Political pushback against marijuana

Marijuana is being "normalized" in Oregon, but there is pushback and nationwide lobbying to keep marijuana illegal.

A lobbyist against pot shares a perspective with me.

But first, a reminder of my perspective.  I don't use marijuana or alcohol, either one.  It gives me an unusual perspective in my circle of acquaintances.  I think they are both psychoactive drugs, with some tendencies toward dependency and misuse.  I tend to see them as pretty similar, with alcohol being somewhat more dangerous.

This perspective allows me to see marijuana as an industry in its infancy, rather than a cultural and public health disaster.  Few people advocate banning alcohol; many people wish to ban marijuana, including the US Attorney General.  A lot of people who drink alcohol want to ban marijuana.  From my perspective this is inconsistent, and therefore curious. What is going on?

Fighter jet sets off diversionary flares

This blog has taken the position that there is a great divide in this country between cultural liberals and cultural conservatives and that the two main political parties have split along those lines now that the Republican Party is under the heavy influence of Trump.  When Trump needs a diversion from Russia troubles or health care troubles he deftly ignites a culture war bomb: Look at those disgusting NFL players disrespecting our flag, soldiers, and first responders!!

My own sense is that the divide between the parties has come about in large part because of a failure of Progressives-Liberals-Democrats.  They have failed to understand the moral values of respect for authority, for group cohesion, for unifying symbols of loyalty and duty.  They have carelessly allowed themselves to become identified as anti-police, non-military, secular to the point of disrespect for church going, and unconcerned about protecting the cohesive specialness of "American-ness."   Those values have great appeal to many people.  It would not require a wholesale change of policies for Democrats, but it would indeed require very different messaging.  A Democratic presidential candidate who was conspicuously patriotic--a JFK, for example--might switch the paradigm.  The Democrat would look like the genuine patriot; Trump like the self serving philistine.

Trump at South Carolina Tea Party Convention

It is not clear to me that a modern day JFK could win the Democratic primary.   He might well be thought too religious, too white, too eager to stand in front of flags.  The GOP and Trump have worked to define Democrats as the globalist party, not the American one.  Democrats backed into that trap, allowing Republicans to claim to be the patriotic party.  This is fixable by Democrats, if they are alert to the problem.

American beer.  Un-American marijuana.  One battlefield of the culture war is how to think about marijuana.  A great many cultural conservatives approve of alcohol and drink it, but want to suppress marijuana.  Budweiser beer represents all-American with flags waving cultural conservatism; marijuana represents disrespect for American values.    

Robert Guyer is an engineer, an attorney, a lobbyist-coach, a southern evangelical Christian, living in Florida.  He is the older brother of Thad Guyer, a frequent guest post author.  He asserts that the real divide in America is narrower than general cultural conservatism.   He says it comes down to religion, first of all, because it shapes values and culture.  It is the most Christian states that will lead the opposition to marijuana.  He is part of that effort.

I am not religious, but a great many Americans are.  He is among a group of people--Evangelical Christians--who voted for Trump some 85%-15%. That huge margin helped make Trump president.  It is important to hear from them.  The Guest Post below is a lightly condensed and edited letter to me: 

Robert Guyer

Guest Post, by Robert Guyer

Peter, I have been considering your comments earlier this week to me on marijuana and researching your thinking. Proverbs 27:17 says “ As iron sharpens iron,  so one person sharpens another.” This is what your thinking does for me, especially as I draft presentations to state legislatures on opposing non-medical marijuana legalization.   In lobbying this I keep in mind four principles:

1) Facts don’t vote
2) Self-interest is the engine of government
3) Love of money is the root of all evil
4) Culture trumps strategy

1) The facts are the same regardless of where they are spoken in Alabama or Oregon– driving under the influence of marijuana increases traffic accidents. (see * below) But technical facts in law making merely support predetermined political decisions based upon lawmaker cost-benefit ratios as to how a vote impacts his or her political well-being. Further, in most cases lawmakers have not the time, interest, or technical back ground to consider facts.

2 and 3) Lawmakers first vote their political fortunes.  Lord Acton said, “Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them.” Phillip Stanhope (1694-1773) If the political winds shift so do they and the winds are shifting as to marijuana. Support for marijuana has reached ~ 40% with Rs and ~ 60% with Ds and Is. (Click Here for Washington Post article.

Marijuana promises 1. tax-income to the state and 2. reduction of expenditures of state money for enforcement, including dealer incarceration, etc. 

A New England lobbyist colleague echoed my thinking on what motivates lawmakers there, telling me Democrats are being pushed from the left on this. "I think its two factors. The first is financial. Since Massachusetts has passed recreational pot, the proponents are dangling the loss of tax income as an incentive to have us pass the same legislation. Secondly, since RI is a blue state, the Democrats control both houses and the Governor's seat, so any item that is liberal in nature and can potentially get them some votes is worth passing. They are also concerned about the growth of the "Progressives" which have won some seats from the more "conservative" Dems. This is the second year that it has been proposed, and has not made it out of committee. My thoughts are that the super left will keep introducing, but the moderates (who are in the leadership positions) will hold the bills for further study.”

4) Finally, I believe culture trumps strategy. A map of states with enacted recreational marijuana laws is quite similar to a map of states that “support” transgenders which is similar to a map for most tolerant states for homosexuals – no surprise that Mississippi is least “tolerant” per the map and Rhode Island most "tolerant." It is culture that in the end determines “progressive” vs “conservative” states and the laws they adopt. The 2016 electoral map also resembles the previous three maps. The pot smoking, gay “tolerant,” and transgender “supporting states” are Democrat dominant ranging from exclusively so in CA to purple MN.

I have been asked by fellow lobbyists what causes the huge cultural divide among the states. I replied, religion. 

Most religious/least religious

Of course this may be a predictable thought from a southern evangelical. Yet, the influence of religion I believe determines greatly personal and political attitudes. For example, 19 per cent of Maine lawmakers self-declare themselves to be Christian while 99 per cent of Tennessee lawmakers so self-declare; both patterns hold in New England and in the South. As I have written to you in the past, Christianity doesn’t make people “good,” it just makes them better than they would otherwise be. “Good” I define as New Testament morality.

What influence upon society is there when each Sunday people are admonished to love your neighbor, tell the truth, feed the hungry, etc.  “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon government, far from it.  We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” James Madison: 1778, to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia. The marijuana map also resembles a map of “religiosity per state” with less religiosity also correlating with gay, transgender, and the 2016 voter maps above. (How religious is your state? Click Here: Pew Research 

Of course, there are many other sociological factors at play such that religion imperfectly followed isn’t the entire answer to differences among the states. For example, the older a person the less welcoming to marijuana. And love of money remains the root of all evil and the “sins of the flesh” are eternally seductive to every human being. Money and the flesh welcome the slippery slope, even if impaired drivers result. And alcohol as you have written is worse than pot, except when they are combined as they are in ~1/3 of users. Since presumably alcohol consumption isn't going up and marijuana use will increase with more states allowing it, then the number of drug involved deaths will increase. (* below)

Your analyses as to why pot smoking will win I believe is spot on. Good lobbying can slow it down. I will continue my work in legislatures lobbying against marijuana legalization.  The big change will be when Congress repeals federal prohibitions on pot which will occur when Ds again run Congress. Of course the federal courts may pull out of the air another wholly unconstitutional decision to advance pot as they did with abortion, gay rights and marriage, with some utterly laughable basis using "penumbras" and reasoning which when unmasked is no more than “just because we said so.”


* "Epidemiologic data show that the risk of involvement in a motor vehicle accident (MVA) increases approximately 2-fold after cannabis smoking." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23220273