Rachel Maddow (one of my faves) has a complaint, wondering how could 9 out of 10 marijuana initiatives succeed at the ballot box, while 4 out of 4 anti-gay initiatives succeeded. (Updated with hyperlinks and bumped. — “R”R)

To be fair, I understand Rachel’s point about the anti-gay ballot amendments in California, Arizona, Florida, and Arkansas all passing – it’s despicable that we would treat gays and lesbians any differently under the law than we treat straights. However, that doesn’t mean there is some equivalence between reforming marijuana laws and discrimination against gays.

For one thing, I’d note that the only state that had statewide gay and marijuana initiatives was California, the only state where a marijuana initiative (Prop 5) failed. (Arkansas had anti-gay adoption, but Fayetteville, not the whole state, approved cannabis as lowest priority for law enforcement.) It wouldn’t be fair to say the anti-gay amendment also brought out anti-pot voters in California, would it?

I’ll admit, Rachel, that the results seem ironic and sad, though no more sad that Californians approving humane treatment of chickens at the slaughter while also taking away marriage rights from humans that already have those rights. But your casual dismissal of some very important gains by the cannabis community is not in keeping with your usual inclusive and tolerant beliefs.

In dismissing marijuana initiatives with “whatever, dude” and “Funyuns” comments, you are dismissing the thousands of seriously ill and disabled Michiganders who will no longer fear arrest and incarceration for simply using a plant to alleviate severe pain, nausea, spasticity, seizures, or the wasting that comes with chemotherapy treatments and HIV/AIDS. Rachel, didn’t you begin your career as an activist helping those with HIV/AIDS in prisons? You should know this better than most.

You’re also dismissing residents of Massachusetts who’ve chosen to put their law enforcement resources into crimes more serious than busting a college kid for a baggie of weed. Or are you supportive of criminal penalties for marijuana that endanger students’ financial aid, poor people’s housing, and working people’s jobs and professionals’ careers?

Perhaps we just did a better job of mobilizing our base and convincing the voters of our message. Yes, you had the financial might of the Mormon Church fighting to pass Prop 8 in California, but we’ve had the financial and prosecutorial might of law enforcement fighting us from their bully pulpit using our own tax dollars. And while it is a terrible injustice to deny the rights of gay people to marry or adopt, nobody is arresting 872,000 gay people a year for being gay, nobody is testing gay people’s urine for metabolites of homosexuality and declaring them DUIs, and nobody is incarcerating gay people for their “lifestyle”.

Yes, gay people face revolting acts of violence and discrimination most stoners never face, but we can still be arrested for our “lifestyle”. The government has an entire cabinet bureau dedicated to propagandizing against us, lying about us, defeating our ballot propositions, and arresting and convicting us.

We should be natural allies, Rachel. Our struggles are very different, but also quite similar. We need to come out of the closet, too. We need to educate ignorant people about us. While you may think the big difference is that gay is innate and stoner is a choice, don’t be so sure. We all have an innate desire to alter our consciousness, and for medical users, they really don’t have much of a choice.

Now pass the Funyuns!

The results of the 2008 election are in and marijuana law reformers are big winners in state and local ballot initiatives.

Michigan became the 13th medical marijuana state with 63% of voters approving Proposal 1.

Massachusetts became the 13th state to decriminalize the personal possession of marijuana with 65% of voters approving Question 2.

Fayetteville, Arkansas voters decided marijuana offenses should be the lowest law-enforcement priority by 65%.

Voters on the Big Island (Hawaii County), Hawaii voted to make possession of 24 ounces and 24 plants the lowest law enforcement priority, and to forbid county officials from cooperating in or accepting funds for marijuana eradication efforts on the island.

In bad news, however, Oregon’s Measure 57 passed with 61% of the vote, establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for repeat drug offenders, among other things. Measure 61 was still at 50%, but even if it passes, it fails because 57 got more votes (61′s mandatory minimums would have included first-time drug offenders)

More bad news comes from California’s Proposition 5 (the Non-Violent Offender Rehabilitation Act) which failed with only 40% of the vote. In addition to diverting non-violent drug offenders to treatment, it would have decriminalized personal possession of marijuana.

But there were some successes in California. Proposition 6 was defeated by 70% of the vote, a measure that would have required the eviction of people from public housing for a recent drug offense. Berkeley, California’s Measure JJ passed with 62% of the vote, which will ease restrictions on zoning for medical marijuana dispensaries.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Prop 5 (NORA) in California is losing 64.9% to 35.1% with 12.6% of precincts counted.

The Detroit News reports that Prop 1 (medmj) in Michigan is winning by a 3-2 margin.

The Republican reports that Question 2 (decrim) in Massachusetts passed by 65%-35%.

Along with the victory by President-Elect Obama, we are thrilled to announce that Michigan will now be the thirteenth medical marijuana state with their passage of Proposal 1 and that Massachusetts will now be the thirteenth marijuana decrim state with their passage of Question 2.  We’re still awaiting the results from California on Proposition 5.

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-11-03

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2008-11-03.mp3)

It’s our special election roundup here on the Stash.  We’ve got the experts here to give their take on state and local initiatives to be decided tomorrow:

• Dianne Byrum, Coalition for Compassionate Care, on Michigan’s Proposal 1 to legalize medical marijuana;
• Whitney Taylor, Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, on Massachusetts Question 2 to decriminalize personal possession of marijuana;
• Ethan Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance, on California’s Proposition 5 to move non-violent drug offenders to treatment instead of jail and decriminalize personal possession of marijuana;
• Ryan Denham, Sensible Fayetteville, on Fayetteville, Arkansas municipal measure to make enforcement of personal marijuana possession crimes the lowest law enforcement priority.

VOTE!

I know some of you think it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same, it’s hopeless, I hate ‘em all, whatever, but a cannabis consumer who doesn’t vote is like a battered spouse who keeps forgiving the batterer.  Your voice matters!  If people didn’t think voting mattered, California would never have passed Prop 215 and all the positive gains of the past dozen years may not have happened.

We can do this.  There are literally millions of us.  We’ve got the public mostly on our side; now it’s the politicians who need education.  The winds of change are blowing and we may have the best political atmosphere for drug law reform yet – the perfect storm of progressive leadership, popular will, and fiscal need.  Vote as if your freedom depends on it… because it does.

Paul Armentano has written a splendid piece on the opposition to California’s Non-Violent Offender Rehabilitation Act.  This act would divert non-violent drug offenders away from prison and into drug treatment and mandate some new state drug treatment programs.  It could save California taxpayers a lot of money and reduce California’s prison overcrowding problem.  The state’s prison guard union isn’t happy about that prospect:

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, California’s powerful prison guards union has spent close to $2 million dollars to lobby against the passage of Prop. 5. After all, overcrowded prisons… and more prison construction (in lieu of building additional public high schools and state colleges) are a financial windfall for prison guards, even if they spell disaster for everyone else.

Another part of the act would decriminalize the possession of small amounts marijuana to a civil fine only with no jail time, as is the case in twelve other US states.  Now, most small possession cases don’t result in prison time, so this is no issue to the prison guards.  Who could be against the decrim part of NORA?

According to the DPA, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors have donated $100,000 to the ‘No on 5? campaign. Could it be that the alcohol lobby is fearful of the day when they will have to legally compete with a natural product that is remarkably safe, non-toxic, and won’t leave you with a hangover? 

Paul is not alone in noticing this.  On the highest-trafficked progressive news blog, Huffington Post, two writers have caught on to this story.  First, Arianna Huffington:

California’s prisons are a budget-busting debacle. There are currently more than 170,000 inmates crammed into prisons designed to hold 100,000 people. Around 70,000 of these prisoners are nonviolent offenders, with over half of them incarcerated for a drug offense.

As a result of this dysfunctional system, prison costs have risen 50 percent since 2000, to over $10 billion a year — close to 10% of the state’s budget (and roughly the same amount California spends on higher education). It costs $46,000 a year to keep a nonviolent prisoner in the state behind bars. Is it any wonder California is gushing red ink?

Enter Prop 5, a ballot initiative that will reduce prison overcrowding, increase public safety, cut costs, expand drug treatment programs inside California’s prisons, and start the state’s first drug treatment program for at-risk youth.

Yet Prop 5 is struggling because of a very powerful special interest: the prison guards union. It has funneled $1.8 million into the campaign to derail Prop 5.

For the guards, prison overcrowding means more overtime pay. So the state’s prison industrial complex has unleashed the full force of its financial power — funding an array of ads that blatantly mischaracterize Prop 5. Truth has gone out the window, replaced by overheated claims that the initiative is a “drug dealer’s bill of rights,” “a get out of jail free card” for meth dealers, and a law that will allow parents to abuse their kids and escape punishment.

And Prop 5′s co-author, Daniel Abrahamson, details some of his personal discussions with Attorney General Jerry Brown:

The prison guards, however, oppose Prop. 5. They don’t like the math. Fewer prisoners will mean fewer jobs and less overtime pay for prison guards. Today we released a new ad that will be running throughout the state that shows how the prison guards are sabotaging California’s future for their own self interest.

Prop. 5 would also forestall massive new prison construction. For taxpayers, that means saving $2.5 billion for each new prison that is no longer needed. For the guards, however, fewer prisons will mean less staff to run them — and possibly fewer new dues-paying members in the future. This is bad news for a union with burgeoning membership that boasts higher annual take-home pay than the governor. To put it bluntly, the prison guards’ union is built on the backs of human beings in cages.

A.G. Jerry Brown’s role in all this is the most perplexing. He is either taking progressives for granted or figures they’ll give him a pass for cozying up to the prison guards and fighting a measure that offers drug treatment and a second chance to young people, nonviolent offenders and prisoners.

As Arianna puts it in her post, “the drug war is the electrified third-rail of politics”, where neither Democrat or Republican, even in a progressive state like California, will seriously address its harms and work toward new solutions.  The politicians of the state and the country in general are building their political war chests on the backs of arrested and imprisoned non-violent drug offenders and the governments they run love the profit in busting (and sometimes trafficking and dealing) drugs.  Urban voters like the tough-on-crime rhetoric and rural voters like the jobs new prison construction brings.  People like to feel like they’re doing something about drugs and corporations love the easily managed cheap prison labor force.

This was the opening panel on Friday morning of the NORML Conference in Berkeley, October 17, 2008.

Pot Politics 2008 and Beyond
Moderator: Keith Stroup, Esq., NORML, New Federal Decriminalization Legislation
Rob Kampia, MPP, Massachusetts and Michigan Initiatives
Madeline Martinez, Oregon NORML, Oregon Cannabis Tax Act 2010
Joe Elford, Esq., Americans for Safe Access, CA Attorney General Guidelines
Ethan Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance, CA Proposition 5 (NORA)
Becky DeKeuster, Berkeley Patients Group, Measure JJ in Berkeley
Ryan Denham, Sensible Fayetteville, Fayetteville Initiative
Sudi Pebbles Trippet, Mendocino, CA Initiative

Feature: Drug Policy Reform and Sentencing Initiatives on the November Ballot | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)

CALIFORNIA: Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA) would expand the number of drug offenders diverted from prison into treatment, expand prison and parole rehabilitation programs, allow inmates earlier release for participating in such programs, and cut back the length of parole. It would also decriminalize the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. 

Proposition 6, the Safe Neighborhoods Act, is primarily aimed at gang members, violent criminals, and criminal aliens, but also includes provisions increasing penalties for methamphetamine possession, possession with intent, and distribution to be equal to those for cocaine, and provides for the expulsion from public housing of anyone convicted of a drug offense. The measure also mandates increased spending for law enforcement. Read the California League of Women Voters’ analysis of Prop. 6 here.

MASSACHUSETTS: The Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy is sponsoring an initiative that would decriminalize the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. Known as Question 2 on the November ballot, the initiative builds on nearly a decade’s worth of work by local activists who ran dozens of successful ballot questions directed at individual representatives. Question 2 looks like almost a sure winner; it garnered 72% support in a mid-August poll. 

MICHIGAN: Michigan is poised to become the first medical marijuana state in the Midwest. An initiative sponsored by the Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care and appearing on the ballot as Proposition 1 would allow patients suffering from debilitating medical conditions including cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, hepatitis C, MS and other conditions as may be approved by the Department of Community Health to use marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation. It would require the department to create an ID card system for qualified patients and their designated caregivers and would allow patients and caregivers to grow small amounts of marijuana indoors in a secure facility. It would also permit both registered and unregistered patients and caregivers to assert a medical necessity defense to any prosecution involving marijuana. A poll released this week showed the measure gaining the approval of 66% of voters. 

OREGON:  Ballot Measure 61, “Mandatory Sentences For Drug Dealers, Identity Thieves, Burglars, And Car Thieves,” is pretty self-explanatory. It would impose mandatory minimum sentences for the manufacture or delivery of cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine of 36 months in some cases and 30 months in others. It also lays out similar mandatory minimums for the other criminal offenders listed above. [Chief Petitioner Kevin] Mannix originally included a provision attempting to supplant the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, but dropped it when it became apparent it could drag down the entire initiative.

Another measure initiated by the legislature and referred to the voters, Ballot Measure 57, would also increase penalties for the sale or distribution of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and Ecstasy. It sets a sentencing range of 34 months to 130 months, depending on the quantity of the drug involved. The measure would also require drug treatment for certain offenders and impose sanctions for those who resist, provide grants to local jurisdictions for jails, drug courts, and treatment services, and limit judges’ ability to reduce sentences.

LOCAL INITIATIVES: In addition to the statewide initiatives mentioned above, there are also a handful of municipal initiatives on the November 4 ballot. Here they are:

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA: In Berkeley, Measure JJ seeks to broaden and regularize medical marijuana access. Supported by the Berkeley Patients Group and at least two city council members, the measure would expand the non-residential zones where dispensaries can locate, create an oversight commission including representatives from each of the three existing collectives to promulgate standards and determine whether relocating or future operators are in compliance, issue zoning certificates by right if operators meet standards, and bring Berkeley possession limits in line with recent state court rulings determining that such limits are unconstitutional. 

FAYETTEVILLE, ARKANSAS: The local grassroots organization Sensible Fayetteville is sponsoring an initiative that would make enforcement of adult marijuana possession laws the lowest law enforcement priority. It also includes language mandating city officials to write an annual letter to their state and federal representatives notifying them of the city’s position and urging them to adopt a similar one. If the measure passes, Fayetteville will become the second Arkansas community to adopt such an ordinance. Nearby Eureka Springs did so in 2007.

HAWAII COUNTY, HAWAII: Hawaii’s Big Island (Hawaii County) will be voting on an initiative making adult marijuana possession offenses the lowest law enforcement priority. Ballot Question 1 not only makes adult possession offenses the lowest priority, it would also bar county law enforcement officials from accepting federal deputization or commissions to enforce laws in conflict with the initiative, prohibits the County Council from accepting or spending funds to enforce adult marijuana possession laws, and bar the County Council from accepting any funds for the marijuana eradication program. The initiative is sponsored by Project Peaceful Sky, a local grassroots organization whose name alludes to the disruption of tranquility caused by law enforcement helicopters searching for marijuana.