Pubdate: Wed, 24 Mar 2010
Source: Huffington Post (US Web)
Copyright: 2010 HuffingtonPost com, Inc.
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Author: Stephen Gutwillig
Note: Stephen Gutwillig is the California State Director of the Drug 
Policy Alliance, the nation's leading organization working to promote 
alternatives to the failed war on drugs.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

CA MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION INITIATIVE TO QUALIFY FOR BALLOT TODAY

Today, an initiative that would legalize personal marijuana 
possession and allow regulated sales of marijuana to adults will 
qualify for California's November general election ballot.  A win at 
the ballot would be a first of its kind in U.S.  history.  This is a 
remarkable moment in the struggle to change our decades-old marijuana 
policies.

Marijuana was prohibited in 1937 before most Americans had ever heard 
of it.  Today the U.S. leads the world in marijuana 
consumption.  Nearly 26 million Americans used marijuana last year 
and more than 100 million have tried it in their lifetimes.  A huge 
commodity of the underground economy, marijuana is the nation's top 
cash crop, valued at $14 billion in California alone.  Our state 
Board of Equalization has estimated we would generate $1.4 billion a 
year by taxing marijuana like alcohol.

Like it or not, marijuana has become a mainstream recreational 
drug.  It is second only to alcohol and cigarettes in popularity and 
is objectively far less harmful than either.  Marijuana is 
drastically less addictive and cannot cause an overdose.  Every major 
independent study has debunked the gateway myth; for the profound 
majority of users, marijuana is the only drug people sample not the 
first.  Children across the country consistently report that 
marijuana is easy for them to get from their peers and the black 
market while significant barriers exist to buying alcohol and cigarettes.

Unthinkable carnage in Mexico has claimed 15,000 lives since the 
Calderon government declared war on drug cartels three years 
ago.  Our government estimates the cartels generate at least 60% of 
their profits from marijuana alone.  Following the murders of several 
U.S.  consular workers, Secretary of State Clinton returned to Mexico 
this week, acknowledging that demand in the U.S. dominates these 
markets.  But she didn't acknowledge that rampant violence is not a 
byproduct of the cannabis plant itself but of the prohibition that 
creates a profit motive people are willing to kill for.

Americans are increasingly turning against the prohibition that fails 
to protect our kids and guarantees a monopoly of profits to violent 
criminal syndicates on both sides of the border.  While polls have 
long confirmed that large majorities favor treating marijuana 
possession as an infraction without arrest let alone jail, support 
for ending marijuana prohibition outright is quickly gaining 
speed.  A Gallup poll last year reported that a historic 44 percent 
of Americans favor legalization, a 10-point jump since 
2001.  Meanwhile, sizable majorities of Californians are ahead of 
that curve, giving rise to the historic initiative we'll vote on this fall.

With this cultural transition underway, you might think enforcement 
of our marijuana laws would reflect their unpopularity.  Sadly, quite 
the opposite is the case.  Arrests for marijuana offenses have 
actually tripled nationwide since 1991.  In California, which 
decriminalized low-level possession in 1975, arrests have jumped 127 
percent in the same two decades the arrest rate for crime in general 
fell by 40 percent.  Police made nearly 850,000 marijuana arrests 
across the country last year, half of all drug arrests and more than 
all violent crime arrests combined.  No law in the United States is 
enforced so widely yet deemed so unnecessary.

Worse still, marijuana laws are enforced selectively with racist 
results.  In California, African Americans are three times more 
likely than whites to be arrested for a marijuana offense despite 
comparable or even lower rates of consumption.  An expose by the 
Pasadena Weekly found that blacks, who represent 14 percent of that 
city's population, accounted for more than half all marijuana arrests 
in the last five years.

It's hard to overstate the significance of the vote this 
November.  Banning marijuana outright has been a disaster, fueling a 
massive, increasingly brutal, underground economy, wasting billions 
in scarce law enforcement resources, and making criminals of 
countless law-abiding citizens.  Elected officials haven't stopped 
these punitive, profligate policies.  Now voters can bring the 
reality check of sensible marijuana regulation to California.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake