Results of 2010 Election added to our Marijuana Laws Map
Marijuana supporters nationwide awoke on November 3rd to find they had been defeated in all four statewide initiatives on the ballot. While losing these battles is not good news for our movement, the lessons we’ve learned and coalitions we’ve formed will help us win the war even sooner.
California’s Prop 19 received 3.4 million votes for legalization, which represents 46.1% of the voters. This is the best a statewide marijuana legalization measure has ever done, besting Nevada 2002 (39%), Alaska 2004 (44%), Colorado 2006 (41%), and Nevada 2006 (44%)
What turned Westerners' 58% support for legalization into just 46% of the vote in California? Details.
The most recent Gallup Poll showed 58% support among Westerners for “legalization”. That means there are 12% of our supporters who dropped their support for legalization once the details are spelled out. What lessons have we learned from the loss? I believe there are ten main lessons we need to learn to succeed in 2012.
1. We must explicitly protect medical marijuana rights.
During the campaign some on our side were surprised by the emergence of the “I Gots Mine” crowd, the so-called “Stoners Against Legalization”. But the fact is that in a medical marijuana state, especially California, what they “gots” is pretty amazing. Moving forward, any legalization measure in a medical state must include the following three explicit points:
a) This legalization bill will not affect your medical marijuana rights in any way.
b) Your medical marijuana rights will not change in any way once legalization passes.
c) If you are concerned about your medical marijuana rights, please see points a) and b).
I’m being somewhat facetious, but the point better be taken. No legalization bill is going to succeed unless the current medical marijuana smokers believe it makes their lives better or at least doesn’t threaten to change their lives.
Now, I know as well as anyone that Prop 19 wouldn’t have affected medical rights, but it got lost within the Purposes and Intents and buried in a cloud of “notwithstandings” and “excepts”. The next initiative needs to have an explicit declarative paragraph protecting medical rights. And it has to be written in such a way that it is perfectly clear to even the most unlikely, naive, and uneducated voters, which leads me to…
You can't win with legalization that criminalizes part of the largest group of marijuana smokers
2. We must remember that people 18-25 are our biggest group of stakeholders and we cannot over-penalize them to appease our opponents.
The theme that Prop 19 would be creating a crime out of 21-year-olds passing joints to their 18-20-year-old friends resonated among every toker who first smoked a joint with an older friend or sibling. I even heard from people aged 18-20 who thought Prop 19 made them a felon. The new crime was created to soothe the soccer moms, but I think people realized it would be as ineffective at stopping young college kids from toking as the 21 drinking age stops frat keggers, so that all we’d accomplish is creating new criminal records for young people. The next initiative needs to retain the 21+ age (18 just won’t pass when alcohol is 21) but leave the punishment for furnishing to 18-20-year-olds the $100 ticket it is now… or at least don’t make it more punitive than the law for alcohol.
I understand the “make it like alcohol” motivation of punishing someone who furnishes to minors, but the punishment called for by Prop 19 was akin to the punishment for one who furnishes to a teen who then causes serious injury to self or others. The minimum punishment for merely furnishing alcohol, absent injury, is a misdemeanor, a $1,000 fine and 24 hours community service. Thus we were portraying marijuana as far more harmful than alcohol (see point 5 below) by implication.
When Humboldt County is voting against legalization, there is a problem.
3. We must find a way to integrate the current illegal growers into a new legalized market.
The results from the so-called “Emerald Triangle” – defeats for legalization in Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties – show us that legalization has to be framed to appeal to small time marijuana growers. Putting aside the immorality of profiting from the misery of prohibition, the fact is that many small time growers are paying their mortgage and feeding their families from profits on illegal marijuana. Nobody is going to vote to reduce the price of weed from $300/oz to $60/oz when that takes food out of their kids’ mouths. The next initiative needs to create a level playing field for small businesses to compete in marijuana cultivation. By emphasizing small, local grows, we can increase the grower vote while also soothing pot smokers worried about “WalMartization” and non-tokers worried about pot becoming as ubiquitous as alcohol they see advertised daily nearly everywhere.
Until Americans see the guys standing up as more dangerous than the ones lying down, we can't win
4. We cannot win until people are more scared of prohibition than they are of legalization.
People resist change. In order to shake things up, they need to find the status quo unacceptable and the alternative a moral good. Early on, many of our messages focused on what good would come from legalization, such as tax revenues (see point 6 below) and prioritization of police resources. While these things are good, they don’t tell the story of why it is so critical to change the status quo.
It’s not that legalization must be approved, it is that prohibition must be ended. LEAP speakers made the point that every test on a baggie of pot for a $100 ticket means a crime lab test of a rape kit has to wait, but it came too late to make a commercial out of that point. We need commercials with high school weed dealers in parking lots and hallways, dealing without any regulations or ID checks. We need commercials with indoor marijuana grow factories taking over suburban neighborhoods because there are no legal commercial grows. We need commercials with illegal outdoor grows polluting our state parks. We need commercials of SWAT teams breaking down doors over a pot plant, abusing families, while the rapist, murderer, and thief escape detection. (We need billionaires to kick in big dollars sooner in the campaign so we can get these commercials on air.) All these commercials that would use scenes prohibitionists use against us need to be used against them in an act of rhetorical judo that shows those evils to be the result of the prohibitionary status quo, not the proposed marijuana legalization. The next initiative campaign needs to scare people about the out-of-control prohibition situation we have now. Which leads to the corollary…
To some, this just means we're arresting too many blacks, not that the arrest itself is wrong.
5. We must stop painting the marijuana as a bad thing that needs to be controlled.
We did a great job with exposing the racially disproportionate nature of marijuana law enforcement. We’ve shown how much money is spent enforcing marijuana laws and how the cost of doing so is diverting police resources. We’ve illustrated the violent nature of the drug trade, particularly in Mexico.
None of that really matters, though, until we honestly address the social disapproval of “smoking pot”. The underlying premise of prohibition is that we are forbidding adults from an activity for all of our own good. Without addressing the morality of marijuana, the flaws we point out in prohibition are just kinks in the system that need to be improved, not an indictment of the reason for the system. We’re locking up too many blacks and Latinos? We’ll just try to be more fair about arresting all races equally, then. We spend a lot of money going after pot? How much is too much to spend to keep your kids safe? Gangsters are violent in the marijuana trade? That’s why we need to arrest people, so they’ll stop smoking pot. See how that works?
The next initiative campaign must do more pro-active positive portrayals of marijuana for adults. It is not enough to campaign against the bad guy (prohibition), you have to have a story arc for the good guy (legal marijuana use). People need to question why we bother arresting bright, successful, educated people and break up their loving families just because they prefer sinsemilla to a six-pack or a cigarette. However, as we tell the good guy’s story…
When you put up a number, you'd better be ready to defend it. When it's a number from a different bill, you're sunk.
6. We must be realistic about what legalization can and cannot accomplish.
As marijuana activists, we’re already starting with a deficit in the public trust column. So when we make our case, we have to be diligent about never over-promising what good can be realized by ending prohibition, especially if we attach hard numbers to those promises. It is too easy to become characterized as the glassy-eyed idealists who believe too much in the magic wonder herb when we supply targets that are so easily shot down.
Both the primary offenses in messaging can be traced to some honest mistakes. First was the claim that Prop 19 would raise $1.4 billion in taxes for California. This arose from the legislature’s legalization bill, AB 390, which proposed a statewide $50/ounce tax. Then the California Board of Equalization crunched the numbers and announced that $1.4 billion could be realized. Then AB 390 failed and Prop 19 took over, but never distanced itself from the $1.4 billion tax revenues and in a few instances, co-opted the $1.4 billion for internet forums and print. When Prop 19 instituted no required taxes and any taxes would be local, not statewide, everyone, even Prop 19′s supporters, knew that far less than $1.4 billion would be raised. Then when the Attorney General vowed to aggressively pursue anyone who opened up a Prop 19 shop, we all knew there would be even less taxes raised.
Next was the implication that Prop 19 would be a significant blow to Mexican drug cartels. Part of this owes to misinformation from the drug czar’s office, which had publicized the stat that 60% of the Mexican cartel income is raised from marijuana. But Prop 19 advocates could be faulted for accepting a drug czar’s word on anything, as well as not knowing their home state marijuana market well enough to realize nobody in California is smoking much Mexican brick weed. Combined with the “billions in taxes” saving the state, the “cripple the cartels” message was easily debunked and left us looking like we’re bullshitting the voters. The next initiative must be careful about promises and always return the focus to any modest gains from ending prohibition being more than what we’re getting now.
We have a drug test here at NORML... "Do you recognize this leaf?"
7. Legalize first, then deal with the drug testing issue.
You won’t find anyone who hates drug testing more than me. It’s inaccurate, unscientific, ineffective, and a disgusting invasion of our right to privacy. And I was thrilled to see non-discrimination language regarding drug testing in Prop 19. But tackling the drug testing issue along with the legalization issue presents too many conflicts for most voters.
Again, it’s about the good guy and the bad guy. The good guy is drug test that protects us at work from the bad guy, the whacked-out druggies. Many people are fine with you smoking a joint and getting whacked-out at home, but want to be sure you’re not smoking a joint at work or while driving. The drug testing language gave opponents a wedge to separate business owners, managers, and responsible workers from supporting us.
The next initiative needs to remain focused on the sole issue of ending the criminalization of people who smoke and grow pot. Once marijuana use is legal, and as the image of marijuana use becomes mainstreamed, the drug testing issue will be easier to work out. It would be considered ridiculous in most circumstances to have a work policy that accepted only teetotalers and punished someone for having a drink Friday night because he’d be dangerous on Monday morning. When marijuana is legal, soon those policies for pot will seem as ridiculous. Now, speaking of drug testing…
Objects in mirror may be fatter than they appear.
8. You can’t “treat it like alcohol” unless you can test for it like alcohol on the roadside.
We often use the phrase “treat it like alcohol” to get through to voters with little knowledge of marijuana (indeed, if they were educated, they’d realize treating cannabis like alcohol is an insult to cannabis.) But every time we do, we activate many long-held frames about alcohol, and one of those is “shit-faced drunks who drive”.
The “stoned drivers” scare is one of the few effective bits of rhetoric our opponents have left, along with “what about the children”? We insisted that Prop 19 didn’t at all change the cops’ ability to bust a stoned driver, but I believe this just did not overcome a gut feeling for most people that it would, because we could offer them no new tools for law enforcement to watch over stoned drivers while creating a more lenient state for marijuana users.
The next initiative must work with the “treat it like alcohol” frame by providing a “breathalyzer” equivalent for the stoned driver. This is the hardest part for me to write, because I so loathe drug testing and even the breathalyzer, which really does not prove anyone’s actual impairment. All any drug test proves is that you’ve used drugs, alcohol included. Some alcoholics can drive fine at a 0.12 BAC; some lightweights are a danger at 0.04 BAC. But since the public believes in the breathalyzer as a magical scientific instrument than can detect and help punish drunk drivers, and since we’re engaging them in the “treat it like alcohol” frame, they need something more tangible than “we’ll just bust them like we do now”, which rings hollow when the general public knows we bust the stoned driver (impaired or not) now just for having weed in his pocket or a roach in the ashtray. There are technologies available – blood testing, cheek-swab saliva testing, epocrine gland (armpit) sweat testing – that can show recent use of marijuana within four hours. That, along with a “no burnt cannabis / no paraphernalia” in the car rule to match the alcohol-equivalent “no open containers” would go along way toward negating the “stoned drivers” scare.
People barely trust their city council to be able to handle potholes on Main Street, much less regulating the third most popular recreational substance
9. Commercialization must be handled with consistent statewide regulation.
Prop 19 designed its commercial regulations to be opt-in, with cities and counties each deciding if they wished to have regulated sales and how they would regulate them. The reasoning for this is sound, as the proponents wanted the commercial regs to stand up to federal court scrutiny, the theory being that since Prop 19 didn’t explicitly tell the state to allow marijuana commerce in violation of federal law, the commercial regs might not violate the Commerce Clause.
However, as a rhetorical piece to convince voters, it was lacking. Most people don’t trust their city government or believe it to be ineffective. Opponents were able to conjure a future where there were hundreds of different pot regulations across the state. This becomes troubling in a crowded Southern California where driving down one strip of road can pass you through multiple city jurisdictions that are visually indistinct from one another. Am I in City of Industry that allows me to have 2 ounces in personal possession or am I in La Puente that only allows one? How will our stores in Torrance collect their 10% marijuana tax when just up the road in Gardena they only charge 5%?
The next initiative must establish a statewide regulatory commercial framework. It will probably be squashed by the federal courts, but it will be better to have legal marijuana first and fight those commercial battles in court than to have prohibition and no chance in court. Once people have the legal right to possess, use, and grow marijuana, the commerce will inevitably follow (see: medical marijuana everywhere.)
Most people don't think of medicine in the same context as getting an ear piercing
10. Medical marijuana has reached its peak and is now inextricably linked to legalization.
In California, the people are already accustomed to a fairly open marijuana policy, where anyone who wants to toke can get a Prop 215 recommendation and buy it from many dispensaries. In the North it’s a well-regulated system that is contributing to clean neighborhoods and city tax revenues. You can see by the county results map above that most of the support comes from the Bay Area where cities and counties put together regulations and ordinances and created a healthy system. Why wouldn’t people vote for more of that?
But in the South it’s a “Wild West” system with tent after tent of “pot docs” on Venice Beach that can’t spell “cannabis” and carnival barkers pushing the “4-gram eighth”. This is the fault of the local officials who refused to put forth any sort of regulations, but that’s lost on the average voter. All they see is that what they have now is pot run wild. Why would people vote for more of that?
While legalization support has increased in eleven years, medical marijuana has declined.
In South Dakota, a medical marijuana initiative failed in 2006 with 48% of the vote. In 2010, South Dakota’s support for medical marijuana dropped to 36%. In Arizona they passed a flawed medical marijuana initiative (it used “prescription”, not “recommendation”) with 65% in 1996. In 2010, it got just below 50% of the vote. In Oregon a measure to create medical marijuana dispensaries lost with 42% of the vote in 2004. In 2010, the dispensaries measure gained slightly with 43% of the vote.
This is reflected in Gallup polls on both medical marijuana and marijuana legalization. In 1999, support for legalization was just 29%, while support for medical use was 73%. It’s fair to say that people who believe in legalization would naturally support medical use, so the difference of 44% in 1999 would represent those who believe in medical use but think people who just want to get high should be punished. By the mid-2000s, medical marijuana support reached 75%-78% and legalization reached 34%-36%, meaning those who support medical-only dropped to 31%-32%. Now in 2010 we have legalization support at 46% while medical support has fallen to 70%, leaving only 24% who believe in medical-only.
Similar initiatives in Arizona, Oregon, and South Dakota for medical marijuana declined while the second Prop 19 for legalization in California increased.
The next initiative needs to highlight the second-class-citizen nature of medical marijuana laws that can only be solved by full legalization. The legalization campaign needs to bring forth those same medical marijuana patients who played to public sympathy to get medical marijuana and show how even with medical marijuana, they are still harassed, arrested, tried, and convicted because they’re swept up in the overall battle law enforcement must engage with healthy marijuana smokers. People need to see the patients who lose housing, lose scholarships, lose child custody, suffer home invasion robberies, can’t travel outside the state, and hear from the patients themselves that medical marijuana just isn’t good enough.
And one thing we don’t need to do? Change the word “marijuana” to “cannabis”. I’ve heard this suggestion a few times, but I think it actually works against us. You and I know that “marijuana” is a Mexican slang term initially used for racist reasons to confuse and frighten the public. But now “marijuana” is the familiar brand name everyone knows. When we run from “marijuana” and only say “cannabis”, “marijuana” is emphasized by its absence. Why won’t they say “marijuana”? What are they trying to hide? What’s wrong with marijuana? It’s like when liberals go out of their way to call themselves “progressives” or when conservatives felt the need to emphasize “compassionate”; it’s distancing yourself from your own brand – if you don’t like it, why should anyone else?
The next initiative needs to just be honest: The Marijuana Legalization Act of 2012. There is nothing wrong with that linguistically or even ethically, as the laws on the books that this would repeal are “marijuana laws” – they use the term “marijuana” (or sometimes “marihuana”) in the statutes. We can, and should, pepper in the word “cannabis” as we explain the act, using it as the proper name of the plant species, but not be afraid to talk about “smoking marijuana” when the public brings it up. By now, people know the plant by the name “marijuana” and that name, in and of itself, doesn’t denigrate it in their minds any more than the less-familiar “cannabis” promotes it.
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I’ll make sure to fix the charts!
Alabama has an initiative for medical marijuana being presented next year after passing through the house last year, why do none of the charts or anything on NORML ever mention this? It seems like a medical marijuana initiative with a chance to pass IN THE SOUTH would be a pretty big deal, I’d consider that a major victory
I don’t consider myself the most clever person, but I haven’t come across this idea being discussed before so figured I’d put it out there.
It appears legalization is potentiallyon the near horizon, you can almost taste it. As your post noted, there were lots of different messages and that may have led to the confusion of the non cannabis using voters and eventual defeat of all the bills and propositions up for vote. While your arguments for what we learned about each of those messages and how we can better frame our message are spot on, I also think one of the issues is how many different organizations are involved in this: NORML, SAFER, DPA, MPA, Just Say Now, et al. Lots of chiefs, few braves. It could look to an outsider, or insider for that matter, that there are a bunch of self-involved groups each fighting their own battles. Those damned stoners can’t get their act together. Still.
How about a summit – very open and public (read: advertised) – of all the organizations’ leaders? Create a coalition of all groups so that there’s one unified voice, one message, but each group dedicated to it’s particular focus, like LEAP dealing with law enforcement and imprisonment and SAFER working to create youth advocacy and getting out the youth vote, as examples. Each org has its strengths and weaknesses, and those can be easily defined. There would be no “in charge” person or group, but perhaps a board consisting of each org’s leaders. One org would be the administrative side, handling organization, media, marketing, financials, etc. All orgs would be equal but tasked with their respective duties based upon their focus and strengths. Not a “one world” sort of thing, as each org would retain its autonomy and individuality but all would work together like in manufacturing: Company A, B & C each make their respective parts, designed by Company C for their end product that is sold to market. That would make it one place for people to donate to and volunteer for. One “face” in the media. All working together with one voice. It would be a strong sign of agreement and a force that could have influence on the millions of Americans who aren’t informed and concerned about prohibition. It could get people to think “Hey, there are all these different groups organizing together for a common cause. Even though I don’t use pot I never knew how much prohibition affected me.” With all that has been learned recently and in the decades before, I find it hard to believe that the best from each couldn’t devise an impenetrable strategy for ending prohibition. Identify and train the best “evening news anchorperson” types to be the main public faces; recruit A-list celebrity/personality endorsements; identify and utilize experts in their fields (medical, industrial, law, etc.). Pooled knowledge, pooled resources, pooled talent, multi-pronged attacks on all fronts – one face, one voice, one message, one goal. Turn the current discontent in the American psyche against prohibitionists, make them have to defend their untenable policies and positions.
It seems that there is so much plurality, polarization and some need to be the king of the mountain. If the groups that are working to end prohibition were able to come together it would be a huge positive image for cannabis culture and for non-partisanship in general. Instead of “we at (insert org name) made it happen” it can be “we all worked together to achieve our common goal”. It could be the shot heard ’round the world.
If we’ve got enough money to run these ads for 18 months, and we can get the food network, lifetime, and oxygen to run them, then yes, I think this can work. But if it’s just a three month campaign, it won’t sink in. A lot of parents are deluded, and they think they’re kids are sheltered from this kind of stuff. They tell themselves that their kid wouldn’t get themselves involved with “those types of people” because they know better than to do something illegal. But if it’s legal, then they think their kids might be attracted to it. I know it’s backwards, but a lot of parents think that. It takes time and a lot of explanation to get them past those misguided beliefs.
I also think you have a good strategy, and some valid points. =)
Ultimately I’ll support legalization whether it uses marijuana or cannabis in the language, and I respect your point of view. I control nothing, and I wish you the best of luck. =)
I agree, and that’s why I call for ads that scare the hell out of parents about what prohibition is doing now. Let them see the teenage dealer in the hall with stats of “85% of seniors find it easy to get weed”. Let them see the scuzzy looking older-20s guy selling a bag in his bachelor pad to sweet little 16-year-old girls while “Slow Ride” from Foghat is playing. Let them see their kid in a cell, making a latenight bail call to mom and dad, the cancelled student aid, etc.
And end them all with: This is what marijuana prohibition has done. It does not work. Meanwhile, public education, regulation, and strict ID carding for minors has brought teen alcohol and tobacco use to historic lows. Legalize marijuana – only then can we truly control it.”
Have you read my piece on this?
http://stash.norml.org/cannabis-marijuana-pot-whats-in-a-name
Here’s my point: People know marijuana is marijuana. People don’t know cannabis is marijuana. When you ask them to regulate cannabis, they ask “what’s cannabis”? Then we say “it’s the proper name for marijuana”. People then think “Why didn’t you just say ‘regulate marijuana’?” People think, why are these people trying to use a euphemism? What’s so bad about marijuana?
Title the initiative “Marijuana Legalization” so we are clear about what we’re doing, both to the doubters and to our own side. No more accusations of “Trojan horses” or “that’s not legalization”. Up front: Marijuana Legalization.
Now, as we discuss it, we can use the hell out of the word “cannabis”. We can do the education about “marijuana’s” racist roots. We can explain the nature of hemp and the science of cannabis. But we have to engage the doubters on the turf they are familiar with before we can change their hearts and minds. We have to show them the “marijuana” they are so afraid of is nothing to fear… then we can bring them to the understanding of how beneficial “cannabis” and “hemp” are. They can’t entertain that notion if they feel like they are being bullshitted from the get go. “Control, Regulate & Tax Cannabis” sounds like the “Environmental Sanitation Removal Serviceperson” that picks up my garbage every Friday… he’s a “garbage man”!
Exorcising “marijuana” is tacitly admitting to people there is something reprehensible about it. Yes, WE know it’s the reprehensible racist scaremongering of Harry J. Anslinger’s ghost, but THEY only equate “marijuana” with, well, marijuana.
Use the word “marijuana” to engage the conversation. Don’t let it be “the m-word” because that gives it more power in the mouths of haters, like “liberal” is now used by conservatives.
I was also thinking about the “marijuana or cannabis” term dilemma, and I am of the mindset that the word cannabis only helped Prop 19 instead of associating it with the word “marijuana” which many people get negative vibes from. We should also familiarize the term cannabis so that we can move towards using it as a society instead of marijuana. I am not afraid to say that the word marijuana has been linked to negative stereotypes for decades now, and using it to further our cause will likely only send us back in time. I am firmly supportive of using the word cannabis unless we absolutely need to use the word marijuana as a legal matter in order to repeal the old “marijuana laws”.
Seriously… =)
I like your suggestion about the paraphernalia having a “packed away or in trunk” clause, and I think that would alleviate any worries I had with the potential need for transportation of a used smoking device. When mentioning this idea to some people yesterday, they also had similar transportation concerns with regards to their paraphernalia, but I think they would also find this acceptable.
I kinda get what you are saying about the “small grower” model, but ultimately I don’t think I understand all that well. I shall take your word for it for now. =) hehe
I like your suggestion about the paraphernalia having a “packed away or in trunk” clause, and I think that would alleviate any worries I had with the potential need for transportation of a used smoking device. When mentioning this idea to some people yesterday, they also had similar transportation concerns with regards to their paraphernalia, but I think they would also find this acceptable.
I kinda get what you are saying about the “small grower” model, but ultimately I don’t think I understand all that well. I shall take your word for it for now. =) hehe
Thanks a lot for the corrections. Wish it were true. haha Great job.
Nice post, as always.
I would add a couple things. We can’t afford to rely on the youth vote. It’s too risky. 2008 was a total anomaly. Bush was that bad, and Obama was that inspiring (at the time) to make it happen. But you won’t see that type of youth energy in politics for another generation–no matter what they issue.
Instead, I think we need to work on parents. It’s irrational, but a lot of parents honestly believe prohibition protects their kids. We have to convince them otherwise. I know we put out the message that prohibition puts their kids at risk, but they aren’t listening. Why is that? Now that I’m a parent, I think I get it. It’s because the desire to protect your kids is so emotionally grounded that it’s hard for cold rational info and data to get through. So distant ads, press releases, photo ops, and studies probably won’t cut it. That stuff just gets ignored. I think the info has to be delivered in a more personal way, by someone they know or someone they get to know over time. Something one on one. Something that allows for their doubts and questions to get addressed and talked through. And that means it has to start now, not just 3 months out from election day. I keep thinking we need to establish a corp of internet community moms and dads who join these mom and dad groups online and who participate in the regular discussion for a month or so, and who then raise the marijuana issue and see how people respond. And then engage people at a civil level, acknowledging and addressing their fears but also making the case (in a gentle, non angry, non judgmental way) for why prohibition actually puts their kids at greater risk. I know, it’s a super labor-intensive way of going about it. But I’m not sure we can win any other way. Otherwise, I think we’ll see the same thing happen as just happened on Tuesday. At the last minute too many parents will get cold feet.
If you consider Philadelphia, more than 1/10th of the state’s population reside there… maybe you just need to add an asterisk?
From PhillyNorml:
http://www.phillynorml.org/pages/news/20100608_Philadelphia_Marijuana_Penalty_Reduction_Goes_Into_Effect_Today
http://www.phillynorml.org/pages/news/20100405_Philadelphia_to_ease_marijuana_penalty
Call a spade a spade when you need to, but call it shovel if you are addressing an American … I guess that’s the lesson for sure.
I’ve been calling it cannabis for decades and it is the “language” I think in. My bookshelves have lots of real information on cannabis, but mainly pretty pictures and legal tripe when it has the slang terms involved. Same goes for much of “other” side of the Internet in reference. If you force people to look into cannabis they find a whole different side in their results.
I know this is slightly pretentious and I make concessions all the time to ensure communication. Especially when referring to medical cannabis because MMJ/Medical Marijuana is almost a legal term and more easily understood by the masses.
Agreed though that Marijuana and not cannabis should be in the title of any new approaches to get it on the ballot. Confusion is just as powerful a repellent as anything else.
Now if we can just get the media to stop calling it “dope,” which I still think means heroin, maybe we can make some progress in changing some of the stereotypes. Much of the slang really does work against us when it comes to working on the conservatives. Ganja, pot, reefer, etc all illicit the wrong response. A lot of the media seems to love calling it “pot-laws” and “legal pot” or “legal dope” for instance. It may be quick and easy and allows for lexicon filler, but that is not helping shed negative stigmas at all.
@paul knight did I miss your update?
You were going to show us a *MORE* liberal bill that would have passed :-/
I won’t hold my breath.
Humboldt will *always* vote against, no matter what.
Just like Prohibition’s “Bootleggers and Baptists” caucus, so will it be again.
Leave ‘em to their karma, forget trying to appease them.
You’re right – the “minors” thing is something I completely forgot to address in this article. I’m kinda torn, because saying things like “you can’t smoke a joint if your kids are in the house” when you’re allowed to smoke a cigarette, drink a beer, or use Oxycontin, seems like it would go against point number 5.
But there is that fear among squares that legalization means bad hippie parents hotboxing their kids or their kid finding weed laying around at his friend’s house on the sleepover. Can something work where we say “you can’t smoke pot in the same ‘room’ as a minor?”
I’ll have to think about it…
This is the problem with most of the decriminalization approaches. Multiple offense scaling rules, local law enforcement stance, etc all factor into being anything close to what most people think it means. In most cases you are far better off than say someone in Florida, but hardly the level of decrim seen in other places.
Mainly it means no felony/jail time and in most cases rarely results in being fully prosecuted for ***small*** amounts. And we do mean small … This again does not address supply and cultivation. Also the idea that decrim can still mean a misdemeanor does not make compute for most when they hear the term.
California addressed this by pushing the decrim language into a citation level vs misdemeanor, but it still falls far short of addressing how they obtain it. Those laws are still the same. So all it takes is charges for trafficking/distribution/intent to sell and you’re in a world of hurt. Again, up to the enforcement officer involved.
Decrim falls short and actually makes things worse from my view. Prohibs point to decrim while still filling prisons with all the “repeat” customers that the courts see etc. They also like to mix up the language and call it “defacto legalization” and negate there is any problem with ignoring the supply side gains even more people willing to risk a non jail time first offense.
Decrim the way we have approached it just does not address the issue. It’s truly a half-ass measure that too many people think is an acceptable solution.
Whoops! No, you’re right, Pennsylvania is not decrim. Will fix.
Fair enough… so what’s your plan, Paul? Show me your plan that convinces 50%+1 voters to vote YES for it.
I don’t think a lot of Emerald Triangle growers worked to convince others to vote against Prop 19, but that they were just voting self-interest. However, flipping LA County would probably bring in enough votes to overwhelm those counties.
But consider the second part I wrote about appeasing the nervous “squares” afraid that marijuana advertising and marketing would become as ubiquitous as alcohol. That’s the hidden benefit in the “small growers” model.
Rick Steves tells the tale of the Amsterdam coffeeshops where you can’t see a menu of buds until you press a button, because they decided to restrict the marketing of cannabis to “on demand” only. Nobody is ever passively advertised to about marijuana; you have to seek out the information.
The “no paraphernalia” rule isn’t meant for unused paraphernalia… in fact, if it is unused, it (in California) isn’t parapernalia, it’s a “glass sculpture novelty item”. Such a rule could require transport of used paraphernalia in the trunk or packed away only. What we’re going for is easing the fears of the “stoned driver”.
I don’t see the point in pandering to the people in the Emerald Triangle who helped defeat Prop 19 when we don’t need their vote. Just flip LA County, get it legalized off that, and let the other people who helped bring down Prop 19 burn… Then we won’t need them, and they’ll get their just deserts…
Also, inventing a breathalyser is a bad idea, but maybe providing them with some current option is a good one. Furthermore, the “no paraphernalia/burnt cannabis” rule is going to go a long way to put a lot of people in trouble that shouldn’t be under a legalized system, and provides us with no realistic way to transport paraphernalia. I do not agree that we need to implement this rule, and believe that it will only do a lot to hurt us in the future. I don’t believe that this one issue can bring the whole issue down in 2012, and we shouldn’t cut our Rights short in order to pass something when we don’t absolutely need to, and this clause would catch so much heat from current cannabis users.
Ultimately though, I think the Emerald Triangle pandering is the worst, as those people are the ones that helped bring Prop 19 down with their greed, and we don’t absolutely need their support in order to pass something in California because of places like LA County. I am referring mostly to suggestion number 3, which does one good thing and that is to highlight the importance of small, local cannabis growing businesses, which we need to protect and promote as you would any small business, but we cannot allow that mentality to trickle over into deliberate benefit for the selection of people based in the Emerald Triangle. Let those people get their just desserts, and work on flipping places like LA County over to the “yes” side so that we can win in 2012.
I have to agree with Brandon. I’m a citizen of PA and the laws definitely aren’t decriminalized. Maybe the possession laws are a little more lax than many states, but after your first offense, the laws only get harsher.
It’s work like this on a daily basis that sets RadRuss and NORML far above all other grassroot organizations. We need to go over all the spook tactics and stoner mistakes,along with the inevitable future reasons stoners go paranoid and lose all logic.
Thanks NORML for all you do to heal this very sick planet. Blessings always!
Russ, you guys on the west have made this election a shamble. you fought over how little I can carry, and how much i can grow. there was only one question. Are we a citizens of the united states or are we second class Americans? Keep acting like a bunch of criminal and you deserve to be treated like one.
Russ, I think you hit the nail on the head here. But, you forgot to mention the dubious “space” argument and what it constitutes. The Marijuana Legalization Act of 2012 needs to clearly define and address consumption around minors. I think the whole space issue needs to be supplemented by a clause that says that any consumption that affects a minor in a way that gets them high/stoned or causes an altered state should be prohibited, but no new punishment needs to be created for this. The word “space” should be replaced by something more clear like “enclosed room,” but the emphasis needs to be on actual impairment. And also, I think including a clear “standardized test” like the breathalyzer, which I also think doesn’t test impairment, in the initiative would be needed for it to pass. A burnt roach would obviously be something that could included in the text of this, but including paraphernalia could actually cause cannabis users to get upset. If paraphernalia is included as something you can’t have in your car, then how are you supposed to transport your bongs, pipes, lighters, grinders etc.? I think paraphernalia shouldn’t be included, however, a burnt roach should be, to parallel the open container rule.
There was another thing that got scrutinized as well. Opponents said 19 wouldn’t increase tax revenue, because none of the commercial businesses could pay their federal taxes without “incriminating themselves.” Even though CA still receives 100 million+ in sales taxes every year from medical mj business, and this could be argued for the next initiative, I think the initiative should try and protect the businesses as much as possible in this respect. I don’t know how it could be done without creating a positive federal conflict though. Perhaps the drafters would know.
Lastly, I think the initiative should partition a small amount of the revenues made from taxes for any societal harms cannabis use may have, however small they are. This would really hurt the prohibitionists’ argument that legalization would cripple CA and cause rampant abuse. It would also help prevent the drug treatment industry from jumping so readily onto the prohibition train.
One thing that I think needs to happen regardless of how this initiative gets written is that a high profile and well done documentary needs to be released, like The Union, a couple of months before election day in 2012. Voters never read ballot measures themselves and unfortunately rely on the media for information. The Union has done an awesome job at compacting all the main points in favor of legalization in an hour and 40 minutes. People will watch a movie, especially if it’s controversial, and the format (I think) is perfect for imprinting all the bad imagery of prohibition, while prompting a meaningful emotional response from viewers. A film is just more digestible for voters than sound bites from activists, and will stick with them longer as well.
Very nice write up. Are you sure that PA is decriminalized??? Because the laws here are pretty harsh in PA. You have PA yellow on the chart and I checked the link for yellow on the key and PA is not listed.