So, will Oregon or Alaska legalize marijuana next week?

[Logical]

The polls have been all over the place. Up and down. So it is not a sure thing in either state.

I assumed 6 months ago these would both be easy wins because of Colorado having very few issues and a lot of success.

If these two do not pass it will make it harder for other states to follow with wins IMO in 2016.

[JEFF9K]

1. Too soon!

Let's see how the Colorado experience plays out over the next few years.

[Logical]

2. Why? What is your concern? nt

[JEFF9K]

8. What's your hurry?

It could be many years before the results of the Colorado experiment play out.

[Logical]

9. What concerns you? Nt

[JEFF9K]

26. Two deceased brothers.

[Logical]

27. I understand. Nt

[Mariana]

33. They died from marijuana use?

I'm very sorry. I have a relative who is drinking himself to death. It's a horrible thing to watch.

[Comrade Grumpy]

12. About 800,000 marijuana arrests a year nationwide. For starters.

There's that basic justice issue.

We could also dismantle or shrink the DEA and all the dope squads if we treated pot as a public health issue instead of a criminal justice one. Not to mention all the other criminal justice system costs enforcing pot prohibition imposes.

Pot has been de facto legal in California for the past 20 years. We're still here.

Pot has been de facto legal in the Netherlands for the past 40 years. It's still there.

I'm always in a hurry to end a social injustice based on prejudice, ignorance, and now, institutional self-interest and inertia.

[Live and Learn]

18. +1 nt

[Warren DeMontague]

24. I think we should keep throwing potheads in prison, for the time being, don't you?

I mean, it's more important to not be hasty than to keep a few wheelchair bound grannies from being raided by SWAT teams for growing a plant to ease their chemo nausea in their back yard.


....right?

[Warren DeMontague]

19. We've had decades to see how the drug war "turned out"... = BADLY.

Maybe we stop filling our prisons with pot smokers for a few decades and see how that "turns out"

[JEFF9K]

25. You are ignoring the possibility that ...

without the drug war, things would have turned out worse.

[Comrade Grumpy]

28. Yeah, we might not have arrested tens of millions of people who weren't harming others.

And we might not have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to do so. Instead, we might have spent some of that money on public health and mental health initiatives.

If you're really interested in drug policy, you might want to examine the studies that find little link between enforcement strategies and drug use rates. Peter Cohen did one on marijuana a few years back; the Irish government just came to the same conclusion in a similar study this week. Google is your friend.

[JEFF9K]

30. What's your source? ...

What's your source on those figures of tens-of-millions and hundreds-of-billions?

I will bet you tens-of-trillions that they aren't accurate.

[Comrade Grumpy]

35. You can start with the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports.

They will show you we've been arresting more than a million people a year on drug charges for at least the past 35 years or so. It's actually been closer to 2 million a year recently, though it is now declining slightly. About half of all drug arrests are for marijuana, and about 90% of them are for simple drug possession.

The federal government budgets more than $20 billion a year for drug law enforcement. That's available in federal budget documents. The states are estimated to spend about the same amount annually, although that figure is bit trickier to come by. That's about $40 billion a year combined. Hell, I may have been conservative with the "hundreds of billions."

Okay. Your turn. You'll have to find your own links, though; it's a big pain in the ass. But I've pointed you in the right direction.

[JEFF9K]

42. Did you know that close to 100% of criminals are on drugs?

Getting them on drug charges keeps them off the streets, savings billions in crime-related losses.

[SomethingFishy]

46. OMG they are on the POT!

CRIMINALS ARE ON THE POT!!!

Hey genius, when drugs are illegal, criminals are going to be on drugs. If you made drinking coke illegal then criminals would be coke drinkers.

Your idea of "drugs" is far from the reality. The old Reefer Madness days of "ALL CRIMINALS TAKE DRUGS" are long gone my friend.

[Warren DeMontague]

40. Like the kids say, there's even an app for that.

Last edited Fri Oct 31, 2014, 06:15 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock

[SomethingFishy]

45. You are right, those numbers are not accurate... They are low..

The "War On Drugs" has been going on for over 30 years now. Arrests for drugs number over a million per year. Expenditures on the WOD are in the 10's of billions per year. You do the math..

You said "We don't know if things would have been worse without the WOD". Worse? That's laughable. The War on Drugs is a colossal failure, an epic clusterfuck that managed to make criminals out of non-violent people minding their own business, managed to create a billions of dollars a year black market and birthed numerous new crime syndicates. And after all the money, all the time, all the energy, all the man hours, I can still get anything I want, any time I want it. Don't do much more than smoke anymore but drugs are no harder to get than they were in 1980 when Reagan started his crusade.

Oh and Colorado is doing fine. Crime is down and revenues are up. And I get some mighty fine weed without having to look over my shoulder for the men in blue. I have 3 friends who have already moved here and a few more talking about it.

[Go Vols]

31. +1

[panader0]

34. Crazy comment....

[Warren DeMontague]

39. "you ignore the possibility that things might have been worse in Spain WITHOUT the Inquistion!"

I mean, doesn't the hypothetical frighten you just a BIT?

[JEFF9K]

43. That's pathetic logic.

[Warren DeMontague]

38. Oh FFS.

Whatever.

[Live and Learn]

20. Ask those imprisoned for it, what their hurry is?

'What is a few more years of imprisonment and the hell that goes with it for both you and your family?'

I am sure they will have some good answers for you.

[morningfog]

3. It had been so successful by every measure, states should not

wait another day.

[JeffHead]

4. I say both...

This snowball is starting to roll!

[customerserviceguy]

10. Same here

Especially Oregon, about 75% of its population can already go buy weed in Washington, and why let WA have all the tax money from marijuana?

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. I think Oregon has better shot than Alaska, but don't forget DC, either!

DC will definitely vote to legalize marijuana possession and cultivation next Tuesday. It can't tax and regulate through the initiative process, so that part will be up to the city council. There is already a bill in process.

Oregon is likely to pass. It has led in polls through-out, and even though it's under 50% in some polls now, it's still leading. It's going to come down to GOTV and how the undecideds break.

Alaska is a little iffier. The polls there have had wild swings, but I still think Alaska has a chance.

This is a bad year to run legalization initiatives, given the mood of the electorate, so any victories we can pull off will be all the more impressive.

[Logical]

7. Thanks for the great information. Nt

[customerserviceguy]

11. I didn't know about DC

Not that I'm fond of driving in that area (speed cameras are most oppressive, and the traffic is another thing entirely) but it would be nice to pick up a little smoke when I do have to go through the place.

[Comrade Grumpy]

13. Well, the DC initiative won't (can't) allow for sales...

...so don't expect pot shops in Dupont Circle anytime soon. Taxed and regulated sales will have to be enacted by the city council, and then Congress will have a chance to try to shoot it down. Given what Capitol Hill is looking like for the next couple of years, it could be a battle.

But in the meantime, if you have a friend in DC who is legally growing his own...

[customerserviceguy]

16. Ah, always looking for friends!

I'd trade Northeastern microbrew for some good smoke...

But thanks for the reality check, of course Congress runs DC like its own little fiefdom.

[rsmith6621]

6. Just Dont Let Washington State Touch....

...it if they pass. Washington still has not got their act together and municipalitys are Federal loopholes in their charters to keep pot stores out.

The will of the voter is being overturned.

[Arugula Latte]

14. The polls I've seen show pot losing slightly here in Oregon, BUT

it looks like they've been mostly polling old people with landlines, so, I wouldn't be surprised if it passes.

I got my ballot in today with a Yes vote for pot legalization.

[Warren DeMontague]

22. Every single poll EXCEPT the last one has shown Measure 91 winning.

It almost seemed like they were contorting themselves like crazy just to come up with a result that wouldnt demoralize the anti-legalization side. And even so, it was pretty much tied within the poll's own margin of error.

IF that poll is accurate and 70% of the voters are over 51, then it arguably could be a dead heat.

[Comrade Grumpy]

36. At 52% today, according to the latest SurveyUSA poll.

[Arugula Latte]

41. Awesome. That's great.

[Blue_In_AK]

15. I won't be surprised if it's legalized here

since I've read that we have the highest per capita percentage of pot smokers of any state in the country. The only reason it might not is that it's virtually decriminalized here already and some people may not like the tax and regulate part of the bill.

I'll say for me it doesn't matter one way or the other...it's not going to change how I live my life at all.

[littlewolf]

17. I thought it was legal in AK ... shesh

[Live and Learn]

21. Not legal, just not likely to get caught. nt

[Comrade Grumpy]

29. Legal to possess small amounts in your own home.

Thanks to a 1979 state Supreme Court ruling. I want to say Raskin, but not sure.

[Blue_In_AK]

32. Correct, although it was 1975

The case is Ravin v. State. The very strong privacy clause in Alaska's constitution allows for the possession of up to an ounce (some interpretations say four ounces) of weed in one's home for personal consumption. All this law would do is allow for the opening of dispensaries as up until now we had to grow our own or buy on the black market (mostly local growers). Whether or not this passes matters not to me.

[Comrade Grumpy]

37. Thank you. I guess the long-term short-term memory loss is taking hold.

[Warren DeMontague]

23. I am keeping my fingers crossed for Oregon.

One thing that has surprised me is how much the powers that be- from the OR Dem party all the way up to Merkeley- have come out in favor this time.

[Glassunion]

44. Vote early and vote often!