April 20, known as the “420” holiday in certain circles, is an infamous date dedicated to one illegal practice: marijuana use.
The date’s significance can be traced to 1971 San Rafael, Calif., when a group of teenagers would meet every day at 4:20 p.m. after school and smoke marijuana together, said Norma Sapp, a Norman member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The ritual of smoking at 4:20 p.m. subsequently spread and became a national “cannabis culture” holiday.
NORML is an organization that seeks to legalize adult marijuana use for recreation and medicine, Sapp said.
She said taxing and regulating the drug like alcohol would be more cost effective than prohibition in protecting against any harm marijuana causes. There should be an age limit and laws prohibiting driving under the influence of marijuana, Sapp said.
In Oklahoma, a person caught in possession of marijuana can be subject to a year in prison with a misdemeanor charge on the first offense, according to NORML’s database of state drug laws. A subsequent offense can carry two to 10 years in prison, and growers can face anywhere from two years to life in prison.
Sapp said Oklahoma law enforcement agencies’ time would be better spent fighting violent crimes rather than drug offenses. She said Oklahoma spends too much money on putting drug offenders in prison when drug rehabilitation for addicts would cost about 1/7 of incarcerating them.
According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, as of April 13, 2009, prisons were at 99.32 percent capacity.
State Rep. Gary Banz, R-Midwest City, said he is opposed to legalizing marijuana. He called marijuana a gateway drug to other harder substances.
“It’s illegal for valid reasons,” Banz said. “It’s personal destruction and harm you potentially do to others.”
Banz said many religious people in the Midwest believe the human body should not be exposed to dangerous substances and intoxicants.
He said he knows prisons are overcrowded, but believes people who go to prison aren’t there for a first offense and deserve to be there because they’ve broken the law several times.
“I’m not willing to let people who have committed crimes back into society,” he said.
He said the best way to avoid overcrowding in prisons is to prevent the behavior from happening in the first place.
“If you make the price of doing a behavior steep enough, they won’t do it,” he said. “It’s all about deterrence.”
Sen. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah, said about 80 percent of prisoners are incarcerated because of some sort of mental health or drug abuse issue. He said Oklahoma drug laws should be relaxed.
“Our prisons are full of people with drug problems,” he said.
He said many people who have serious drug problems are afraid to ask for help because they are afraid of getting into legal trouble.
Drug policy in Oklahoma is also on the minds of many OU students.
Kaylee Burton, professional writing senior, is starting the Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter at OU next fall. SSDP has over 100 chapters across the country and consists of college students who are interested in revising national drug policy, she said.
“We’re part of the D.A.R.E. generation,” she said. “It’s proven to not be effective because they only used scare tactics.”
Right now the OU chapter is still in the early stages and is currently looking for a faculty sponsor, Burton said. She said once the group has official campus status, it plans to work with UOSA on the referendum regarding drugs, and to implement “good Samaritan laws” which would prevent anyone from being arrested if seeking help for a person who had an overdose.
Burton said many people in the area aren’t active in revising drug policy because there’s a stigma with drug usage in the region.
“I think in the Midwest, people have been closed off for so many years and do what they’re told,” she said. “If it doesn’t affect me, why should I care?”
Burton said the group doesn’t advocate usage of marijuana, but does advocate the change in policy.
“Why are we punishing people so much?” Burton said. “We want people to be fair, not try to force or scare us.”
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paulb 3 years, 1 month ago
Mr. Banz is inaccurate. If you talk to any marijuana user, almost exclusively they tried tobacco or alchohol before cannabis (it's real name, by the way). Most likely, tri-methylxanide was the first drug they "did". You call it caffeine, but it's still drug use. "Gateway" is a bluff to pin blame on something that cannot be pinned down. Responsible cannabis use does not hurt anybody else. I emphasize "responsible". Prohibitionists will try to convince you that "anything above 0.00 = abuse"; you must distinguish between "responsible use" and "irresponsible abuse". They are not the same thing. If someone is not responsible with alchohol, unless they broke the law by driving drunk or something, we get them help, not a prison sentence. If you are DUI, or commit some other infraction, that is one thing, but adults over the age of 21 should not go to jail for sitting in the privacy of their own home with a dried-out plant. Again, "responsible" means you absolutely positively keep it away from all children. Not hard to do, if you are a responsible parent (sorry teenagers, I am on their side here; wait 20 years and be surprised to find you eventually agree with me). His comment about religious people, being he is a politician, approaches a violation of the separation between church and state. I admit that I am a Christian, and I have been meditating and talking to Him for some time about this; I feel that we are wrong in our current laws; cannabis is something created for us to use, and our governments attempts to willingly exterminate a species from the planet is about as atheist as you can get.
OUSooners 3 years, 1 month ago
I can't believe there are no comments yet.
Nobody smokes pot and kills someone with their car or rapes someone. No one gets addicted. It is so much less harmful to ourselves and to others than other drugs, like alcohol and cigarettes, that we except. It overcrowds our overcrowded prisons and wastes billions of dollars that we don't have to begin with. Our decisions have caused horrible drug-gang violence in Mexico that has only been escalating. People are dying. Reconsider decriminalizing, if not legalizing.
squirrel 3 years, 1 month ago
Secondly, and this point has been hounded to death, but evidently not enough since no changes have been made: Dollars and cents. Legalizing and regulating cannabis would not only save huge amounts of money that the DEA, state and local law enforcement, but speaking for myself, I would be more than happy to pay 100% tax on it. I would pay twice what I pay now just for the privilege of not having to worry about going to jail for something that harms no one else, and may harm me, depending on what studies you listen to, but the help it gives me far outweighs any possible negative side effects. Add to that the money saved in our prisons and there is a big step twords fixing the horrible state the economy is currently in. And, as an added benefit the money going into our government and economy is stolen directly from the pockets of the Mexican drug cartels, as marijuana is their biggest cash crop. Also consider that if able to buy marijuana legally, users would not have to have dealings with people who sell illegal drugs, greatly reducing the "gateway" effect. The only way I can see marijuana being a gateway drug is when people who have no desire to use harder drugs, can only get what they want by dealing with the criminal element that has hard, potentially fatal, and addictive drugs for sale right beside a harmless plant. I feel that making it possible to purchase marijuana legally, and in designated places would show reduced use across all drug classes.
Lastly, and I think most importantly it is what the American people want. Consistently in the polls to president Obama and at the town hall meeting it has come in as the number one issue. And where we still have an unpopular war, and economic disaster going on for, the people to repeatedly vote marijuana reform the top issue speaks volumes. Remember that we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people. I can only hope that our elected officials will wake up before these ideas truly perish from the Earth.
squirrel 3 years, 1 month ago
First of all to Mr. Banz. I feel that the religious argument is pretty invalid as cannabis is the only substance legal or illegal used for recreation that is consumed just as God made it. Are brewed hops better with their higher fatality rate, or maybe the drugs put out by pharmacological companies that even if used as directed can lead to physical side effects or addiction, when cannabis would be a non addicting alternative for many of these, and with no known overdose limit, how can it be wrong? I regularly use cannabis to help with my insomnia (as opposed to addictive sleeping pills), and to relieve chronic pain from a bad joint (surely better than opiate based products.) How can it be justified to make so many opiate based "medicines" legally by pharmacological companies, yet those same companies can't use THC. Essentially we are allowing these companies to make products that are in the same drug class as heroin and widely distribute them. Don't think for a second that just because you need to have to have a prescription that almost anyone can find a doctor who will write it for them. And lastly from my experience, with the young people of today pharmaceutical grade opiates are the true gateway drug to true hard drug use. These are found in many homes and are accessible to the teens at any age before alcohol before cigarettes, and certainly before marijuana since you have to find someone who is in the illegal market instead of just going to your parent's medicine cabinet.