victimize consumers.

Now the FTC is paying particular attention to mortgage schemes. The sudden leap in consumer complaints is in part attributable to hundreds of “rescue” companies that launched last year after the Obama administration created a government-subsidized loan modification program.

Logistical problems have plagued the administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program, which has produced only 116,000 permanent mortgage modifications. In turn, many homeowners have turned to fly-by-night companies for help, analysts say.

“Fundamentally they’re a product of a broken system,” said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. “As long as people are desperate to save their homes, and don’t have a good alternative, these guys are going to find a way to cheat them.”

Although some businesses offer legitimate loan modification services, the FTC has proposed a new rule that would prohibit companies from charging consumers up-front fees, a move that will probably “drive a lot of these scammers out of this business,” Vladeck said. The agency, which can bring civil but not criminal court cases, has identified about 500 companies that currently charge advance fees.

Through its “Operation Loan Lies,” the agency has sued about 30 companies accused of operating bogus loan modification or foreclosure rescue businesses.

Ultimately, Vladeck hopes these cases will encourage the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against mortgage schemers.

“I want to shut you down,” Vladeck said of the schemers. “I want to take every penny you have and I want to send you to jail.”

Conventional wisdom dictates that as younger generations slowly replace the old, conservative social traditions are jettisoned.

This may be true for issues such as gay marriage, where there are clear divisions among younger and older voters, but when it comes to marijuana reform, the evidence indicates that simplistic divisions of opinion along age lines don’t apply for pot.

Earlier this week, an AP wire article picked up a lot of buzz in the news-cycle, with a title and premise meant to shock the mainstream: “Marijuana Use by Seniors Goes up as Boomers Age.”

The AP article was pegged to a December report released by the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). It revealed that the number of Americans over 50 who reported consuming cannabis in the year prior to the study had gone up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent in the period from 2002 to 2008.

This is supported by earlier polling results. In February 2009, a Zogby poll found that voters aged 50 to 64 were almost equally divided in their support for marijuana legalization at 48 percent. In that same poll, young voters aged 18 to 29 were the cohort who most enthusiastically supported legalization, at 55 percent. But overall support among all ages came in at 44 percent.

So who brought the average down? Don’t lay the blame on the elderly. In fact, as early as 2004, an AARP poll found that 72 percent of its members (all 50-plus, with the lion’s share over 65) supported marijuana for medical purposes, indicating their understanding of the benefits of legal cannabis availability.

Some expert observers in the marijuana reform movement believe the bulk of marijuana detractors are made up of 30- and 40-somethings — adults of parenting age. And as more of the 65-and-over crowd is populated by baby boomers, it appears that in the not-too-distant future every age demographic including the elderly will approve of marijuana reform more than Americans in their 30s and 40s.

“These are people who have had children, and whether they used marijuana in the past or not, they’ve become very concerned that young children will have access to it,” says Paul Armentano, deputy national director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “They’ve been swayed by prohibition and are leery of the option to end it, even though controlling and regulating marijuana would provide less access to children.”

In the breakdown of the 2009 Zogby poll, which NORML allowed AlterNet to review, 38.7 percent of respondents 65 and older approved of taxing and regulating marijuana for adults. A low number, but compare it to the group aged 30 to 49, who approved it at 38.2 percent. Nearly the same, but still lower. And it ought to be noted that in an earlier Zogby poll, commissioned by NORML in 2006, 30- to 49-year-olds stood out even more starkly, opposing marijuana legalization at 58 percent, while the 65-plus crowd opposed it at 52 percent; approximately two-thirds of the young adult and boomer cohorts approved.

And just as children are the reason many younger parents are against marijuana reform, offspring (or the lack of them) may also be behind why greater numbers of aging boomers are embracing marijuana — most or all of their kids have left the nest.

This makes sense to George Rohrbacher, a 61-year-old cattle rancher in Eastern Washington state who smokes weed every day. When his kids — now 25 to 35 — were growing up, marijuana was something he had to keep a secret.

“Children under 18 don’t need to be high on anything other than life,” Rohrbacher says. His wife Ann espouses the same belief and quit marijuana just before 1976, when they had their first child. She later became a school superintendent.

Although Rohrbacher didn’t give up the herb except for small stretches of time (such as when he served in the Washington state senate), it wasn’t something he shared with his kids. “I didn’t want them to have to defend me in the DARE program at school,” he says. “But when my youngest son was 19 and off to college, I went from completely undercover to the opposite of that.”

Today an advocate for marijuana legalization, Rohrbacher speaks to many baby boomers who, like his wife, gave up pot. “Due to career choices, family-raising choices, they’ve not imbibed in years and they tell me they can’t wait until they get to that spot in their career or family lives when they can go back to smoking pot,” he says.

SAMHSA’s study showed that past year marijuana use among those aged 55 to 59 tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent in 2008. Nearly 9 percent of men aged 50 to 54 admitted to using marijuana in the past year, bringing that demographic’s level of cannabis use to nearly the same 10 percent rate that the general U.S. population is estimated to consume pot. While SAMHSA has jumped to the alarm on this trend, suggesting that “by the year 2020, the number of persons needing treatment for a substance abuse disorder will double among persons aged 50 or older,” the reality of the matter is that SAMHSA’s dire prognosis may more realistically apply to aging Americans who use harder drugs like cocaine or meth — not cannabis consumers.

Boomers’ enthusiasm for weed is likely due to their being the first generation to experience widespread marijuana use in their youth. Nearly everyone smoked it or knew someone who did. If what Rohrbacher has observed is true, many of them gave it up not because they didn’t like it anymore, but because they felt it might interfere in their efforts to raise families and maintain jobs where drug testing is a concern. After all, legal and salary ramifications are much more significant once you have a family to raise and support.

As the nation’s 78 million boomers go grayer, they will also return to pot to soften the pains of aging. “I played a lot of sports when I was younger and I have aches now — plain old aches from sleeping wrong or doing something wrong — and those aches are as bad as various moments on the football field years ago,” Rohrbacher said. “And I’d rather smoke marijuana than reach for a pharmaceutical.”

Rohrbacher isn’t alone. Though pharmaceuticals are marketed heavily to aging Americans, among all adults over 50 who admitted to using some kind of illegal substance in the previous year — 4.3 million adults, or 5.7 percent of adults in that age range — 44.9 percent admitted to using marijuana, compared to 33.4 percent who’d used prescription drugs for non-medical use.

And in addition to lessening the pain brought on by common ailments like joint pain and menopause, one study found that cannabis might prevent osteoporosis in the elderly. (Interestingly, it may weaken bones in younger people.)

Americans, as a whole, are trending toward marijuana legalization. By mid-last year, a few polls showed that the taxing and regulating of cannabis had support from a majority of Americans for the first time ever. The majorities are slim, but they’re majorities nonetheless.

And with an enormous aging population that is more accepting of pot legalization and more clearly understands its benefits and the downsides to its prohibition, that majority may grow to be a decisive one in the public debate, even if today’s — and tomorrow’s — parents might be the last ones to be dragged on board.