Remembering old tokes and rethinking small-time pot crimes

I read Kathleen Parker's column on our opinion page Tuesday with alarm.

I had no idea that columnists were being called upon to come clean on their sordid pot-smoking pasts as part of a great national marijuana debate. I missed the memo.

So. Yeah, I've smoked pot. And no, not every time I write a column. I swear.

Also, who cares? I don't even care much as I type it. I doubt you do. But it's supposed to let everyone know I can relate to the debate. “He's cool,” as I might have been introduced to a dorm room full of nervous people with a towel stuffed under the door.

Legal pot in Colorado is stoking a fresh look at America's relationship with cannabis. There's a libertarian part of me that likes the notion of legalization. There's also a part of me that once thought Jeff Spicoli was cool.

Now, I worry more about Jeff Spicoli taking my daughter to prom.

As I've written before, I favor allowing seriously sick people to access marijuana legally with hopes of relieving their pain and suffering, subject to regulation. I'm not to the point, yet, where I favor flat-out legalization. I don't think Iowa is there yet, either.

But I think it's time to reconsider whether possessing less than an ounce of marijuana still should be a ticket into the criminal justice system, with all its potential and permanent effects and consequences. In Iowa, first- and second-offense possession charges are a serious misdemeanor, rising to an aggravated misdemeanor on strike three. Each of these carry the possibility of hefty fines and jail time.

And, according to last year's American Civil Liberties Union study, blacks in Iowa are more than eight times more likely to be arrested for pot possession than whites, the highest such disparity in the nation. Pot use rates among whites and blacks are similar.

In a presentation a year ago, the Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy argued that very few of these offenders go to prison and that possession cases “frequently” result in deferred judgments and a $315 fine. If that's the case, why is small-time possession still a criminal offense? And although my kid may get a deferred judgment for smoking a joint at an outdoor campus concert, will a black kid on Des Moines' north side get the same break? Statistics would suggest otherwise.

In Massachusetts, getting caught with less than an ounce is a civil, not a criminal, offense. They take your weed and you pay a fine. If you're a minor, you take a drug abuse awareness course. What you don't get is a criminal record.

I like that approach. Linn County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden does not.

“I think that would be a step in the wrong direction,” Vander Sanden said. “I think that it would give the impression that marijuana is not the dangerous drug that I think that it is. I think it just encourages it.”

I admire Vander Sanden's passion on the issue of drug abuse. As a prosecutor, he's seen the cost of abuse. And we seem to agree that driving on pot, selling it, cultivating it and deploying your cantaloupe calves to haul it by the bale should remain illegal in Iowa.

But I disagree that a smarter, more measured approach to a low-level marijuana offense would make Iowa less safe.

At the very least, we should have a real discussion, especially among the skittish inhabitants of our Statehouse. Beats swapping pot stories.