Pubdate: Sun, 25 Oct 2009
Source: North County Times (Escondido, CA)
Copyright: 2009 North County Times
Contact: http://www.nctimes.com/app/forms/letters/index.php
Website: http://www.nctimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1080
Author: Jim Trageser
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

VOTERS MAY LEGALIZE POT TO HAVE FINAL SAY

If California voters decide to legalize marijuana via ballot measure 
next year - or at any point in the future - the state's 
law-enforcement leadership will have only itself to blame.

Because through their defiance of the voters' decision to allow 
marijuana to be sold for medical purposes, California's political and 
legal leaders have changed the conversation about legalizing pot. The 
question is no longer whether legalizing marijuana is sound public 
policy, but instead what it will take to get elected and hired 
government officials to understand they work for us.

San Diego County's refusal to set up clear rules for those who want 
to sell medical marijuana under voter-approved Proposition 215 is no 
longer even the most egregious example of elected officials thumbing 
their noses at the very folks who elected them - not with Los Angeles 
County District Attorney Steve Cooley announcing last week that his 
office would be prosecuting every single pot dispensary in that county.

Clearly, this is not what voters intended when they voted to allow 
the growing and selling of pot for medical use back in 1996. They 
wanted to have an organized, lightly regulated way for people whose 
doctors feel marijuana would offer relief of their symptoms to be 
able to get pot without fearing arrest and prosecution.

And you know what? That's exactly what our elected officials should 
be giving us - not foot-dragging, excuses and outright defiance.

Granted, we voters have been a bit inconsistent, straying off-message 
in elections since Prop. 215 was approved. For instance, we keep 
re-electing San Diego County's board of supervisors, even as they've 
voted unanimously and repeatedly to block medical marijuana in the 
county (this despite the fact that local voters passed Prop. 215).

It's not even the first time our supposed public servants have told 
us to take a long hike off a short pier: When voters passed a ballot 
measure to prohibit the use of race in considering admission to 
public universities and colleges (also in 1996), University of 
California and California State University officials vowed to defy 
the new law - and showed far more creativity in crafting end-runs on 
the law than they ever had in their other endeavors.

So there's a history of the voters' will being ignored.

But there's also a history of the voters having the final say - 
witness three justices of the state Supreme Court being voted out of 
office in 1986.

While voters have, in the years since Prop. 215 was passed (years in 
which it has been routinely ignored, undermined and attacked by the 
folks charged with enforcing our laws), shown little willingness to 
punish those who defy our will, there are other ways of exercising 
political power.

Things like passing a new law that would leave defiant officials no 
legal recourse but to follow the law. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake