Odam in the Dellums era:

The phrase “perfect storm” describes how several unrelated events can combine to create a force much more powerful than any of its components taken separately. Something like that seems to be happening with cannabis policy in Oaksterdam.

For some time, the prevailing wind in this old port has been moving cannabis policies away from prohibition, starting with the city’s long history of medical cannabis distribution and regulation.    

In 2004, voters passed Measure Z by a two-to-one margin, to make private adult cannabis sales, cultivation and possession the lowest law enforcement priority and calling for taxed regulation of adult sales, similar to alcohol, as soon as possible.

After two years delay, the city may be ready to implement the will of the voters more completely, in no small part as the result of its new mayor, former Congressman Ron Dellums, a very long-term supporter of cannabis legalization.   

Back in the 1970’s while a member of Congress, he was also a member of the Advisory Board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and even spoke at a number of NORML conferences.   

Opposing the war on cannabis was probably not his most controversial position. He is also a very long-term opponent of US militarism, and now he has been shown to have been well ahead of his time on both issues. Today, he has a chance to act on his opposition to two seemingly unrelated wars in his home town.   

The Iraq fiasco, like the Vietnam War, has had the effect of undermining the credibility of government propaganda on the home front. Of course, the government’s reefer madness campaign is America’s longest running incitement to violence, at home and abroad. It would appear that the media have once again learned the hard way that “reporter” and “stenographer” are not synonyms and are beginning to ask long suppressed questions.

Violence at home was very much on Dellums’ mind when he delivered his inaugural address. He sadly noted that Oakland had 148 murders in 2006, a 57 percent jump from 2005; these “murders do not speak to community; people with a sense of community don’t kill each other.”   

If these murders were typical of those in the rest of the country, most of them were the result of the misuse of a legal drug and the rest were the violence surrounding the trade in illicit drugs. In short, they were the result of drunkenness and the drug war. It is virtually certain that none were the result of cannabis use.   

Mayor Dellums. Oaksterdam News file photo.

The trade in contraband cannabis is much less violent than that in most other contraband, but one should not underestimate the violence caused by its prohibition. Almost 700,000 Americans were arrested for cannabis possession in 2005; searched, handcuffed, shackled and placed behind bars. In order to arrest these hundreds of thousands, millions must feel threatened. Does all of this violence have no impact on society as a whole? Does the promotion of alcohol and the suppression cannabis not promote violence?   

Dellums rightly says that “people with a sense of community don’t kill each other.” But doesn’t the suppression of cannabis kill the sense of community for a large part of the population?

“Chaos theory” says that the ripple effect from small isolated events can have a much wider impact. This is certainly true of the chaos of cannabis prohibition.   

Regarding the Drug War, I reflect on the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.:   

“One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.” — Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?   

Chaos or community?

Ron Dellums has made his choice.

* Cowan is a former director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)