Journalist makes the economic case for cannabis legalization in 'Too High to Fail"

By WALLACE BAINE
Source: santacruzsentinel.com

A few years ago, Doug Fine was giving a talk on sustainability when he happened to share an airport shuttle ride with a woman who was a USDA-approved expert on biofuel.

The two struck up a conversation about the possibilities of biofuel when Fine asked, "Well, what about hemp?"

"Instantly, she said, Oh, that's the best one of all. Hemp can provide benefits that corn and soy can't. But we can't look at it as an alternative fuel,' " Fine said.

Now it is Fine who is making that case and more in his new book "Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution." He comes to the Capitola Book Café to discuss the current political and economic status of cannabis tonight.

The book, he said, is an economic argument that the prohibition against cannabis and the larger War on Drugs is hurting the American economy. The book has already gotten the attention of pop culture's most prominent critic of the drug war, comic and talk-show provocateur Bill Maher.

Maher reviewed the book for the New York Times and wrote, "He has written a well-researched book that uses the clever tactic of making the moral case for ending marijuana prohibition by burying it inside the economic case. We've become a ruthless society, and almost everything has to be sold as first, it's good for business.' To his credit, Fine doesn't do what so many of us do and scream, Can't we just stop jailing potheads because that would be the right thing?' "

In the book, Fine illustrates the state of the marijuana industry by following one particular plant from Mendocino County in its journey from seed to a medical-marijuana patient. He describes the unique pot culture in Mendocino County, perhaps the nation's most tolerant county of the cannabis industry. And he outlines the potentially enormous economic lost opportunity that cannabis prohibition engenders.

But the Obama administration, despite the widespread hope that it would be more open to the idea of decriminalization, has instead cracked down on cannabis growers. Citing a Rasmussen poll released in May, Fine said of the Obama administration, "Journalistically speaking, it's just very confusing. Polls show that 56 percent of Americans say they support legalizing and regulating cannabis and 80 percent support medical marijuana. I mean, you have people like Pat Robertson and George Schultz coming out for this and it seems clear the American people are ready to address it. You would think that, as a candidate, Obama would want to take advantage of that."

Fine -- who lived in Santa Cruz for a few years in the 1990s and, in fact, worked as an intern with the Sentinel -- admits that his book is not exactly a dispassionate journalistic examination of the issue. He is not afraid to speak out as an advocate as well, particularly when it comes to his disappointment in the Obama approach to the issue. "As an American father and taxpayer and patriot, yes, I'm frustrated. The drug war has cost taxpayers a trillion dollars. It is one of the worst policies in our history, right up there with segregation, and clearly, it's time to end it. We would be a safer and better off country."

Fine often invokes American's failed experiment with Prohibition in the 1920s. But, unlike some cannabis proponents, he doesn't point to a vast conspiracy of industrialists and conservatives holding back legalization.
"I think it's simpler than all that. I think it's just bureaucratic inertia. There's $30 billion a year that goes into law enforcement to fight the drug war, and that's a hard tap to turn off. The only industry that really has a strong vested interest in the status quo is the private prison industry, and that's just not enough to hold back legalization on its own. It's more about a tipping point in public opinion and that's coming."