Pubdate: Fri, 30 Jul 2010
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2010 Independent Media Institute
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Author: Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet
Note: Daniela Perdomo is a staff writer and editor at AlterNet
Cited: Proposition 19 http://www.taxcannabis.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Proposition+19

WILL CALIFORNIA LEGALIZE POT?

With Only a Few Months to Go Until the Election, the Campaign to 
Legalize Marijuana in California Has Only $50,000 in Cash on Hand. 
The Question Now Is: How Can It Win?

Today, at least a third of Americans say they've tried smoking weed. 
Is it possible that after half a century of increasingly mainstreamed 
pot use the public is ready for marijuana to be legal? We may soon find out.

California has long been on the front lines of marijuana policy. In 
1996, it became the first state to legalize medical cannabis. This 
year, the Tax Cannabis initiative -- now officially baptized 
Proposition 19 -- may very well be the best chance any state has ever 
had at legalizing the consumption, possession and cultivation of 
marijuana for anyone over 21.

Drug reformers are particularly excited about Prop. 19's prospects 
because the pot reform stars seem to be as aligned as ever here. 
Consider the current state of marijuana in California. For one, 
medical cannabis has normalized the idea of pot as a legitimate 
industry to many of the state's residents. At least 300,000 and as 
many as 400,000 Californians are card-carrying medical marijuana 
patients, and the medical pot industry brings in around $100 million 
in sales tax revenue each year, according to Americans for Safe Access.

Add to this the fact that at least 3.3 million Californians consume 
cannabis each year, a figure culled from a presumably low-ball 
federal estimate, meaning the actual incidence rate may be much 
higher. In other words, at least one in 10 Californians uses pot 
every year. Plus, 38 percent of Californians say they have tried pot 
at least once in their lifetimes.

Next, tie the widespread use of this mild substance -- which has 
proven to be less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes -- to the 
growing slice of law enforcement resources that are dedicated to 
fighting non-violent crimes associated with marijuana. Since 2005, 
marijuana arrests have increased nearly 30 percent, totaling 78,000 
in 2008, according to figures from the state's Office of the Attorney 
General. Of those arrests, four out of five were for simple 
possession. Not surprisingly, this overzealous drug war 
disproportionately affects minorities and young people.

All of this in the face of the state's massive debt -- $19 billion 
for the month-old fiscal year -- which is closing schools, laying off 
police officers, and shutting down key public services while 
cash-strapped taxpayers foot the bill for a failed, senseless drug 
policy. With little money in state and local municipalities' coffers, 
criminalizing marijuana seems a senseless waste of the state's 
largest cash crop. In all, marijuana prohibition is both an economic 
and a social issue -- and Prop. 19 hopes to convince California 
voters that Nov. 2 is the time to end it.

The midterm elections are just over three months away, and Prop. 19 
is seen by many observers as one of the ballot items most likely to 
galvanize voters. As the people behind Prop. 19 prepare to launch 
their ground campaign in earnest, it's clear the initiative will be 
under a magnifying glass every step of the way.

The question on everyone's mind is: How do they win?

The reality of the matter is that Prop. 19 has the deck stacked 
against it simply because there is no precedent for a voting public 
of a state to endorse removing all civil and criminal penalties 
associated with adult marijuana use. All preceding efforts have met 
sad ends: A 1972 measure also called Prop. 19 failed in California; 
more recently, attempts in Alaska, Colorado and Nevada were also 
rejected. In the face of decades of federal and state prohibition, it 
is still much easier to vote no than yes, even in the face of 
convincing arguments to do otherwise.

"There is no template available that shows what you need to do to 
achieve victory," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the 
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Where Prop. 19 Stands Today

For the past few months since qualifying for the ballot, Prop. 19 has 
focused on building up its online support, fund-raising, staffing the 
Oakland office, building a coalition, and setting up a network of 
volunteers throughout the state who will soon power the ground force. 
Over this time, the mainstream media's coverage of the campaign has 
mostly focused on poll numbers.

Polls in April and May found support at 56 percent and 51 percent, 
respectively. A SurveyUSA poll released this month shows support at 
50 percent, 10 points over those against it. A new Public Policy 
Polling poll found the divide to be even greater, with 52 percent 
supporting and 36 percent nixing it -- and the campaign says these 
results are more consistent with its internal polling. But another 
poll also released this month, the Field poll, showed that more 
people oppose the initiative than support it, at 48 to 44 percent. 
(This contrasts with the last Field poll, conducted over a year ago, 
which found support at 56 percent.) No matter which numbers you're 
looking at though, 50, 52 or even 56 percent isn't all that 
comforting. It's one thing to say yes to a pollster, it's quite 
another thing to get out and vote that way.

"Progressive drug reform on the California ballot needs to be polling 
in the high 50s or low 60s," says Stephen Gutwillig, the California 
director at the Drug Policy Alliance. "This is because they generally 
have nowhere to go but down because of the fear-mongering that 
usually occurs at the hands of the law enforcement lobby which tends 
to not need as much money to push their regressive fear-based messages."

Mauricio Garzon, the even-tempered campaign coordinator, admits polls 
could be better but is sure that something even more important is 
happening. "We're seeing a legitimization of this issue, politically. 
There was a time when this was impossible," he says. "You reflect on 
this and you see a shift in public sentiment and this is what this 
campaign has always been about. Making Americans understand how 
important this issue is. It's a real issue and the existing framework 
has been devastating to our society."

Indeed, Tax Cannabis has always been framed as a public education 
campaign. In this sense, at least, Prop. 19 is really succeeding -- 
after all, a lot of people are talking about it.

Prop. 19's newly hired field director, James Rigdon, thinks marijuana 
legalization has a lot more going for it than other issues. "There's 
something appealing about this for everyone -- helping the economy, 
incarceration issues, personal freedom ideas, public safety concerns. 
People from all walks are willing to come out and support us," Rigdon 
tells me. "Our supporters aren't just Cheech and Chong. They're 
everyday people who support this because it's good for everybody."

The multi-layered appeal to ending marijuana prohibition even has 
some expert election observers believing that ballot initiatives 
legalizing cannabis may be the Democrats' answer to the gay marriage 
bans that drive Republican voters to the polling places. That theory 
remains to be tested in November, but what is certain now is that the 
far-reaching benefits that come with legalizing the marijuana 
industry in California have attracted a broad coalition of supporters 
of all stripes.

In addition to all the major players in the drug reform community, 
groups ranging from the NAACP to the ACLU have also signed up as 
official endorsers of Prop. 19. So, too, have numerous labor unions, 
faith leaders, law enforcement officers, elected officials, and 
doctors and physicians. According to Gutwillig, a coalition of 
organized labor, civil rights organizations, and the drug policy 
reform movement "has not existed before and could be game-changing."

As the coalition of Prop. 19 supporters grows, so does the mainstream 
media's coverage. Gutwillig believes Prop. 19 has done a "really good 
job of defining the way the media is covering it; coming up with new 
and interesting ways of talking about the issue. They are talking 
about the failures of prohibition without seeming to encourage 
greater consumption of marijuana. And the argument that is 
increasingly made is that this is not playing out as criminal justice 
reform, that this is playing out as a social or cultural or economic 
issue. The framing is different."

Here Gutwillig is referring to the last statewide drug initiative -- 
Prop. 5 in 2008. That failed measure was framed as a criminal justice 
issue and sought to emphasize treatment and rehabilitation for drug 
offenders over harsh criminal consequences. So the Prop. 19 
campaign's hope may be to learn from the lesson of Prop. 5 and skew 
away from criminal justice arguments. But there could be a downside 
to this approach.

"Prop. 19 is talking about this as more of a jobs, revenue issue, 
which plays well for the mainstream media which likes to play up the 
fiscal side of it because it ties into larger stories, but a more 
sinister interpretation may be that it allows the media to talk about 
marijuana reform without talking about marijuana reform," Gutwillig says.

This is tied to another worry Gutwillig observes. "The research and 
focus groups I've seen see the whole revenue thing as gravy -- it 
matters to people who've already made up their minds about supporting 
Prop. 19. But it's not the reason someone is going to come off the 
fence. [Talking about revenue] doesn't resonate with voters, nor 
should it," he says. "But what does resonate is the other side of the 
fiscal coin, which is the opportunity to save and redirect scarce law 
enforcement resources. That message makes a big difference. People's 
instincts tell them there is something fundamentally hypocritical 
about marijuana prohibition."

Prop. 19 hopes to appeal to the instincts of Californians who believe 
the drug war has failed.

The Campaign's Strategy

As Prop. 19 prepares to fan out across California, it has set two 
very important, realistic goals. The first is that it will not try to 
change the minds of those who believe marijuana prohibition has been 
a success. This means that the campaign is out to mobilize those who 
already support Prop. 19, and make sure they show up to vote; it also 
means they will focus on convincing those who have some sense that 
criminalizing pot has done more harm than good that this measure is 
the right solution to this policy problem. The campaign expects the 
swing demographics to be comprised mostly of blacks, Latinos, 
mothers, and young people.

In its second key strategic move, the campaign will especially focus 
on the largest areas of voters most likely to vote in midterm 
elections -- Los Angeles County, Orange County, the Bay Area, the 
Inland Empire, and the Central Valley -- rather than spread itself 
too thin across the entire state.

As the campaign prepares to begin its on-the-ground outreach over 
these next few weeks, the question of financing arises. After all, 
big dollars are behind most successful campaigns.

While Tax Cannabis premiered with a lot of fanfare about its 
financial backing, the situation is somewhat different now. Richard 
Lee, the pot entrepreneur and co-proponent of the initiative, 
injected $1.4 million of his money -- via Oaksterdam University -- to 
ensure its passage. While fund-raising has continued at a steady 
clip, the latest public filings show that most of the larger cash 
infusions still come from S.K. Seymour, LLC, Lee's umbrella 
organization that runs Oaksterdam and other cannabis-related 
businesses. Despite this, Prop. 19 is committed to raising small 
amounts from many people, and the filings show many small-dollar 
donations have started to flow in. According to Lee, the campaign has 
raised $130,000 online and most of these donations were under $250.

Yet Lee admits that "everything is on track, except fund-raising." 
The campaign currently has $50,000 in cash. While the campaign has 
talked to the major funders of other marijuana measures throughout 
the country -- people like Peter Louis, George Soros, Bob Wilson, and 
John Sperling -- none have committed funding yet. All of these men 
contributed between $1 million and $2 million each to Prop. 5, the 
failed 2008 measure that sought to reform sentencing for drug-related 
offenses. A big question remains unanswered: Why are these Prop. 5 
donors not funding Prop. 19?

Their non-involvement may be why Garzon says the campaign "can 
certainly do a lot with a little." Prop. 19 has not yet planned for a 
mass media campaign, which costs a lot of money. For example, a 
statewide TV ad buy for a political candidate in California costs 
about $1 million per week. That's a daunting figure and so Tax 
Cannabis will instead be stressing one-to-one public education, which 
will take the form of door-to-door canvassing, phone banks and 
town-hall meetings.

"We don't think we need [a mass media campaign] to win. It depends on 
our budget -- if we have room for it, we will," Garzon says. "People 
are interested enough that we find the person-to-person interaction 
to be very successful. When you answer their questions, they're very 
supportive."

The Prop. 19 campaign will rely heavily on volunteers. Though the 
campaign hasn't yet put out an official appeal, 2,600 people have 
already signed on. Many thousands more are expected to comprise the 
complete army of volunteers, who will have to learn how to craft 
talking points that appeal to different kinds of on-the-fence Californians.

Already the campaign has some idea of what those talking points will 
be. A town-hall meeting in Mendocino County gave Garzon an 
opportunity to see what resonated with voters there. The event was 
billed as "Life After Legalization," and speakers framed the passing 
of Prop. 19 as an opportunity to become "the Napa Valley of 
cannabis," Garzon said. By the end of the meeting, a union man had 
inspired attendees to chant, "Organize! Organize!"

For Jerome Urias-Cantu, a law student at Stanford, the key issue is 
border safety. In a fund-raising appeal sent out to Prop. 19's 
mailing list, he wrote about a cousin who lived in Ciudad Juarez, 
just miles from the California border, who was killed in the 
escalating drug war in Mexico. "Oscar had nothing to do with the drug 
trade, but he was shot and killed nonetheless," Urias-Cantu wrote. 
"That's why I support the reform of California's cannabis laws. The 
measure will prevent needless deaths by reducing the profitability of 
the drug trade and putting the violent drug cartels out of business." 
(The Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that Mexican 
cartels receive 60 percent of their revenue from marijuana sales in 
the United States.)

Lance Rogers, a volunteer regional director based in San Diego, 
believes that besides the border issues, people in his area will be 
interested in economic arguments for Prop. 19. "San Diego -- like the 
state -- is in a major fiscal crisis. We have an extreme budget 
deficit due to pension problems," he says.

And as a criminal defense attorney, Rogers has met others like him 
who "see the effects of an overly punitive criminal justice system on 
marijuana offenses. I see people go to prison for five or seven years 
for sales of less than an ounce of marijuana. Granted, these are 
folks who have prior felonies or other things going on, but the fact 
is that this person is going to prison for $75,000 a year for doing 
what Prop. 19 would legalize."

Priscilla A. Pyrk, the regional director for the Inland Empire and 
the owner of a medical marijuana collective, thinks dispelling 
stereotypes about cannabis consumers and entrepreneurs will be 
important, too. "The cannabis industry needs to revamp how people 
perceive this industry and its users," Pyrk says. "That's why it's 
great that we have a lot of non-traditional cannabis consumers coming 
on board. They're coming out of the closet! Doctors, lawyers, 
businessmen are coming out and standing up for the initiative."

Women, who were key in the effort to legalize medical cannabis and 
have more generally helped mainstream pot use, will also be targeted. 
According to Richard Lee, soccer moms in particular are a big 
undecided group. "We have to educate them about how Prop. 19 will 
protect their kids better than the status quo," he says. "The current 
system draws kids into selling and buying cannabis. If alcohol was 
illegal, it'd be the same way. There is a forbidden fruit attraction."

Stephen Gutwillig agrees: "The campaign must validate moms' instinct 
that there is something whack about marijuana prohibition. The 
instinct that marijuana is more like tobacco and alcohol than not, 
and safer -- which it is -- and that there's no reason that we 
shouldn't be trying to regulate marijuana. They know we're wasting a 
lot of law enforcement resources on this futile attempt to enforce 
these unenforceable laws."

As Prop. 19 works on the ground, it will count on the field support 
of three organizations. One is NORML, the National Organization for 
the Reform of Marijuana Laws; the second is the Courage Campaign, a 
progressive advocacy group with 800,000 members. Arisha Hatch, the 
national field director at Courage, estimates that about 500 to 1,000 
of its volunteers will be highly involved with the Prop. 19 
campaign's get-out-the-vote work, which she sees as "the biggest 
challenge [Prop. 19] will face. We need to get people to actually 
speak on message and in a responsible way about what taxing and 
regulating cannabis will be like.

"Marijuana legalization is the only thing on the ballot that can 
replicate that turnout. I see it as an extremely important issue for 
progressives, which is why Courage has made it the initiative we're 
supporting this cycle," Hatch says.

The final group supporting Prop. 19 on the ground is Students for 
Sensible Drug Policy, which will manage the campus outreach and focus 
on bringing out the youth vote.

Aaron Houston, the executive director of SSDP, says he is committed 
to proving the conventional wisdom about youth voters and midterm 
elections wrong: "What we're going to change with this election is 
demonstrate that marijuana on the ballot motivates young people to 
turn out and vote. Opportunistic politicians will find out that 
marijuana increases youth turnout and that speaking out against drug 
reform is to their peril."

Scoping Out the Opposition

Prop. 19's most vocal opposition comes from the top. Gubernatorial 
candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown don't see eye to eye on much, 
but they both seem to have decided it's politically expedient to 
oppose the measure. Senator Dianne Feinstein also recently came out against it.

"I was at a party with doctors who said they used to light up with 
Jerry Brown," says Garzon. "But you know, the reality is that we know 
that politicians aren't going to lead on this issue."

Feinstein, for her part, refers to a Rand study released this month 
to justify the idea that "if Proposition 19 passes, the only thing 
that would be certain is drug use would go up and the state of 
California would run afoul of federal law and risk losing federal funding."

But if you read the actual study, you learn that Rand is still rather 
conservative in its ability to prognosticate much: "The proposed 
legislation in California would create a large change in policy. As a 
result it is uncertain how useful these studies are for making 
projections about marijuana legalization."

Yet even a rather staid study like Rand still sees positives such as 
tax revenues, which the state has projected could be as high as $1.4 
billion annually. As for Feinstein's claim, there is no reason to 
believe Prop. 5 would affect federal funding (which Feinstein will 
fight for anyway). As Richard Lee says, similar arguments were used 
against Prop. 215 but the medical marijuana measure has not resulted 
in less funding coming to California. And regarding the senator's 
assertion that drug use will go up, the opposite may be true. Other 
studies show that marijuana use among youth has actually dropped 
since medical marijuana was legalized in California. There was a 47 
percent decline among the state's ninth-graders from 1996 to 2006.

"Sen. Feinstein opposed Prop. 215 although she has now come out in 
favor of medical marijuana. It's political math," Lee says. "With 
Prop. 215, all the major politicians and statewide candidates were 
against it but it passed with 56 percent of the vote. So if you look 
at the polling, the voters don't trust politicians on this."

Currently, the No on Prop. 19 movement seems relegated to a few small 
groups. The most well-funded one is called Public Safety First, which 
claims endorsements from the California Chamber of Commerce, the 
California Police Chiefs Association and the California Narcotic 
Officers' Association. The group is headed by John Lovell, the 
lobbyist for the police and narcotic officers' unions. Public Safety 
First has under 250 fans on Facebook -- compared to the over 120,000 
Prop. 19 has -- and James Rigdon, the Prop. 19 field director, says 
at least 20 of them are fans of Prop. 19, too. "Some of them even 
work here," he laughs.

A couple volunteer opposition groups have cropped up, too. Citizens 
Against Legalizing Marijuana seems to have little if any money behind 
it. Another such group, Nip It In The Bud, boasts little more than a 
Web site, which depicts a skeleton holding a scroll reading: "Fix 
California with pot??? NOT!"

Prop. 19 seems more concerned with opposition within the movement 
than without it.

"From our own side there has been some fragmentation as there is in 
all social movements. There's just different people with different 
ideas," Garzon says. "We're open to criticism but we're trying to do 
things responsibly. We can't please everybody but we've tried to 
craft something that makes sense to a mother in Los Angeles, too. 
This isn't ultimately about the right to smoke, it's about taxes in 
our communities, a failed system, a public health issue."

I told Garzon that a few marijuana activists had written me to say 
they were upset about the local control aspect of Prop. 19 -- 
counties can decide whether to legalize the sale of cannabis. One had 
called the regulatory framework confusing and a bureaucratic disaster 
waiting to happen.

"We're not instituting a state government aspect, true. But it'll 
come down to who do you want to give your tax dollars to? Local 
control is what we need on so many issues but in particular this 
issue," he said. Local governments can decide "ideologically, 
culturally, operationally what is right for them. What it does is 
allows the best of the models to bubble up to the top. If say, one 
place does it horribly wrong, then Pasadena can wait and see how 
Davis does it. Local governments can decide not to pass it this year 
- -- but those who don't pass on the opportunity will take advantage of 
that extra revenue."

Priscilla A. Pyrk, the Prop. 19 organizer in the Inland Empire, also 
hopes to assuage some opposition from within the medical cannabis 
community: "Prop. 19 does not have anything to do with the medical 
side of cannabis. Prop. 215 stays intact. This can help medical 
cannabis patients by alleviating any of the judgment that is 
currently focused on them."

Not Much Time Left

How do they win? No one can say for sure, but the fund-raising 
strategy will be of paramount importance so the get-out-the-vote game 
can succeed. This midterm election cycle, the Prop. 19 campaign has 
to convince voters that marijuana prohibition hits on many important 
issues vital to their lives.

Going forward, the campaign will be heavily publicizing a recently 
released report from the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office 
which finds that Prop. 19 would put police priorities where they 
belong, generate hundreds of millions in revenue and protect the public.

The campaign needs to hammer in several points to stand a chance. Its 
messaging has to emphasize how marijuana prohibition has been a 
costly, senseless disaster. The drug war has strengthened and 
enriched violent cartels while law enforcement resources have been 
wasted on arresting non-violent marijuana users, ruining lives and 
siphoning from key public services that are sorely needed by all 
Californians. Prop. 19 must also make clear that taxing and 
regulating pot will make it harder for minors to access pot -- and 
that medical marijuana has proven that increased regulation decreases 
use by kids. Finally, the campaign ought to appeal to voters by 
reminding them that this initiative is their opportunity to take a 
stand where politicians have been reluctant to act. In other words, 
the time is now.

If the campaign is successful, Californians will wake up on Nov. 3 to 
find that marijuana prohibition is finally over. If it isn't, at 
least we will be a step closer to that possibility.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake