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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 10, 2014)
3 Street roots Oct. 10, 2014 f l Where pot is concerned, legal or not, poverty’s a player BY JAKE THOMAS Home Forward, the agency that manages about 1,980 units 5f public housing and A I Ahis fall, Oregon voters could make the about 9,390 Housing Choice vouchers for state the third in the country to the Portland region, has a similar J L . legalize marijuana for recreational no-smoking-anything policy, according to its use. However, what that might mean for spokeswoman Shelley Marehesi. She says Oregonians depends on where they fall on that there is a question on the Housing the economic spectrum. Choice application form that asks if an - If Oregon voters approve Measure 91, applicant or anyone in their household uses which would legalize and regulate pot, controlled substances. If they mark “yes,” people who live in federally subsidized they’re turned away, which Home Forward housing — the primary low-income housing has had to do, says Marehesi. Applicants for service in the United States — wjll risk public housing are notified that they will be being evicted if they use the drug while the denied if they admit to using marijuana, rest of the state can smoke to their heart’s even if it’s medicinal. Home Forward content. doesn’t have numbers on how many people And if you have a conviction for have been denied being admitted to housing programs or evicted because of marijuana, possessing pot on your record, which says Marehesi. includes an outsize share of minorities, If there’s an indication that someone is . Oregon’s politicians aren’t eager to get it breaking Home Forward’s no-smoking cleared. policy, they will be given a notice, says Under federal law, marijuana remains an illegal substance that has no value medicinal .Marehesi, and will be evicted if the problem persists. But w hat if someone is eating pot or otherwise. Although 23 states and the brownies in public housing? District of Columbia have passed laws “We have no way to know if someone is sanctioning its medical use and Colorado eating brownies,” says Marches!. and Washington have legalized it for 7 Central City Concern, a large social recreational use, the feds overarching reach services nonprofit that manages 1,600 units includes federal housing programs. ' of housing for low-income people, is taking a “Historically, medical marijuana patients have experienced intense discrimination and similar tack. “Because we receive federal funding, and reports of evictions and difficulty in marijuana laws have not changed on a obtaining public housing/ says Kris federal level, CentralCity Concern will not Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe be changing any of its practices relating to . Access, a national medical marijuana drug use on behalf of tenants who are in advocacy organization. recovery and on behalf of all staff,” says In 2011, the U.S. Department of Housing Kathy Pape, the nonprofit’s spokeswoman. and Urban Development issued a memo to There are no numbers on how often it local housing authorities stating that they happens, but residents of public housing are were required to establish policies that evicted for using marijuana, even if it’s IegaT' prohibited people from being admitted into federal housing programs based on tlie ir use C rider state law. In August, the C o rtez STAFF W R IT E R Tncludm g 'm edical g Tnmanj^ana" The federal government’s two large housing programs are Housing Choice Vouchers, which subsidize private rentals for low-income tenants, and public housing, which are federally funded facilities run by local agencies. The memo, which gave some flexibility to how local housing authorities on their handling of pQt-smoking tenants, applied to both programs. Arnie Fiske Zuniga, deputy executive director of the Seattle Housing Authority, says her agency hasn’t changed its drug policies in response to Washington state’s legalization of pot. Specifically, she says, the authority has a policy of not allowing smoking of any kind in its properties. “It’s federal funding, and federal law trumps,” she says. -Jo ttrn ak T ep o rto d th a t an#7~year- old re s id e n t of D olores, Colorado was forced to vacate her federally subsidized apartment for smoking pot, , which she told the paper was for her arthritis. Marehesi told Street Roots that Home Forward recently evicted someone from a property f< running amedica grow operation i public Legalize, regulate pet, BY JAKE THOMAS -.STAFF VWTBR <' " Jarris spent much of his ; life with people addicted to substances, and he knows about drugs and what they can do to people. So when Harris came out in support of Measure 91, which would legalize recreational marijuana use if approved by voters in. November, heads turned. After spending years working for mental health and addictions programs in Wyoming and Illinois, he moved to Portland Where he became one of the founding staff members of Central City Concern, today’ Portland’s largest nonprofit for low-income recovery and housing.services. Harris went on to become its executive director before leaving to head the Oregon Department of Human Services addiction and mental health division. ■ offense oi>your record càrrieOÌnWticÌSÌ, social and employment consequences. Measure 91 ^doesn’t provide any mechanism for Oregonians with a marijuana-related misdemeanor or felony on their record, which can be a barrier to jobs and housing, to get it expunged. “I’m hopeful, frankly, that we will have some relief for those in prison, whether it’s legislation or pardon from the governor,” says Leland Berger, a Portland attorney who has long been active On marijuana issues, “But if it were up to me the, initiative would have cleared it all.” „ But so. far, lawmakers and th e governor haven’t warmed to the idea. Janet Langley, a legislative aide for State Rep. Peter Buckley, an Ashland Democrat who been active on legalizing marijuana, says that there are no discussions among lawmakers about expunging people’s previous pot convictions if Measure 91 passes. She also says that Buckley is not optimistic about lawmakers taking action on the issue. Melissa Navas, spokeswoman for Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, says that there are no plans in place to begin issuing pardons for people with pot convictions on their records. “I expect that there will be significant pushback from law enforcement and prosecutors to any sort of automatic expungement,” says David Fidanque, executive director of the ACLU of Oregon. The Multnomah Cóunty District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on What actions it would take if marijuana was legalized this fall. According to Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County (Wash.) Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, had about 175 cases before around the time the state legalized marijuana. As a result, those cases were dismissed, says Donohoe, However, in Seattle, problems with the poor and minorities being targeted for smoking pot persisted. Seattle passed an ordinance prohibiting pot smoking in public, and began ticketing offenders. This summer, a report emerged that most of these tickets Were going to an outsized portion of people who are homeless and/or black. One officer w ro te 80 percent of th e tic k e ts. I n r e s p o n s e , , th e city a tto rn e y is se e k in g to d ism iss th e citations, and the officer who wrote the 1 most tickets is under investigation. Colorado and Washington’s legalisation ballot measures, like Oregon’s, brought no immediate relief to people with past convictions. In Washington, a bill was introduced in the legislature last year that would forgive misdemeanor pot convictions. It didn’t pass. In Colorado, an appellate ' court ruled this spring that people with minor marijuana convictions could challenge them in court as a result of the state’s legalization of pot. , Fidanque says that there is some good news for people with a past record. In Oregon, individuals with misdemeanors and lower-level felonies can apply to the court to have their récords cleared. ite addiction expert Street Roots spoke with Harris about his support for marijuana legalization, what goes into a good prevention campaign and why people in his line of work might be reluctant to back the measure. criminalized for housing. Hermes says that after HUD issued its 2011 memo, some housing authorities in California began evictihg its pot-smoking tenants, with Los Angeles being particularly eager to give the boot to marijuana smokers. Hermes doesn’t expect any court challenges to federal housing program’s ban on medical pot to succeed given that statè supreme courts have tended to err on the side of restricting the rights of people who use the drug. For instance* the Oregon Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that employers can fire someone for using pot even if it’s medical. “It’s still an allowable form of social * discrimination that can::be used in thè context of public housing,” he says. Measure 91, which would legalize marijuana in Oregon, doesn’t affect landlord- tenant relationships. Landlords, under the measure, can still maintain drug-free housing policies., A 2013 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, drawing on 2010 statistics from the FBI, found that 10,000 people in Oregon were arrested for pot possession that year. The same report found that in Oregon biacks were twice as likely to be . arrested for marijuana as whites. There are 174 people in state prison for ' marijuana crimes, according to figures for New Approach Oregon, the organization spearheading passage of Measure 91, which it obtained through a public records request With the Oregon Department of Corrections. According to NeW Approach Oregon, law enforcement in the state has arrested or cited 99,000 people for marijuana offense in W ^ H ^ d é^ ^ ^ H a v in g even a minor What do you say to Richard H arris: Well, (marijuana) has been misciassified for 80 years, and people have some dependency issues with marijuana. But on a scale of dangerousness as a drug, it’s at the very bottom. Alcohol is a much more dangerous drug. Marijuana is not a dangerous drug like opiates; it’s a benign drug that’s been misciassified. It’s been driven into the black market, which supports crime and people who are busted for it get a criminal record. It’s pn their record permanently, which So if you had a regulated market for marijuana, you could control access to.it, so kids aren’t buying it from someone under the bleachers. A regulated market is going to be better than criminalizing i t It hasn’t worked for a long time, and it could turn tax dollars back into schools and prevention education. J.T.: . the health care approach to drug use? R.H.: If you took a public health approach to educating people on what the consequences are on using i t they will make up their minds on what they are * going to do. We regulate alcohol and there are people with problems with alcohol and there are traffic fatalities, but it’sbetter than an illegal market It’s sort of catch-as-catchcan, particularly with young people, and there is money in See LEGALIZE POT, p a g e 7
