Pubdate: Sat, 09 Feb 2013
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2013 Star Advertiser
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Author: Jacob Sullum

FOES OF LEGAL MARIJUANA TREADING LIGHTLY RIGHT NOW

Three months ago, voters in Colorado and Washington approved ballot 
initiatives aimed at legalizing the possession, production and 
distribution of marijuana.

A month later, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice 
Department would settle on a response to this historic development 
"relatively soon." How soon is that? I have been trying to get a 
response to that question from Justice Department spokeswoman Nanda 
Chitre for about a month, but she is not returning my calls.

Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney's offices in Colorado and Washington 
decline to give any indication of how they will treat the 
state-licensed marijuana stores that are scheduled to open next year.

This caginess may be a good sign, reflecting the Obama 
administration's awareness that interfering with these experiments in 
pharmacological tolerance would be politically perilous.

Survey data released last week indicate that most Americans think 
marijuana should be legalized, while an even larger majority says 
states should be free to make that decision.

In a Reason-Rupe Public Opinion Survey completed on Jan. 21, 53 
percent of respondents said "the government should treat marijuana 
the same as alcohol." Asked whether the federal government should 
arrest pot smokers in Colorado and Washington, 72 percent said no; 
more strikingly, by a margin of 2 to 1, the respondents said the 
federal government should not arrest newly legal growers or sellers, 
either. Two-thirds of the respondents took that view.

These results indicate that some people who oppose marijuana 
legalization nevertheless believe the choice should be left to the 
states, as a consistent federalist would. Reflecting that tendency, 
most Republicans and self-identified conservatives in the Reason-Rupe 
poll supported marijuana prohibition, but most also said the federal 
government should not try to impose that policy on Colorado and 
Washington. A CBS News poll conducted in November generated similar results.

In a December interview with ABC News, President Barack Obama said 
his administration had no plans to go after marijuana consumers, 
which the federal government almost never does anyway, but he did not 
say how state-licensed suppliers will be treated.

He added that "we're going to need to have a conversation" about the 
interplay between state legalization and continued federal prohibition.

So far, that conversation has been pretty one-sided. Last month, 
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee talked to Holder about marijuana 
legalization for 45 minutes. Afterward, Inslee called the meeting 
"very satisfying" and "a confidence builder," although he emphasized 
that Holder had made no commitments regarding the possibility of 
trying to block legalization through civil litigation, criminal 
prosecution, or forfeiture threats.

In the meantime, both Colorado and Washington have begun writing the 
rules for growing, processing and selling marijuana.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board is holding hearings on its 
marijuana regulations, and in Colorado a task force appointed by Gov. 
John Hickenlooper is putting together recommendations, due at the end 
of this month, for state legislators.

It surely is not lost on Obama that marijuana legalization got more 
votes in Colorado, a swing state, than he did, and nearly as many as 
he did in reliably blue Washington. Any attempt to override the will 
of those voters would provoke a hostile response not just from people 
in Colorado and Washington, but from the large majority of Americans 
across the country who believe the federal government should mind its 
own business.

Wanda James, co-founder of Simply Pure, a Denver-based manufacturer 
of cannabis-infused food products that until now has served medical 
marijuana dispensaries, understands that getting into the 
recreational market could be risky. But she argues that trying to 
shut down that market would be risky for the president and his party.

"Three million people in America on election night voted to legalize 
marijuana," James says. "I can't imagine the U.S. government starting 
some arrest campaign on people who are compliant with their state 
laws. I just can't see the American government doing this when the 
will of the people is saying 'enough.'" before there was a Federal 
Reserve System, inflation was less than half of what it became in the 
hundred years after the Fed was founded. The biggest deflation in the 
history of the country came after the Fed was founded, and that 
deflation contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. As for 
bank failures, they reached levels unheard of before there was a 
Federal Reserve System.

Like so many "progressives," then and now, Wilson seemed to think 
that, if those who made government decisions had no financial 
interest in those decisions, then they could be trusted to wield 
their powers in the public interest.

But the enormous power wielded by the unelected leaders of the Fed 
over the economy, unchecked by the constraints of the market, has 
repeatedly turned out to be more than human beings can handle.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom