Support for pot in 2nd District House race CAMPAIGN 2012

Congressional candidate Andy Caffrey smokes a Marijuana joint with Congressional candidate John Lewallen in Fairfax, Calif., on Thursday, May 17th, 2012. Congressional candidate Andy Caffrey smokes a Marijuana joint with Congressional candidate John Lewallen in Fairfax, Calif., on Thursday, May 17th, 2012. Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle Photo: John Storey, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Support for pot in 2nd District House race 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Andy Caffrey, a Garberville resident running for Congress, stood before the media outside a former medical marijuana dispensary in Fairfax the other day and sparked up a - medicinal - joint.

No biggie. Caffrey has done that a couple of times lately on the campaign trail. If elected, the registered medical marijuana user has promised to light one up on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in support of the overall legalization of weed.

In just about any other congressional race in the country, Caffrey's puff would be launch-the-TV-attack-ads controversial. But not in the liberal Second District, which stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge through America's pot breadbasket to Oregon. The legalization question has been raised in nearly every debate - and drawn mostly amens.

It's a sign of the growing acceptance of marijuana. Although retiring Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, is one of the most liberal members of Congress, she opposes the general legalization of marijuana. She is fine with the medicinal use of marijuana, which was legalized in California in 1996, and opposes the recent federal crackdown on medical dispensaries, as do all 12 candidates - even the two Republicans.

Being pro-legalization in the Second District is not a hippie position. It's rooted in worrying about increasing violence connected with illegal grow operations, concerns about the environmental impact of pot farms and, most of all, the economy.

Major cash crop

With an estimated $1 billion worth of marijuana grown in the district, pot is a major industry, helping to prop up poorer communities in the northern end, where the median income is half of what it is in wealthy Marin County in the south.

"If you talk to environmental groups, they're not complaining about the timber industry anymore. It's the pot growers who are the main threat to the coho (salmon) streams," said pro-legalization Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, who chairs the Assembly's Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife.

And while the pro-legalization candidates acknowledge that their future House colleagues won't be nearly as sympathetic toward pot, anti-drug-war advocates like Bill Piper said they "can create a debate in Congress."

"It helps where there is a discussion that moves toward regulating marijuana rather than just prohibiting it," said Piper, based in Washington, D.C., as national affairs director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

The pro-legalization candidates come to their positions in many ways.

Democratic Marin County Supervisor Susan Adams is a lifelong nurse who specialized in treating women with addiction issues. San Rafael Democrat Stacey Lawson is a wealthy business executive. Huffman is a longtime environmentalist with two young children.

"Nobody is shooting each other in public lands over illegal vineyards," Adams said. "Maybe it is time for us to take a look at a different strategy."

Even the two Republicans in the field - Dan Roberts and Michael Halliwell - aren't antagonistic toward legalization.

Roberts, a Tiburon securities dealer, is concerned that the federal raids on California's approved pot dispensaries are an abuse of federal power.

As a candidate, President Obama promised he "would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users." But Obama has done little to stop the raids that have closed hundreds of dispensaries.

Republican's position

"It's the so-called progressives, the Obama administration, that's coming in and closing dispensaries," said Roberts, who opposes legalization but "recognizes California law" regarding medical cannabis.

"They're attacking the marijuana users and growers and property owners in California," Roberts said. "I will be their best friend. I'm not going to call in the troops."

Caffrey said he and fellow House candidates John Lewallen, a nonpartisan seaweed harvester from Philo (Mendocino County), and William Courtney, a Democratic physician from Mendocino, have become so friendly over marijuana issues that they've dubbed themselves "The Emerald Triangle" - after the part of the district stretching through Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties that hosts the nation's largest pot-growing region.

The 54-year-old Caffrey uses medicinal marijuana to help with what he described as post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by several incidents, including losing all his possessions in the 1991 Oakland hills firestorm. The former Earth First activist was sharing a home with eight people when the fire struck.

But while Caffrey has focused much of his campaign on solving the climate crisis, he, too, is frustrated by the federal clampdown on dispensaries, including the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana. The Fairfax dispensary where he smoked his high-profile joint was the state's longest-standing licensed dispensary until it closed in December because of federal pressure.

'Legal landscape'

Sharing that concern is Lawson, who has received funding from some of the Democratic Party's top national donors and Emily's List, a powerhouse national organization that backs pro-choice female Democrats.

"We need to move toward a legal landscape where it can be taxed, it can be regulated and kept out of the hands of children, it can be monitored as a crop, where the right environmental protections can be put in place and where the revenue from a billion-dollar industry can go toward delivering the kind of social services we need in our district," she said.

Huffman, who has supported efforts to legalize marijuana in the state Legislature, said that until there is more pro-pot sentiment in Congress, California must bring "some integrity" to its medical cannabis laws and "try to make that something that is real and not a charade that is a front for trafficking."

For now, Huffman said, the challenge from this corner of California "is really an interim one: How can we bring some order to this situation while we wait for the rest of the country to relearn the Prohibition lesson."