The U.S. oil and gas industry
wants marijuana to be legal. That’s how it looks to me.
The CEOs of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other oil companies
haven’t swapped their business suits for tie-dyed outfits and
jewelry shaped like reefer leaves.
But the industry’s
support for legalizing pot seems clear from the pattern of its
political stances in the arguments over the energy crisis. Everyone
knows the range of solutions that could be applied. The arguments
boil down to what role the federal government should play.
Those who want government action call for higher
fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles and a much higher excise tax
on gasoline, to encourage conservation of fossil fuels. The
government could also be more assertive with tax incentives to
develop alternatives such as solar and wind power, more efficient
appliances and buildings and mass transportation.
The oil
and gas companies, their industry groups and think tanks, take the
opposite stance. They insist that government regulations only
interfere with satisfying good old consumer demand. Their mantra?
If Americans want to keep on burning huge amounts of oil and gas,
let the free market handle it — no matter what the
consequences.
Consumers rule? OK. More than 14 million
Americans have smoked pot in the past month, according to a recent
survey by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Nearly
100 million have tried it sometime in their lives, and no doubt
most “sometimers” think it’s nothing the government should stick
its nose into.
The pro-pot sentiment is clear in the 12
states where voters have approved medical marijuana initiatives
since 1996. Those popular laws, passed mostly in Western states,
allow doctors to prescribe pot with a fair degree of leeway. Eleven
states, including some without the medical provision, have
effectively decriminalized marijuana for all adult consumers,
treating them no more seriously than drivers who commit minor
traffic violations. Voters in some cities, such as Denver, have
gone so far as to eliminate all penalties for adults who possess
small amounts.
The federal government stubbornly keeps on
pursuing pot consumers everywhere, even though studies show
marijuana is a lighter drug than alcohol. Pot smoking does not seem
to lead to the use of heavier drugs, and does not cause crime
waves. According to pot consumer Web sites, luminaries in both
political parties admit they’ve smoked the herb, from Bill Clinton
and Al Gore to Newt Gingrich and New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, along with movie stars, musicians, and bestselling
authors such as Stephen King. King says, “Marijuana should not only
be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry.”
Meanwhile, the country’s “addiction” to oil and gas, as recovering
oilman George W. Bush described it in his State of the Union
speech, has far more negatives. Unlike the oil and gas industry,
potheads don’t want to abolish environmental protections so that
drilling rigs can invade the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and
wild lands in the Rocky Mountains. They don’t want to build new
port facilities to receive shiploads of explosive liquefied natural
gas, which would ramp up power plants to heat and cool the epidemic
of trophy homes. They’re not sending the Montana National Guard to
Iraq to secure their supply lines. All they want is a simple
grower’s light and a closet, or a few square feet of garden.
On the crucial issue of global warming, all the
pot-puffers’ smoke adds up to a tiny fraction of the tailpipe
emissions from 24 million gas-guzzling SUVs, not to mention all the
inefficient pickup trucks, diesel semis, snowmobiles and ATVs. And
in a directly lethal comparison, 40,000 Americans die each year in
wrecks of oil-propelled vehicles; it’s difficult to find evidence
of a single death due to smoking pot.
Over and over, the
oil and gas industry says that whatever consumers want, they should
get. They want the federal government to stay out of that equation.
If the industry applied its might and reasoning to the government’s
denial of pot smokers, it would tip the scales of justice and
settle that issue once and for all. The question should be posed to
the CEOs and their followers: If they don’t support legalizing
marijuana, aren’t they merely self-serving — thinking
of their corporate profits — in their stance on the energy
issue?
Ray Ring is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He is the paper’s editor in the field, based in
Bozeman, Montana.
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