Boy did that feel good, I just got back from voting for Proposition 19, to legalize adult cannabis sales in California. Whether is passes or not, it felt good just to be able to have a say in the matter for a change...

I'm smoking up some sweet and stoney Trinity County Skunk right now in anticipation of a cannabis victory later this evening! Keeping my fingers crossed and making sure everyone I know is going to the polls today...

HW

Way to go, HW - you definitely be Da Man!

Thanks to people like yourself, I have a feeling this will pass! If I lived in Cali, I'd have been right behind you.

What a shame we lost!

I can't find any source that tells me what the margin was....

Yes = 46%
No = 54%

Proposition 19 fails. So it is business as usual in California for the time being. The ‘anti’ crowd really broke out the scare tactics the last week before the election. Untruths and slander about stoned employees and drivers filled the airwaves, and it apparently worked.

Gear up for 5-8 states (including California again) trying to legalize adult cannabis sales/possession in the 2012 election...

HW

I was just reading that Humboldt County voted AGAINST it! Then I realized...why, of course! That would drive prices way down, and which grower would want that?

That said, I'm impressed by the volume of yes votes, even if we lost.

Here are the Arizona numbers,,,50/50 lets have a recount with stoners doing the counting!

Prop 203 - Arizona Medical Marijuana Act
92.5% of Precincts Reporting (2072 of 2239 Precincts)

Total Number of Votes Percent
NO 643,295 50%
YES 635,826 50%

Go Arizona!!!!

Yet another state to recognize the benefits of medicinal cannabis.

What happens when over half the states allow it medicinally, and by then at least one or two states legalize adult recreational usage? The country as a whole will have to deal with this issue at some point, but let's take this one step at a time...

Who knows, maybe by this afternoon 420 (and our other fine members who reside in AZ) will be at the doctors office getting legal!

Keeping the fingers crossed on that one, good luck...

HW

Can't wait for it to happen on MD - keep dreaming, right?

On the other hand, DC has the med law right now, and I wonder what it would take for a MD resident to drive 20 minutes into DC and go.."ohhh...my aching back..."...or..."this awful migraine...can't stand the pain!"... :)

99.9 % of the votes in, still 50/50 but the actual vote count is still about 7,000 higher for no..wtf ???


One of my friends in AZ who could really benefit from the Medicinal prop (had thyroid cancer) didn't even vote...That's the last time I am going to make an effort to "share" any of the good shit from CA with him..What a fucking joke,,people talk shit and then don't vote.

Stupid is as stupid does!


Done ranting!

Yes, go Arizona ... that would make most of the south west US medical marijuana states!

I am hopeful many states will reach critical mass on the legalization issue in 2012 as well.

Another incremental step is the decriminalization issue. Regarding California Senate Bill 144:

http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=8364

I'm naive with these political processes. What happened to get this bill on the table - were public signatures required or the state politicians wrote the bill, voted on it, and required the governor's signature?

Is this process simpler or more difficult than a state ballot measure that may only happen once every two years?

How likely is it that other states (e.g. Nevada) will reduce the penalty from a misdemeanor to a $100 fine in the near future like California and Colorado?

tenseeker, Prop. 19 itself is what happened to get this decriminalization step moving forward. Good old-boy Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this into law just a few weeks before the election hoping to take the wind out of the sails of the full legalization ballot item. An assembly bill like this one is always floating around the capitol, the governor just timed it right and put his political will towards a political cause; the annulment of the full legalization of cannabis.

Since he and almost all senior California political figures were against this ballot proposition to begin with, it made sense politically to back the lesser of two evils; phased decriminalization rather than full legalization. Most of the older conservative voting public capitulated and voted to keep it illegal once the governor backed that course of action...

Is it good that cannabis is decriminalized? Most certainly yes, but I can not help but wonder what would have happened had this assembly bill been moved forward last year or shelved until after the election this year at which point it would have been made moot by a popular 'yes' vote...

HW

Ok, good explanation HW ...

I caught the drift that the bill was passed to weaken the Prop 19 efforts but I didn't know that a bill like this is commonly floating around and can be passed relatively quickly when there is the political will.

By implication, I suppose a push in other states in 2012 may result in legalization or the same tactic to decriminalize and usurp the legalization efforts which is not ideal but still pushes another boulder up the hill.

Well, I guess the great wall of china was not built in a day ...

The thing that makes CA's medical MJ laws different from other states' laws is the lack of specific illnesses that would be covered. Most other states limit med. MJ to very serious illnesses such as MS, cancer, and AIDS. Others also permit MJ use for glaucoma. Unfortunately, none of these illnesses can be faked and doctors will not give you a prescription unless you actually have the illnesses since they risk losing their license. So, effectively MJ is still banned in those states. I think a good compromise is for more states to adopt the liberal CA approach. Easy access, but still limited to a docs. certification. This is a legal fiction, but it works well for both sides.

Remember, even in AMS MJ is tolerated--not legalized.

akibono, good point about more states adopting the less restrictive mmj requirements being win/win model. I don't know but I had the sense that states that adopted mmj after CA made the restrictions more firm because they saw the CA model as flawed and broken with the loose restrictions. It seams like it would be difficult for these states to justify going back on these requirements now? I agree that it gives the states a sort of plausible deniability that in the end is a win for the consumer, the states, and the federal government ... quite interesting. I suppose the compromise could push actual legalization out or not?

I just watched "Marijuana: the Chronic History" on the History Channel. These points are probably well know to most here but it's beginning to resonate with me as I learn more about it. I get the impression that US Big Brother has a weakening grip but just won't let go!

They said:

If it wasn't for the US government pressuring Jamaica marijuana would have been legalized there long ago.

Portugal is the only country that has completely decriminalized marijuana. Apparently, the US government through a Hissy Fit over it but when the statistics came in they found the crime went down and usage did not go up.

The Netherlands data has shown that the US teen marijuana use is a little higher than the Netherlands teen use but the US hard drug use is much higher than in the Netherlands at least in part because it separates marijuana access from hard drug access which reduces the attempts by pushers to push harder drugs on vulnerable consumers.

The Netherlands generates 3.2 billion dollars (2.5 billion Euros) per year for the Dutch economy through the taxation and tourism of Marijuana.

Harry Anslinger's 1961 United Nations Single Convention Treaty on Narcotics, intended to eradicate marijuana use, exported the US marijuana prohibition to 160 countries around the world.


By the way, I feel bad for 420 ... to lose the Prop 203 by so few votes must be heartbreaking. I imagine you were looking forward to potentially benefiting from it :-(