04/01/2005 01:30 PM Senate HEALTH, EDUCATION & SOCIAL SERVICES
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| += | SB 74 | TELECONFERENCED | |
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
SENATE HEALTH, EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES STANDING COMMITTEE
April 1, 2005
1:34 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Fred Dyson, Chair
Senator Gary Wilken, Vice Chair
Senator Lyda Green
Senator Kim Elton
Senator Donny Olson
MEMBERS ABSENT
All members present
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
SENATE BILL NO. 74
"An Act making findings relating to marijuana use and
possession; relating to marijuana and misconduct involving a
controlled substance; and providing an effective date."
MOVED SB 74 OUT OF COMMITTEE
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
BILL: SB 74
SHORT TITLE: CRIMES INVOLVING MARIJUANA/OTHER DRUGS
SPONSOR(s): RULES BY REQUEST OF THE GOVERNOR
01/21/05 (S) READ THE FIRST TIME - REFERRALS
01/21/05 (S) HES, JUD, FIN
03/21/05 (S) HES AT 1:30 PM BUTROVICH 205
03/21/05 (S) Heard & Held
03/21/05 (S) MINUTE(HES)
03/23/05 (S) HES AT 1:30 PM BUTROVICH 205
03/23/05 (S) Heard & Held
03/23/05 (S) MINUTE(HES)
04/01/05 (S) HES AT 1:30 PM BUTROVICH 205
WITNESS REGISTER
DEAN GUANELI
Chief Assistant Attorney General
Department of Law
PO Box 110300
Juneau, AK 99811-0300
POSITION STATEMENT: Introduced SB 74.
JOHN BOBO
United States Department of Transportation
400 7th Street, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20590
POSITION STATEMENT: Supported SB 74.
DR. LESTER GRINSPOON
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
DR. MITCH EARLEYWINE
Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Southern California
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
DR. KELLY DREW
University of Alaska Fairbanks
P.O. Box 757500
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
DAVID FINKELSTEIN
Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and Control
1550 H St
Anchorage, AK 99501
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
BILL PARKER
Alaskans for Marijuana Regulation and Control
1550 H St
Anchorage, AK 99501
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
MICHAEL MACLEOD-BALL
Alaska Civil Liberties Union
P.O. Box 201844
Anchorage, AK 99501
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
JIM WELCH
Anchorage, AK 99501
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
JOHN B. CLAYTON, JR.
Anchorage, AK 99501
POSITION STATEMENT: Opposed SB 74.
ACTION NARRATIVE
CHAIR FRED DYSON called the Senate Health, Education and Social
Services Standing Committee meeting to order at 1:34:28 PM.
Present were Senators Lyda Green, Kim Elton, Donny Olson and
Chair Fred Dyson.
SB 74-CRIMES INVOLVING MARIJUANA/OTHER DRUGS
CHAIR DYSON announced SB 74 to be up for consideration.
1:37:24 PM
JOHN BOBO, United States Department of Transportation said:
My name is John Bobo I work at the US Department of
Transportation, Office of the Secretary. At the DOT I
serve as director of the Office of Drug and Alcohol
Policy and Compliance. I serve as an advisor to the
Secretary on drug and alcohol policy and as the
department's liaison to the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, which oversees the world's largest
drug and alcohol workplace testing program. Our
testing regulations cover people engaged in
transportation safety jobs: pilots, ferryboat
captains, pipeline workers, truckers, bus drivers, and
train engineers. That is roughly some 12.1 million
people across the country.
My experience in this area is based on the ten years
that I have worked as a prosecutor in the State of
Tennessee specializing in DUIs, vehicler homicides,
and narcotics enforcement. I have had an opportunity
to view these issues from a national standpoint.
Before I came to the DOT, I was the director of the
National Traffic Law Center at the American
Prosecutors Research Institute where I traveled the
country providing training technical assistance to
prosecutors and law enforcement officials.
MR. BOBO said the magnitude of the psychoactive effect of
smoking marijuana is directly proportional its THC content and
the average THC content of marijuana has increased dramatically
throughout the last two decades from one to five percent THC in
the 1970's to 14 to 18 percent in Alaskan marijuana today.
Hydroponic and homegrown marijuana is now between 22 to 24
percent THC.
SENATOR OLSON arrived at 1:40:22 PM.
MR. BOBO said:
The United States Department of Transportation
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
released a drug and human performance fact sheet that
concluded that marijuana creates problems with memory
and learning, distorted perception, difficulty in
thinking and problem solving, loss of coordination,
difficulty in sustaining attention, difficulty
registering and processing information, impaired
retention time and sleepiness. Studies have shown that
marijuana particularly impairs monotonous and
prolonged driving and mixing alcohol and marijuana may
produce effects dramatically greater than those
produced when each drug is taken individually.
He said marijuana is becoming increasingly prevalent among
younger people who are, significantly, the country's most
inexperienced drivers. According to the Insurance Institute of
Highway Safety, motor vehicle crash injuries are by far the
leading public health problem for people between the ages of 13
and 19 years old. In the year 2000, 40 percent of the deaths of
people between the ages of 16 to 19 years old were related to
motor vehicle crashes.
CHAIR DYSON said the committee has heard extensive testimony
about the health effects and the growing potency of marijuana.
He asked Mr. Bobo to confine his testimony to describing the
effects that marijuana has on an individual's ability to operate
motor vehicles.
1:44:02 PM
MR. BOBO said twelve states are making it illegal for one to
operate a motor vehicle when one has marijuana drug in their
system.
SENATOR GARY WILKEN arrived at 1:47:22 PM.
SENATOR ELTON asked Mr. Bobo to compare the most recent
information regarding the number of alcohol related auto
fatalities and the number of marijuana related auto fatalities.
MR. BOBO said he could not answer that question with precision
since there has been little research devoted to determining how
the hybrid effects of alcohol and marijuana affect driving. He
said that there are many fatalities involving both alcohol and
marijuana that are attributed to the effects of alcohol alone
because of current limitations in research and law enforcement
capabilities. He said labs often do not check for THC in victims
of fatal automobile accidents once it has been determined that
they have had an illegal amount of alcohol in their systems.
1:50:50 PM
BILL PARKER, former member of the House of Representatives and
retired Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Corrections,
opposed SB 74. He said:
Senate Bill 74 attempts to recriminalize marijuana for
adults in Alaska in violation of our own state
constitution. In 1975, in the landmark case known as
Ravin, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the privacy
clause of the Alaska Constitution protects possession
of a small amount of marijuana by Alaskans in their
homes for their own use. Since 1975, when the Alaska
Legislature changed the statute to decriminalize
marijuana in Alaska, various attempts have been made
in the last thirty years to attack this
decriminalization both legally and politically. An
initiative in 1990 attempted to recriminalize
marijuana in Alaska but initiatives change statutes
and not the constitution so the initiative had no
effect. All of the legal attempts to test the
constitutionality of decriminalization in the courts
have been unsuccessful. Last fall the Alaska Supreme
Court declined to take the appellate court's latest
ruling upholding Ravin.
Senate Bill 74 is another attempt to attack the
constitutionality of decriminalization in a legal and
political way. If SB 74 passes with these findings,
they will be admissible in court and the
administration has new arguments that marijuana is
much more potent and dangerous than it was in 1975, so
much so that it is almost a different substance. That
is why the findings section of this bill is so
important.
These findings are flawed and expert witnesses are
going to explain the flaws today. They will discuss
the complex medical and sociological issues that other
government panels have studied at length. A Shaffer
Commission Report to President Nixon in 1972 titled
"Marijuana A Signal of Misunderstanding", The National
Resource Council's 1982 report titled "An Analysis of
Marijuana Policy", The Institute of Medicine's 1990
report "Marijuana and Medicine, Assessing the
Scientific Base", The 2002 Report of the British
Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, "The
Classification of Cannabis" and Jamaica's 2001
National Commission of Ganja came to this same
conclusion: Marijuana is not so harmful that the
penalties for possession need to be increased.
Senate Bill 74 will take our state in the opposite and
wrong direction. The testimony for today will show
that time schedule for SB 74 is inadequate to evaluate
marijuana in Alaska. We have submitted in writing the
findings of experts in their fields who have
determined marijuana to be relatively harmless
compared to alcohol. Each finding must be examined
individually and with scientific integrity.
Here is a quick review of the evidence that you will
hear today: Experts will point out the differences
between scientific research and pseudo science, the
confusion between correlation and causation. The
administrations assertions about the increased potency
of marijuana are inaccurate and misleading. There are
serious questions about the potency of the marijuana
of today and yesterday, but there is no reliable way
to measure potency. There is no proof that marijuana
is more addictive or more dangerous than it was
previously believed to be. In fact more potent
marijuana may result in people using it less because
of the effect of auto titration in which marijuana
users stop using marijuana when they have received
their desired effect.
The administrations treatment of statistics is
misleading because most of them are the result of
court orders rather than clinical diagnosis of
marijuana addictions or even self-referrals. Most had
to choose between treatment or incarceration and most
chose treatment. The rate of marijuana use among
minors in Alaska is not higher today than it was in
1975 in fact, according to the government's own
figures, overall use among people ages six to twelve
in Alaska's schools is lower now than after 30 years
of decriminalization.
1:55:12 PM
Marijuana use by minors has not been shown to cause
psychosis later in life. Marijuana use does not induce
violent behavior or rape or child abuse. The emergency
room data used to show that marijuana is more
dangerous today is not conclusive. The administration
has overstated and misinterpreted the evidence that
marijuana is linked to lung cancer, juvenile crime,
and the possibility of dependence or addiction. The
scientific evidence today discredits the old gateway
drug theory.
There are laws already in place that prohibit driving
while impaired by alcohol or marijuana and these laws
will remain in effect. SB 74 will have a bad affect on
medical marijuana patients by jeopardizing their
access to legal marijuana if adult use of marijuana in
the home is criminalized. If the administrations aim
is to promote the public health and welfare,
recriminalizing personal adult use of marijuana in the
home won't do it. Criminalization will only feed the
black market and increase the social costs that flow
from it. Science shows that marijuana causes fall less
harm to the public health or welfare than either
alcohol or tobacco and that is as true today as it was
in 1975.
2:00:33 PM
MICHAEL MACLEOD-BALL, Director of the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU), Alaska, said:
Thank you for the opportunity to present evidence
countering the administrations misleading
characterization of marijuana as a substance that has
grown more dangerous over the last 30 years. As the
administration has acknowledged, both before this
committee and in public statements, the purpose of the
bill is to provide a framework for overturning the
Alaska Supreme Court's decision that our
constitutional right to privacy includes the right to
possess small amounts of marijuana in the home for
purely personal purposes.
The bill also significantly steps up the penalties in
a manner to bring the bill directly into conflict with
existing case law. The administration hopes that a
legislative finding concerning marijuana risks would
be sufficient for the court to reverse itself if and
when this bill is enacted and then challenged in
court. Because this legislation directly impacts a
fundamental right, the right to privacy, the ACLU
believes that any legislative finding that does not
reflective of the weight of the evidence available for
review will be set aside by the courts.
On the other hand, if this committee takes on the
heavy burden of weighing the available science fully
and completely and produces findings that are
reflective of the weight of evidence, we believe that
the court will consider such balanced findings an
insufficient basis for justifying a restriction on a
constitutional right to privacy.
The ACLU believes that drug policy based on imposing
criminal sentences on mere users is counter-productive
and this bill tries to do that. But our disagreement
with this bill on a policy level won't defeat the
legislation that will be accomplished by the very
nature of this proposal, an enactment of a restriction
on a fundamental constitutional right based on either
incomplete hearings or biased or inadequate or
unjustifiable findings.
It cannot seriously be doubted that in order for this
committee to properly evaluate the risks associated
with one's private consumption of marijuana in the
privacy of one's own home, it must consider far more
evidence than it has been able to take in during the
course of three one-and-a-half or two hour sessions.
We believe that the weight of the evidence clearly
shows that marijuana is not significantly more
dangerous than it was in the 1970's when Alaska Law
legalized use and possession in the home.
National and International panels have concluded that
marijuana is significantly less dangerous than alcohol
and substantial increase in the risks associated with
marijuana over the last 30 years have been shown not
to exist.
2:04:16 PM
The findings associated with this bill are clearly
one-sided, ignore the weight of the evidence on the
subject and in many cases are simply wrong. They are,
as the following experts will tell you, misleading
assertions based on half-truths and omissions. We
believe strongly that findings such as these, if left
to stand will be the downfall of this bill in court.
The courts will not blindly accept legislative
findings when a law has distinctions based on religion
or ethnicity, when a law restricts free speech,
especially political speech, restricts freedom of
worship, or as in here, restricts an individual's
right to privacy. Privacy is a fundamental right in
Alaska, stronger than the privacy right inferred to
exist under the U.S. constitution. But the
constitution doesn't say how far the right to privacy
extends, so the courts have been asked to do the job
of defining our right of privacy. Shortly after the
amendment adding the privacy right, the Ravin case
came along.
At its core, Ravin has less to do with marijuana
possession than with attempting to define the scope of
the privacy right. Ravin stands for the proposition
that activities in the home are entitled to a higher
degree of privacy protection than other kinds of
activities. Also activities that are purely personal
and don't pose a significant risk to others are
entitled to a higher degree of privacy protection. The
court was eloquent in describing its reasoning and I
will quote from its decision:
The authority of the state to exert control over the
individual extends only to activities of the
individual, which affect others or the public at large
as it relates to matters of public health of safety or
to provide for the general welfare. We believe this to
be a tenant of a free society: the state cannot impose
its own notions of morality, propriety, or fashion on
individuals when the public has no legitimate interest
in the affairs of those individuals.
2:06:05 PM
Having come to these conclusions about the scope of
the privacy right, the court had to determine whether
marijuana use and possession fell within its
protective ambit. In order to do so, the court
considered the luminous materials and heard from
numerous experts. The Alaska Supreme Court concurred
with lower court rulings that marijuana was not
without risk, however it said that the health affects
were not so severe to warrant a government intrusion
on a basic human right.
So the administration's argument in support of this
bill will now stand or fall on whether it can
demonstrate that marijuana is so much more dangerous
than it was in the 1970s when Ravin was decided that
justification now exists to restrict individual
privacy rights where none exited before. It is
especially important to be clear on this point. It is
not enough to find that marijuana has risks. The court
already decided in the 1970s that there was some risk
in the use of marijuana, albeit far less than in the
use of alcohol. The court heard evidence from some
that marijuana was dangerous, offset by others who
said that it has some risks but not many. The court
decided that the balance of evidence was insufficient
to justify a restriction on privacy rights.
In order to make this legislation work, you need to
determine that marijuana is far more dangerous than it
was in 1975. Unfortunately the evidence won't tell you
that marijuana spurs violence; it won't tell you that
there has been a significant increase in young users,
it won't tell you that there is any significant
increase in potency that isn't offset by other
factors.
We don't think that the case can be made that there is
any increased danger in marijuana use today and if you
consider all of the evidence available to you, some of
which has been presented to this committee, we are
certain that you will have to agree. So, why should
you be concerned about the available evidence making
sure you have fully evaluated everything and have made
accurate findings? Because the legislation will stand
or fall whether you do this job fully and thoroughly.
2:08:14 PM
As noted before, courts will generally defer the fact-
finding done by the Legislature, but not if a
fundamental right is restricted. In that case, the
court will look for a fundamental relationship between
the proposed restriction and a compelling state
interest and it will be far less likely to defer to
the Legislature's finding and it will take a hard look
at what the Legislature did in adopting the
legislation.
It should be noted that in several cases the courts
have looked quite disparagingly on findings that were
the result of preordained decisions, insufficient
hearings, or hasty deliberations. Even in Alaska the
few precedents that are available suggest that the
ordinary deference to legislative action disappears
when constitutionally protected rights such as the
right to privacy are at issue.
Examining all of the precedents, if the court is at
all likely to decline to defer to the legislature and
in this context, it will only be if the legislature
has comprehensively reviewed the available evidence
and finding conclusions that accurately reflect that
evidence. The courts will not tolerate proceedings
that are merely a show to make it seems as though the
legislature has taken a comprehensive look at the
available evidence. They will not stand for a paper
record of several hundred pages if the result is
directly contrary to the evidence submitted.
Based on our experience before this committee, it is
our view that the attention given to the issues falls
far short of what the court will expect. To
understand the complexity of the issue involved here
requires a commitment of far more time and expertise.
By rights this panel should convene something akin to
a blue ribbon commission, as has been done elsewhere -
to advise and inform the committee on this issue. But
there seems to be no interest in conducting a thorough
review of this nature. It's understandable, this
committee and this body have many important issues to
address and there is a natural urge to push things
along and get things done, but when a restriction on a
fundamental right is involved, you need to do more.
I will let others speak to the findings regarding
scientific issues, but I would like to talk about two
of the findings in particular that relate to legal
issues. Finding number 19 purports and I will quote:
We confirm that it is illegal to possess any amount of
marijuana anywhere in state. In fact, by adopting such
a finding the legislature wholly discounts the
judiciary's role in our three-branch system of
government. Pursuant to judicial decision, it, in
fact, has not been illegal to possess small amounts of
marijuana for personal use. To adopt a finding that
reconfirms illegality this body asserts, in effect,
that the judiciary has no role in determining the
constitutionally of legislative enactments.
Finding number 18 asserts that the ruling in Crocker
imposes unnecessary and unreasonable requirements for
search warrants to investigate marijuana growing that
inhibit law enforcement efforts to reduce the amount
of marijuana illegally grown indoors and illegally
sold and exported.
This is simply inaccurate, Crocker merely held that a
judicial officer should not issue a warrant to search
a person's home for evidence of marijuana possession
unless the state's warrant application establishes
probable cause to believe that the person's possession
of marijuana exceeds that scope of the possession that
is constitutionally protected under Ravin. Before a
search warrant can be lawfully issued, the government
must establish probable cause to believe that the
evidence being sought is connected to a crime. The
same rule governs search warrants for all controlled
substances, not just marijuana.
This is neither unnecessary nor unreasonable; it is
the law. Probable cause means probable cause to
suspect a violation of the law, not probable cause to
suspect the occurrence of a constitutionally protected
activity. Could you get a warrant to enter a home if
you suspected someone was exercising his or her right
to freedom of speech? It's a silly point, but you
understand what I am trying to say. The finding in
point is slanted and there is no need for it.
2:12:41 PM
We would strongly urge this committee to remove or
drastically alter the findings in the bill, each and
every one of them. As they stand, they do not reflect
the state of the science on the subject or they are
factually incorrect. They will serve as the basis for
a challenge to this bill. We strongly urge this
committee to undertake a far more comprehensive look
at the science or work for the creation of a truly
independent panel to examine the science. The Alaska
Civil Liberties Union stands ready to help in
establishing and carrying out such a panel if you
should choose. We believe that that is the only way
this legislature might successfully adopt for the
restrictions that it would seem to desire.
We understand the basic reflex to criminalize
marijuana possession and that it is based on a fear
that our kids are being harmed, but there are better
ways of dealing with this than to make marijuana users
criminals. I would ask you to provide me with any
questions that you have. I am happy to answer them now
or later.
2:13:54 PM
CHAIR DYSON remarked he was told that marijuana is illegal under
federal law and asked Mr. Macleod-Ball to explain how the force
of federal law and state law interact on this point of
difference.
MR. MACLEOD-BALL responded the state has rights to regulate in
its own jurisdiction and federal law addresses interstate
activities.
CHAIR DYSON remarked the vast majority of land in Alaska is
federal land and asked whether federal law takes precedence over
state law within federal lands in Alaska.
MR. MACLEOD-BALL did not know the answer. He said the issue at
hand is whether or not the state has the right to regulate
possession of small amounts of marijuana in the home and federal
law would not apply to most homes in the state.
2:15:45 PM
SENATOR WILKEN said:
Two points, at the outset of your testimony you talked
about marijuana being less dangerous than alcohol.
Does that then imply that there is some danger or no
danger in using marijuana?
MR. MACLEOD-BALL said:
I am not a scientific expert and I would like to defer
that question to the experts that are coming up right
after me. As a lawyer, I will say that the Ravin court
acknowledged that there are some risks associated with
marijuana, but it ruled that they were not sufficient
to justify intrusion into the privacy right with
respect to personal use and possession of marijuana in
the home.
SENATOR WILKEN remarked that Mr. Macleod-Ball described some
alternative ways of dealing with marijuana and asked him to
describe some of these alternatives.
MR. MACLEOD-BALL replied if the state is concerned about the use
of marijuana it should concentrate on prevention and education
programs modeled after current programs that address alcohol and
tobacco abuse.
2:17:59 PM
SENATOR ELTON stated there is a zero fiscal note attached to
this bill and it seems counterintuitive that this bill could
have a zero fiscal note from The Department of Public Safety
(DPS) and a zero fiscal note from the court system despite
having a positive fiscal note from the Public Defender's Office
(PDO). He asked Mr. Macleod-Ball to explain the apparent
inconsistency.
MR. MACLEOD-BALL explained:
I believe that you have provided the answer within
your question and I would agree with what you just
said. I think that there are perhaps two views on the
fiscal impact of this legislation. One view would be
that it creates a whole additional set of crimes that
will need to be enforced and if, in fact, you are
going to continue doing what you are doing now, with
Department of Public Safety and Public Defender
personnel and then also take on all of these new
crimes, why you must hire more people and spend more
money to get it done.
The other view would be that if you divert resources
into dealing with this new set of crimes that you have
committed you must necessarily take resources away
from some other perhaps more important, perhaps less
important, task. We would argue that, if that is the
view that you take, chances are that you are going the
be taking resources away from things that are perhaps
more worthy of the state's resources.
2:19:52 PM
DR. LESTER GRINSPOON, Associate Professor Emeritus at the
Harvard Medical School, said:
After graduating from the Harvard Medical School in
1955 I joined the faculty and combined research and
teaching with some clinical practice. In 1967 I was
very much concerned about the great danger young
people were exposing themselves to as they recklessly
ignored the government warning about marijuana's
dangers. I decided to study it with the object of
producing a scientifically sound paper on the subject,
one which I hoped to publish in a journal of
periodicals accessible to college-age people. Perhaps
some would pay more attention to a professor's review
than they were paying to material produced by the
United States Government.
2:21:19 PM
As I delved into the medical, scientific and other
literature, I soon discovered, to my great surprise
and consternation, that despite my retraining in
medicine and science, I had been brainwashed like most
other American citizens about the danger of this drug.
I began working on 'Marijuana Reconsidered', which was
published by Harvard University Press in 1971.
After documenting that most of what we believe about
the dangers of cannabis is mythical, I concluded that
marijuana was far less harmful than either alcohol or
tobacco and that its greatest harmfulness arose from
the way that we as a society were dealing with it. At
that time we were arresting about 300,000, mostly
young people, on marijuana charges each year. Today
the figure is about 750,000.
Let me say at the outset that marijuana is no more
harmful today than it was in 1975 when I testified in
the Ravin Court. Street marijuana is arguably more
portent than it was at that time, but this does mean
that it is more dangerous because both medicinal and
recreational users quickly learn to titrate a potent
dose to achieve the desired affect. A user who smokes
or vaporizes marijuana has to inhale less of a more
potent sample and conversely more of one that is less
potent. It follows that to the extent that inhaling
the smoke is considered a risk factor for pulmonary
disease, the more potent sample provides a healthier
choice.
I should hasten to add that the pulmonary risk
associated with smoking marijuana has been greatly
exaggerated. There is not a single case of lung cancer
or emphysema attributed to the smoking of marijuana to
be found in medical literature. I believe that the
lungs of marijuana smokers are at greater risk from
the air of cities like Los Angeles or Houston or any
other city with poor air quality. However for those,
particularly in today's anti-smoke camp, who believe
that we need to avoid smoke for any reason, there is
now available a device called the vaporizer which
holds the temperature of the marijuana to be consumed
in a temperature window that vaporizes the canabinoid
without igniting the cannabis.
2:24:30 PM
I wish I had time to address the other 18 findings
because so many are erroneous and none are supported
by documentation. Let me briefly consider another
part, one that states 'Marijuana use by children is
associated with an increased risk of attempting
suicide.' I believe that the intention here is to
suggest that because there is an association, cannabis
must be causal in this increment of risk. Psychiatry
is becoming increasingly aware that children suffer
from depression and some of them commit suicide. Like
other depressed people, some of the depressed children
use marijuana. Marijuana is an effective
antidepressant and some of them may have discovered it
as a self-medication. There is no credible evidence
that I know of that establishes marijuana is causally
related to suicide.
I am struck by the fact that so many of these findings
are the same claims about marijuana that have been
discredited more than once throughout our history. For
example, schizophrenics and patients suffering from
other psychosis were thought to comprise a significant
number of the patients admitted into the Indian insane
asylums in the second half of the 19th Century and the
use of ganja was thought to be causative.
It was for this reason that the British organized the
Indian Drug Commission Study, which was published in
1894. The Commission examined 800 doctors,
superintendents, and so forth. In a 300 page, 7-volume
report, the commission concluded that 'There is no
evidence of any weight regarding mental and moral
injury from the moderate use of these drugs.'
2:26:21 PM
This report put to rest the belief that ganja caused
schizophrenia and other psychosis for a while, but it
has reoccurred periodically, most recently during the
last year or so. For example, a report from New
Zealand with a study group of only 759 subjects claims
to have established that those who smoke marijuana
three or more times a week by the age of 15 have a 10
percent higher chance of developing schizophrenia
later in life.
Similarly other studies in Great Britain and the
Netherlands predict a greater number of schizophrenic
patients. If these predictions are correct, given the
number of young people who are or who have used
cannabis, we should expect to see an increment in the
incidents of schizophrenia. However, no such increment
exists.
In finding number two, the assertion is made that
'Marijuana has addictive properties similar to heroin
and other similar illegal controlled substances.' Most
of those who are sophisticated about cannabis question
whether the word 'addiction' is even appropriate to
this drug and all would agree that the withdrawal
symptoms seen with 'heroin and other illegal
controlled' are not observed upon cessation of
marijuana use.
The assertion made in finding number 4 'Marijuana use
makes it more likely that the person will go to use
more potent illegal controlled substances,' is simply
a restatement of what was know as the 'stepping stone
hypothesis', a belief which has been thoroughly
discredited. As I participate in these hearings, I am
reminded of those which preceded The Federal Marijuana
Tax Act of 1947, the first of the draconian
legislation aimed at marijuana.
2:28:36 PM
A review of the hearings before the House Ways and
Means Committee, which defeated the passage of that
legislation, demonstrates quite clearly how little
empirical data was found to support the act. Indeed
the enactment reflected far more the mass hysteria
surrounding the subject than any concrete evidence of
the drug's harmfulness. I would urge the members of
this committee to acquaint themselves with some of the
excellent comprehensive special reports and commission
reports which have been developed over the past
century. They include The La Guardia Report of 1944,
The Shaffer Report of 1972 and The Canadian Senate
Special Committee on Illegal Drug Report of 2002.
I think that if this legislative body is as meticulous
and comprehensive in collecting and assessing the data
as these commissions were, it will have a better
chance of arriving at a sound judgment about whether
the harmfulness of marijuana is sufficient to enact
such a restrictive bill.
CHAIR DYSON asked the witness to summarize his testimony.
DR. GRINSPOON said:
In conclusion, I must tell you that I have much more
to say on this topic, but giving the extremely short
time allotted here, there is no way that I can
properly respond to the erroneous findings proposed in
this bill. It would take days if not weeks to
carefully review each of the findings and reports
submitted by the government in order to fully explain
the fallacies of this bill. In short, this committee
cannot possibly hope to seriously consider, in the
allotted time, the evidence necessary to reach a
conclusion about the harmful effects of marijuana. I
would urge the committee to postpone action on this
legislation until such time as a full and fair review
of all of the evidence is achieved. If this
legislature does adopt these findings, I would urge
you to fully annotate those findings with specific
references to specific evidence in the legislative
record, Thank you.
SENATOR OLSON asked if the effect of THC upon the CB1 and CB2
canabinoid receptors is blunted after the receptors have become
saturated with THC.
DR. GRINSPOON responded:
No, there is no evidence that the CB 1 and CB 2
receptors operate differently when they become
saturated. They operate just as they would without
outside THC.
SENATOR OLSON asked whether the half-life of marijuana is
affected by the amount of THC in the drug.
DR. GRINSPOON replied the THC content of marijuana does not
affect its half-life.
MITCH EAREYWINE, PhD, Associate Professor, University of
Southern California said:
I am an Associated Professor of Psychology at the
University of Southern California. I have over 70
publications including the book "Understanding
Marijuana" which was published by Oxford in 2002. It's
over 300 pages and it took me 15 months to put it
together. I want to echo Dr. Grinspoon's ideas that
this is not an easy literature to master and that
taking as much time as possible on it is really worth
your time.
A couple of questions came up during previous
testimony that I would like to address and I would
like to focus on some of the issues of potency and the
behavioral effects of cannabis. With regard to a
question about the auto-titration process, some data
from Dr. Cohen from the Netherlands suggested that
people don't report getting any higher than they did
in the 1970s from the cannabis that is reportedly
stronger than it was in those days. You also
understand that any drug that is inhaled goes
immediately to the lungs and then to the brain, so the
effect of cannabis is accessible within a mere 15
seconds. It's not as though people can't titrate very
quickly and alter their use of the substance even if
does contain more THC than it had in the past.
The tacit idea behind the assumption that stronger
cannabis is somehow more dangerous is worth testing.
In fact, data from Dr. Mathius and Dr. Tashkent at
UCLA suggest that people who are smoking cannabis with
more THC in it tend to take smaller puffs and tend to
inhale them for a briefer period. This actually
provides less opportunity for any carcinogens or tars
to get attached to their lungs and this, in fact,
increases their chances of aborting any pulmonary
problems.
The measures of potency from the 1970's versus today
have been exaggerated. If cannabis is stronger, it is
at most two or three times stronger not 10 to 100
times stronger, as we often hear in the media. The
exaggerations arose from a misunderstanding in the
1970's of how THC degrades. You can imagine police
officers confiscating cannabis and placing it in a hot
evidence locker and then, when they got around to it,
sending it down to Mississippi's Potency Monitoring
Project to have the potency assessed. Well that time
in the hot evidence locker allowed the THC to degrade
to other canabinoids and so the estimates were, well
its .9 percent, its 1 percent THC.
2:35:01 PM
When you give people cannabis that is 1 percent THC in
the laboratory, they get a headache they claim that it
is a placebo and they find it inactive and they don't
want to do it again. Obviously, in the 1970's this
couldn't have been the case or people would have never
used the drug a second time. In addition the
incredible strains of 18 percent or 19 percent THC are
relatively rare. The averages from the University of
Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project are around six
percent THC for present day marijuana.
Another issue that has come up concerns cannabis'
involvement in accidents. One Senator had asked about
the dangers of alcohol relative to those of cannabis
with regard to auto accidents. When you look at
probability studies of injury related crashes
involving alcohol, you will find that people with
alcohol in their systems have been shown to be five to
eight times more likely to be involved in a crash.
Studies of cannabis metabolites in drivers, and these
are directed to people with cannabis and no alcohol in
their systems at all, you find that some subjects
actually have a lower crash rate than people with no
cannabis in their system and the group with the
highest probably of being involved in an accident are
at most twice as likely to be involved in an accident.
I think that the most compelling data on this topic
comes from laboratory studies where people are given
THC in the laboratory and then asked to drive a car or
a driving simulator. If you look at work by Anthony
LaGora here in the United States it shows that THC,
even at levels of 8 percent, tends to have no impact
on certain measures of driving attention and brake
latency. Work by Dr. Rovie in the Netherlands shows
that when cannabis is used alone, there is no impact
on stopping distance or on handling. People can follow
a car for up to an hour without making any mistakes.
They are completely capable of making left and right
turns and using all driving signals.
2:37:48 PM
The other issue that has come up in other testimony
concerns the accuracy of emergency room mentions. We
often hear that THC is now mentioned in emergency room
data more often than it was in the past. As it turns
out, these data come from the Drug Abuse Network
studies, which have been highly criticized. What
happens is that emergency room doctors are extremely
busy and some are more devoted to gathering these data
than others. When people have gone back to try to
reexamine the cases they find that they were not
particularly reliably recorded. The other notion is
that people come in after they have done something
particularly idiotic, like having cut their thumb
while slicing onions and they feel embarrassed so they
say something like, 'Oh I was smoking marijuana,' in
an effort to appear less accident prone.
Another big issue concerns the tacit assumption that
higher THC is what is behind increased rates in
adolescent admissions to treatment. As it turns out,
there is no THC measurement in any of these studies.
It is not as if adolescents that are admitted to
treatment bring in their cannabis and have it analyzed
to see its THC content. This has in fact been the
product of some recent moves by the judicial system to
offer people either treatment or incarceration. As you
might imagine, most teens prefer treatment to
incarceration. Some recent work by Bruce Merken has
suggested that many teens who are entering treatment,
supposedly cannabis dependent, haven't used any
cannabis in the previous month. Obviously they
couldn't be particularly dependant if can use it that
infrequently.
2:40:31 PM
DR. EARLEYWINE said:
The bottom line is that this is an extremely complex
literature and that is why I wrote a 325-page book on
it. I certainly appreciate your time, in fact, this
substance is not completely harmless, but certainly
nowhere as dangerous as the way it's been depicted by
some of the physicians that have testified on this
bill.
CHAIR DYSON said a considerable amount of the previous testimony
asserted that several correlations have been established between
marijuana and violence and accidents. He was surprised to hear
of studies that conclude marijuana does not impair driving
ability. He asked Dr. Earleywine if he, Chair Dyson, had
understood the import of these studies correctly.
2:42:14 PM
DR. EARLEYWINE responded:
It sounds like that is a two part question, one
concerning driving and one concerning aggression.
With regards to the study on driving, I can describe
the study by Rovie where people used cannabis and then
drove around with a driving instructor in the car who
didn't know if they had smoked cannabis or a placebo.
They found that among the marijuana group, there were
no deficits in stopping distance or handling or in
their ability to follow another car. Obviously that
doesn't mean that it is completely safe to drive and
also driving under impairment laws should not be
changed. But this is not anywhere near the kind of
magnitude of deficits in driving that alcohol
produces. He added Dr. Taylor at Kent has performed
studies that have concluded that people under the
influence of marijuana do not exhibit increased
aggression when provoked.
CHAIR DYSON asked him whether he has ever been paid for
testifying before public hearings or trials.
DR. EARLEYWINE responded he has only testified twice and has
never been paid for his testimony.
DR. OLSON asked the name of the person who conducted the
aforementioned study on aggression.
DR. EARLEYWINE responded Dr. Taylor conducted the studies and
they are referenced in the back of his book "Understanding
Marijauna". He added an entire chapter of his book is devoted to
the topic of marijuana, reckless driving, aggression and
motivation.
DR. OLSON asked when the study was written.
DR. EARLEYWINE said the Taylor study was published in 1980.
2:44:08 PM
DR. KELLY DREW, Associate Professor of Chemistry and
Biochemistry at the University of Alaska Fairbanks said:
I have been a resident of Alaska for about 30 years I
left to go to graduate school and for my post-doctoral
training. I have a PhD in neuro-pharmacology, which is
the study of the theory and principles of the actions
of drugs on the brain. My early research was focused
primarily on drug addiction. One of my significant
contributions was to show how learning was involved in
addiction. Today learning is recognized as a primary
target for the treatment of addiction. Dr. Stan Glick
trained me. He is a physician scientist and an
established neuro-pharmacologist who studies drug
addiction and abuse and pharmacological therapies for
drug addiction for more than four decades. After
receiving my PhD I went to the Karolinska Institute in
Stockholm, Sweden. There I worked in a department of
pharmacology and I focused on neuro-pharmacology under
Dr. Urban Ungerstedt who pioneered our understanding
of Dopamine, which is now known to underlie part of
addiction, motivation, and reward. I am currently a
tenured associate professor at the Department of
Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Alaska
Fairbanks.
I have been living in Fairbanks since 1990. I have
published over 30 peer review papers and five book
chapters in neuro-pharmacology. I have been a leader
in establishing the neuro-science program here at UAF.
It was recently funded by a $7.5 million grant from
the National Institute of Health.
To speak to some of the points raised in the bill from
the findings, I would like to start with the first
finding which indicates that marijuana is one of the
most commonly used illegal substances. I want to say
that this finding indicates the size of the number of
people affected by this legislation. Marijuana users
and their families are affected by the legal and
health related consequences of marijuana use. As a
wife and mother in the Fairbanks community I have to
say that I have seen devastating consequences that
marijuana laws have had upon families. In my
professional opinion as a neuro-pharmacologist the
health and social risks of marijuana use do not
justify the severity of some of the consequences that
I have seen.
2:47:16 PM
I believe that the legal risks of this legislation far
outweigh the health and social risks of marijuana use.
With regards to finding number two which asserts that
marijuana is as addictive as heroin: human
epidemiological data, the statistical analysis of
patterns of use as well as the animal research data
rank the addictive properties of marijuana below those
of tobacco, alcohol, cocaine and heroin. Evidence
suggests that as few as 10 percent of individuals who
experiment with marijuana become daily users and
dependence among users is highest for tobacco,
followed by heroin, cocaine, and then finally
cannabis.
The data from animal studies is also consistent with a
low addictive potential for cannabis. It has been very
difficult to demonstrate the positive reinforcing and
dependence producing actions of THC, the active
ingredient of marijuana, in laboratory tests on
animals. For the most part there are three standard
techniques that are used in labs right now to access
addictive potential and all three of these have failed
to show a consistent positive reinforcing affect of
THC. While some authors argue that these three decades
of negative findings are due to optimization
techniques when you compare it to other drugs of
abuse, the other drugs have not been difficult to
optimize for animal studies.
The apparently low addictive potential of cannabis
may, in part, be due to the fact that there is seldom
abstinence syndrome and this may be due, in part,
because THC is stored in fat tissue and then slowly
released. The magnitude of the withdrawal effect of
many drugs is proportional to how quickly they are
eliminated from the body. THC goes to the brain and
then it is redistributed to the fatty tissues from
which it is slowly eliminated.
Overall, given the epidemiological data, the
difficulty in training animals to take THC and the
absence of pronounced withdrawal symptoms, the
suggestion that marijuana has addictive properties
similar to heroin and other illegal substances is not
warranted.
2:49:44 PM
Regarding the use by children, the 'gateway theory' of
adolescent drug use was first proposed in 1975 and the
theory suggest that adolescents typically use tobacco
or alcohol before progressing to illicit substances
including marijuana. Cigarette and alcohol progression
may continue to marijuana, however the most important
finding has been that the cause of this progression is
unknown and the simplest explanation that is discussed
in the literature regarding this observed progression
is that early access to cannabis may reduce perceived
barriers to other illegal drugs and provide channels
to obtaining far more addictive life threatening drugs
such as heroin and cocaine, particularly
methamphetamine, which is my greatest concern.
CHAIR DYSON asked Dr. Drew to summarize her testimony.
2:51:06 PM
DR. DREW said:
As a mother of a 14-year old daughter, I want her to
know the difference between risks associated with
marijuana and harder drugs that are more addicting and
life threatening such as cocaine, methamphetamine,
heroin, and even the poorly defined class of
inhalants.
I want to say with regard to the concern of one of the
findings with regard to the substances in marijuana,
you have already heard about the CB 1 and CB 2
receptors and most recently there has been evidence
that marijuana actually prevents some of pathology of
Alzheimer's disease by activating of CB 1 receptors
and that occurs by inhibiting the immune response in
the brain.
I do know, in summary and conclusion, the bottom line
of the evidence does not support the assertion that
marijuana poses a threat to public health that
justifies prohibiting its use and possession in the
state. Issues regarding access to children, I don't
think, warrant further investigation. The bottom line
is that given the growing presence of methamphetamine
in Alaska and certainly in the Fairbanks community, my
professional opinion is that it would be irresponsible
to put resources into prosecuting marijuana users when
resources are inadequate to responding to the growing
threat of methamphetamine. I hope that you as
legislators can look beyond a moral judgment of
marijuana users and address the more real health risks
associated with far more dangerous drugs.
SENATOR OLSON asked Dr. Drew to tell him how much clinical
experience she has throughout her academic carrier.
DR. DREW responded:
I am not a clinician. Physicians have trained me, both
my PhD and advisor and post-doctoral advisor were MD-
PhDs. All of my training and research, until I moved
back to Fairbanks, was done at medical colleges, but
my expertise is in theory and it relies primarily on
animal studies.
SENATOR OLSON asked Dr. Drew whether she had done any studies on
the effects of marijuana on pregnant woman and developing
fetuses or on the cardiovascular or immune system.
DR. DREW responded:
I haven't done any clinical research and my animal
studies have been directed more towards addiction.
Right now my focus here in Alaska is on nuero-
protection. We study hibernation and nuero-protection
so I am familiar particularly with some of the
protective aspects and for what I mentioned on the
recent findings. This refers to a January paper in the
Journal of Medical Science, shows that the canabinoid
THC CB 1 and CB 2 receptors inhibit Alzheimer's
pathology in an animal model. That is a really
significant finding in terms of potential therapy for
Alzheimer's disease.
SENATOR OLSON asked whether she knew anything about the T and B
cell lymphocytes and whether they may or may not be impaired by
THC.
DR. DREW replied she has seen a few references to that, but she
has not had time to review the pertinent literature.
2:54:55 PM
DAVID FINKELSTEIN, Director of the 2004 Proposition 2 Campaign,
said:
Clearly 44 percent of the public favors legalization.
The initiative that was on the ballot had no limits
and it was pretty much a blanket legalization. That
does show significant concerns. People are concerned
about a marijuana approach that doesn't have limits,
that it obvious. The polls that we and others have
done show that the majority also have shown that they
do not believe that adults should be incarcerated for
possessing small amounts of marijuana.
I think that those two figures, the poll itself and
the actual results of the election, show that there is
a middle ground. I believe that the majority of
Alaskans support establishing limits regulating
marijuana. The productive approach that I think that
the legislature could use in this involves dealing
more with the issues affecting under-age Alaskans,
either by increasing the penalties or increasing
education.
2:58:16 PM
The Legislature could apply the penalties to anyone
between 18 and 21, which I do not believe that they
apply to now. The medical marijuana issue has left
many Alaskans in a bad place. Patients have qualified,
their doctors have written the recommendation, but
they can't necessarily get their hands on marijuana.
Some people can grow it effectively, some can't. Those
people ought to have some sort of regulated way to
obtain marijuana.
The bottom line of this issue is what has been going
on in our state in recent years. Marijuana in small
amounts in the home has effectively been legal for
many years in Alaska. While there was a statute on the
books that had penalties in place, they were not
enforced to any significant degree. The changes that
have occurred as a result of the court decisions of
2004 are mostly a level of awareness that has changed.
There have been a certain number of headlines on the
subject and now people are more aware, but the fact of
the matter is that we have been in this situation for
quite a while; small amounts of marijuana have been
allowed in the home under the right to privacy of our
constitution. Nobody has presented any evidence that
there has been some new emerging problem that didn't
exist previously that came out of that. I would
encourage the committee to consider a regulation
approach to marijuana as a more productive endeavor.
3:00:23 PM
CHAIR DYSON said:
I worked pretty hard on medical marijuana and I
remember working with you in those days. I am a little
distressed to find out that those who have a medical
need are having trouble getting it and irrespective of
what happens to this bill I would be glad to have a
conversation with you about how we could make what I
understood to be our intentions work.
JIM WELCH, Anchorage, said:
For almost twenty years now I have had multiple
sclerosis (MS). MS is a disease that short-circuits
nerve pathways, so it can effect anything that
involves my nerve messages getting through, whether it
be the functioning of a limb or an organ or a
sensation. There is no cure for it so as things
deteriorate, doctors try to treat symptoms. One of
the problems with this, however, is that many of the
drugs have side-affects at least as primary as the
affects.
Over the years I have had to try many prescription
drugs for many of these symptoms for many different
reasons, usually with very limited success and often
with very unpleasant side-affects. In 1998, I was
active in the campaign to pass the initiative to
legalize medical marijuana. I found that for two or
three years, marijuana was the only thing that allowed
me to get through most nights without racking muscle
spasms or headaches that would not allow me to sleep.
I applaud what the Legislature has tried to do with
crystal methamphetamine. That is a drug that I think
everyone can agree has no redeeming qualities, but
further demonizing marijuana is engaging in the wrong
battle. Comparing marijuana to heroin is like
comparing aspirin to morphine. Saying that marijuana
is stronger than it was in the 70s and therefore
dangerous is like saying Aleve is more dangerous than
Tylenol since you only have to take one pill instead
of two. To me that seems like a good thing because it
means that you have to put less smoke in your lungs.
3:04:05 PM
I have never smoked tobacco and if I never had to put
more smoke in my lungs or take another drug in my life
that would be fine with me. This is not the 40s era of
'Reefer Madness' or even the Nancy Regan 80s of 'Just
Say No' It is the 21st century and in the last
election 44 percent of Alaskans voted to legalize
marijuana. You have the power of the majority to make
criminal penalties more severe, but it would be a slap
in the face of a very large portion of the Alaskan
populace who believe that marijuana is okay and who
just a few years before, voted by a substantial
majority to legalize the use of medical marijuana.
I don't know why the Governor has chosen to make
marijuana the bad boy of his drug campaign. It doesn't
make any sense to me. I know that it is not addictive.
I smoked marijuana several times a week for three
years and when it was no longer effective, I stopped.
I experienced no withdrawal, no craving, no side-
affects, no problems. Unlike tobacco or alcohol no one
has ever died from marijuana. I would argue that at
worst it is innocuous and at best it is has some
significant medical benefits.
As far as the purported connection to violence, anyone
who has ever used marijuana knows that its effects
last only a few hours whereas it can be detected for
as long as thirty days after it has been used. That is
like issuing a DWI to somebody who drank a beer a
month before. In the last world cup soccer matches in
Portugal, security checked all persons and all bags
being brought into the stadium. Any alcohol was
immediately seized but all the marijuana found was not
even confiscated. That tells you what kind of behavior
the people in charge of security felt would result
from people using marijuana. They worried about
notoriously rowdy soccer fans using alcohol, but not
the ones using marijuana.
3:06:10 PM
I have no illusion or intention to make you proponents
of legalizing marijuana. That is not even an issue
before you. I do ask you however, to recognize the
folly of harsher criminalization penalties. It means
putting more non-violent offenders in jail, putting
more time and the other limited resources of our
police into what amounts to a low priority use of
their efforts. I ask how to put your drug enforcement
resources towards addressing something like crystal
methamphetamine. Fighting marijuana is the wrong
battle in any war on drugs. You have bigger issues to
deal with.
SENATOR OLSON asked Mr. Welsh whether medical marijuana is
becoming more difficult to obtain.
MR. WELSH agreed it is becoming more difficult to obtain medical
marijuana. He said while he discontinued using medical marijuana
when his symptoms became so severe that it no longer had a
affect, he has heard several people tell him that it is becoming
increasingly difficult to obtain medical marijuana prescriptions
as well as the drug itself.
SENATOR OLSON asked Mr. Welsh what drugs he is using at the
present time.
MR. WELSH said he has tried a series of drugs over the last two
years to accommodate his leg spasms and general pain:
Hydrocodons, Telcmaxite (now). He has tried several drugs that
don't work. He tried resterols that allowed him to sleep through
the night and them made him a zombie for the rest of the day.
3:09:23 PM
BEN CLAYTON JR., said:
I come to address you today out of concern for recent
actions taken which propose to restrict, rather than
expand, personal freedoms. I denounce this intrusion
for what it plainly is an end-run attempt to neuter
the robust freedom of liberty that accrues to me as an
Alaskan citizen by the constitution of the United
States and is amplified by the constitution of the
State of Alaska. While I am not an attorney, my
rudimentary understanding of Ravin is that I, as an
Alaskan citizen, am guaranteed not just the same
rights to privacy as any other citizen of the country,
but a greater freedom from governmental intrusion.
I am deeply concerned with my country's direction and
feel compelled to say so publicly. As I have said in
the past, it is important to stand up for what is
right even if you find yourself standing alone. This
may be an appropriate time to remind everyone that
Proposition 2 last fall was supported by over 125
thousand Alaskan voters, which by any count,
represents a substantial constituency.
3:11:42 PM
When asked by friends and associates why I supported
proposition 2 to decriminalize personal possession of
marijuana by adults, I respond in this manner:
Observation number one: our present system is broken,
it is easier for a kid in high-school to buy drugs
than a six pack of beer.
Observation two: prohibition has never worked. The
23rd Amendment prohibiting alcohol was, in retrospect,
a noble experiment. Well-meaning people attempted a
thing which many believed in their hearts be to be
best for the common good. What it actually amounted to
was a war on individual freedom. Fourteen years later
people grew weary of the rise of organized crime;
citizens were dismayed over the rise of urban
violence. Gangs were machine-gunning one another and
the occasional innocent bystander with such frequency
that everyone decided that change was imperative.
3:13:05 PM
Then, as now, the federal, state and local police were
swamped, pretending to enforce a law, which simply did
not enjoy popular support. People were being killed,
tax money was squandered, courts were packed with
cases that shouldn't have been there in the first
place, prisons grew over-crowded, more were built and
they soon became inadequate to house the guilty. Today
in America a greater population is in jail than in any
other nation in the world. The parallels between
these two policies are broadly demonstrable and
undeniable. Where is the pragmatic voice of reason to
lead us?
Observation number three: no one can vote on my civil
rights. The proposition that the majority can dictate
freedoms guaranteed by the courts to a minority is on
one hand laughable and absurd, on the other it is
alarming and frightening. The division of powers
obligates the court to, if I may paraphrase Thomas
Jefferson, "Protect the minority from the tyranny of
the majority". Using the logic of this train of
thought would imply that after the war between the
states, if the majority of voters in a state voted to
allow slavery, it would be allowed, as if the 13th
Amendment held no sway. This concept flies in the face
of the phrase "A nation of laws."
Observation four: repeating an action over and over
and expecting a different outcome is a sign of mental
illness. I know an 18-year-old man who had his future
irreparably harmed by this neo-Puritanism, which has
gripped our nation. He was an Eagle Scout, a member of
the ROTC, an honor student at a local high school. He
was caught with will less than a half gram of
marijuana. This man, rather than pursuing a college
degree and becoming a contributor to society, had lost
his scholarship and a potentially promising military
carrier and found himself seeking life, liberty, and
the pursuit happiness in a sub-minimum wage job in the
fast food industry.
Everyone has his or her own favorite constitutional
right. My favorite is the 9th Amendment conserving the
rights not given the government to the people. I love
this community, my state and country and the
philosophies upon which they are founded. As proud as
I am to live in the home of the brave, the only thing
that makes it worthwhile is our tireless effort to see
that it remains the land of the free.
3:16:35 PM
MR. MCLOUD-BALL advised Dr. Less Iverson, Professor or
Pharmacology at the University at Oxford, England was unable to
testify but has given a written statement:
I feel that the statements in SB 74 give an inaccurate
picture of the scientific data about marijuana and I
conclude that the medical risk associated with
marijuana use do not equate to those of harder drugs
such as those of heroin and cocaine or amphetamines.
In my view marijuana is a relatively safe drug and its
use does less medical and social harm than alcohol or
tobacco.
Doctor John Morgan, author of the book "Marijuana Myths,
Marijuana Facts," was going to testify today but was unable to
do so.
MR. MACLEOD-BALL summarized:
Most studies that you see will agree that there is no
significant accumulation of evidence that marijuana is
any more harmful today than it was in the 1970's. We
think that the evidence that has been submitted does
not support the findings that are presented as the
preamble to this bill and we ask you to make
appropriate adjustments.
MR. PARKER said:
The findings that pass out of this committee will go
before the Supreme Court eventually and will be the
legislature's scientific statement on marijuana in
Alaskan today. I urge you to consider very carefully
whether those 18 or 19 findings are each backed up by
the testimony that you have heard and if they are not,
do not advance them because they will wind up before
the courts.
3:20:10 PM
MR. GUANELI, Chief Assistant Attorney General with the Criminal
Division of the Department of Law (DOL), said:
This morning I was in a meeting in the Governor's
Office with representatives from the City of Kotzebue,
Chief of Staff of the Commissioner of Corrections, the
Governor, himself, and Senator Olson. Al Adams was
there representing the Kotzebue area and the Governor
asked him, we where talking about law enforcement in
Kotzebue, about whether the communities were wet or
dry or damp and how things were going in terms of
alcohol addiction and Al Adams said. You know, the
real problem now in our area is marijuana.
What Al Adams said was completely unprompted, I
haven't talked to Al Adams in a couple of years,
really rang true to me because it matches up with the
studies that which Christy Willard from the Division
of Behavioral Health talked about, the study from the
North West Artic Borough of middle school students in
which 10 percent had started using marijuana before
the age of 11. Corresponding studies in other areas in
the state show a much higher rate of marijuana use
among young people, among Alaska Natives, by young
Alaska Natives and in listening to all of the
testimony today, I come away with the idea that the
whole notion of use by our youth and use by Alaskan
Natives is really getting short-shrift. I didn't hear
anybody talk about use by Alaska Natives today but the
evidence is that it is much higher than use by non-
natives.
I really wonder if they are missing the point of the
Governor's bill, which is to focus on the emerging
problems. David Finkelstein said 'I haven't seen any
emerging problems with marijuana since the 70s, that
was his testimony just a few minutes ago and yet, we
have a situation where kids are using at a younger and
younger age. Alaska Natives are using at a higher
rate.
Lieutenant Story said that because of problems with
the court decision, the Crocker Decision that makes it
more difficult to stop marijuana growing, there is
more of a supply on the market in Alaska and that
means that there is more marijuana going out to rural
communities. So those who say that there is no
emerging problem with marijuana that it really is no
more harmful than it was in the 70s, I think are
missing the boat.
MR. MURRAY from the Drug Czar's office said that in
the last few years we have come to know a lot more
about the adolescent brain and its effects. The Office
of National Intelligence Center came out with a little
brochure that Mr. Hogan, from the Division of
Behavioral Health gave me last week and it's all about
marijuana! It says that 40 percent of high-school
students have tried it and it lists other drugs
compared to lesser percentages. Six percent use
steroids, 3 percent use heroin. It goes on to say that
the evidence now shows that a very low percentage of
the people who first use marijuana over the age of 18
become dependant on the drug. However 13 percent of
people who first use marijuana when they are below the
age of 14 become dependant on the drug. There was only
one mention of this study in my own hometown newspaper
and it did not concern marijuana, it was in the sports
page and it was titled "High-school Steroid Use on the
Rise", this says 6 percent of high school students use
steroids and that is what gets reported. I think that
part of it is the media doesn't want to acknowledge
that there is this problem, but I think that the
evidence has shown that there really is a problem.
Dr. Grinspoon recommended that if the committee adopts
the finding, it ought to annotate those findings with
specific evidence in the record that the state has
provided. We, in fact, have done that and we have
given you another half inch of materials. The first
portion of that goes through the findings one by one
and annotates which particular study supports all of
the studies findings. Frankly, I am comfortable with
all of them. I think that we could probably write the
one about comparing it to heroin addiction slightly
differently, but I am certainly comfortable with all
of them.
In reading the Ravin decision by the Alaska Supreme
Court, the court members presiding over the Ravin
decision made it very clear that they view their job
not to weight the competing scientific evidence the
way the legislature does. If you read the opinion,
they say that they cite other court opinions that say
that. But in Ravin they had no choice because there
was no legislative record.
CHAIR DYSON said it is his intention to review all of the
information provided to the committee in consideration of the
significance of authenticating the findings.
3:26:17 PM
SENATOR WILKEN moved to report SB 74 from committee with
individual recommendations and attached fiscal notes.
SENATOR ELTON objected and said:
There are some things that I have struggled with as we
have worked with this bill and I think that Mr.
Guaneli has attempted to make a very good argument for
the bill and I find myself at times, wanting to
believe even though I question some of the data. He
has focused a lot on use and I am trying to correlate
use with possible impacts on public health and public
safety. That is where a lot of the data has been
coming from and quite frankly, in the battle of
dueling experts, I am finding that those that are pro
this approach are using much more anecdotal evidence
than scientific evidence.
The findings sections bother me a lot and maybe they
bother me for the wrong reason, but, if I go through
most of the 19 points in the findings section, I find
that if I substitute the word 'alcohol' for
'marijuana' I make a more compelling case to
criminalize alcohol than I do marijuana, given the
studies that we know about alcohol. Now I am not going
to argue for criminalizing alcohol. We tried
prohibition and it didn't work, but I don't think that
a lot of those findings convince me that we should
recriminalize marijuana.
Finally, the thing that really bothers me is that
given the evidence that we have gotten from the
scientific community, the law enforcement, from
prosecutors, from people from the department of
transportation, the thing that bothers me are the
fiscal notes. We have a fiscal note from public
defenders saying that there is going to be a
substantial cost if this bill is passed. Now, I don't
know if that is true or not, but I suspect that there
will be an additional cost on the public defenders
side. I find it unbelievable that there will be no
cost on the law enforcement or the prosecution side.
3:30:02 PM
If we are to believe them, the only thing that I can
assume is that, without additional financial
resources, we are going to diverting additional
resources from other law enforcement issues. For those
reasons I object to the movement of this bill. I also
want to wrap up by saying that, given the nature and
the volume of the studies that we have gotten, it
probably would take an awful lot longer for us as
members of the HESS panel to sort through things and
find out which evidence is most compelling.
CHAIR DYSON asked for a roll call vote. Senator Wilken, Senator
Green, Senator Olson and Chair Dyson voted yea. Senator Elton
voted nay and SB 74 passed from committee.
There being no further business to come before the committee,
Chair Dyson at adjourned the meeting 3:31:39 PM.
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