Before we vote again ?

Yes but his patients would still be his patients. Just as long as those corporate grows or big growers don't take away my right to grow I really don't care what they do.

dirtsurfr said:

I don't grow for profit and I donate to people with cards that I know. If every one did that it would be legalized. IMO

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Why should it? Pot is not illegal because there are people making money off of it. Pot is illegal because of several factors, the least of which is the business aspect. Frankly, if you're not concerned about my economic freedom to grow and sell, I'm not really concerned about your freedom to smoke. Freedom is freedom for everyone, there is no difference, and I'm a little sick of the attitude that nobody should ever get to sell it and that it should only be given away. First of all, it takes effort, time and money to grow this for others and I'm REAL tired of people who expect you to be a slave and work for free. That doesn't mean I'm not going to share it with people who need it for medicine for free, but I'm not happy the attitude that that should be the expectation and there's something wrong if someone sells it. It should be legalized because it's a plant and we live in a country that's SUPPOSED to be the land of free and individual liberty, not because you should be free to only give it to someone else.

I agree with that for sure.

Damn straight, Reef.

ReefBongwell said:

Why should it? Pot is not illegal because there are people making money off of it. Pot is illegal because of several factors, the least of which is the business aspect. Frankly, if you're not concerned about my economic freedom to grow and sell, I'm not really concerned about your freedom to smoke. Freedom is freedom for everyone, there is no difference, and I'm a little sick of the attitude that nobody should ever get to sell it and that it should only be given away. First of all, it takes effort, time and money to grow this for others and I'm REAL tired of people who expect you to be a slave and work for free. That doesn't mean I'm not going to share it with people who need it for medicine for free, but I'm not happy the attitude that that should be the expectation and there's something wrong if someone sells it. It should be legalized because it's a plant and we live in a country that's SUPPOSED to be the land of free and individual liberty, not because you should be free to only give it to someone else.

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Very well said Reef!!

ReefBongwell said:

Why should it? Pot is not illegal because there are people making money off of it. Pot is illegal because of several factors, the least of which is the business aspect. Frankly, if you're not concerned about my economic freedom to grow and sell, I'm not really concerned about your freedom to smoke. Freedom is freedom for everyone, there is no difference, and I'm a little sick of the attitude that nobody should ever get to sell it and that it should only be given away. First of all, it takes effort, time and money to grow this for others and I'm REAL tired of people who expect you to be a slave and work for free. That doesn't mean I'm not going to share it with people who need it for medicine for free, but I'm not happy the attitude that that should be the expectation and there's something wrong if someone sells it. It should be legalized because it's a plant and we live in a country that's SUPPOSED to be the land of free and individual liberty, not because you should be free to only give it to someone else.

Click to expand...

I dont want to start anything. But I would like you to step back and re read that.
Pot is illegal 100% because of big business. If you look back, way back. Paper mills and saw mills pushed for hemp to be illegal. Then big pharm started making pills and to push them on us they also pushed for pot to be made illegal. When pills first started to become release, many people feared them. Many people never wanted to take them. Best way to get the masses to use them, was to make pot and other home drugs illegal. They made the drug task force, and then spun it as a evil drug that mexicans and black people use to rape and kill children. We funded reefer madness and other movies. We funded news papers and such to spin it that its evil and drives you into madness. It all started from paper businesses.
Its all illegal because of big business.

I wasn't saying because of big business. I meant it's not illegal because of people selling it vs giving it away. I know the history.

However, I take issue with your statement that it's because of big business. It's because of corruption. Big business is irrelevant in the face of a non-corrupt government -- and even if big business wanted it illegal, it remains illegal more than anything because of how many people view it as immoral/a bad influence.

It is not corruption when its legal. If you dont like it, fight to change the laws. Not much happens from a arm chair battle.
Big businesses buy lobbyist. Senators and Reps only hear from them. They write laws based on what big businesses fund with there lobbyist.
Best law we all can pass is corporations are not people. Then limit the amount a sole person can donate to some one.
As it stands right now, once it becomes federally legal big tobacco will take it over. They will push for laws that will drive small people out all in the name of "public health and safety" Over saying there product is safer then Joe rapist growing it in his backyard.
They are coming after you from all sides now.
They are claiming you are harming the environment. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/pot-farms-california-too-dangerous-intervene-6C10819906
They are claiming you are kidnapping people for medical pot. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/pot-farmer-kidnapped-teen-girl_n_3695793.html

Bad people are ruining it for people like me who have cancer and need help.
But its all coming crashing down in the name of "public health and safety".

California Marijuana Legalization Backers Hope To Get Measure Onto 2014 Ballot Posted: 02/25/2013 3:48 pm EST | Updated: 02/27/2013 5:37 pm EST



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SAN FRANCISCO -- The push to legalize marijuana, both in its standard and non-psychoactive hemp forms, is alive and well in California.
The California Cannabis, Hemp and Health Initiative plans to start collecting the necessary 500,000+ signatures this May to get a measure on the 2014 ballot that would legalize marijuana in many forms.
The bill would specifically allow both the growing and possession of marijuana, direct the legislature to establish a regulatory, taxation and licensing structure for the retail sale of cannabis, legalize industrial hemp production and prohibit state officials from enforcing federal law (which explicitly states that pot is illegal) over state law.
While California voters rejected a marijuana legalization bill in 2010 by a margin of just under 700,000 votes, the backers of this current initiative hope that successful efforts mounted in Colorado and Washington in the interim may have helped push public opinion far enough in their direction to overcome any opposition.
Some drug law reformers have questioned the wisdom of aiming for a 2014 legalization ballot measure. As a mid-term election, it likely won't draw the same level of interest as something put before voters in 2016.
"We need to take a breath--because we're California, and we're super complicated," Amanda Reiman, California policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Sacramento Bee.
As such, many legalization backers plan on targeting their resources for 2016. Mounting a viable pro-marijuana ballot campaign isn't cheap; according to campaign finance tracker MapLight.org, the backers of Prop 19 outspent their opponents by $3.7 million and still came up short.

Even if the 2014 measure were to pass, it would leave California's marijuana industry in limbo: pot would be permitted on the state level but remain illegal on the federal level. Hoping to rectify that, a pair of Democratic congressmen, Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) introduced a bill earlier this month that would allow any state that to chooses to legalize marijuana to do so unperturbed, as long as federal taxes are paid on all sales.

Meanwhile, up in Sacramento, a couple of legislators are looking to take on similar issues while leaving behind much of the political baggage that comes with advocating outright legalization. State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Allan Mansoor (R-Carlsbad) recently introduced bills that would legalize California's production of hemp.
The legislation would revise the definition of marijuana to exclude industrial hemp, meaning varieties of the cannabis plant containing less then three-tenths of one percent of THC. Under the proposal, hemp products would be regularly tested by the Drug Enforcement Agency in order to ensure that THC levels remained below the legal threshold.
Hemp, which has a wide variety of uses from clothing to bio-fuels to fishing bait, is illegal to produce in California, leading to significant imports from countries like Canada. States such as Oregon and West Virginia have laws on the books permitting hemp production; however, even in those states, hemp isn't produced on an industrial scale due to it being illegal on the federal level.
As such, the state's large demand for hemp products presents a significant business opportunity for potential California hemp producers. "California manufacturers of hemp products currently import from around the world tens of thousands of acres’ worth of hemp seed, oil, and fiber products that could be produced by California farmers at a more competitive price, and the intermediate processing of hemp seed, oil, and fiber could create jobs in close proximity to the fields of cultivation," argues Leno in his bill.
This bill isn't Leno's first attempt at cultivating industrial hemp production in the state. A previous effort on the same subject was vetoed by California Governor Jerry Brown in 2011. The Sacramento Bee reports:The California Narcotics Officers Association opposed Leno's prior hemp legalization on the grounds that, because it's difficult to tell hemp plants from standard pot plants using the naked eye, illegal marijuana plants could be easily hidden inside of a larger field of hemp.
Correction: The article has been corrected to clarify how states that have legalized hemp production deal with the practice being prohibited at the federal level and to indicate the minimum number of signatures required to get an initiative on the California ballot.

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When news broke on election night that Colorado was the first state to legalize marijuana, patrons at the trendy Casselman’s Bar & Venue in Denver erupted in cheers, then hugged each other and cried. Organizers and friends of the state’s Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol thanked everyone—elderly black ladies, young hipsters, business execs—and there were far more people in suits than in tie-dye that night. And nary a hint of ganja smoke inside the hip establishment.
A few hours later in Seattle’s Hotel Ändra, travel writer Rick Steves joined business leaders and members of the American Civil Liberties Union, along with Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, in thanking volunteers for making cannabis-legalization history in Washington as well.
But cheers for Colorado and Washington that evening were accompanied by a bit of jealousy here in California, where voters narrowly defeated this state’s pot-legalization measure, Proposition 19, in 2010.
“A lot of people have said to me, ’How come we couldn’t do that last election?’” remarked Stephen Downing, a retired Los Angeles Police Department deputy chief and a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
But Colorado and Washington’s victories sparked more than just envy in the Golden State. Amanda Reiman, with the Drug Policy Alliance, says a new legalization initiative is now on the tip of everyone’s tongue in the California reform community.
“This was something that we were talking about before the election,” she said. “The results of the election have just ramped up those conversations, absolutely.”
Today, it’s not a question of if California will legalize marijuana for adults over the age of 21. Now, people just ask when.
“A lot of people in California are starting to talk about a future campaign—certainly the debate about 2014 vs. 2016, all that’s being engaged,” said Bill Zimmerman, who helped run California’s successful Proposition 215 medical-marijuana initiative in 1996.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, for instance, has planned a conference on legalization in California later this month, January 26 and 27, in San Francisco. All the big players in the marijuana world—NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, LEAP, Americans for Safe Access, the Emerald Growers Association, the Oaksterdam community in Oakland—have been holding both public and private talks as well.
And a new California legalization initiative may not be the only one in the nation. Recent polls show that Americans are increasingly comfortable with the idea of bringing pot out of the closet. A survey released last month from the respected polling organization Quinnipiac University showed that Americans now favor marijuana legalization 51 percent to 44 percent. It’s a historic shift.
Americans also believe that states, not the federal government, should decide whether pot is legal. A Gallup poll released on December 10, 2012, revealed that 64 percent of Americans want to leave marijuana policy up to the states.
“I would not be surprised to see [cannabis legalization] on the ballot in a number of places in 2014 and 2016,” said Beau Kilmer, co-director of the Drug Policy Research Center at the nonpartisan think tank the RAND Corporation.
But replicating Colorado and Washington’s victories isn’t simply a matter of copying and pasting initiatives, reform experts say. The victories in both states came from a decade of hard work, resulting not only in strong political coalitions and palatable initiative language, but also campaigns run by professional operatives armed with lots of cash.
Experts also say California is a different beast entirely. Moreover, evidence has emerged that drug warriors are already lobbying the Obama administration to overturn election outcomes in Colorado and Washington before states like California can legalize pot, too.
[SIZE=+1]How Colorado and Washington freed weed[/SIZE] The Colorado victory may have blindsided the federal government, but the movement toward marijuana legalization had been building for a long time.
The state’s Amendment 64 really began with the Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation education campaign, which relentlessly hammered home the message that marijuana is safer than alcohol. Then in 2006, SAFER ran a statewide pot-legalization initiative. Although it failed, the defeat taught the group some key lessons, including the importance of grassroots campaigning and building a solid political infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Denver, elected lawmakers had become leaders of the national medical-marijuana movement. Coloradans legalized medical weed at the ballot box in 2000, but the medical-pot industry’s rapid and unchecked growth sparked intense criticism. The Colorado Legislature responded by passing seed-to-sale regulations for the state in 2010.
The new rules are administered by the Colorado Department of Revenue and today, gun- and badge-carrying officers from the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division regulate the industry. Pot cops monitor grow rooms and club transactions via remote cameras linked to the Internet, while ensuring the collection of millions in tax revenue for the state.
Against this backdrop, in which the electorate not only had become aware that pot is safer than booze, but also realized that the state had a functioning system for controlling medical cannabis, marijuana-law reformers decided to launch another initiative for 2012. The Marijuana Policy Project, a nationwide effort to decriminalize pot and keep users out of prison, provided 90 percent of the funding for the Amendment 64 campaign, according to Mason Tvert, its co-director. The Drug Policy Alliance, another nationwide drug reform group, donated the other 10 percent.
The highly professional campaign in Colorado conducted polling, drafted initiative language and paid signature gatherers to get the necessary valid signatures to put Amendment 64 on the ballot. The campaign also worked closely with the Students for Sensible Drug Policy, LEAP, the ACLU of Colorado, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People of Colorado to mobilize thousands of volunteers to go door to door and staff phone banks.
Like those of Prop. 19 in California, opponents of Amendment 64 spent less than half a million dollars, so the campaign was the reformers’ to lose. Amendment 64’s ads featured and targeted a key swing group: young moms. The Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol campaign didn’t extol the virtues of pot: Instead, it talked about controlling the drug to keep it away from kids and promised that the tax revenue from pot regulation would benefit schools.
“I think folks in Colorado and Washington learned from California’s experience,” said Kilmer of RAND.
Farther west, Washington—a liberal state with a long history of supporting medical cannabis—also had a group of serious professionals who slam-dunked pot legalization in a state that was simply waiting for it.
Washingtonians legalized medical pot in 1998, two years after Californians, and ever since have struggled with how to regulate the drug—not unlike what has happened in the Golden State. Illegal dispensaries have thrived in cities like Seattle, but they’ve also been subject to raids by federal, state and local authorities.
Fed up with that chaos, pillars of the Washington community came together to run the Initiative 502 campaign, known as New Approach Washington. The campaign sponsors included Washington ACLU drug-policy director Alison Holcomb, Seattle City Attorney Holmes, former U.S. Attorney John McKay, celebrity travel writer Rick Steves, Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, two former presidents of the Washington State Bar, and a former professor at the University of Washington. In short, this was no coalition of hippie dreamers.
Much like Colorado, the Washington group polled extensively and came up with a moderate form of legalization that lifted penalties for adults possessing personal amounts, but banned home growing, created a tough new drugged-driving standard, and taxed the industry heavily to fund schools and research.
New Approach Washington spent about $5.7 million on the campaign, including about $2 million on TV advertisements that put tough-talking law-enforcement officials against prohibition front and center.
Initiative 502 passed, 55 percent to 45 percent, with 1.7 million votes for and 1.4 million votes against. Colorado’s Amendment 64 won by the same margin, 55 percent to 45 percent, with 1.3 million votes cast for it and 1 million votes cast against.
But California is not Washington or Colorado. We’re bigger and more diverse. The pot-legalization movement here also has failed over the years to unite behind a statewide measure. And, while drug-law reformers foresee a domino effect from pot legalization in two states, a historic backlash is possible as well.
[SIZE=+1]The California way[/SIZE] One major hurdle for marijuana legalization in California is the diversity of opinion among residents.
“In Washington and Colorado, you can win over mainstream opinion and you’re then likely to win an election,” said Zimmerman of Prop. 215 fame. “Here in California, you’ve got to win the approval of a number of different communities, many of which often act independently of the mainstream: Latinos, African-Americans, youth, senior citizens. It’s a much more complex task.”
It will also be more costly: more than $1 million to gather the half-million valid signatures needed to put an initiative on the California ballot, experts say. Campaign marketing and operations could cost anywhere from $5 million to $15 million. But Reiman said pockets this deep do exist in the reform community. “A lot of people have $5 [million] to $10 million dollars laying around. It’s just a question of whether the people that have that laying around are going to find [marijuana legalization] a worthy cause.”
Funders will want to see an initiative that’s winnable at the polls yet acceptable to the fractious gaggle of reform groups in California. And that could be tough. During the Prop. 19 race, Oaksterdam organizers in Oakland not only had to fight the California Police Chiefs Association and the beer industry, but also the entrenched medical- and illegal-marijuana interests in Southern and Northern California.
Sharp divisiveness in the California cannabis community combined with tepid mainstream support in the electorate has also scared big donors over the years. And without the needed cash, legalization efforts have stalled. No fewer than five groups tried to get a pot-law reform initiative on the California ballot in 2012. All failed.
But Zimmerman and Reiman think there is enough objective data on California voter preferences to enable reform groups to agree on ballot language this time around. Even if the most extreme examples of “stoners against legalization” don’t agree with new drugged-driving laws or caps on home growing, the extremists “pale in comparison to people like moms in their 30s in Southern California” who voted against Prop. 19, Reiman noted.
Indeed, the gender gap over pot legalization remains strong—and that’s true throughout the nation. According to the Quinnipiac poll, American men support legalization 59 percent to 36 percent, but women oppose it 52 percent to 44 percent.
The age gap remains persistent as well. Nationwide, residents 65 and older strongly oppose legalization: 56 percent to 35 percent, according to the Quinnipiac poll. By contrast, younger voters adamantly support it. Those aged 18 to 29 want pot legalized, 67 percent to 29 percent, and those aged 30 to 44 support it, 58 percent to 39 percent. In the 45-64 age group, 48 percent support marijuana legalization compared to 47 percent who oppose it. “It seems likely,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, “that given the better-than-2-1 majority among younger voters, legalization is just a matter of time.”
For many pot-legalization reformers, however, that time is not 2014. The California electorate is different in nonpresidential years, Zimmerman noted. Republicans tend to come out in force in the off years, while Democrats stay home. Historically, off-year elections have given us Republican governors Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, George Deukmejian and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And a whopping 69 percent of California Republicans said no to pot legalization in a May 2012 Los Angeles Times poll.
“There are going to be people tempted by 2014; I think that would be a disaster,” Zimmerman said. “It could be another rebuke, which would make it much more difficult to pass an initiative in 2016.”
But waiting for the youth vote and Democrats in 2016 isn’t a sure thing either, particularly when California’s top Democratic leaders remain opposed to pot legalization, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Gov. Jerry Brown.
Part of the reason Californians haven’t moved further on legalization may be due to the turmoil surrounding medical marijuana in the state. Brown went on CNN after the election to say the Obama administration should respect states’ rights with regard to pot laws, but he also said California’s system has seen “abuses.”
“We’ve got a medical-marijuana dispensary situation which is a mess,” said Zimmerman. “If we can’t clean that up and show the public that we’re capable in California of running marijuana distribution with medical patients, I’m not sure that they’re going to allow us to create a marijuana-distribution system for recreational users.”
The California Supreme Court also has yet to rule on the legality of dispensaries, or a city’s right to ban them. San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will reintroduce a medical-marijuana-industry regulation bill next year, but Sacramento legislators have worried about touching what they view as an electric third rail in state politics.
There’s also the possibility that pot already might be legal enough for many Californians. When he was in office, Schwarzenegger made simple possession an infraction. Since then, juvenile arrests for pot have plummeted to their lowest levels since record keeping began in the 1950s. In addition, most adult residents can get a medical recommendation for weed, and dispensaries and delivery services abound. According to RAND, the most common price Americans pay for pot is zero dollars. The reason? People typically receive it as a gift from friends.
[SIZE=+1]Legalization blowback[/SIZE] History is replete with political tipping points—moments in time when large numbers of people change their minds about a controversial issue. In addition to marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage appears to be at a political tipping point, too. In 2008, a Quinnipiac poll showed that Americans opposed gay marriage 55 percent to 36 percent. But in just four years, the country’s mood shifted dramatically; now, 48 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, compared to 46 percent opposed. That’s a 17-point swing.
“When these social issues begin to change and the public begins to view them a little different, the numbers can tumble pretty radically,” said Zimmerman.
Some pundits have credited President Barack Obama’s decision earlier this year to come out in support of same-sex marriage for helping turn the tide on that issue. Conversely, if his administration embarks on a federal campaign to punish Washington and Colorado for legalizing pot, it could have a chilling effect on reform efforts.
Yes, Obama told ABC News last month that busting potheads in Colorado and Washington was not an effective use of federal resources, but he didn’t say anything about busting marijuana businesses. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont has called for hearings in 2013 on the conflict between state and federal law. Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder has said recently the Department of Justice will announce its policy “soon.”
And while the federal government cannot stop states from repealing drug laws, it could sue to try to block the implementation of regulations in Colorado and Washington. The feds could also attempt to withhold transportation funds, or other retaliatory moves.
Holder may have single-handedly defeated Prop. 19 when he flew into Los Angeles for a pre-election press conference and blasted the initiative. Federal tolerance of state legalization also could threaten U.S. treaties with Latin American countries that fight our drug war, said Isaac Campos, a marijuana-prohibition historian at the University of Cincinnati.
Former Drug Enforcement Administration head Peter Bensinger is trying to mobilize retired DEA agents and narcotics officers to lobby the Obama administration for a crackdown, according to correspondence. In one email dated November 15, 2012, Bensinger urged the Association of Former Federal Narcotics Agents to take action: “We want to make it easy for all of you to help us put pressure on the Administration to step in and stop Colorado and Washington from implementing the legalization of marijuana,” he wrote. “We need to push back.”
Drug warriors also have a strong economic incentive to fight legalization. “The money [from the federal war on drugs] is just too big for police departments through grants and asset seizures,” explained Downing of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “The state prison population is going down for the first time ever, but the federal prison population is increasing. All of that has to do with money.”
And the backlash from drug warriors may be working. On December 7, The New York Times reported that the Obama Justice Department is weighing options as to how to respond to Colorado and Washington and whether to launch a crackdown or file lawsuits in those states.
At the same time, drug-reform advocates are girding for a long, tough battle. “I think it’s vital for anybody who wants to keep the momentum going to recognize that there’s going to be blowback in a serious way,” explained Campos. “There’s an enormous amount of practical, material interests wrapped up in the drug war. Those people must be putting a lot of pressure on Obama right now. The prison-industrial complex is superdependent on the war on drugs. We’re at a really crucial moment.”
Legalization in Washington and Colorado marks not only the beginning of the end, many say, but also the beginning of the most difficult part.
“We are looking up a huge mountain right now, and we’re all taking deep breaths and looking around and gearing up for a really long but hopefully successful fight,” Reiman said. “I think Californians are ready.”

SEATTLE, WASH.—Nobody said the road to legal marijuana in America would be easy. And for eight decades filled with terrifying twists, lawless turns and abrupt dead-ends, they were just so right.

Yet now that an end is finally in sight, nobody imagined how unutterably complicated the home stretch would be, riddled with unanticipated obstacles, caveats and unknowns that could yet send the entire effort up in smoke.

On paper, what happened last Nov. 6 was simple: a straight-up, yes/no question on full legalization of cannabis tacked onto the 2012 U.S. presidential election ballot in the states of Washington and Colorado. The people spoke; majorities said yes; the electorate demanded a sea change in drug policy.



Thus ended prohibition: Washington and Colorado, two of the 18 states that already permit medical marijuana by prescription, had taken a plunge that would make Amsterdam blush. Weed would become a retail product for anyone 21 or older. Taxed and regulated from seed to sale.

But how?

When state regulators and stakeholders sat down after the vote to work out the details, the buzz faded quickly against an almost endless stream of vexing questions.

Who and how many will be licensed to grow, process and sell weed? What constitutes a “serving” of marijuana, and how potent should it be? What about stoned drivers? Should people be able to grow/sell their own?

What guarantee is there that what happens in Washington and Colorado stays in Washington and Colorado? Or should neighbouring states brace for “leakage” in the form of bud-laden trucks, fanning out across the nation?

And what, most of all, can be done to combat arguably the biggest concern of all — that Big Marijuana will inevitably emerge, alongside Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol, and aggressively advertise pot to smithereens, planting lifelong habits targeting adolescents. Picture a grinning Joe Camel with a doobie dangling from his lips. That can’t be good.


“For 40 years, the academic debate over legalization had the character of a simple binary choice — yes or no — and that turned out to be completely false,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a public policy expert with Carnegie Mellon University.

“The entire enterprise is far more complicated than people imagined. There are a thousand ways to legalize. Many, many details that need to get worked out. And many ways to get it wrong. These are interesting times, to say the least.”

Entrepreneurs line up

Here on the streets in legal marijuana’s ground zero, one finds a blend of excitement, apprehension and indifference at the still-hazy changes. Some anticipate a boom in marijuana tourism starting early in 2014, when legal sales begin. Others say the boom has already begun.

“The free market is pretty darn creative, as we can see from the alcohol and tobacco industries, which have a bad track record in terms of targeting youth. So we’re trying to be ready for that.”
Jonathan Caulkins,
public policy expert with Carnegie Mellon University


“It’s definitely brought some people out of the closet and into the store,” said a saleswoman at the Federal Way location of Mary Jane’s House of Glass, a chain of pipe and paraphernalia stores throughout the Pacific Northwest. “And we’re more than happy to serve them.”

Entrepreneurs are already jumping on the pot wagon. In Olympia, the state capital, the owner of a shabby dive, Frankie’s Sports Bar & Grill, tested the patience of lawmakers after last November’s vote by allowing patrons to smoke marijuana on the premises — a no-no, even when the new law takes effect next year.

In Seattle, former Microsoft executive Jamen Shively made a splash in May in a showy announcement of a $10-million startup to establish a national marijuana brand, the weedy analog to the city’s ubiquitous Starbucks franchise.

Shively was flanked by longtime acquaintance Vincente Fox, the former Mexican president, who described the project as the perfect antidote to murderous Mexican drug cartels.

Yet marijuana enthusiasts in unsleepy Seattle may yet discover that the new law can bite, as well. Pot use has long been the lowest priority for Seattle police, who have not issued a single ticket for smoking in public since last November’s vote.

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes last month called on police to start cracking down on street smokers, imposing fines of $103, saying the public expects strict enforcement on the heels of Initiative 502.

“People pretty much expect, if they carry an open can of beer down the street, they will get a ticket,” said Holmes. “If those smoking marijuana don’t expect similar treatment, they are missing the point.”

Canada keeps breaking bad

What is especially astonishing, from a Canadian perspective, is that all this is happening south of us and not the other way around. A decade ago, it was the Bush-era Americans, as war-on-druggy as ever, frothing over the scourge of “B.C. Bud” and the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien introducing a bill for decriminalization in Canada that died when Parliament was prorogued. Prime Minister Paul Martin, though enfeebled by a minority government, tried again in 2004 and got nowhere. The Conservative victory of 2006 turned the tide, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government signalling that if anything, Canadians should ready for a hardening, not softening, of marijuana laws.

Canada’s political dichotomy on pot seems even more acute now, in the wake of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s endorsement of not just decriminalization but outright legalization during a recent visit to Vancouver.

Taxation, control and regulation, Trudeau argued, would keep cannabis out of the hands of young people because, like cigarettes and alcohol, proof of age will be required.

“The Conservatives base their approach on ideology and fear. I prefer to base my approach on evidence and best practices and I think that is what Canadians will respond to,” said Trudeau.

The Harper government answered quickly, with Justice Minister Peter MacKay saying, “I find it quite strange, frankly, that Mr. Trudeau would be talking about legalization as a priority at this time. Our government has no intention of legalization.”

In the U.S., by contrast, the war on marijuana spent the decade coming apart at every seam. The largely problem-free proliferation of medical marijuana laws (the District of Columbia joined the club in July and there is now a medical pot dispensary within walking distance of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency headquarters) coincided with a deepening consensus that close to a century of prohibition had failed miserably to put the slightest dent in America’s recreational choices, legal or otherwise. Murderous cartels and private prisons have done well. People, not so much.

That, perhaps, is the best thing the closely watched legalization regimes in Colorado and Washington have going for them — that however these new laws ultimately perform, the bar they must rise above stands pathetically low, as measured by public opinion on the status quo.

How low? Consider this: In March last year, U.S. evangelical leader Pat Robertson put his five decades of moral sway over Christian America on the line, announcing on The 700 Club that “I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol.”

“I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

The Canadian government surely comes by its views honestly. And nowadays, on marijuana, they fall to the right of Pat Robertson.

Same drug, different paths

It is far too soon to prejudge the tentative marijuana rulebooks emerging in Washington and Colorado. But it does seem safe to say Washington has come out of the gate with a clearer sense of where it wants to go.

Some marijuana researchers say the difference was built into the questions put to voters. In Colorado, the ballot initiative, known as Amendment 64 fixated upon comparing marijuana’s safety to that of alcohol and urging that it be legalized, taxed and controlled accordingly.

Washington, by contrast, built a far more comprehensive campaign known as Initiative 502 with public health and safety as its core message. Advocates stressed the failure of prohibition and the merits of a new approach that would tightly regulate legal marijuana while steering tax revenues to public education, health care, research and substance abuse prevention, while simultaneously establishing a new threshold for driving under the influence of marijuana.

There was little to no gloating on the Yes side in Washington state, apart from the usual gaggle of stoners mugging (and puffing) for the TV cameras on election night. Instead, the backers of I-502 went straight to work, reaching out to the losing side and asking the law’s opponents, including leaders in the fields of drug treatment, to sit together and use their collective influence to press for the smartest possible rules.

“It’s been an incredibly progressive undertaking. You had the yeas and the nays working together in a respectful way,” said University of Washington professor emeritus Roger Roffman, a veteran marijuana-dependency researcher and one of the sponsors of the Washington law.

The Colorado effort, said Roffman, missed the mark because its message of comparative safety to alcohol came across to many “as a code for ‘there’s nothing to worry about, it’s harmless, there’s no danger to marijuana and it is alright to use without any constraints.’

“As a longtime marijuana researcher, I don’t believe that. I favoured legalization not only because prohibition has failed miserably to educate the consumer to appreciate the good stuff about the benefits of marijuana. But it has almost failed miserably about the potential harms. Drug education was skewed to scare, and that very skewing pulled credibility from the message. So the risks — and there are real risks — to children, to adolescents, potentially for people with cardiovascular disease or pulmonary disease, that wasn’t getting through either.

“So the goal now is an approach based in reality, in science, in compassion, in wisdom and serious thinking. I’m optimistic given the quality of minds going into putting these rules together. Washington state has a chance now to show the federal government, and the country and the whole world that we can find a smarter way to co-exist with marijuana in our society.”

The devil, of course, is in the details. And only now are they beginning to emerge. The Washington regulations will begin issuing licenses in December with the intent of creating a three-tiered marijuana industry, distinguishing between growers (indoor and outdoor), processors and retailers, with two excise taxes of 25 per cent at the wholesale and retail points of sale.

Though the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which will oversee regulation, has yet to indicate the number of retail locations it will approve, the expectation is anyone aged 21 and over will be able to buy up to an ounce of usable marijuana, from 8 a.m. to midnight, when the first crop comes online in March 2014.

There will be no free samples. Retailers will be allowed to let customers sniff the product only. No outlet can be within 300 metres of a school, childcare centre, library or public transportation hub. Some marijuana products, including pot-infused candies, cookies and other baked goods, will require childproof packaging. Store signage and advertising that may appeal to youth will also be restricted.

Washington’s emerging legal marijuana industry will also have to spend more on strict chemical testing of each shipment to establish chemical content and purity and to meet strict labelling requirements, including trace herbicides and insecticides used during cultivation. All licensed facilities will be subject to state inspection.

And to combat “leakage” — the potential for product to be siphoned into the black market and exported to other states — Washington is initiating a “seed-to-sale” tracking system involving computer software that will assign each legal grower a bar code accounting for every ounce.

Colorado, by contrast, seems to have copied a great deal of Washington’s regime, with one significant difference — the Mile High State, unlike Washington, will allow any adult to home grow up to six plants for personal use. But Colorado has been late out of the gate with regulation and those rules thus far are described as “temporary,” even though the first retail outlets are expected to open in January.

Carnegie Mellon scholar Caulkins, who opposes legalization, is serving as a consultant to Washington officials as they work through the details, with price, marketing and drugged driving three of the most crucial unknowns going forward.

“It takes some time, but you expect marijuana prices to go down in the long run,” Caulkins said. “Historically, the industry has operated in inefficient ways because they had to avoid detection. Now, when you don’t have to hide what you’re doing, we expect economies of scale, greater automation and greater specialization of labour to lead to declining prices in the long run. And that, without adjustments such as tax hikes on pot, will lead to increased use.”

Secondly, said Caulkins, is the worry of youth-themed advertising. “The free market is pretty darn creative, as we can see from the alcohol and tobacco industries, which have a bad track record in terms of targeting youth. So we’re trying to be ready for that.

“Tied in with that concern is how a younger generation will be influenced by growing up in a world with more normalized marijuana. I think it would be crazy not to be open to that possibility. But it’s also crazy to forecast how big a deal it’s going to be, because we have no historic precedent to measure it against.”

Washington state set its new “driving high” impairment threshold at five nanograms last December and Colorado has since adopted the same number. But that baseline has since sparked a controversy because THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, is fat soluble and, unlike alcohol, can remain in the bloodstream days after a person last used marijuana. Police in both states will base their findings on blood tests as there is as yet no reliable Breathalyzer system available.

“The (drugged) driving issue is going to be fought about for a very long time,” said Caulkins. “That’s just going to be a headache because we don’t have a good test for impairment.”

What will Obama do?

But far and away the biggest wild card of all remains the other Washington — Washington, D.C. — where the Obama administration has maintained a stoic, and increasingly conspicuous, silence as Washington and Colorado plunge into the wild green yonder.

Apart from a single throwaway comment — President Barack Obama acknowledged he had “bigger fish to fry” — the feds are in a position to quash the entire enterprise at any time. Marijuana, federally, remains classified as Schedule 1, the highest order of no-no.

The fact that a legal pot industry has spent the better part of a year readying for the change without federal interference is leaving many with the impression that Obama intends to let states do what they (sometimes) do best — serve as incubators in democracy, trying out things that may or may not work.

“With the whole world watching this, I would love to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office, or for that matter, the Justice Department, in order to figure out what their rationale is for holding back,” said Roffman, author of the soon-to-be-published book, Marijuana Nation: One Man’s Chronicle of America Getting High, From Vietnam to Legalization (Pegasus).

“There has not been a single statement from the feds that says ‘We are going to co-operate with these two states and permit them to function as a laboratory of democracy.’ We’re at a major turning point here, yet federal silence hovers over it all.”

Caulkins, who also admits to “some frustration” with Obama’s silence, said the absence of federal input speaks to a larger theme of how the outside world views American policy.

“When it comes to drug policy, the U.S. has been misunderstood around the world for 20 years or more, because the outside world listens to what Washington, D.C., says when nobody in the states listens to what Washington, D.C., says.

“So, in totality, the U.S. is much less hawkish than what federal drug officials say when they go off to the United Nations or run around the world preaching at people. I think what we’re seeing in Washington and Colorado is the clearest evidence.”

Uruguay's pot legalization could be 'tipping point' in war on drugs


Latin American country soon to be first nation in the world to fully legalize marijuana

By Andre Mayer, CBC News

Posted: Aug 2, 2013 8:53 AM ET

Last Updated: Aug 2, 2013 1:26 PM ET

Uruguay will soon become the first country in the world to fully legalize pot. (Jorge Dan Lopez/Reuters)




Drug legalization debate divides the AmericasMarijuana: the political, legal and medical angles


The decision by Uruguay lawmakers to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana could signal the beginning of the end for the increasingly unpopular U.S.-led war on drugs, experts say.
"Uruguay being the first nation to engage in legalization and alternative drug policy could be kind of a tipping point," says Nathan Jones, a post-doctoral fellow at Rice University's James Baker Institute for Public Policy in Texas. He says that Uruguay's move challenges "those international treaties that kind of hold the whole drug prohibition regime together."
On Wednesday, Uruguay's House of Deputies voted 50 to 46 in favour of a bill to legalize the production, commercialization and distribution of pot.
The bill still has to move through the Senate, but with a government majority in the upper house it is expected to pass at some point in the fall.
Once passed, the legislation would make the small South American country the first in the world to completely legalize marijuana.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica has said he hopes the legislation will neutralize drug-smuggling gangs in his country, adding: "We know we are embarking on a cutting-edge experiment for the whole world."
Alternative to the war on drugs

Uruguay's move brought instant condemnation from the UN's International Narcotics Control Board, the body that monitors international drug treaties, to which Uruguay is a party.
Pope Francis also spoke out strongly against the liberalization of recreational drugs during his visit to Brazil last week. But observers say Uruguay's proposed law is part of a slow but steady liberalization in drug policy throughout the Americas, particularly in countries where incarceration levels or drug-related gang violence has been a huge problem.

• Drug legalization debate divides the Americas
• Marijuana: the political, legal and medical angles

Last fall, Colorado and Washington State both voted in favour of legalizing recreational marijuana use.
Another significant development was a report produced by the Organization of American States (OAS) earlier this year, says Juan Carlos Hidalgo, a Latin America policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
The OAS report proposed four alternatives to the war on drugs.
The proposals were legalization; greater cooperation between nations on security and enforcement; community-building, which would involve establishing more treatment facilities and using sport to divert idle youth from falling into the drug culture; and "disruption," in which countries take a laissez-faire approach to drug smuggling and simply focus on violent drug-related crimes.
Countries such as Uruguay, Colombia and Guatemala have argued in favour of legalization, while Brazil and Peru, for example, remain against it. But both sides agree that the current zero-tolerance strategy has not met its aims.
"At this moment, Latin America is having a very lively debate on what to do," says Hidalgo. "There is a wide consensus that the war on drugs is a failure – even defenders of the policy admit that it is not working well."
Dubious alliances

Launched in 1971 by then U.S. president Richard Nixon, the so-called war on drugs has been predicated on a heavy-handed enforcement strategy that has created dubious alliances with Latin dictators and paramilitary groups. It has also cost upwards of one trillion dollars and, critics say, accomplished very little.
Under the Uruguayan legislation, private companies will be allowed to grow cannabis for sale at drug stores and individual citizens will be permitted to grow up to six plants. (Nir Elias/Reuters) Even so, the U.S. remains resistant to any alternative, says Hidalgo, a fact that was on display during the recent OAS meeting in Guatemala. Responding to the growing favour for legalization among some Central and South American leaders, including former Mexican president Vicente Fox, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the challenges "defy any simple, one-shot, Band-Aid" solution.
The anti-legalization sentiment is echoed by a group of former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs who are urging President Barack Obama to use his authority to sue Colorado and Washington to force them to repeal their legislation.
One of the arguments made about legalization is that it will put drug suppliers, like the notorious Mexican drug cartels, out of business.
That's an unlikely scenario, says Rice University's Jones.
If Mexico were to legalize pot it would have little effect on the cartels, he says, because their main objective is exporting drugs — largely cocaine and heroin – to other countries, most notably the United States.
However, Jones says most analysts believe that if marijuana were to be legalized across the hemisphere, it would cut into drug cartel profits by about 30 per cent.
The Uruguayan model

Under its legislation, Uruguay will allow its residents, 18 and over, to buy up to 40 grams of cannabis a month at licensed drug stores, or grow up to six plants at home.
Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA and the co-author of Legalizing Marijuana: What Everyone Needs to Know, believes the initial outcome will be mostly positive.
"The immediate consequences are likely to be decreased crime, decreased arrests, decreased illicit activity, increased state revenue -- and increased drug abuse," he says.
Kleiman says the crucial factor will be the market price for cannabis. If it's too low, he says, it might compel more people to use, and if it's too high, it may create a black market. The Uruguayan government will need to decide "whether the sales process is designed to maximize sales or protect public health," says Kleiman.
Once the Uruguayan legislation is implemented, anyone who wants to grow, sell or merely purchase marijuana will have to be included in a national registry, "which I think creates certain privacy concerns," says Hidalgo.
"I can see people being skeptical [about] registering as a drug user in a government registry," he adds.
Hidalgo hails the Uruguayan vote as a "positive step," but says broader liberalization across the Americas requires greater buy-in from the U.S.
"So far, Washington is trying to pretend this is not taking place," he says. "But sooner rather than later, they're going to have to engage in the debate."

[h=1]A Grand Plan for California Pot Legalization in 2016 Revealed[/h]Posted on January 28, 2013 at 9:07 am by David Downs in Activism



Drug Policy Alliance senior attorney Tamar Todd (right) holds up a Magic 8-Ball during a talk about future pot legalization efforts. From the right: Todd, Mason Tvert, Richard Lee, and Alison Holcomb

SAN FRANCISCO — Energized by pot legalization in Colorado and Washington, marijuana law reformers revealed huge plans Sunday for the next four years in the U.S. But sobering realities lurked just outside California NORML‘s big 2013 conference, titled “Cannabis in California: Ending the 100-Year War“, held at Ft. Mason Center in San Francisco over the weekend.Exit polls show that of those who voted “No” on 2010 California legalization initiative Prop 19:
- 39 percent had friends that smoked pot;
- 34 percent were past pot users;
- and fifteen percent said they supported legalization.
Prop 19 lost by about 400,000 votes, representing just a fraction of the pro-legalizers, former smokers and their friends who voted against their own self-interest.

Ft. Mason Center file photo

These troubling base defections drove calls for vigorous and renewed base-building, and a new unity among ever-bickering pro-legalization factions in 2013.Pollster Graham Boyd delivered the sobering Prop 19 exit poll numbers Sunday at 9:30 a.m. during a rockstar-studded “Lessons from Washington, Colorado & Prop 19″ panel that included: Colorado Amendment 64 campaign co-director Mason Tvert; Washington Initiative 592 director Alison Holcomb, Prop 19 founder Richard Lee, and Drug Policy Alliance senior attorney Tamar Todd.
Prop 19 failed to carry pot-growing epicenter Humboldt County, with 53 percent of Humboldters voting “no” on decriminalization, Boyd said.
In 2012, five separate weed legalization groups representing the full spectrum of ideas – from modest reform to radical legalization – all failed to make the ballot. Over the weekend, several of these groups said the losses have humbled them and and they are now committed to working together as part of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform.
“Folks in this room are the core of the base. It is going to be vitally important that we do the work of building a coalition that holds together,” Boyd said.
The unity theme was widely echoed. Mason Tvert urged California activists to “take the next couple of years to get people ready.”
Drug Policy Alliance California director Amanda Reiman urged reform leaders to “have intense, personal conversations with constituents we need,” she said. “Unity is essential.”
Major Amendment 64 funder, Marijuana Policy Project president Rob Kampia outlined an ambitious four-year agenda for the MPP. Kampia said pot legalization in California in 2016 is going to cost $14 million. Kampia called California legalization in 2016 “ours to lose” in either one of two ways: too radical of an initiative; or severe infighting amongst legalizers.
Legalization in Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont by 2016 will cost $9 million, Kampia said.
“It really only takes 23 rich guys who can write $1 million checks, and I know 23 rich guys who can write million dollar checks,” Kampia said.
Nov. 2016 “is going to make this last November look boring,” he concluded.
State Senator Mark Leno and Rep. Tom Ammiano brought political gravitas to the conference, as well as a sense of fear from Sacramento about all things pot.
Medical marijuana industry regulations will be discussed this February in the state Senate, but Leno said his colleagues are “afraid of their own shadows” when it comes to the popular herb.
Rep. Ammiano said 28 new representatives in the Assembly should be open to marijuana law reform, but all efforts face powerful opposition, chiefly from the: California Narcotic Officers Association; and California Police Chiefs Association.
The League of California Cities is also aggressively pushing dispensary bans in the name of local control, Ammiano said. Meanwhile the California Chamber of Commerce wants to ensure employers can keep firing workers for weekend or vacation pot use, Leno said.
Despite such entrenched interests, the grizzled veterans of the decades-long war on weed savored “a new world” over the weekend. Marijuana arrests in California plummeted by 86 percent from 2010 to 2011, the last reporting period, thanks to efforts by California NORML, Sen. Leno and a few other dedicated souls who downgraded weed possession from a misdemeanor to a legal infraction.
Rep. Ammiano said California medical marijuana crackdown would end “soon”, either with the transfer of US Attorney Melinda Haag or the resignation of Attorney General Holder.
Federal agents raid Oaksterdam cannabis college in April, 2012 as part of a broad crackdown on medical marijuana business in California

Rep. Ammiano thanked Washington and Colorado for “massaging things” and called Ms. Haag’s closure of scores of licensed Bay Area dispensaries “drone strikes” and a “jihad”.
Harborside Health Center attorney Henry Wykowski said the world’s largest marijuana dispensary will remain open by federal order, and the Oakland club intends to vanquish Ms. Haag in a juried Bay Area trial, which could set nationwide precedent.
A previous Harborside victories has set a statewide precedent that landlords cannot evict lawful dispensaries for doing what they said they would do in the lease: dispense marijuana.
The 300 or so people in the room Saturday erupted into cheers, and the large convention hall took on the aura of a Southern Baptist revival. All that was missing was an organist and a choir.
Outside, a middle-aged woman asked what was going on inside. When told of the NORML conference, she asked if there was any weed to be had. I told her no, just politics, and she frowned and ambled off toward the nearby farmer’s market.
###
Random notes: Sen. Leno said that if he ever has the honor of serving San Francisco in the House of Representatives, he would “make [marijuana] issues a priority”. Sen. Leno is termed out in four years. Rep. Pelosi faces no term limits.
Americans for Safe Access chief attorney Joe Elford said clinical trials of marijuana in humans are underway, and the drug will eventually be rescheduled.

[video=youtube;9U4Ha9HQvMo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo[/video]

There's some good stuff in those articles and a presite of what's to come in maybe 2014 and 2016. All the other links are Marijauna news from around the country and world. The movement is big and there's plenty of states becoming MMJ or legal . Illinois is next and that's home of the Feds. There's countries becoming legal yet we as a nation still stand divided. The links have some good stuff in them . There was this Kid the feds locked up and forgot about him in a cell for four days and will pay him 4 plus million . A million dollars a day. They almost killed him.

Ya but man I stopped after the first 100 pages.
I am done with school for a reason.

yea but it wasn't just for you and you didn't have to read it or post a lame post just cause you didn't have anything else to do constructive.

Because your reply post was so constructive. Lets all pause for TWS and his top hat walk.