Pubdate: Sun, 06 Apr 2014
Source: Buffalo News (NY)
Copyright: 2014 The Buffalo News
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/GXIzebQL
Website: http://www.buffalonews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/61
Author: Adam Nagourney, New York Times

MOST DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS HESITANT ON LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

LOS ANGELES - California voters strongly favor legalizing marijuana.
The state Democratic Party adopted a platform last month urging
California to follow Colorado and Washington in ending marijuana
prohibition. The state's lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, has called
for legalizing the drug. But not Gov. Jerry Brown. "I think we ought
to kind of watch and see how things go in Colorado," Brown, a
Democrat, said curtly when asked the question as he was presenting his
state budget this year.

At a time of rapidly evolving attitudes toward marijuana legalization
a slight majority of Americans now support legalizing the drug
Democratic governors across the country, Brown among them, find
themselves uncomfortably at odds with their own base.

Even with Democrats and younger voters leading the wave of the
pro-legalization shift, these governors are standing back, supporting
much more limited medical-marijuana proposals or invoking the kind of
law-and-order and public health arguments more commonly heard from
Republicans. While 17 more states - most of them leaning Democratic -
have seen bills introduced this year to follow Colorado and Washington
in approving recreational marijuana, no sitting governor or member of
the Senate has offered a full-out endorsement of legalization.

Only Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat in Vermont, which is struggling
with a heroin problem, said he was open to the idea.

"Quite frankly, I don't think we are ready, or want to go down that
road," Dannel P. Malloy, the Democratic governor of Connecticut, which
has legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized possession of small
amounts of marijuana, said in an interview. "Perhaps the best way to
handle this is to watch those experiments that are underway. I don't
think it's necessary, and I don't think it's appropriate."

The hesitance expressed by these governors reflects not only governing
concerns but also, several analysts said, a historically rooted
political wariness of being portrayed as soft on crime by Republicans.
In particular, Brown, who is 75, lived through the culture wars of the
1960s, when Democrats suffered from being seen as permissive on issues
like this.

"Either they don't care about it as passionately or they feel
embarrassed or vulnerable. They fear the judgment," said Ethan
Nadelmann, the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization
that favors decriminalization of marijuana. "The fear of being soft on
drugs, soft on marijuana, soft on crime is woven into the DNA of
American politicians, especially Democrats."

In Colorado, where recreational marijuana went on sale Jan. 1, revenue
figures released in February suggested that taxes on drug sales could
bring in more than $100 million a year for the state, a figure that
made other states take note.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has said he would oppose outright
legalization of marijuana but would support legalizing, to some
extent, medical marijuana in the state, and might be open to
decriminalizing the drug.  
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