Pubdate: Mon, 22 Oct 2012
Source: Baker City Herald, The (OR)
Copyright: 2012 Western Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.bakercityherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1586

NO ON MEASURE 80

Were the backers of Measure 80 - the marijuana legalization measure 
on the Nov. 6 ballot - interested solely in allowing people 21 and 
older to grow and to smoke the stuff in the privacy of their homes, 
they'd have a better chance of persuading voters to approve the initiative.

But there's a lot more to Measure 80 than letting adults get a legal high.

The initiative reads like propaganda designed to convince voters that 
marijuana is not only just another intoxicant, like alcohol, but a 
wondrous substance that can help to cure the state's physical as well 
as fiscal ills.

Measure 80, with its emphasis on establishing state-licensed pot 
shops, seems to us more beneficial to people who want to sell 
marijuana than to people who just want to smoke it.

A keystone of the measure is creating an Oregon Cannabis Commission. 
This commission would, among its many other duties, issue licenses to 
qualified marijuana growers, license stores that could sell 
marijuana, set prices, and even establish standards for the "quality 
and potency" of pot sold at sanctioned stores.

So much for the rustic "grow your own" ethic of past decades.

Besides which, five of the seven members of the commission would be 
elected at large by marijuana growers and processors.

Last we checked, Jack Daniels and Jim Beam aren't members of the 
Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

Although Measure 80 supporters insist that legalizing marijuana will 
make it harder for kids to get pot, that claim, based on the language 
of the measure itself, seems laughable.

For instance, although the measure regulates marijuana that's ready 
to smoke, it specifically exempts hemp from any regulation. Yet the 
measure defines hemp as including marijuana seeds and starter plants.

Notwithstanding proponents' touting of hemp for its various 
industrial uses, including biofuel, it's obvious that the vast 
majority of the marijuana grown now ends up in people's lungs, not 
their fuel tanks.

Pretending that marijuana seeds and starter plants won't eventually 
be put to that use, and thus don't need to be regulated, is ridiculous.

It used to be that supporters of legalizing marijuana tended to frame 
the issue as one of personal freedom, the right for adults to decide 
for themselves what they eat or smoke or drink, without interference 
from the government.

Measure 80, though, seems designed to get the state government 
intimately involved in the marijuana business.

That's not a proper role for the state, and voters should reject Measure 80.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom