Many Utah lawmakers acknowledge the extremity of the state's law-enforcement establishment, but insist that moderated behavior should be an instrument of the legislature, not plebiscitary eruptions financed by a billionaire on the loose. Local supporters of Initiative B comment that human rights are not of mere parochial concern. They point out that the Mormon community in Utah felt no compunction about lobbying against gay marriages in Hawaii.
What's inching along, with tortured slowness, is a reaction against the excesses of the marijuana laws. Critics of moderation correctly point out that there is a difference between a reform of the marijuana laws designed to permit patients to get relief from marijuana, and flat-out legalization. Dr. Herbert Kleber, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and medical director of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, makes the point that there is less reason to put medical marijuana on the ballot than the legalization of it. "They reallly are two totally different issues. One is in many ways a political issue, but the other is a scientific issue. Marijuana for medicinal purposes should not be decided by referendum. Would you have had a referendum on penicillin for pneumonia?"
But that license, acknowledged and approved in California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Alaska, Maine and D.C., is being used to propel the more general sanctions, as under Proposition 5 in Alaska. California's Mendocino County, upholding the tradition that Californians will always -- somewhere, somehow -- identify themselves with extremes, has scheduled a county initiative that would permit anyone to grow marijuana anywhere in Mendocino. There is cultural attraction to the idea, in part because Mendocino is a fertile area for the best pot -- or so, I hasten to comment, I have heard.
Although the subject comes up, it certainly will not appear on the agenda of either of the political parties. A politician running for national office might as well acclaim Arafat as sanction the legalization of pot. In little enclaves of intelligence and courage one spots the exceptions: Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, and (former) Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore. But all that can be said with absolute confidence about them is that they will never run for national office. Even with George Soros behind them.