On ballots: Has pro-marijuana camp found way to win over middle America?
Ballot initiatives in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington would make recreational use of marijuana legal. At least one is likely to succeed. Pro-legalization groups have been honing their message.
On ballots: Has pro-marijuana camp found way to win over middle America?
Ballot initiatives in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington would make recreational use of marijuana legal. At least one is likely to succeed. Pro-legalization groups have been honing their message.
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff Writer / October 16, 2012
Jake Dimmock, co-owner of the Northwest Patient Resource Center medical marijuana dispensary, prepares medical marijuana for distribution to patients on Oct. 10 in Seattle. Washington state is on the verge of becoming the first in the nation to let adults over 21 buy taxed, inspected marijuana at state-licensed shops.
Ted S. Warren/AP
ATLANTA
The failure of Prop. 19 – a California legalization measure – two years ago was widely seen as a stunning defeat for high-flying pro-marijuana forces.
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Yet judging by three new pot legalization proposals now on ballots in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, the lessons of Prop. 19 were hardly lost.
Instead, pro-legalization groups including the ACLU studied exit polling, conducted their own focus group research, found moderate spokesmen, and tweaked proposals to try to build “trust” with a middle America that has grown steadily more accepting of pot use, yet, as Prop. 19 showed, remains wary of the impact of making the drug legal.
Three weeks ahead of Election Day, it now appears that at least one of those initiatives – Initiative 105 in Washington State – is heading toward passage, with some 57 percent of likely voters now backing the measure, according to a Survey USA poll taken in September. If that happens, it would be the first time a government has lifted pot prohibition, setting up a potential Cons utional showdown with a federal government that still prohibits growing, selling, and using marijuana.
But more critically, a successful legalization campaign in Washington would give the strongest evidence yet of how pro-marijuana groups can spin a winning message to the American center, even against entrenched and deputized opposition. How closely the promise of that message dovetails with the reality of legalization, however, will be the real test for broader adoption.
“I think these campaigns did learn a lot from the Prop. 19 experience,” says Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Corporation’s Drug Policy Research Center.
“There were a lot of meetings after the fact and there’s some serious money [involved], all of which makes it easier to tease out potential liabilities and run a campaign where you’re doing focus groups and you have lots of televised advertisements.”
The initiatives in the three states differ slightly, but all have managed to cobble together ideologically diverse coalitions. They’ve also managed to balance societal safeguards with the promise of sizable tax revenues. Where Prop. 19 left it to municipalities to license growers and retailers, the new measures impose state regulation on the pot trade. And proponents have also picked a presidential election that’s likely to draw lots of younger voters and stuck to libertarian-leaning Western states to make their case.
In Washington State, Initiative 105 combines a 25 percent excise tax that could raise nearly $2 billion over the next five years with a ban on pot smoking in public, an intoxication limit of 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood, and an exception that would allow employers to fire workers for smoking on the job.
That “not-in-your-face” tack is proving powerful enough that some of America’s biggest drug warriors are challenging US Attorney General Eric Holder to do something to help sway at udes away from Initiative 105.
On a conference call Monday, several former senior DEA officials and directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy said Washington should make it clear to voters that even if states pass the initiatives, pot smokers in those states would still be violating federal law.
The former drug-war officials on the conference call said that states like Colorado, which have legalized medical marijuana, have seen problems mount as a result, including reports of higher crime, more drug use by teens, and growing numbers of drug driving arrests.
On the call, former US drug czar John Walters said he thought it was “shocking” that Mr. Holder hasn’t made a statement on the referenda. “All you have to do is say things that this administration has already said. It would help enormously and I think it would defeat these measures,” said Mr. Walters.
The federal response, if any of the initiatives pass, will be critical. Obama said early on in his presidency that arresting medical marijuana users would not be a priority, although Mr. Holder said ahead of the 2010 election that the Department of Justice would “vigorously enforce” drug laws.
This year, Holder has been notably silent about the Western legalization referenda. And while Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan at one point said it’s up to states to decide, he later walked back that statement to Mitt Romney’s position, which is to fight legalization “tooth and nail,” as he recently said.
But stanching legalization at the state level may not be that easy. If voters approve such measures, it may force the federal government to adopt a nuanced approach. In Colorado, for example, the law is written so that revenues would go to schools, meaning federal enforcement could be seen as taking money away from education.
Other results could whittle away support for legalization, contends Mr. Kilmer at RAND. Lower prices – which would be inevitable if pot could be grown legally as an agricultural product – may drive more usage in other states and could seriously reduce expected tax receipts from legal weed sales, all of which may raise federal ire.
In the end, the focus of the new initiatives has been on assuring those who don’t smoke pot that the laws will actually have a net social benefit. To produce such benefits, marijuana proponents have now acknowledged, serious and complex regulatory safeguards have to be proposed, all of which means the growth of state government.
The "libertarian … dream of legal pot with no regulations" does not play well with voters, Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project tells the Huffington Post.
What may be playing the biggest role in the success so far of the Washington initiative specifically is that former US law enforcement officials have joined the pro-legalization movement.
In an ad running now, former US Attorneys John McKay and Kate Pflaumer appear with Charles Mandingo, the FBI’s former Seattle chief, to support Initiative 105’s licensing of marijuana growers, processors, and retailers.
"We know firsthand that decades of marijuana arrests have failed to reduce use," Mr. Mandigo says. "And the drug cartels are pocketing all the profits."
Rick Steves, the well-known PBS travel show host, is also currently touring the state, touting a pro-legalization message. Mr. Steves has said he does not believe that Washington will become a drug “mecca” if the law passes.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Electio...a/%28page%29/2
http://www.samefacts.com/2013/10/dru...-it-game-over/Public opinion on cannabis legalization has been trending positive since sometime in the late 1990s. By a couple of years ago, it was just about break-even. But in the latest Gallup poll, the “pro” side has moved to an almost-20-point advantage, 58 to 39.
So let's see how many politicians run in 2014 on mj-decriminalization plank?
Washington and Colorado have not descended into madness. Go figure.
I wonder if anyone has seen estimated revenues from possible taxes on the drugs?
Just the savings on incarceration would be billions..
It'll never happen in Texas unfortunately, however if it does, then this will be the last state to do it. Ironically this would be a perfect state to grow it.
The GOP is hanging on for dear life with their gerrymandering and suppressive tactics but when it does flip it is going to flip in a serious way. Texas 20 years from now is going to be quite different.
Are you saying the democrats are pushing for mj legalization here in Texas. I know the libertarians are.
Good old boys just drink whiskey.
Its much better for the liver and makes for more effective wife beating.
I love and hate my state at the same time.
I think there is a live and let live mentality that permeates all the political parties here in TX...
...sometimes you get crazy laws like the non-discrimination law in SA....
I am saying young people are. The puritanical streak has a pretty significant generational divide.
Once most baby boomers die off or retire, Texas will be at least purple. The days of Texas playing for Red Team are numbered.
Few Problems With Cannabis for California
In the heart of Northern California’s marijuana growing region, the sheriff’s office is inundated each fall with complaints about the stench of marijuana plots or the latest expropriation of public land by growers. Its tranquil communities have been altered by the emergence of a wealthy class of marijuana entrepreneurs, while nearly 500 miles away in Los Angeles, officials have struggled to regulate an explosion of medical marijuana shops.
But at a time when polls show widening public support for legalization — recreational marijuana is about to become legal in Colorado and Washington, and voter initiatives are in the pipeline in at least three other states — California’s 17-year experience as the first state to legalize medical marijuana offers surprising lessons, experts say.
Warnings voiced against partial legalization — of civic disorder, increased lawlessness and a drastic rise in other drug use — have proved unfounded.
Instead, research suggests both that marijuana has become an alcohol subs ute for younger people here and in other states that have legalized medical marijuana, and that while driving under the influence of any intoxicant is dangerous, driving after smoking marijuana is less dangerous than after drinking alcohol.
Although marijuana is legal here only for medical use, it is widely available. There is no evidence that its use by teenagers has risen since the 1996 legalization, though it is an open question whether outright legalization would make the drug that much easier for young people to get, and thus contribute to increased use.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/27...alifornia.html
Gone to Pot
The old expression about everything being bigger in Texas just got trumped by what's happening in California. In my career as a reporter, I've been on more than a few drug raids and seen my fair share of marijuana plants. But nothing prepared me for what's growing in northern California. As Mendocino Sheriff Tom Allman describes them, they're "super-mega-steroid marijuana plants. We followed Sheriff Allman along on a raid near Ukiah where deputies had just discovered more than a hundred plants the size of giant Christmas trees, some reaching 15 feet high. It's the latest trend in pot farms, or what are increasingly looking like pot plantations! So how'd they get so big? Sheriff Allman says it's a combination of genetic modification, fertilizers, pesticides, California's ideal growing climate and water, lots of water.
While the super plants we found in an illegal growing operation were in Mendocino County, they're popping up all over the state, and much of the time on public land where illegal large-scale cultivation of marijuana is destroying local ecosystems. And, increasingly, it's not locals who are farming the pot plants. Allman told me that Latin American, even European syndicates, have moved in to the back woods where they are growing far from prying eyes. This is a multi-billion dollar business and those who I spoke to used words like "crisis" and "out of control" to describe what's going on here. Think about this -- illegal marijuana farms in northern California are actually sucking the mighty Eel River dry, and that's threatening the native salmon population.
Big time marijuana operations are the subject of our latest investigation for Dan Rather Reports on AXS TV. While the diversion of water from rivers is a big concern, the use of toxic pesticides -- some banned long ago in the U.S. -- to keep anything and everything away from crops is also troubling. These pesticides are poisoning wildlife and contaminating the water supply. We also discovered that these chemicals show up in marijuana that's not only headed for the black market, but in supplies due to be sold in California's medical dispensaries.
When you start looking at all these concerns over the environment and the health of individuals smoking pot, it's hard not to think that whatever we're doing to control this drug is simply not working.
Unlike other agriculture, there is no crop insurance for marijuana growers. That means that many farmers will use any means necessary to guarantee a return on their investment -- even when it means spraying harmful chemicals or draining a creek dry that is home to endangered fish. This needs to change.
More teenagers today are turning to pot than cigarettes. As societal at udes towards marijuana have shifted -- 20 states plus the District of Columbia have made medical marijuana legal -- we must move beyond debates on whether or not it should be legal. It is time we start discussing how we can guarantee that marijuana is not destroying the environment or poisoning the people who smoke it.
http://readersupportednews.org/opini...08-gone-to-pot
Last edited by boutons_deux; 10-28-2013 at 03:30 PM.
The Benefits of Legal Medical Pot: Less Alcohol Abuse and an Economic Boom
The warnings of social disorder and increased drug abuse have not panned out in California, 17 years after the legalization of medical marijuana.
http://www.alternet.org/benefits-leg...tter916138&t=5
the Al Cohol industry was the biggest financer of opposition to CA mj legalization, much like the cigarette industry killed raising CA taxes on cigs.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 10-28-2013 at 03:36 PM.
marijuana is Schedule I, but addictive, poisonous nicotine isn't even regulated
Selling a Poison by the Barrel: Liquid Nicotine for E-Cigarettes
A dangerous new form of a powerful stimulant is hitting markets nationwide, for sale by the vial, the gallon and even the barrel.
The drug is nicotine, in its potent, liquid form — extracted from tobacco and tinctured with a tail of flavorings, colorings and assorted chemicals to feed the fast-growing electronic cigarette industry.
These “e-liquids,” the key ingredients in e-cigarettes, are powerful neurotoxins. Tiny amounts, whether ingested or absorbed through the skin, can cause vomiting and seizures and even be lethal. A teaspoon of even highly diluted e-liquid can kill a small child.
But, like e-cigarettes, e-liquids are not regulated by federal authorities. They are mixed on factory floors and in the back rooms of shops, and sold legally in stores and online in small bottles that are kept casually around the house for regular refilling of e-cigarettes.
Evidence of the potential dangers is already emerging. Toxicologists warn that e-liquids pose a significant risk to public health, particularly to children, who may be drawn to their bright colors and fragrant flavorings like cherry, chocolate and bubble gum.
“It’s not a matter of if a child will be seriously poisoned or killed,” said Lee Cantrell, director of the San Diego division of the California Poison Control System and a professor of pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s a matter of when.”
Reports of accidental poisonings, notably among children, are soaring. Since 2011, there appears to have been one death in the United States, a suicide by an adult who injected nicotine. But less serious cases have led to a surge in calls to poison control centers. Nationwide, the number of cases linked to e-liquids jumped to 1,351 in 2013, a 300 percent increase from 2012, and the number is on pace to double this year, according to information from the National Poison Data System. Of the cases in 2013, 365 were referred to hospitals, triple the previous year’s number.
Examples come from across the country. Last month, a 2-year-old girl in Oklahoma City drank a small bottle of a parent’s nicotine liquid, started vomiting and was rushed to an emergency room.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/24...om=mostemailed
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