Rick Steves, the European travel expert and longtime advocate for legal marijuana, says newly implemented laws in Colorado and Washington are key first steps in changing the national conversation on pot.
Steves, who hails from Washington state, spoke to The Cannabist's John Wenzel about his views on marijuana legalization and how newly legal weed is playing out in both his home state and Colorado. According to Steves, one of the critical effects of the new laws is that fewer individuals will go to jail for minor drug offenses.
"The main thing now in our two states is we're not locking up poor and black and brown people because of [cannabis use], and I think that’s a great thing," Steves said. "Maybe technically we still do but it's not as rampant."
An American Civil Liberties Union report released last year found that black Americans are almost four times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for marijuana possession. That number rose to 7.5 or 8.5 times more likely in certain parts of the country, including Washington, D.C. and Minnesota. Another study on overall arrests, released by the journal Crime & Delinquency last month, found that by 49 percent of black males and 46 percent of Hispanic males are arrested by the age of 23 compared to 38 percent of white males.
Steves said he sees all aspects of the legalization fight -- from recreational pot to industrial hemp -- from a civil liberties perspective.
"I'm just tired of rich white people smoking pot with impunity and poor kids and black kids getting locked up because of it," Steves said. "It's racism. You can't take their vote away, but you can disenfranchise them by taking their lives away."
Steves, who has written about Amsterdam's relationship with marijuana, said he was "hugely" surprised that Colorado's marijuana policy has turned out to be more liberal than the Netherlands' famously tolerant approach to drugs.
"It surprises me hugely because for 20 years I've been saying, 'Look at the Dutch. They're a live-and-let-live culture and a joint is about as exciting as a can of beer to them.” But the Dutch were kind of easygoing about the existence of that gray area: the relationships between wholesalers and retailers," Steves said. "They decided not to go there because that's the complicated nut to crack, and in Colorado and Washington we were the the first to say, 'We’re not just going to — wink wink — say you can buy and smoke it in coffee shops and not ask where they get their inventory. We're going to establish a system where we can tax and regulate it.' That puts us WAY ahead of Europeans."
Steves, known for his travel books and public television show, has long spoken out on his support for legal pot. He currently sits on the board of NORML, a group focused on decriminalizing marijuana, and was a co-sponsor of Initiative 502, Washington's successful marijuana ballot measure.
"Rather than acting as a deterrent, the US criminalization of marijuana drains precious resources, clogs our legal system, and distracts law enforcement attention from more pressing safety concerns," Steves writes on his website. "Of the many billions of tax dollars we invest annually fighting our war on drugs, more than two-thirds is spent on police, courts, and prisons. Meanwhile, European nations — seeking a cure that isn't more costly than the problem itself — spend a much larger portion of its drug policy funds on doctors, counselors, and clinics."
Click here to read The Cannabist's full interview with Steves.
Before You Go
“I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should be," he said back in 2000 in an interview with Rolling Stone. "We really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment.”
He's since spoken about the issue of marijuana and drug prohibition a number of times. Last year, he appeared in the documentary, "Breaking the Taboo," where he argued that the war on drugs has been a failure.
“I don't want to promote that but I also don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake," Paul said. "There are a lot of young people who do this and then later on in their twenties they grow up and get married and they quit doing things like this. I don't want to put them in jail and ruin their lives."
"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Robertson said in an interview with The New York Times in 2012. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."
Robertson has made similar remarks on his "700 Club" show before, but the Times, like many others, perhaps felt they must have misheard him.
“[T]o me, marijuana is no different than wine," he said in an interview with High Times. "It's a drug of choice. It's meant to alter your current state -- and that's not a bad thing. It's ridiculous that marijuana is still illegal. We're still fighting for it ... It comes down to individual decision-making. There are millions of people who smoke pot on a social basis and don't become criminals. So stop with that argument -- it doesn't work.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
From his campaign platform:
"By managing marijuana like alcohol and tobacco - regulating, taxing and enforcing its lawful use - America will be better off. The billions saved on marijuana interdiction, along with the billions captured as legal revenue, can be redirected against the individuals committing real crimes against society."
“Marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry," he said in an interview with High Times. "My wife says, and I agree with her, that what would be really great for Maine would be to legalize dope completely and set up dope stores the way that there are state-run liquor stores.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
While marijuana has been made legal for various uses in a number of states, the Obama administration continues to enforce federal laws across the nation. This has led to numerous raids of marijuana-based businesses, as well as prosecutions of growers and other people involved in pot.
"I think it's about time we legalize marijuana," he said. "We have to make a choice in this country. We either put people who are smoking marijuana behind bars or we legalize it, but this little game we're playing in the middle is not helping us, it is not helping Mexico and it is causing massive violence on our southern border."
"Decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Portugal's 10 year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. We must stop criminalising drug users. Health and treatment should be offered to drug users - not prison. Bad drugs policies affect literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the world. We need to provide medical help to those that have problematic use - not criminal retribution."
"I don't tend to say this publicly, but we can see it's a curative thing. The narcotics industry is also enormous. It funds terrorism and - this is a huge problem in America - fuels the foreign gangs," he said. "More than 85 percent of men incarcerated in America are on drug-related offences. It costs $40,000 a year for every prisoner. If they were really serious about the economy there would be a sensible discussion about legalization."
While Obama and his administration have responded to state marijuana reforms by saying they must enforce federal laws against marijuana, the president has the power to reschedule the drug, which would allow federal authorities to shift resources away from a prohibitive approach.
"However, I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts," Palin said. "If somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society."While Obama has spoken repeatedly about not being interested in prosecuting small-time marijuana users, he hasn't done anything to prevent them from being busted by law enforcement in states where the drug is still illegal.
In 2012, the former president said he was fine with state legalization efforts, though he himself doesn't necessary support legalizing the drug.
“As president 35 years ago I called for decriminalizing -- but not legalizing -- the possession of marijuana,” Carter said. “Since then, U.S. drug policies have been very horrible to our own country because of an explosion in prison populations.”
"I don't have a problem with states experimenting with this sort of thing I think that's the role of states," Cuccinelli said, according to Ryan Nobles of WWBT.
“The proof will be in the policy. The war on drugs has gotten a really bad rap, when you ask people if they support the war on drugs they say no ... [Obama's] budget once again has the same old drug warrior policy ... I reject the assumption that everybody who is using drugs needs treatment or is an addict and needs to get arrested ... Not all drug use is abuse.”
He's kept up the fight for drug policy reform since.
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
“We've been fighting the war on drugs since the '60s. And guess what? Trillions of dollars later, we are losing," Sharpton said during a segment on MSNBC. "When you look at the disparities in sentencing drug offenders, hasn't this kind of injustice undermined the legitimacy of our criminal justice system?”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
Tancredo continued, “The arguments against marijuana today are the same as the arguments against liquor years ago.”
Years later, the former congressman agreed to smoke pot on camera with a documentary filmmaker, a deal that he later backed out of.
