March 22 marked the 30th anniversary of the release of a report from former President Richard Nixon’s National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse that recommended that the federal government decriminalize both marijuana use and “casual” distribution. “Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety,” read the report, headed by then-Gov. Raymond Shafer of Pennsylvania. Nixon ultimately rejected the commission’s findings, which the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and other groups say led to the current state of drug prohibition.
According to recently declassified documents obtained by Common Sense for Drug Policy, Nixon — arguing that marijuana could be linked to the “downfall of civilized society” — attempted to persuade Shafer to reject his own commission’s findings outright. As a result, NORML says, nearly 13.2 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges since 1972, including nearly 735,000 in 2000 alone — the last year for which national statistics are available. For more info, or to listen to tapes of Nixon’s conversations with Shafer, see CSDP online at www.csdp.org.
This article appears in March 29 • 2002.