Common Sense On Weed In D.C.

If only people would take action from Mr. Zuckerberg's words instead of nodding in agreement and turning the page.

Let’s stop wrecking lives over a bag of weed

By Paul Zukerberg, Published: May 24

In a little office on the third floor of Metropolitan Police Headquarters on Indiana Avenue NW is a small window to the future — open to some, closed to many. This is where you get your D.C. “police clearance.”
If you have never been there, that’s because you have never applied for a job flipping burgers, mowing lawns or cleaning restrooms in the District. Room 3033 is the human resources department for the poor, the young and the disenfranchised. The piece of paper you get there — if you have no criminal record — is what you need to land a job. Without it, you’re out of luck.
For 29 years, I have defended clients facing marijuana charges in the District. At every initial appearance, without fail, the judge admonishes the defendant either to stay in school or to hold down a job. In the majority of cases, however, a job is not possible because most employers in this town will not hire entry-level workers who do not have a police clearance.
What crime is increasingly tripping up those looking for work? Possession of marijuana.
In 1995, police in the District arrested about 1,850 people for having pot. By 2011, the number had skyrocketed to more than 6,000. It’s still rising.
To put that into perspective, there are twice as many marijuana arrests in the District as there are students graduating from D.C. high schools each year.
And though marijuana usage rates for blacks and whites are about the same, more than 90 percent of those arrested on pot charges in the District are black. Most of them are young men. By the time their cases are over, months or sometimes years later, they have gone from the unemployed to the long-term unemployed.
For young people denied jobs, crime and public assistance become far more enticing. Marijuana laws create a permanent underclass of people unable to join the legitimate workforce.
The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” Is it not cruel, and unusual, to deny a young person caught with a bag of weed his chance for entry into productive society? Long experience shows that legitimate employment is the best remedy for youthful indiscretions.
The costs of our current marijuana policy are extraordinary, both for those arrested and for society. We are spending millions of dollars, and tens of thousands of hours’ work by police, enforcing punitive marijuana laws. Add up what is spent on the arrests, booking, forensic testing, prosecution, court-appointed lawyers, judges, marshals and probation officers, and the cost of a single marijuana prosecution can begin to rival the cost of sending a student to college.
There are two types of marijuana users the District. Those who have avoided arrest, and those whose lives are derailed by involvement with the criminal courts. The first group is predominantly white and privileged. The second, black and disadvantaged. Research confirms what many people of color suspect: The disparity between white and black marijuana arrests is the result of racial bias in the application of the law.
I talked a great deal about this issue when I ran for D.C. Council in April’s special election. I didn’t win, but that doesn’t mean that the city’s leaders can’t take a sensible action to improve the prospects of thousands of young people.
It’s time for Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and the D.C. Council to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. Seventeen states and several major cities already have. Blue states such as Massachusetts and red states such as Nebraska have realized that it is counterproductive to pointlessly saddle their kids with criminal records. If Cambridge intellectuals and Nebraska “cornhuskers” can agree on decriminalizing marijuana, why can’t the District’s elected leaders figure this out, too?
Decriminalization is not legalization. With decriminalization, marijuana is still prohibited but the maximum penalty for those caught with small amounts is reduced from a criminal misdemeanor to a civil violation.
Adults are given a citation and fined. Juveniles are assigned to an educational class, and their parents are notified. Because there’s no arrest, there’s no arrest record — and no impediment to finding legitimate employment.
Public safety is not enhanced by locking up people for small amounts of pot. In fact, public safety is compromised, and society pays a hefty price, when law enforcement turns harmless young pot users into “lawbreakers” and drags them into a system that ultimately spits out them out on a dead-end street.
The writer is a D.C. lawyer.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-for-dc-to-stop-wrecking-lives-over-a-bag-of-weed/2013/05/24/e3bbc8cc-c314-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z4

Zuckerberg Puts Legalization On Debate In DC

Without the candidacy of Paul Zuckerberg for City Council in the recent election, this would not even be in discussion. Thank you Mr. Zuckerberg!

Some on D.C. Council plan bills to ease penalties for having marijuana

By Tim Craig, Published: May 15

Some D.C. Council members are crafting legislation to lessen the penalties for marijuana possession, hoping to settle the matter before outside groups petition the issue onto the ballot.
Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) — who as chairman of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee would shepherd the legislation — are formulating a proposal to eliminate criminal penalties for those caught with small amounts of cannabis or subject offenders to fines.
“Absolutely, it’s time we look at decriminalization of marijuana in the District of Columbia,” said Wells, who is running for mayor next year. “It’s time we enter the 21st century and stop criminalizing people . . . for what is not really a major crime.”
Wells and Barry said they will introduce a bill as early as this summer. Meanwhile, Anita Bonds (D-At Large) also is considering a measure to decriminalize marijuana or reduce penalties for possession. The initiatives would be debated by Wells’s committee.
Although there appears to be council support for a debate, those who support decriminalizing pot face considerable obstacles, including a skeptical council chairman, Phil Mendelson (D).
“I don’t think it’s the right time,” said Mendelson, who noted that Congress has blocked similar efforts in the District. “I don’t think decriminalization of marijuana will go over easily with Congress.”
But advocates say they think that there is growing momentum in the District and across the nation to change drug laws. On Monday, the Vermont Legislature voted to decriminalize up to an ounce of marijuana, joining more than a dozen states to remove the threat of jail for possession. Colorado is preparing to tax the sale of marijuana.
Steve Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project said advocates may seek a referendum on the matter in the District as early as November 2014. A recent poll of District voters commissioned by the group and the Drug Policy Alliance, which support decriminalizing marijuana, found broad backing for decriminalizing or legalizing the drug.
But Barry, who first supported marijuana decriminalization as mayor in the 1980s, said he would prefer that the council, instead of voters, decide the matter.
He said too many young African Americans get criminal records because of small amounts of marijuana possession. “These council members ought to stand up, and I think they will, on behalf of their constituency, who suffers mightily from this archaic situation,” said Barry, who was arrested for cocaine possession in 1990 while mayor.
Barry said he and Wells hope to get “six or seven” council members to co-sponsor a measure. On Wednesday, David Grosso (I-At Large) pledged his support but added that he wants to broaden the discussion to include legalization.
“The people on the streets dealing are the nonviolent drug offenders who are going to jail for dealing drugs,” said Grosso, who at age 22 was arrested in 1993 in Florida for having marijuana. “I think that is a serious problem.”
Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large) compared the marijuana debate to the ongoing debate over regulating food trucks. “It’s just something we are going to have to address,” said Orange, who is undecided on decriminalization.
Mendelson, however, said the issue should be decided by voters instead of the council to avoid congressional scrutiny. “As a matter of strategy, an initiative might be a better way to go, strategically, because then you have all the voters speaking,” he said.
Under city law, possession of up to half a pound of marijuana is punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine on a first offense.
Most first-time offenders are sentenced to community service and are eligible to have their records expunged. But Paul Zukerberg, a lawyer who specializes in marijuana cases, said many offenders get criminal records because they lack the resources to get their records expunged.
Zukerberg, who unsuccessfully ran for the council on a decriminalization platform, said thousands of people cannot find work because of criminal records.
“You have to aggressively go after it to have the charge removed,” he said. “And, as a practical matter, once your name is in a public database for a number of years, to try to go back and erase it is futile.”
Regardless of what happens on the council, Wells’s decision to push for decriminalization means the issue will most probably become part of the mayoral race.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), who has yet to announce whether he will seek reelection, has said the city should fully implement the medical marijuana law before considering decriminalization.
Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), a candidate for mayor, said she’s considering her response but also thinks the city should stay focused on its medical marijuana program.
“I think the notion about the concern of the number of people in our criminal-justice system because of minor drug offenses warrants looking at,” said Bowser, who is also on the judiciary committee. “But I am not prepared to say we need to go another step.”




http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/some-on-dc-council-plan-bills-to-ease-penalties-for-having-marijuana/2013/05/15/18feed18-bd87-11e2-97d4-a479289a31f9_story.html

Electric Cars and Vocational Education

Electric cars in DC schools? A great program to me - Milloy asks some good questions.

D.C. school was ahead of its time with electric car

By Courtland Milloy, Published: November 29, 2011

Whatever happened to the Volkswagen Rabbit that D.C. public school students converted to a battery powered racer back in the mid-1990s? The car had been the crown jewel of the Electric Vehicle Program at Phelps Vocational High in Northeast Washington. Students were always parading it around town and putting it on display at auto shows. They even got to race it at the Richmond International Speedway.
Then, while Phelps was closed for renovation between 2002 and 2008, the car disappeared from the school’s auto shop garage. When the new and improved Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering High School reopened, a scaled-down version of the auto mechanics course was moved to another school and the Electric Vehicle Program was discontinued.
So where is the car?
Advocates for restarting the program could sure use it as an example of how D.C. students once led the way in the use of clean energy. And with President Obama pressing on with plans to get 1 million electric vehicles on the nation’s roads by 2015, the city could recharge a program that had been ahead of its time — and it would still be right on time.
“The electric car industry worldwide is growing rapidly because of climate change and efforts to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels,” said LeRoy Hall, a retired Pepco employee who helped start the EVP at Phelps. “Yet our students are denied training in this expanding and potentially lucrative field.”
In recent months, Hall has testified before the D.C. Council, urging its members to restart the EVP. Other supporters have made similar appeals to school officials — as well as inquiries about the whereabouts of the student-built car.
Hall says he’s still waiting for a response.
When it comes to preparing students for work in the auto industry in the Washington area, Suitland High School in Prince George’s County, the Edison Academy at Thomas Edison High in Fairfax County and the Thomas Edison High School of Technology in Montgomery County offer excellent instruction. In the District, Ballou High got the remnants of the Phelps auto mechanics program while students at Spingarn focus on collision repair.
The EVP at Phelps was in a class by itself.
“Even students who weren’t in the program started coming around; they couldn’t believe what we were doing,” said Dave Goldstein, president emeritus of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington who also volunteered at Phelps. “They were saying, ‘What if you did this?’ and ‘What if you did that?’ They weren’t just standing around looking or giving answers by rote. They were making suggestions and coming up with new ideas. That’s how you know real learning is taking place. Kids who had been delinquent started coming back to school. They would come back to school at night to work on the car.”
Converting that Rabbit into an electric-powered racer had required the practical application of physics, electronics, electromagnetism, aerodynamics and hydraulics. Students researched different kinds of electric motors and the type and quantity of batteries needed to run them. They removed the old gasoline-powered engine, the gas tank and fuel lines, and replaced the automatic transmission with a five-speed stick shift.
They installed the electric motor and built their own electrical testing devices using resistance coils from old electric space heaters, put in some electrical adaptors and special gauges.
And it ran just fine. No batteries conking out, catching fire or exploding.
Perhaps even more importantly, the students worked as a team. They cooperated, made decisions as a group and delegated responsibilities. They weren’t just learning how to build a car; they were also picking up on the civic skills needed to build and sustain a democracy.
The team of that brought the EVP to Phelps included Hall, Goldstein, Edward Torrence, who was the Phelps auto shop teacher, and Dwayne French, one of Torrence’s students who went on to run the automotive technology program at Ballou. All say they would help start another EVP if asked.
As for the car, perhaps the city towed it from the auto shop and mistakenly took it to a government vehicle maintenance lot. It’s worth a look. The car was pearl white with the number 51 stenciled on the sides; students said they wanted the car to symbolize the District’s quest to become the 51st state.
Obviously the city didn’t think much of their effort.
“We’re still looking for it,” D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown, an avowed supporter of vocational education programs, told me recently.
Better yet, he could get the program restarted and just let the students build another one.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-school-was-ahead-of-its-time-with-electric-car/2011/11/29/gIQAqV418N_story.html