Justice Stevens says marijuana should be legal

My good friend Tom Angell of Marijuana Marjority just alerted me to some big news from an NPR interview today with retired Justice John Paul Stevens.  

Justice Stevens says he supports marijuana legalization: 

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens made some news in an interview with NPR's Scott Simon on Thursday.

 

Scott asked him if the federal government should legalize marijuana.

 

"Yes," Stevens replied. "I really think that that's another instance of public opinion [that's] changed. And recognize that the distinction between marijuana and alcoholic beverages is really not much of a distinction. Alcohol, the prohibition against selling and dispensing alcoholic beverages has I think been generally, there's a general consensus that it was not worth the cost. And I think really in time that will be the general consensus with respect to this particular drug."

Justice Stevens had a few notable opinions related to marijuana hile on the Court.  Perhaps most famously, Justice Stevens authored the majority opinion in Raich, a case upholding the federal government's power to prosecute minor marijuana cases.  Of course, that decision had everything to do with the commerce power and little to do with Stevens' view of marijuana policy.  

A somewhat lesser known case gave us hints of his policy views, however.  In Morse v. Frederick (aka the "Bong Hits for Jesus" student speech case), Justice Stevens wrote a dissent that concluded by linking marijuana and alcohol prohibition:

Reaching back still further, the current dominant opinion supporting the war on drugs in general, and our antimarijuana laws in particular, is reminiscent of the opinion that supported the nationwide ban on alcohol consumption when I was a student. While alcoholic beverages are now regarded as ordinary articles of commerce, their use was then condemned with the same moral fervor that now supports the war on drugs. The ensuing change in public opinion occurred much more slowly than the relatively rapid shift in Americans’ views on the Vietnam War, and progressed on a state-by-state basis over a period of many years. But just as prohibition in the 1920’s and early 1930’s was secretly questioned by thousands of otherwise law-abiding patrons of bootleggers and speakeasies, today the actions of literally millions of otherwise law-abiding users of marijuana, and of the majority of voters in each of the several States that tolerate medicinal uses of the product, lead me to wonder whether the fear of disapproval by those in the majority is silencing opponents of the war on drugs. Surely our national experience with alcohol should make us wary of dampening speech suggesting—however inarticulately—that it would be better to tax and regulate marijuana than to persevere in a futile effort to ban its use entirely. 

 

Even in high school, a rule that permits only one point of view to be expressed is less likely to produce correct answers than the open discussion of countervailing views. Whitney, 274 U. S., at 377 (Brandeis, J., concurring); Abrams, 250 U. S., at 630 (Holmes, J., dissenting); Tinker, 393 U. S., at 512. In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority’s viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment . Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular.

 

I respectfully dissent.