Into the mainstream
A battle waged for decades, the legalization of marijuana has recently reappeared on state legislative agendas across the nation.

By Alisha Brown
Staff Reporter

The medicinal use of marijuana in Texas may soon stand up to the judicial gavel if a bill proposed by representative Terry Keel gains approval.

The bill was introduced Feb. 27 to the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee of the Texas House of Representatives to allow offenders to use the defense that possessing the illegal drug was recommended by their physician.

Photo by D‡vid Dunai - Senior Photographer

Keel, a Republican representative and former sheriff and district attorney of Travis County, made provisions in the bill for a patient of a licensed physician with a bona fide medical condition to use their doctor’s recommendation for the use of marijuana to ease pain and suffering as an affirmative defense.

This provision stops short of the legalizing possession of the drug. It only qualifies medicinal purposes as a legitimate defense in court.

In Texas, possessing less than an ounce of marijuana is still considered a class B misdemeanor punishable by jail time, detective R.J. Ramos with the Fort Worth Police Department narcotics division said.

“Having two to four ounces is a class A misdemeanor and above that it goes into the felonies,” Ramos said.

Other states have taken bolder steps in state legislation. A bill passed by a 6-1 vote Tuesday in a New Mexico legislative committee to reduce the penalties of possessing less than an ounce of marijuana, which is presently punishable by jail time in the state.

The bill, proposed by Gov. Gary Johnson, would still make marijuana possession punishable by a $300 fine, but reduces the charge from a misdemeanor to the fine.

“It’s not condoning the use of drugs, but it’s making a statement that it’s not criminal,” Johnson said in an interview with CNN.

Although New Mexico is only a border away, the likeliness for Texas to reduce criminal penalties is unlikely, said Don Jackson, chairman of the political science department.

“Anywhere in the Bible Belt is less likely to make that change,” he said. “There is a difference in conservative traditions. Texas is more morally based than libertarian.”

Similar propositions have passed in about eight other states, according to Katharine Huffman, director of the New Mexico drug policy project for the Lindesmith Center.

California passed Proposition 215 in 1996 allowing for the possession and cultivating of marijuana when recommended by a physician for medicinal purposes such as easing symptoms of glaucoma and cancer.

Arizona passed its own version of the bill, Proposition 200, in the same year, approving marijuana “to treat a disease or to relieve the pain and suffering of seriously or terminally ill patients.”

It also prohibited judges from sending convicted nonviolent drug offenders to prison until their third conviction.

Jackson said the federal government is a long way away from passing legislation to even the penalties across the board.

“I think the war on drugs was lost a long time ago,” he said. “The government is now going to demand treatment not prevention. But it’s going to be difficult to get by Congress to get out in front of this one.”

However, a week ago congressman Barney Frank re-introduced legislation to repeal some federal penalties for possessing marijuana.

Federal provisions currently ban federal financial aid up to a year to students who have been convicted of any federal or state drug offense, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Passage of the bill would give authority to bar that provision based on the severity of the crime and whether the offenders were taking steps to rehabilitate themselves, Frank said on (http://www.norml.org).

Twenty-three co-sponsors have signed Frank’s proposal and more than 70 civil and national education groups have endorsed it, according to the NORML Web site.

Alisha Brown
a.k.brown2@student.tcu.edu