Hawai`i County voters are being asked to approve a change to county ordinance making cannabis enforcement the lowest law enforcement priority. This is falsely portrayed as a move to legalize marijuana. It is not.

By keeping marijuana illegal but directing police to make it the lowest law enforcement priority, the initiative’s backers on the County Council--including Mayoral candidate Angel Pilago—are facilitating criminal activity on a massive scale. Moreover, the measure would create stupendous opportunities for police corruption just as the County Police are bringing in a large class of new officers.

Genuine legalization would take marijuana production and distribution out of the hands of criminals and place it under the control of legal businesses such as those selling tobacco or liquor. Instead we are asked to approve a measure which does exactly the opposite—maximizing Hawai`i County’s attraction as a haven to criminals.

Anybody who is confused by this need only look back twenty years. Uninhabited subdivided Puna jungles were laced with booby traps. People disappeared. Others were murdered. Police made selective raids. We even began exporting homicides—most famously the 1974 Palmyra Island murder of Malcolm and Eleanor Graham by Mountain View marijuana grower and lifelong criminal Duane ‘Buck’ Walker.

Along with the marijuana came cocaine, heroin, and eventually methamphetamines—“ice”. Marijuana advocates claim that “because of green harvest, this island is on ice”. This is a lie. Marijuana has never been difficult to find on the Big Island. Ice is here because of criminals seeking a profit outside the law. Approving this ordinance will make them more numerous.

Another ugly side-effect of the black market in drugs—phony protest movements. The most significant of these blocked the construction of the True Geothermal plant in Wao Kele O Puna. The result, Wao Kele is now in the hands of the OHA trustees and we are still burning dirty and expensive foreign oil instead of clean geothermal to generate electricity . Backed by Pilago and ousted soon-to-be-former-County-Councilman Bob Jacobson, Wao Kele protest leader and convicted drug dealer Ralph Palikapu Dedman went on to back the seizure of Hawaiian kuleana lots at Punalu`u, Ka`u. Like Dedman, many other leading activists are convicted criminals. Obviously the spread of illegal drugs is completely intertwined with the spread of phony protest-for-profit shakedown operations.

Voters should reject this proposal to go easy on drug dealers.