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US drug policy fuels push for legal pot worldwide

In a former colonial mansion in Jamaica, politicians huddle to discuss trying to ease marijuana laws in the land of the late reggae musician and cannabis evangelist Bob Marley. In Morocco, one of the world's top producers of the concentrated pot known as hashish, two leading political parties want to legalize its cultivation, at least for medical and industrial use.

And in Argentina, the nation's drug czar, a Catholic priest who has long served in its drug-ravaged slums, is calling for a public debate about regulating marijuana.

From the Americas to Europe to North Africa and beyond, the marijuana legalization movement is gaining unprecedented traction — a nod to successful efforts in Colorado, Washington state and the small South American nation of Uruguay, which in December became the first country to approve nationwide pot legalization.

Leaders long weary of the drug war's violence and futility have been emboldened by changes in U.S. policy, even in the face of opposition from their own conservative populations. Some are eager to try an approach that focuses on public health instead of prohibition, and some see a potentially lucrative industry in cannabis regulation.

"A number of countries are saying, 'We've been curious about this, but we didn't think we could go this route,'" said Sam Kamin, a University of Denver law professor who helped write Colorado's marijuana regulations. "It's harder for the U.S. to look at other countries and say, 'You can't legalize, you can't decriminalize,' because it's going on here."

That's due largely to a White House that's more open to drug war alternatives.

U.S. President Barack Obama recently told The New Yorker magazine that he considers marijuana less dangerous to consumers than alcohol, and said it's important that the legalization experiments in Washington and Colorado go forward, especially because blacks are arrested for the drug at a greater rate than whites, despite similar levels of use.

His administration also has criticized drug war-driven incarceration rates in the U.S. and announced that it will soon let banks do business with licensed marijuana operations, which have largely been cash-only because federal law forbids financial institutions from processing pot-related transactions.

Such actions underscore how the official U.S. position has changed in recent years. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it wouldn't target medical marijuana patients. In August, the agency said it wouldn't interfere with the laws in Colorado and Washington, which regulate the growth and sale of taxed pot for recreational use.

Government officials and activists worldwide have taken note of the more open stance. Also not lost on them was the Obama administration's public silence before votes in both states and in Uruguay.

It all creates a "sense that the U.S. is no longer quite the drug war-obsessed government it was" and that other nations have some political space to explore reform, said Ethan Nadelmann, head of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, a pro-legalization group based in New York.

Anxiety over U.S. reprisals has previously doused reform efforts in Jamaica, including a 2001 attempt to approve private use of marijuana by adults. Given America's evolution, "the discussion has changed," said Delano Seiveright, director of Ganja Law Reform Coalition-Jamaica.

Last summer eight lawmakers, evenly split between the ruling People's National Party and the opposition Jamaica Labor Party, met with Nadelmann and local cannabis crusaders at a luxury hotel in Kingston's financial district and discussed next steps, including a near-term effort to decriminalize pot possession.

Officials are concerned about the roughly 300 young men each week who get criminal records for possessing small amounts of "ganja." Others in the debt-shackled nation worry about losing out on tourism dollars: For many, weed is synonymous with Marley's home country, where it has long been used as a medicinal herb by families, including as a cold remedy, and as a spiritual sacrament by Rastafarians.

Influential politicians are increasingly taking up the idea of loosening pot restrictions. Jamaica's health minister recently said he was "fully on board" with medical marijuana.

"The cooperation on this issue far outweighs what I've seen before," Seiveright said. "Both sides are in agreement with the need to move forward."

In Morocco, lawmakers have been inspired by the experiments in Washington, Colorado and Uruguay to push forward their longstanding desire to allow cannabis to be grown for medical and industrial uses. They say such a law would help small farmers who survive on the crop but live at the mercy of drug lords and police attempts to eradicate it.

"Security policies aren't solving the problem because it's an economic and social issue," said Mehdi Bensaid, a legislator with the Party of Authenticity and Modernity, a political party closely allied with the country's king. "We think this crop can become an important economic resource for Morocco and the citizens of this region."

In October, lawmakers from Uruguay, Mexico and Canada converged on Colorado for a firsthand look at how that state's law is being implemented. They toured a medical marijuana dispensary and sniffed bar-coded marijuana plants as the dispensary's owner gave them a tour.

"Mexico has outlets like that, but guarded by armed men," Mexican Congressman René Fujiwara Montelongo said afterward.

There's no general push to legalize marijuana in Mexico, where tens of thousands have died in cartel violence in recent years. But in more liberal Mexico City, legislators are planning to pitch a further loosening of pot laws by increasing personal possession limits, allowing residents to grow up to three plants and allowing private pot smoking clubs.

Opponents to legalization worry that pot could become heavily commercialized or that increased access will increase youth use. They say the other side's political victories have reawakened their cause.

"There's been a real hunger from people abroad to find out how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place and how to avoid it," said Kevin Sabet of Project Smart Approaches to Marijuana.

Washington and Colorado passed recreational laws in 2012 to regulate the growth and sale of taxed pot at state-licensed stores. Sales began Jan. 1 in Colorado, and are due to start later this year in Washington. Twenty states and the District of Columbia already have medical marijuana laws.

A number of U.S. states are considering whether to try for recreational laws. Voters in Alaska will have their say on a legalization measure this summer. Oregon voters could also weigh in this year, and in California, drug-reform groups are deciding whether to push a ballot measure in 2014 or wait until 2016's presidential election. Abroad, activists are pushing the issue before a United Nations summit in 2016.

While some European countries, including Spain, Belgium and the Czech Republic, have taken steps over the years to liberalize pot laws in the face of international treaties that limit drug production to medical and research purposes, the Netherlands, famous for its pot "coffee shops," has started to pull back, calling on cities to close shops near schools and ban sales to tourists.

There is, however, an effort afoot to legitimize the growing of cannabis sold in the coffee shops. While it's been legal to sell pot, it's never been legal to grow it, so shops must turn to the black market for their supply, which may wind up seized in a raid.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, where some countries have decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs, from cocaine to marijuana, there is significant public opposition to further legalization. But top officials are realizing that it is on the table, despite the longstanding efforts of the U.S., which has provided billions of dollars to support counter-narcotics work in the hemisphere.

Current or former presidents in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil have called for a re-evaluation of or end to the drug war, a chorus echoed by Roman Catholic priest Juan Carlos Molina, the drug czar in Argentina.

Molina said he's following orders from President Cristina Fernandez to change the government's focus from enforcing drug laws against young people to getting them into treatment. He also said after Fernandez appointed him in December that Argentine society is ready to openly debate legalizing marijuana altogether.

"I believe that Argentina deserves a good debate about this. We have the capacity to do it. The issue is fundamental for this country," Molina said in an interview with Radio del Plata.

The pace of change has put American legalization activists in heavy demand at conferences in countries weighing their drug laws, including Chile, Poland and the Netherlands. The advocates, including those who worked on the efforts in Washington and Colorado, have advised foreign lawmakers and activists on how to build campaigns.

Clara Musto, a spokeswoman for the Uruguayan campaign, said meeting with the Americans helped her group see that it would need to promote arguments beyond ensuring the liberty of cannabis users if it wanted to increase public support. "They knew so much about how to lead," she said.

John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America, a non-governmental organization that works to promote social and economic justice, was among the Americans who visited Uruguay as the president, the ruling party and activists pushed their proposal to create a government-controlled marijuana industry.

"This isn't just talk," he said. "Whether Colorado is going to do it well, or Washington, they're doing it. If you're going to pursue something similar, you're not going to be alone."

[Curtman]

The logo at USA Today in support of medical marijuana.

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USA TODAY has replaced their logo with a marijuana leaf today and they're using it to prominently feature this powerful story of parents who have moved their families to Colorado in order to get a specific strain of medical marijuana that has helped children with epilepsy.

Parents move to Colorado for 'miracle' pot for children

Greta Botker has been through more adversity in her short life than most adults. At the age of 7, she's sampled a host of medications for her epilepsy: Onfi, Depakote, Felbatol, Keppra and Prednisone.

She's been on strict diets.

She's had brain surgery.

Nothing reduced the 15 or so seizures she had every day since she was 5 months old that kept her from walking steadily, feeding herself or talking. Her parents, Maria and Mark, had run out of options.

Then they heard about a strain of marijuana grown in Colorado that reduced the number of seizures in children with severe epilepsy.

"We really tried everything with Greta," says Maria Botker, a nurse. "We put our child through brain surgery, so a plant like marijuana was not going to scare me."

In November, Maria and Greta headed west to find a miracle. Mark and the couple's two other daughters, 13 and 10, stayed on the family's farm in Minnesota.

Maria and Greta joined a migration of parents who, after trying countless methods to ease their children's crippling seizures, are packing up their families and moving to Colorado.

MORE: Marijuana and tobacco: How times have changed

The state has become a refuge for those families for two reasons: Colorado has the most liberal laws for use of marijuana, and it has opened a market for a strain called Charlotte's Web that is believed to be effective for people with severe epilepsy.

At the beginning of the year, Colorado became the first state to allow recreational marijuana use for adults. It has permitted medical marijuana since 2000. Twenty states and the District of Columbia allow medical use of marijuana, but the diseases for which it is allowed vary. Washington state also has legalized recreational marijuana, but the law hasn't gone into effect.

Realm of Caring, a Colorado foundation started by the family that grows Charlotte's Web, has 100 patients whose families have moved to Colorado from 43 states and two countries, says executive director Heather Jackson. It has a waiting list of more than 2,000 people, she says.

In all, the foundation has more than 300 medical marijuana patients, 200 of them children, Jackson says.

It's the latest development in a movement that began in 1996, when California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana, says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a pro-marijuana group. Since then, he says, NORML has fielded thousands of calls from people who want to move to states with medical marijuana.

"Our advice is … if you can do it, literally get on a plane and fly west," he says.

Diane Fornbacher, 36, an advocate for legalizing marijuana, will move next month with her husband and two sons from Collingswood, N.J., to the Denver area, so she can use marijuana to manage her post-traumatic stress disorder. She says the condition was brought on by a turbulent childhood in which her mother killed her stepfather, then herself.

Although New Jersey is one of the states that allow medical marijuana, it does not consider PTSD a qualifying condition for its use.

Many of the Colorado newcomers have settled along Interstate 25 between Denver and Colorado Springs, where Charlotte's Web is grown.

The strain is high in cannabidiol, an ingredient in marijuana considered to have medical applications, and low in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which causes people to get high. The strain is taken in liquid form, not smoked.

Charlotte's Web is named after Charlotte Figi, the first child to try the strain two years ago. Charlotte, who was 5 at the time, suffered 60 seizures a day. Now, her parents say, she has none.

Cannabidiol is believed to act as a brake on parts of the brain that cause epileptic seizures and as a stimulant in other parts that help reduce them, says Igor Grant, director of the University of California's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research.

The science behind it remains unproven, so the Botkers are relocating on a gamble.

The Epilepsy Foundation and the American Epilepsy Society do not expressly tell families not to use medical marijuana, but they warn there is not enough research to show whether it is safe and effective. They urge patients to work with a doctor to determine the best treatment.

Sharon Levy, a pediatrician who directs the Adolescent Substance Abuse Program at Boston Children's Hospital, warns against using marijuana for any purpose. She says it has been proved to have negative long-term effects on children, such as impaired brain function and addiction. Though cannabidiol has shown some success in suppressing seizures, she says, there is no research to guide parents on dosages or long-term effects.

"Marijuana is not a medicine," she says.

Joel Stanley, one of the six brothers who grow Charlotte's Web, says 85% of people taking it have seen reductions in seizures.

A handful of patients have seen their seizures end altogether. In 2012, Jackson's son Zaki, who is 10, was the second child to use Charlotte's Web. Jackson says he has gone almost two years without a seizure.

The successes are anecdotal, but Stanley says the foundation is working with chemists and researchers to document the drug's effectiveness.

Families say the unknown is worth the risk. The alternative, they say, is their child's death.

The Botkers wasted no time getting to Colorado. They bought a house. Maria obtained a Colorado driver's license. Following state requirements, they took Greta to two doctors who signed off on medical marijuana for her and got on Realm of Caring's waiting list. By November, they had settled just south of Denver.

It is the latest chapter in an odyssey that began when Greta was 5 months old and her mother noticed the first seizures. The couple took her to specialist after specialist until one diagnosed her with infantile spasms, which evolved into a rare genetic disease called Lennox Gastaut syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy. The doctor told them Greta would have developmental delays, difficulty with basic functions such as walking and feeding herself, and extreme seizures that would be hard to control.

She was 7 months old.

An array of medications didn't cut the number of seizures. When she was almost 5, Greta had brain surgery. It didn't work.

When they heard about Charlotte's Web on CNN, the Botkers saw it as a lifeline.

Leaving the tightknit western Minnesota community of Clinton and splitting up the family was something they had to do, Maria Botker says.

She telecommutes for her job as an administrative nurse at a Minnesota hospital. Greta, who has the developmental capacity of a 2-year-old, goes to first grade. Mark and the older girls visited during the holidays. The parents switch off every few months, so each can spend time with all their daughters.

"We are a close family, and we love our community," Botker says, "so being away has been really hard."

But they've formed another community with families who are also grasping for hope.

Anna and Biagio Burriesci live four blocks from the Botkers with their 6- and 4-year-old sons and 2-year-old daughter, Grace. In November, the family moved to Colorado from New York City, where they grew up, to find help for their daughter.

Grace is a friendly toddler with a sweet smile and curly black hair. Like Greta, she was born healthy. She began having seizures when she was a year old, her father says — as many as 300 a day.

"She'd be walking and just drop to the floor," Biagio Burriesci says. She was diagnosed with Dravet syndrome, a rare condition with seizures that are difficult to control, cause physical and cognitive delays and can lead to death.

When the family learned on Facebook about a family moving to Colorado last summer, "hoping for a miracle," Burriesci, a former paramedic, says they began researching.

"This condition ultimately meant death for our kid, so we were going to war for her," he says. "Families are desperate."

By the end of the summer, Grace was on Realm of Caring's waiting list for the drug.

The family sold their house in Queens, losing about $200,000, Burriesci says. He left his job as a New York City police officer and hasn't been able to find work in Colorado

"We gave up everything," he says. Anna, an emergency room nurse, found work in a hospital. He stays home with the children.

The sacrifice pales in the face of the upside, Burriesci says. Gracie, as she's known to her family, receives 0.7 milliliters of liquid marijuana three times a day. Her seizures are down to five a day, her father says. She is walking better and learning to speak.

"We feel like we found our miracle," Burriesci says.

For the Botkers, hope costs $600 a month, which is not covered by insurance. It is worth it, Maria Botker says. Greta is down to four to six seizures a day. She's on two of the five medications she used to take.

Botker is fighting to get medical marijuana approved in Minnesota. Then she and Greta could go home.

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