District Attorney Larry Krasner’s remarks supporting legalization of recreational cannabis use for adults
The following remarks were given by DA Krasner before a joint House and Senate policy committee in Harrisburg, PA on April 29, 2019:
“I’m the elected District Attorney in Philadelphia, PA. I’ve been in office now for 15 months, and was elected — and I say this not out of pride, but as a reflection of what I’m about to say after it — was elected with the largest mandate and the biggest landslide in at least 20 years in Philadelphia county, running specifically, among other things, on criminal justice reform and supporting the availability to adults of marijuana for recreational purposes. And I still support that. We had a huge turnout in that election, we had 50,000 unexpected votes and we had it because there was genuine excitement about various aspects of criminal justice reform. One of those aspects was exactly the type of bill we are talking about.
This is no reflection whatsoever on Mr. Adams, who like me, had a past as a criminal defense attorney in addition to being a prosecutor. But it is only fair for me to comment that when I hear that the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association says their position is based on science, I think I’m back in 1968. When Richard Nixon ordered a study of marijuana and didn’t like the answer, which is it’s really not bad for you, so he used it as a political tool to go after people who were opposed to the war and Blacks. And he did so explicitly, and we all know that history.
Science does not support the notion that marijuana is a dangerous drug. We have from tobacco 480,000 preventable deaths a year. It’s the biggest cause of preventable deaths. We have 88,000 from alcohol, the third biggest cause of preventable deaths in the United States. And we have from marijuana essentially zero. That is science. Those are the facts. I could get into the weeds with it, but that is reality.
We have to take into account when we consider the comments of the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association, their history and their record. I withdrew from that organization this year, and Philadelphia represented 30% of their membership. And I withdrew for the first time as a DA in a county in Pennsylvania in about a decade, because this organization has for three decades supported the policies that gave us an 800% increase in jail population, when the rest of the country was doing miserably at 500%. It has stood for having one of the worst records on mass supervision in the United States. We’re the second worst state in the United States, only surpassed by Georgia which just changed all of its laws so we’re about to be the worst for mass supervision, by which I mean probation and parole. We are the world epicenter for juveniles who are doing life for murder cases, the world epicenter, because there is no state that does more and there is no country in the world that does it. And we have also written statute after statute in the last three decades that are a textbook on how to ruin a criminal justice system. That is what the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association has done. That is why it was necessary for my office to withdraw from it. And frankly, that should go into an assessment of credibility when the PDAA tells you that they are relying on science. They’re not relying on science. They’re relying on pseudoscience which has been a well-funded industry to prosecute this because people make money — including criminal defense attorneys — make money when it is prosecuted.
I have a problem in Philadelphia, and that problem is we have a terrible situation with opioids, and so does Allegheny County, among others. It is a terrible situation. I need to have marijuana readily available in order to reduce the number of fatal overdoses. We have almost four fatal overdoses a day. Studies in other states have indicated that as much as a 25% reduction. I could save a life a day with more readily available marijuana for a couple of very simple reasons. Number one: It is a better way to deal with pain than opioids, than the big corporate answer that has addicted so many people. That is true whether it’s effectively over the counter because it’s available for adults for recreational use, or whether it’s available medically, and thank goodness the state did approve it medically. But it is also true that there are many places where people who are addicted to opioids are transitioning from opioids to cannabis as a form of treatment. And it can be a successful form of treatment. It is also true that we have many people in the United States who are effectively allergic to alcohol to the point where it can kill them, put them in blackouts, get them locked up. They’re just fine on marijuana. The reality is that people want to relax. And when you have a substance that does virtually no harm, and every alternative to it — alcohol in particular — does enormous amounts of harm, what sense does it make to act like that is a terrible substance?
I appreciate that Mr. Adams raised the issue of DUI, in other words driving under the influence. Because Pennsylvania has had the dumbest law on DUI for cannabis for a very long time. What that law currently says is that if there is any detectable amount of digested marijuana in your system, then you are DUI. So in other words, if I smoked a joint 30 days ago, it has absolutely no psychoactive effect whatsoever on anything I am doing, and I drive a car, then I am driving under the influence. This is absurd. It has been the law in Pennsylvania forever. It is on a collision course with our medical marijuana which is going to tell people medically it’s okay for you to take this for the various neuropathy or other forms of disease that you have, but somehow you can’t drive. It’s absurd and it’s indicative of what we have gotten from the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s Association. All of these other states have dealt with it. They have passed something like our law in relation to alcohol, where there’s a chemical limit and there are some other aspects to it. They have done it.
And frankly my office has done it, because we have made a decision that we’re not going to prosecute cannabis DUIs unless people show active — I repeat, active — psychoactive amounts of cannabis in their system that rise to a level which is generally scientifically been agreed upon as affecting driving. I am here to say that there is a modern way for prosecutors to support an intelligent approach to cannabis. And as someone who cares deeply about the prevention of crime, and knows that we’re going to do a lot better about preventing crime if we have proper funding of public schools in Philadelphia, than if we spend more time being punitive and retributive, I would like to remind everyone that the state of Colorado is swimming in money for its public schools. Pennsylvania can do the dumb thing, which is be the last one to the game, because we’re coming to the game, and we can give all that tax money to New Jersey which has already beaten us, or we can get that money, put it into the things that prevent crime, and those things are public schools, mental health treatment, and economic development.”
[Concludes remarks]
