Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jul 2013
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Ian Mulgrew
Cited: Sensible BC: http://www.sensiblebc.ca

PEOPLE-POWERED POT REFERENDUM IS THE FIRST STEP

Plan to legitimize the plant and its derivatives moves the marijuana 
community out of the shadows

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has got it right - legalize don't 
decriminalize marijuana. And B. C. residents should take notice since 
they have an opportunity to lead the country on this issue.

A new campaign is underway across the province to get rid of criminal 
marijuana laws in the same way the province got rid of the hated 
Harmonized Sales Tax.

For 90 days starting Sept. 10, the Sensible BC activist group is 
hoping to garner 400,000 signatures - 10 per cent of the registered 
voters in each riding - to trigger a people-powered pot referendum in 2014.

If the organization is successful and wins that plebiscite, police 
would be ordered to stop enforcing the federal cannabis prohibition.

There is more than a good chance they will be victorious: 73 per cent 
in a recent poll said they support decriminalization.

Ending marijuana prosecutions, however, is only a start.

Decriminalization is a halfway house of pain that makes pot consumers 
happy, but leaves the rest of society dealing with the continuing 
black market and the violence it engenders. Trudeau gets that. Look 
at Amsterdam: The front door leads into a quaint smoking cafe, but 
it's Hells Angels at the back door providing the pot.

This is not a solution - but it is a good place to start the 
conversation about how we should deal with marijuana.

Sensible BC envisions a commission being established to forge a new 
regulatory and taxation scheme, which is akin to what Washington and 
Colorado have done since they became the first American states to 
legalize marijuana in November.

I believe they are on the right track by legitimizing the plant and 
its derivatives so they can be properly taxed and regulated. So does Trudeau.

This moves the marijuana economy out of the shadows, robs organized 
crime of the low-hanging, high-profit fruit on which it thrives, and 
eliminates the need for violence.

It also, in my opinion, provides an opportunity to craft more 
effective and more honest drug education programs, deliver better 
health care, and re-task public-safety and judicial resources devoted 
at the moment to the futile War on Drugs.

The two U. S. states aim to address cannabis-impaired driving, 
channel the new revenue into health care, education and public 
safety, find ways of preventing weed products from leaving the state, 
and regulate marketing, labelling, retail and wholesale sales.

The success of last year's ballot initiatives - which legalized 
cannabis even though it remains banned by U. S. federal law - has 
already spurred the capitalization of new pot firms.

With medical marijuana programs in 19 states, the plant is fuelling a 
burgeoning legal economy of box-stores and Internet sales that is 
said to top $ 2 billion a year.

There are a handful of marijuana related penny stocks hoping to cash 
in on what conservative estimates suggest may become a $ 40- billion- 
ayear business in the U. S.

Privateer Holdings Inc., in Seattle, recently became the first equity 
firm with plans to invest in pot companies - its first acquisition, 
leafly. com, a Yelp for medical cannabis, is putatively generating $ 
100,000 a month in revenue.

The Colorado legislature estimates that annual recreational marijuana 
sales will total $ 291 million statewide next year - Denver alone 
accounting for $ 128 million.

Those figures do not include the current sales of medical cannabis, 
edibles and related products via dispensaries in the state, which 
totalled about $ 200 million for 2012.

In Washington state, the office of financial management predicts 
sales of about $ 1 billion annually.

So far, the Obama Administration still has not said how it plans to 
respond, or whether it will react later this year when the states 
roll out their liquor style pot shops and retail outlets.

The president may allow it to happen and let pot legalization occur 
across America in the same way support for gay marriage built - one 
state at a time.

That was how Prohibition ended - with states individually voting 
against it until the federal government only had to acknowledge the 
manifest national will.

That's how it can happen in Canada - one province at a time.

I think the critical mass for a change in public policy toward 
marijuana was reached with the Washington and Colorado initiatives.

No longer were the people behind pot legalization primarily 
Cheech-and-Chong aficionados; they were mostly non-smoking, sensible 
folk advocating for change, just as we have here: Former attorneys 
general, politicians, lawyers, health officials and people like 
Trudeau who care about the safety of their community and the future 
for their children - people who know the present criminal approach 
doesn't work.

The first step toward change in B. C. is getting the petition signed.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom