Our local Portland weekly, the Willamette Week, has a lengthy cover story, “Just Say Now”, on the surging popularity of the cannabis legalization movement. It features quotes from Ethan Nadelmann of DPA, Bruce Mirken of MPP, Rep. Barney Frank and others, and gives the average non-reformer a really good explanation of the valid reasons to end prohibition.
But what most warmed my heart is the accompanying article by James Pitkin on the local efforts to legalize cannabis in Oreg0n:
Last month, when CNN’s Anderson Cooper needed a place other than overhyped California to film a series about legalizing pot, his producers called the head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre knew just where to send them—Oregon.
“Oregon is second fiddle to California,” St. Pierre told WW in a phone interview from NORML’s office in Washington, D.C. “But it’s really the only other instrument in the orchestra.”
Some eye-popping statistics show [Oregon Gov. Ted] Kulongoski and other Oregon leaders may be passing on an opportunity.
The feds consistently put Oregon in the top 10 states for cannabis use. More than 300,000 Oregonians say they’ve smoked marijuana in the past month—more than 8 percent of the population. If pot were sold by the state, some say it could outstrip liquor as a revenue source, bringing in up to $200 million a year.
Without a standard-bearer in Salem, Oregon’s small but earnest band of cannabis activists is left to do for themselves. They plan to put the issue on the 2010 ballot with an initiative called the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act.
If they can gather 87,000 signatures to put it on the ballot, and voters then approved the initiative, the act would set up the Oregon Cannabis Control Commission. The new agency would sell pot to buyers 21 and over, with 90 percent of the profit going to the state’s general fund and 10 percent for drug treatment.
The article also includes a review of state politicians and their stand on legalization, with a surprising number in favor of legalization… but unwilling to risk political capital to push for it.
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[...] Willamette Week’s cover story on legalization [...]