For Immediate Release:                   
Contact: Steve Adamske (202) 225-7141  
or Heather Wong (202) 226-3314                                               

           Washington, DC --  Congressman Barney Frank released the following statement regarding his plan to introduce legislation to remove federal penalties for the personal use of marijuana:

“I think it is poor law enforcement to keep on the books legislation that establishes as a crime behavior the government does not seriously wish to prosecute.  For highly-trained Federal law enforcement agents to spend time prosecuting people for smoking marijuana is a diversion of scarce resources from their job of protecting public safety.              

“The norm in America is for the states to decide whether particular behaviors should be made criminal.  To make the smoking of marijuana one of those extremely rare instances of federal crime – to make a ‘federal case’ out of it – is wholly disproportionate to the activity involved.  We do not have federal criminal prohibitions against drinking alcoholic beverages, and there are generally no criminal penalties for the use of tobacco at the state and federal levels for adults.  There is no rational argument for treating marijuana so differently from these other substances.

“To those who say that the government should not be encouraging the smoking of marijuana, my response is that I completely agree.  But it is a great mistake to divide all human activity into two categories:  those that are criminally prohibited, and those that are encouraged.  In a free society, there must be a very considerable zone of activity in which people are allowed to make their own choices as long as they are not impinging on the rights, freedom, or property of others.  I believe it is important with regard to tobacco, marijuana, and alcohol, among other things, that we strictly regulate the age at which people may use these things and enforcement of the age restrictions should be firm.  But criminalizing choices that adults make because we think they are unwise ones, when the choices involved have no negative effect on the rights of others, is not appropriate in a free society.  If the law I am proposing passes, states will still be free to treat marijuana as they wish.  But I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals.  Federal law enforcement is a serious business, and we should be concentrating our efforts in this regard on measures that truly protect the public.”

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