Putting it here because these are ballot initiatives.
Colorado, Oregon, and Washington have ballot initiatives in 2012 that will legalize production, possession, delivery and distribution of marijuana. You would be able to grow your own or buy it at state-licensed stores.
Shockingly, (to me at least) polls show it passing in Colorado and Washington and failing slightly in Oregon. In Colorado, a recent Denver Post poll showed 51% support and only 40% opposed. It has support across all income ranges and age groups with the exception of those over 65.
California had a similar measure a few years ago that also showed popular support before the election but it ended up failing 54-46. I think Colorado (where I am) just might pass this because, for all intents and purposes, it already is legal. Denver and Boulder are filled with medical marijuana dispensaries, and the pages of the alternative weeklies are filled with ads for them. It is a formality getting a medical marijuana card. Anybody who wants one can get one. Several municipalities, including Denver have passed laws instructing the police to make possession a least priority crime, basically saying to ignore it.
This is something that I never imagined would happen in my lifetime. I know that Alaska decriminalized possession in the 70’s but that was repealed and it hasn’t come back up.
Do you think this an idea who’s time has come?
Colorado marijuana legalization initiative leads in new poll
There is absolutely no way in hell the federal government is going to allow it. Assuming that the initiative passes, is certified into law, and the state licenses a commercial marijuana seller, his first customer will be a DEA agent there to arrest him for possession, sale, distribution and smuggling of a Class 1 narcotic.
Add to that that any employer would still be within their rights to fire someone if they tested positive for marijuana on a drug test, and even if it’s legalized it’ll still be illegal.
The only, only way marijuana will ever be made legal in this country is if Congress does it.
There are state-licensed stores selling it right now - they’re called dispensaries and they sell it for medicinal purposes. There are a couple of them within walking distance of my house.
The biggest hurdle for those who wanted to get into the business in a big way was working with banks - they were afraid to work with the sellers because of the federal laws.
President Obama said that he would tell his US Attorneys to avoid stepping on the states laws toes, but he hasn’t really kept that promise. Small-scale operations are being allowed to operate, but anything that gets too big gets targeted.
Oregon has medical marijuana. The “clinics” are supposed to have a client list and ONLY dispense it to those clients. Recently, an operation was busted because they were selling to anybody with a card from any of the retailers, and growing far more than they were permitted to do. Problems follow drugs, legal or not, and somebody is always going to come up with another scam. It doesn’t help that these dispensaries all look like dope houses, run down and with the windows all shuttered. Whenever the owners/growers are interviewed on the news, they look and sound like they’re way into their own product. It’s no wonder that Oregon voters may turn it down.
As long as you aren’t stoned on the job, what business is it of your employer what you do in your own time?
If cannabis is legal, then surely your employers should be treating it like alcohol… Don’t tell me you can get fired for drinking a beer at the weekend?
Edited to add: I don’t actually smoke Cannabis, so have no dog in the fight. I do take powerful painkillers on prescription though.
Can you point to a case where a dispensary that was in compliance with its state MM law has been raided since Obama called off the feds? At least up here in Montana all the dispensaries that have gotten raided have turned out to be in pretty egregious violation of the state MM law and involved in various other criminal dealings. It has nothing to do with how “big” they are, other than that the ones with hefty criminal sidelines and more liberal policies on who they sell to are going to grow faster.
Regardless of whether it is still illegal on the Federal level, what this would do is remove the state from cooperation and compliance with those laws. You’re not going to see local police or DAs involved in the case - arresting or holding people, or filing paperwork, or staking out citizens.
One question I would have for CA people would be: How many state and local police are involved in the annual harvest interdiction in Northern California? Because chances are that if it was legalized, those people wouldn’t be involved anymore. What percentage of current force requirements does that leave as Federal only?
That article doesn’t really say why they were being raided though. There’s always outrage when the feds raid a dispensary, but I haven’t seen a situation yet where it didn’t turn out to be pretty much entirely justified.
I know someone with a ‘green card’ here in California. He was once pulled over with marijuana in his car and showed the cop his card (or maybe it was the doctor’s letter) and he was not arrested, just sent on his merry way (with a ticket for speeding). Not sure what would happen if he had been stopped by a federal agent.
But what I found interesting is that he said marijuana purchased through the dispensary was not taxed (like buying food) and was not considered as a “purchase”, but a “donation” to the dispensary. I suspect that those terms are used for legal reasons, though I’m not sure what they are. And I have no idea why it isn’t taxed like cigarettes & alcohol.
I have a medical marijuana card in California, and I do in fact pay sales tax, though the stoned cashiers don’t always apply it to the purchase. There is no semantic manipulation of terms - I am purchasing marijuana for medical use from this dispensary.
Even if the federal government hasn’t completely shut down the “medical” marijuana stores, you can bet they’re going to take a much different approach to it being sold openly for recreational use.
No it’s not legal and I’m not just picking nits. If it were legal anywhere in the US or in the Netherlands, Philip Morris would enter the business and the price would crash to that of hay. Hemp is a weed after all.
It is decriminalized in CA, which is something different. Yeah, yeah I know you mentioned “Federal Crime”; it’s just that I’m stressing there’s a very big step between medical marijuana and full-on legalization. I oppose the latter and support the former.
This. Marijuana is not “legal”, and no state has the authority to make it so. No legitimate businessman is going to put his life savings into opening a business that can be arbitrarily shut down by the federal government at any time, and no bank is going to finance a loan to start up a “legalized” marijuana dispensary.
Personally, it wouldn’t bother me at all if marijuana were legalized tomorrow, but that change has to come at the federal level. States legalizing marijuana is on the same constitutional ground as the “show me your papers” law in Arizona, or the states passing laws “declaring” Obamacare unconstitutional, and it’s just as much an attempt at doing an end-run around the supreme law of the land when our side does it as it is when theirs does.
Youre misunderstanding what is happening, there are 1000’s of shops in state legalized states selling basically to the public already, getting busted by the Feds is because you got noticed somehow or win a crummy lottery. The de fecto state of things is pretty important to reality. Certainly any president can change the reality significantly and any employer can still violate the human rights of employees and potential employees by demanding to search their urethra at random for ganja. We are in a state of limbo on the issue to some extent but don’t get confused, a ton of people will be smoking a ton of marinol with little to no threat of legal consequence from now into the medium term future at least.