Pubdate: Thu, 17 Apr 2014
Source: Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA)
Copyright: 2014 The Press-Enterprise Company
Contact: http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/letters_form.html
Website: http://www.pe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/830
Author: Richard K. DeAttley

LONGTIME MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION ADVOCATE STILL SEEING GREEN

If there is a stereotype of someone advocating marijuana 
legalization, it's not Lanny Swerdlow.

The Whitewater resident, who has been an activist for 15 years in 
both Riverside and Palm Springs talks fast, quotes numbers and 
studies about cannabis, writes for several publications, and shows 
absolutely no signs of being laid-back during an interview in his 
Hemp and Cannabis Foundation office in Riverside.

Opened in 2008, it was set up to help provide medical marijuana 
physician recommendations.

When in comes to the green, there is no grey for Swerdlow, 68 . 
Obtuse, he is not. Police, he said, "are afraid medical marijuana's 
gonna lead to marijuana legalization - which it will. Colorado and 
Washington are perfect examples."

The founder in 1999 of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project 
advocacy group is certain he is right, certain that marijuana is 
helpful rather than harmful when compared to alcohol, and certain 
that keeping marijuana illegal for recreational use is not a matter 
of public safety, but because local governments are protecting 
revenues derived from fines and asset forfeitures - "it's all about 
money," he said. There's more than a few who would dispute him, 
including Gov. Jerry Brown, but in his view the only harmful effects 
of marijuana is that "it will make someone who is already a couch 
potato more of a couch potato." California became the first state in 
the nation to allow medical marijuana use, possession and cultivation 
when it passed Proposition 215 in 1996. Subsequently, SB 420 laid out 
details about cultivation guidelines. But California advocates like 
Swerdlow, who got his RN certification from College of the Desert in 
2006, have had to look elsewhere in the past few years for the next 
step in marijuana legalization. And there have been a couple of steps 
back for medical marijuana in California. In May 2013, a unanimous 
California Supreme Court upheld a Riverside ordinance and said local 
governments could constitutionally ban medical marijuana clinics 
through zoning laws.

Swerdlow was one the defendants in the suit, as a board member of 
Inland Empire Patient's Health and Wellness Center. The medical 
marijuana clinic closed its doors on the same day of the Supreme 
Court ruling. And last month, the court declined, 4-3, to take up a 
lower court's approval of local bans on medical marijuana users' 
personal cultivation in a case that came from Live Oak in Sutter County.

"Essentially, Prop. 215 has been gutted," Swerdlow said . "Patients 
will now either have to drive long distances to Palm Springs or Los 
Angeles, but what most of them are going to do is buy from 
criminals." Petition signatures are currently being sought for 
Riverside Safe Access, a ballot measure that would legalize, regulate 
and tax a small number of dispensaries to the city. Swerdlow is a 
volunteer coordinator for the group, which has until May 5 to gather 
enough signatures to qualify for either the next general city 
election in June 2015 or a special election, if enough people sign 
their petition. As of mid-April, the group's Facebook page showed a 
few recent comments and a February posting that sought paid signature 
gatherers.

Asked in early April how things were going, Swerdlow said only that 
organizers were "optimistic" that they would collect enough valid 
signatures. Swerdlow was on the Palm Springs Medical Marijuana task 
force, which helped develop the city's medical marijuana law. It 
permits city-licensed collectives to operate through storefronts, 
making Palm Springs only Inland city that regulates and issues 
permits for medical marijuana dispensaries. Both Riverside and San 
Bernardino counties and cities throughout both counties have banned 
the stores. The proposal for Riverside has some similarities to the 
Palm Springs law. Jessica A. Levinson, an associate clinical 
professor for election laws and government political reform at Loyola 
Law School in Los Angeles, says the two court rulings are not death 
blows for Prop. 215. "It may have been watered down or eroded, but it 
still leaves jurisdictions some leeway" about brick-and-mortar stores 
and cultivation, she said. "It just gives them more discretion not to 
have them, and allows localities to make up their own minds." And, 
Levinson said, those issues may be pushed aside when California 
eventually considers statewide recreational marijuana use. "If you 
look at the demographics, I think this issue is only a matter of 
time," she said. "Whatever happens to Prop. 215, it is not going to 
be the last proposition on the state ballot dealing with marijuana." 
Swerdlow said that's where he has turned his energy.

In 2012, he founded the Brownie Mary Democratic Club of Riverside 
County as an advocacy group for medical marijuana and marijuana 
legalization. "It's been chartered by Riverside County Democratic 
Central Committee," Swerdlow said. "We are an official part of the 
Democratic Party. We now have clubs chartered in Los Angeles, 
Sacramento and San Francisco." The group went to the state Democratic 
convention in Los Angeles in March. Swerdlow made the club a force to 
be reckoned with. The party for the first time endorsed marijuana 
legalization as part of its platform, calling on marijuana to be 
regulated and taxed similar to alcohol and tobacco. "This is not a 
debate about stoners," Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom told the convention. 
"You can be pro-regulation without being an advocate for drug use." 
Swerdlow said he wrote the original platform proposal - "they 
massaged the wording a bit from what I originally put in there," but 
said he was pleased with the outcome. "It kind of sends a word to all 
the Democratic politicians who are on the fence.

That might be enough to push them off the fence, on our side."

It sounds like another uphill battle for Swerdlow. Days before the 
platform language was considered, Gov. Brown talked about marijuana 
legalization on NBC's "Meet the Press." "How many people can get 
stoned and still have a great state or nation?" Brown asked.

While elected Democrats distance themselves about marijuana 
legalization, Swerdlow said he was convinced what he called the 
"grass roots" of the party supports it. "I used to look at the 
Democratic Party and think they were Republican light," Swerdlow 
said. But he now sees the party as "really progressive, and the 
Democratic Party, I believe, will end marijuana prohibition."

Californians most recently rejected marijuana legalization and 
regulation in 2010 by voting down Prop. 19. Poll numbers since then 
have shown growing support for legalization, when it's combined with 
government oversight.

Loyola Law School's Levinson said voters should expect to see 
legalization for recreational marijuana in the form of a ballot 
initiative, rather than by the Legislature. "This is the type of 
issue we typically see through the initiative process in California." 
And it looks like that won't happen until 2016.

There were two efforts for a November 2014 ballot measure on 
recreational marijuana, but by early April organizers for one 
campaign announced they were folding, and the other campaign had 
already failed to collect enough signatures.

Swerdlow said backers of the kinds of measures that passed in 
Colorado and Washington have said they want the California marijuana 
vote during the 2016 presidential election, when more, and younger, 
voters go to the polls.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom