Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jan 2014
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2014 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: Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times

POT LEGALIZATION OFF TO STRONG YEAR

Demographics and Failed Drug Policy Have Helped to Shift Attitudes,
Experts Say

SEATTLE - The new year is shaping up to be one of the marijuana
movement's strongest ever.

The first legal pot storefronts in America opened to long lines in
Colorado this month. Washington state is poised to issue licenses for
producing, processing and selling the Schedule I drug - once officials
sift through around 7,000 applications.

Signature gatherers have been at work in at least five states to put
marijuana measures on the ballot in 2014. On Wednesday, organizers
announced they had gathered more than 1 million signatures in favor of
putting a medical marijuana measure before voters in Florida, a
high-population bellwether that could become the first Southern state
to embrace pot.

"Florida looks like the country as a whole," says Ben Pollara,
campaign manager for the Sunshine State's effort. "If Florida does
this, it is a big deal for medical marijuana across the country."

Just three months ago a clear majority of Americans for the first time
said the drug should be legalized - 58 percent of those surveyed,
which represents a 10-percentage-point jump in just one year,
according to the Gallup Poll. Such acceptance is almost five times
what Gallup found when public opinion polling on marijuana began in
1969.

AND LAST MONTH in California, where the legalization measure
Proposition 19 went down to defeat in 2010, the Field Poll reported
what it called its first clear majority in favor of legalizing pot -
55 percent of those polled, compared with just 13 percent in 1969.

"What has happened now is we have reached the national tipping point
on marijuana reform," said Stephen Gutwillig, deputy executive
director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group. "Marijuana
legalization has gone from an abstract concept to a mainstream issue
to a political reality within a three-year period."

The Obama administration said last year it would not interfere in
states that allow commercial marijuana sales - as long as they are
strictly regulated. But pot remains illegal under federal law, and
messages from on high are mixed.

On Wednesday the chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement
Administration, James Capra, told a Senate panel, "Going down the path
to legalization in this country is reckless and irresponsible."

But in a lengthy New Yorker interview published Sunday, President
Barack Obama said of legalization in Washington and Colorado, "It's
important for it to go forward because it's important for society not
to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one
time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished."

Obama said of marijuana, "I don't think it is more dangerous than
alcohol."

The big question, of course, is why attitudes toward marijuana are
shifting now. And the answer, according to pollsters and drug policy
experts, is a complicated stew of demographics, personal experience,
electoral success and the failure of existing drug policy.

To Alison Holcomb, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who
wrote the ballot measure that legalized recreational marijuana in
Washington state, the "enormous jump" in approval of legalization in
just a year does not reflect "changes in attitudes about marijuana
specifically," she said. "Rather, it's a change in attitudes about
whether it's OK to support marijuana law reform."

IN OTHER WORDS, Americans don't necessarily like pot more than they
used to. The percentage of those who have actually tried it has stayed
in the 30 percent range for three decades. Rather, Americans are
simply fed up with criminal penalties they say are neither cost
effective nor just.

Those looking for evidence of marijuana's new momentum need only look
to Jan. 8.

That's the day recreational pot supporters delivered around 46,000
signatures to election officials in Alaska - 50 percent more than
required - putting a measure on legalization one step closer to a vote
in the largely Republican state.

That same afternoon in deeply Democratic New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo,
a former prosecutor with a history of opposing the drug, announced a
modest medical marijuana pilot project.

"Research suggests that medical marijuana can help manage the pain and
treatment of cancer and other serious illnesses," said Cuomo, adding
an increasing number of states have enacted medical marijuana laws.
California was the first in 1996, followed by 20 others, including
Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.

Although people 65 and older are the only age group that pollsters say
still opposes legalization, their support for the drug has also jumped
more in recent years than that of any other. Between 2011 and 2013,
Gallup found that the percentage of older Americans in favor of
legalization rose 14 percentage points - more than double any other
group surveyed.  
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