In a July 19 , Chuck Rosenberg, the acting administrator of the DEA, wrote, “On November 30, 2011, your predecessors, The Honorable Lincoln D. Chafee and The Honorable Christine O. Gregoire, petitioned the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to initiate rulemaking proceedings under the rescheduling provisions of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA),” . “Specifically, your predecessors petitioned the DEA to have marijuana and “related items” removed from Schedule I of the CSA and rescheduled as medical cannabis in Schedule II.”

The DEA, it should be noted, disagreed, writing to Raimondo, “Based on the HHS evaluation and all other relevant data, the DEA has concluded that there is no substantial evidence that marijuana should be removed from Schedule I.” It cited three main reasons: “Marijuana has a high potential for abuse. Marijuana has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. Marijuana lacks accepted safety for use under medical supervision.” An editorial in today’s New York Times proves false each of those three reasons. The DEA was also responding to a request from the governor of Washington and a citizen of New Mexico.

While governor of Rhode Island, Chafee signed legislation to decriminalize less than an ounce of marijuana. But he declined to push Rhode Island to become the first state on the East Coast to tax and regulate marijuana. As a presidential candidate earlier this year, there was some reason to believe Chafee was considering campaigning as a pro-pot candidate after he said his position on full federal legalization would “evolve during the campaign.”

Governor Raimondo has taken a similar tack on taxing and legalizing marijuana as Chafee did during his tenure. “I could see Rhode Island eventually getting there, but I’m not going to rush,” she said in March. On medical marijuana, she pushed legislation that added a per-plant tax to patients who don’t grow their own.

According to a spokeswoman for Raimondo, the governor doesn’t plan to pursue the matter with the DEA any further. “This petition was submitted during the prior administration, so the governor does not plan to respond to the letter,” said Marie Aberger, who did not respond to a question asking if Raimondo thinks marijuana should be considered a Schedule 1 drug.

Rhode Island has the highest per capita marijuana users in the nation and a recent poll found 55 percent of Rhode Islanders favor legalization. A different poll found 53 percent of Americans favor legalization.

That’s because House Speaker Nick Mattiello and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed haven’t allowed a vote on the five-year-old bill that has proven safe and profitable elsewhere, advocates said at a State House event Thursday.

“We believe that by not allowing a vote the speaker and the Senate president are implicitly endorsing the failed status quo,” said Jared Moffat, an organizer for Regulate Rhode Island, the local group calling attention to marijuana legalization’s potential to increase revenue and freedom while decreasing teen use and mass incarceration.

Regulate Rhode Island delivered a petition with more than 1,300 signatures on it to the legislative leaders. And making the case for legalizing marijuana at a subsequent press event were the doctor and lawyer who co-chair the organization.

Andrew Horwitz is a criminal defense attorney and law professor at Roger Williams Univeristy.

Dr. James Crowley is a former president of the Rhode Island Medical Society.

Climate change

The PPP poll of 1,179 likely Rhode Island primary voters found that 53 percent of Rhode Islanders were “much more likely” to “vote for a candidate who believes the United States must do all it can to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels by embracing measures like solar, wind, and renewable fuels, like biofuels,” and 22 percent “somewhat more likely” to support such a candidate. Only 26 percent of Rhode Islanders don’t want to support a climate champion for elected office with 11 percent “somewhat less likely” to support such a candidate, 7 percent were “much less likely” and 8 percent said it wouldn’t make a difference.

Even a majority of Rhode Island Republicans want to support a climate champion, the PPP poll found. A total of 63 percent of Republicans were more likely to support a candidate who would decrease dependence on fossil fuels, with 37 percent much more likely and 26 percent somewhat more likely. For Republicans, 27 percent were less likely to vote for a candidate who would invest in alternative energy and 10 percent of Democrats.

The PPP survey parsed its climate change question in terms of fossil fuels contributing to terrorism. It asked: “You may have heard about a connection between fossil fuels and terrorism. Even though the US doesn’t buy oil directly from regimes hostile to us and our allies, our demand for oil does drive up world prices, which benefits hostile regimes. Knowing this, would you be much more likely, somewhat more likely, somewhat less likely, or much less likely to vote for a candidate who believes the United States must do all it can to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels by embracing measures like solar, wind, and renewable fuels, like biofuels?”

Cannabis

The Brown poll posed a more straight-forward question about marijuana. “Thinking beyond medical marijuana, do you support or oppose changing the law in Rhode Island to regulate and tax the use of marijuana, similarly to alcohol,” it asked.

Much of Rhode Island does, with 55 percent answering yes. 21 percent strongly support taxing and regulating cannabis and another 34 percent support it. Only 4 percent were neutral, 24 percent oppose the idea and 12 percent strongly oppose ending prohibition. 5 percent said they didn’t know or refused to answer.

Young Rhode Islanders overwhelmingly want marijuana to be legal, with 72 percent of people age 18 to 44 supporting the idea. Older Rhode Islanders were evenly split with 42.9 percent supporting legalization and 42.1 percent opposed. 56.3 percent of people age 45 to 64 support it and 37.7 percent are opposed.

The poll showed people were more likely to support regulating cannabis like alcohol the more education and income they had.

It also showed that white people were both more likely to support and oppose legalization than black people. 55 percent of white people polled said they support legalization and 36 percent were opposed compared with 50 percent of black respondents who support it and 30 percent who are opposed. Conversely black respondents were more than twice as likely as whites to either refuse to answer or remain neutral.

A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday showed overwhelming support for legislation that would legalize marijuana in Rhode Island after its economic successes in both Colorado and Washington.

Jordan Wellington, a lawyer with Vicente Sederberg LLC in Colorado, came to speak in support of the legislation, S 510. Wellington has worked closely with Colorado’s state government to implement the retail and regulation of marijuana, and now works in their Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division as the single policy analyst.

“Instead of should or shouldn’t we, we discussed how to move forward with this responsibly,” he said.

Wellington said Colorado gained more than 20,000 jobs and saw $900 million in sales that brought in $125 million in tax revenue. The cost of enforcement, he said, was less than $10 million.

Money from the extra revenue was invested in educational programs about cannabis to teach youth about its effects and consequences.

“We have found that some of the messaging to youth has been very effective,” Wellington said. “A very cautious message has been given to Colorado’s youth.”

According to Wellington, Colorado has not been without its challenges by taking this step forward. Regulation and education has been key in making the policy work. “One of the biggest things we did was we put a lot of different restrictions on potency in edibles,” he said.

The question of youth cannabis use was touched upon several times throughout the hearing. Andrew Horwitz, an assistant dean at Roger Williams Law School, who also testified in support of 510, said the prohibition approach aken towards marijuana is completely ineffective, and disingenuous to children.

“We are fundamentally dishonest in the way we talk to our children about marijuana,” Horwitz said. “We talk to them like it’s crack, like its heroin. They know now to believe us, that marijuana does what we claim.”

Horwitz also stated that reforming juvenile use starts from the top, with how the state looks at marijuana as a whole. “We are doing terrible damage by the use of our criminal justice system to deal with a public health issue,” he said.

One of these damages includes a racial disparity in the number of African Americans who are arrested for marijuana related crimes, due to police saturation in communities of color, as well as racial profiling.

“We’re doing a number of things wrong,” he said. “We’re arresting people for distributing marijuana. If you legalize the distribution of marijuana, you eliminate the whole line item of law enforcement.”

Jared Moffat, director of Regulate Rhode Island, also came in support of 510, with an entire binder of studies regarding the legalization in Colorado. The most accurate study of youth use, called Healthy Kids Colorado, looked at 40,000 middle and high school children, and is re-done every two years.

“The best available data on youth marijuana in Colorado shows that the use has remained flat,” he said, especially when in comparison to alcohol and tobacco, which has continually fallen in recent years. Moffat, like Horwitz and Wellington, pointed to education as the key to reducing youth cannabis use. Looking at the context of use is important as well.

“If we are acknowledging that marijuana is available in our schools, we need to acknowledge that is readily available from drug dealers,” Moffat said.

Moffat said many of the studies that opponents brought up against the legalization of marijuana have cherry picked their data in order to make it look like youth use has risen. One such study compared the city of Denver to the United States as a whole.

“If you take any metropolitan area, you’re going to find higher use,” he said.

Youth use was definitely the biggest worry of both legislators and the few opponents who did come out to speak against the bill, such as Debbie Paragini, who came as a Rhode Island parent.

“I feel really upset living in a state that is thinking about legalizing yet another recreational drug. For an economic basis? I don’t understand that,” she said. “As a parent, I think this is a really bad idea.”

One religion commits no crime
And you can worship anytime
No statues just some sticky weed
Rolling paper is all you need

Instead of prayer you take a toke
The answers show up in the smoke
It fills our heads with peace and love
Not words of war from up above

They say communion wine is blood
Commune with nature, burn a bud
St. Maryjane, you are superb
Baptize the world with your sweet herb

c2015pn
Read Peet Nourjian’s previous poems here.

“Resulting taxes would generate $7.6 to $21 million for alcohol and drug abuse treatment and education, $10.5 to $50 million for the general fund, and $1.9 to $5.2 million for medical marijuana research,” according to a press release with the new report.

Read the full report here.

The two estimates are based on current marijuana use which is difficult to monitor accurately because it is unregulated. The report assumes .55 percent of American pot users live in Rhode Island* and use between 1 and 3 grams of marijuana weekly and pay $292 to $375 an ounce.

The report says Rhode Islanders who grow their own pot will not be taxed, according to the current bills before the General Assembly.

The new report indicates cost savings on criminal prosecutions would be less dramatic, estimating a savings of about $100,000. “While the collective financial savings are not huge, this legislation will free up important bed space, police time, and prosecution and judiciary time that is currently spent prosecuting these cases every year,” it says.

Far greater are what the report calls the “human costs” of keeping marijuana illegal. It uses the real-life story of Providence native Josh Giorgi, who was arrested for selling pot while a student at URI in 2006.