Marijuana: the Fuzz’ Favorite Tool

National Public Radio’s local Seattle station, KPLU, ran a five-day series on the soon-to-pass I-502 bill. The bill decriminalizes adult use for up to one ounce of dry cannabis and includes a contentious DUID clause.

From the fourth installment in the series stems a rare gem of public servant buffoonery, warranting the criticisms cannabis activists have levied for years. Pat Slack, commander of the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force and drunk driver extraordinaire, spouted forth a torrent of unusually uncensored confessions of persecution and bigotry for the public to marinate in.

I-502 campaign director Allison Holcomb and anti-502 advocate, Pat Slack.

From KPLU:

 “‘Are there people in jail for possession of marijuana? Ya, there are, but most of ’em have violated a parole or probation,’ . . . ‘So the judge has said you can’t use marijuana, because when you use marijuana you commit other crimes and then they get caught with it and they go to jail,’ Slack said.”

While this is one of Slack’s more tame assertions, I can’t help but repeat this line: “because when you use marijuana you commit other crimes.”

Ahem.

Now, this may be a gross misquoting of the “judge” by Slack, but the use of faulty logic to implicate cannabis as the precursor to criminal activity harkens back to the fear-mongering generated by Anslinger and Co. during the nascent stages of the New Prohibition. Today, such misleading intelligence represents the outdated use of anti-cannabis rhetoric pervasive in the rank and file of anti-drug institutions. What crimes, Mr. Slack? What havoc does cannabis encourage us to wreak? Surely, such ignorance isn’t befitting of a alleged public servant.

Here’s where it gets sickening… KPLU paraphrases (I can only assume the paraphrasing is due to the Slack’s inarticulate rambling) and then takes a direct quote:

“For example, he [Slack] says, as an officer, you might get a call to go to the local 7-11 because of a public disturbance. You get there and find the perpetrators have marijuana on them. You can book them and take them to jail.

Or, perhaps, you have a major crime case. The police can hold the suspect on a marijuana charge to buy time while they investigate.

‘Whether it’s a robbery or murder or rape or burglary, or whatever. So, yeah, it’s a tool,’ he said.”

When discussing incarceration or crime, it’s difficult to navigate around the stigmas of racial profiling that plague our jail-hungry nation. Slack refers to cannabis as a tool, but for what? As it was a tool for Anslinger during his persecution of African-American musicians, so it is for Slack and his cronies, er, contemporaries.

Cannabis isn’t a tool to uphold antiquated models of racial persecution (which Latinos now suffer from), nor does it instigate crime. However, those who dictate drug laws in the U.S. disagree. These people are in charge of cannabis’ fate, and according to Slack: it’s their tool. Suffice to say, they’ll be loathe to give up this tool for the good of the American public.