NON-PROFIT BOSS: MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION CAN CURE ECONOMY
October 20, 2009
By Suzanne Zionts For Fox Business News.com


All this week FOX Business is investigating the medicinal pot business and national debate on legalization in a special report called High Noon.

Below is a Q&A with Stephen Gutwillig, California head of the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit that ran legalization campaigns and wrote medical marijuana laws in 8 of the 14 states where it is legal. Famed financier George Soros is among the organization’s public supporters.

Q: What is your reaction to the Obama administration’s announcement that it will not target medical marijuana suppliers and users?
Gutwillig: Our feeling is this is a victory for patients who use marijuana and medicine for very serious conditions. It is the first acknowledgement on a federal level that patients shouldn’t be arrested for using their medicine. It is good to have clarity from the Obama administration, in sharp contrast to their predecessors; they will not use federal resources to prosecute marijuana patients or their providers who are compiling with state laws.

Q: What would you expect to be the next steps for medicinal marijuana policy?
Gutwillig: The next stops would be the adoption of medical marijuana laws by more than the states that already have approval since California led the way in 1996. The next step would also be for the federal government to formerly acknowledge the legal existence of medical marijuana. These guidelines that exist today for medical marijuana don’t have the force of law. Marijuana is still considered a Schedule 1 drug, which means it’s considered as dangerous as heroin and has no medical benefits whatsoever. The Obama administration needs to support a bill that Rep. (Barney) Frank has introduced that would fix those problems.

Q: Is your organization pushing for complete legalization of marijuana? What are your main reasons for your campaign?
Gutwillig: We favor regulation of marijuana for non-medical use as well. Within this context, regulating marijuana for adults would eliminate all the obstacles that medical marijuana patients currently face in accessing their medicine, but more broadly, marijuana prohibition has been a colossal failure like alcohol prohibition. Marijuana laws have created a vast, increasingly violent underground economy that guarantees profits to brutal criminal syndicates on both sides of the boarder. It robs taxpayers of billions of dollars of potential new revenue, wasting an estimated $8 billion of scarce law enforcement resources and making criminals of tens of millions of otherwise law abiding Americans.

Q: Do you expect to see a quick path to legalization on the heels of Monday’s announcement?
Gutwillig: I think the pace of reform is going to be somewhere in the middle. There is enormous momentum to reform marijuana laws in general. We are well into majority territory among Democrat Americans in western states and everyone under 30.

Q: How do you think legalization would impact the economy overall?
Gutwillig: Marijuana already plays a huge roll in the U.S. economy. It is California’s number one cash crop valued at an estimated $14 billion a year. We can no longer afford to ignore this source of new revenue as the local and national economies continue to struggle.