Introduction

Confronted by a host of policy challenges in the summer of 1977, the new Jimmy Carter administration set about articulating its approach to U.S. drug control. Carter inherited from prior administrations, and would continue, a slate of policies centered on reducing heroin production in Asia and Latin America, particularly Mexico. Washington’s Mexico program posed a number of contradictions for the environmentalist and human-rights president. Abuses by Mexican soldiers and police during drug-control sweeps and Mexico’s use of herbicides to destroy marijuana generated controversy, but domestic drug policy likewise presented dilemmas. Between 1973 and 1976, seven states had decriminalized marijuana possession and candidate Carter’s remarks about reforming marijuana laws led supporters to soon expect a reversal of the country’s punitive approach to marijuana use. Carter’s main drug policy advisor, Peter G. Bourne, pushed for unequivocal federal-level decriminalization, but Carter and other advisors were concerned that Bourne was too dismissive of harm from marijuana. When the policy paper was finally released, many of Bourne’s draft statements, describing the harm from marijuana as “minimal” and marijuana prohibition as an “unhappy and misguided chapter” in U.S. history, were cut. Ultimately, Carter did not want the White House to be seen as advocating marijuana use.1

Criminology · Decriminalization · Drug · Drug control · Drug trafficking · Harm · Harm reduction · Heroin · Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) · Political science · Possession (linguistics) · Punitive damages · Sociology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law