I’m still gonna JUST SAY NOW!

We transformed the marijuana debate, and have shown that it’s possible to run real, bottom-up campaign to legalize marijuana.

Agree with the latter, but when the “debate” still consists of vested interests trotting out unchallenged reefer madness bullshit, it’s hard to agree with the former. The “debate” is still played on their terms, with the media apparently still unable/unwilling to point out the obvious lies required to maintain prohibition.

It’s the media, stupid, to paraphrase that cliche.

Going forward, much like so many other cultural taboos, demographics will be trending our way. I would imagine the breakdown of the vote is highly generational. Fortunately, that will be temporary. That a ballot initiative of this nature happened this early in my lifetime was surprising. That nearly half voted in favor, even more so. I see that as a mark of progress. That it fell short is just another temporary setback.

Parents need to be made to understand that their kids ARE going to smoke pot. Would they rather it be completely uncontrolled with their kids buying it on the street corner and possibly going to jail? They need to know that their children can get it right now and any time. The disconnect is amazing.

Touche, strangely. That’s a good point. It will be a long while before stupid pot puns stop appearing in reporting on this issue.

I will say though that we were among the earliest to push the cartels angle in this election, and how legalization would defund them. We seized on the Latin American presidents discussing the issue early and elevated that over the summer. But yes, there is a long way to go in the media.

NOW

There, I said it.

My advice: pre-emptively de-couple pot from kids. I predicted in September — in my living room, you and Jon and Jane were there, Michael — that the anti-19 campaign would end up looking a lot like the pro-Prop 8 campaign:

SAVE OUR CHILDREN

The crashed school bus picture, scare stories about day-care providers getting high with kids in their care, the whole reefer-madness racism about our virginal white daughters falling prey to dark men with loose joints: it all happened. I don’t think the ‘scary immigrant’ message was unrelated to the anti-pot message at all; they are linked.

I don’t know the answer. I just know that as long as parents are made to feel that their kids’ lives are threatened, they vote irrationally. And any appeal to rationality fails, just like it did against Prop 8 two years ago.

And, of course, the legalization movement needs more professionalization. And the good sense to listen to people who can provide a professional approach to political action, not the political malpractice we saw this year.

More Just Say Now staffers, more smart people, more capability for listening on the part of long-time legalization activists.

Thanks for all your hard work, looking forward to the lessons learned document,

I live in Western Sonoma County. The only people I know personally who did not vote for it are a couple of younger local growers of really great pot. They were afraid that they would be priced out of the permit markets
and or there would be a corporate take over –rumors abound the Phillip Morris already bought 500 acres in Mendo.. true or not true I don’t know.

The other factor was that people did not understand the law.
ABC did a story on driving under the influence of pot — they pretended they didn’t now it was already illegal to drive under the influence and would still be illegal

Sharon “I am so dumb I married Ozzie” Osborn said on national television that mj is a gateway drug and if prop 19 passed the school bus drivers would be allowed to smoke pot. CBS new talk show for incredibility stupid women –factless feckless drivel

I think you should have reached out to the people who worked on the first state wide pot initiative in the early 70′s…you needed to show more old people :) Since apparently that was the demographic that didn’t show up.

I am glad to hear you are going to do it again. The recent legislation making an oz or less a mismemeanor is good and I understand more leg. is coming

I also think you need to get people to hold Obama’s feet to the fire on this issue. It is poor and very expensive public policy and he treats it like a joke.

The next ad campaign for pot decriminalization should prominently feature a ~~~Edited by Moderator. Not even as a joke or attempt to make a point~~~ . We gave them Viagra, the Rascal and digitally-remastered “Lawrence Welk Show”, and this is show they repay us? Progressive legislation is never going to go anywhere in this country as long as our ~~~Edited by Moderator~~~. If they won’t let us get high, l~~~Edited by Moderator~~~.

Ha ha, just kidding. I’ll just leave it to the death panels ~~~Edited by Moderator~~~…

My smoking friends here in CA seem to be okay with the status quo. They believe that it’s all but legalized now, easy to purchase, why rock the boat (and there’s a fear that the initiative was poorly worded with some hidden gotchas even though they can’t say how).

I just can’t figure it out. amazing works to a degree but when you have a simple prop like 21 and it gets shotdown? I guess. Confussed? Uneducated? Less sense than a mule? Maybe it’s me!

There are always parents who are aware. Similar to when I was a teenager. My parents sat my brother and sister and myself down when we turned 14 and told us if we were going to smoke cigarettes or drink, to do it in front of them and not hide about it. They recognized we would manage to do so anyway and figured it was better to be up front about things.

Of course, nowadays, they would be arrested for child abuse.

It is not legal. Police use the odor to hassle people and to search them
and if you are someone they want to hassle they can pretend they smell it.

It poor public policy and costs the state of california a lot of money in courts and in jails not too mention police state time.

And course Herr Holder thinks the feds should still be raiding pot clubs

“the marijuana reform movement needs to embrace the grassroots”
“vested interests”
“did not vote for it are a couple of younger local growers”

I think a lot of folks are worried about big ag/tobacco coopting the results of others’ hard work – ‘word is’ that there have been corporate trademarks of names and land purchases in prime growing areas.

If there is a way to protect mom’n'pop growers, I think more support could be generated. Not only that more folks would see it as a potential cottage industry (“Work from home, in your spare time!”), but a small grower *legally* supplying their personal network would have little interest in dealing to the chilllldrunnnn.

The way prop 19 was written each county would have decided its own rules.
I think a lot of people heard the Oakland was charging 200k for a grow permit (for a huge warehouse operation) and got freaked out thinking they would be priced out.

In the early 70′s there were the same rumors about big tobacco and the pot world. What the hell –there is room for Bartles and James and Screaming Eagle in the wine world same for pot.

Have somebody (Soros?) cut a check to poll those who voted against 19. From that sample, identify those who initially supported it and determine what caused their switch. I’m not convinced the conventional explanation about the AG’s stance was the reason. I suspect non-smokers’ innate apprehension caught up to them. Begin to diffuse that fear and bring home that 10% in an election cycle not heavily Republican. The first and last face of the campaign should be law enforcement. Hate to say it, but depict as many short-haired, middle-aged white males as possible. Lose the leaf, stop calling it marijuana.

I believe one needs to challenge the law in court.

The Federal Governments powers are constrained, and it’s hard to see how one cannot challenge under the “general welfare” of the US, and locally grown pot is not governed under “interstate commerce”.

One of the major spokesmen for the campaign was a former deputy chief of LA and other the former chief of San Jose

Short haired and in suits white and old

what would you call it besides marijuana?

I’m not even sure the Prohibitionists ‘won’ so much as the Prop 19 Campaign* was overran by it’s own success – these folks have nobly toiled for decades in catch up mindset and it looks like they had trouble dealing with the response in Cali

so yeah, more seasoned professionals in the future

*I am not talking about JSN
and I am grateful for all those who have fought so hard for so long in the Legalization trenches

I’m aware of deputy chief, it was problem of his visibility. I think I heard him once on the radio only (KPFK?). His image, or another cop’s, image or silhouette should have been more prevalent than the pot leaf.

I would call it something other than the derogatory word used to stigmatize minority cannabis smokers and black musicians.

The reason why medical marijuana lost is simple: the Democrats never supported it, and by snuffing it made the position appear to be a radical aberration on the ballot. The national party never did anything to try and end the drug war, and the Obama Agenda’s unpopularity meant that 2010 was just a bad year.

However, it will pass in 2012. That is assured.

Agree about Dem opposition. As a registered Dem, our candidates are craven and desperate to surry support from the prison-industrial complex and law enforcement unions. Problem is, that’s not going to change, and we need to find a way to counter that.

It was the top of the ticket candidates who were gutless. The assembly and probably the state senate are going to pass a marijuana bill.

I never liked Dianne Feinstein and after hearing her say she was opposed to legalization because she didn’t what Cal to be known as a druggy state.

I guess she prefers it be known as a state that wastes billions of dollars on enforcement

Keep it up and try again. There will always be enough people to get referenda on the ballot. Work on the flaws and we’ll all be ready 2010. I’d much rather work on an “issue” than for a “politician”.

Also, we need to legalize industrial hemp in parallel with medical marijuana. Let’s have two referenda in every state (that has referenda): one for medical and one for hemp.

Well. The CA MMJ Cartel didn’t want there bottom line getting hurt, & it didn’t. Now we have to take that away.
Time to find a lawyer and Class Action ALL CA Dispencieries under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Would that work? Maybe.
If they don’t get prohibition based prices, then there won’t be ANY reason for that. Right? Just a thought.

During the effort in Massachusetts to put proposed policy questions on the ballot, (some districts full out legalization, some districts just medical,) i stood out in the blazing June sun and collected 400+ signatures, during which time i talked as much as i could with people passing by. One demographic always signed, parents didn’t, prosperous business types didn’t, but little old ladies always did, and they had 3 things to say. One was they were sick of the violence, two was it was a stupid way of spending our taxes, and three was – they had nursed enough people through cancer. Otherwise, the few who didn’t sign said that they did not know enough about the issue to commit.
I showed up on my first day of signature gathering – not with a cooler of ice and water – but one hundred copies of a 8 1/2×11 of the best URLs i had compiled from researching every topic about cannabis that i could think of. I gave out 500 all told. In every discussion while handing out a sheet, i’d say that i’d want to start a public discussion – a lyceum (MA) or a chautaqua (NY) or a roundtable or something. Rent a meeting room in the library and have in speakers. Speak to the garden club about this new medicinal herb we could all grow. Speak to teh housing contractors about hempcrete, the structural, insulating, and cost curbing properties thereof, speak to hospice about the pain curbing and spiritual side of cannabis, (imagine each patient having his/her own plant, watching your herb grow and planning on being there when it flowered.)
Another thought i had about the voters – they are scared about what the scenery will look like after prohibition passes – what will traffic be like? What if people come stoned (let’s call it incapacitated) to work? (Their boss fires their ass – geez, does the government have to do everything for you?) So, i think some visionary work can be done here – what will industry look like? What will polite society look like? Will i be lost and alone among zombies eating my brainz?
I think a case can be made for legalization by educating the voting public (and this was the scope of that sheet of URLs I handed out)(and this essay i wrote) that Prohibition came from racism and dirty corporate profitmongering, that Nixon’s War on Drugs was from vindictiveness in the face of his own commissioned study recommending otherwise, and the worst in incarceration numbers, today’s iteration – prisons for profit, by Halliburton.

Kathryn–

Thanks for enumerating the many aspects related to marijuana legalization. I just completed the “Just Say Now” survey, and omitted some of your very salient points. What I did say was that the conversation has to be simplified to sound bites that refute the lies that become accepted when presented by an authority or expert figure.

KEEP IT SIMPLE -

Prop 19 was not simple – concern with grow license fees should not be a topic during the voting – and wording raising concern with employment hire/fire was ABSOLUTELY NUTS to have been in the law – Keep the second year law students away from writing the wording of what we want passed.

It is the same as the public option – it should have been Medicare for all above 50 (as the Conn Senator proposed) or Medicare for all. The mess that was passed has some good but that is buried in a $600 billion welfare check to the corp[orations.

Treat the topic as an agriculture expansion issue – with perhaps food safety.

Toke UP!

i’m just throwing this out there…..

what really bugged me was the incentive to TAX pot. Personally I believe that it should be treated as any other agricultural product.

But more than that I am also a tobacco user. I have seen what has happened with tobacco over the last 20 years. Its where the state goes when it needs more taxes. Its gone from $1 to $2 to $5 to more a pack depending on where you are. The state has already milked liquor to the max… people just wont stand for any more taxes on beer. But you can always gouge tobacco users for a little more.

So thats why I would rather just keep being “illegal” and buying on the black market. Its still readily available and the price is still more or less the same as it was in the 80s.

really what incentive was there for a pot user to really vote yes. What good is it to be able to just run down to the corner store is it costs twice as much.

Here’s an article re Massachusetts-
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2010/nov/03/marijuana_ballot_questions_win_m

I don’t mind a tax on cannabis sold at a pharmacy/dispensary. But, when legal, we can grow our own, and if we sell some bud to a friend, that doesn’t get taxed – just as the stuff you sell at a yard sale doesn’t get taxed. It’s under a certain level of commerce, or something. And then it will be as cheap as tomatoes.

Marijuana is the racist scary name given to cannabis. When Wm Randolph Hearst and DuPont ginned up the reefer madness bit, the AMA didn’t even realize they were talking about the plant that had been on the US Pharmacopeia for some time.

THis is EXACTLY what the movement does NOT need.

It’s time for the first words out of the mouths of pot advocates be something besides “Dude, let’s party.”

We need guys like the head of NORML and other articulate people who will not evoke the memory of Jeff Spicoli in a high school classroom.

We need to line up credible physicians to act as “expert witnesses” and get as many people of “gravitas” as we can.

We do NOT need to evoke the ’60s, which scares the hell out of anyone who wasn’t there.

It would help I suppose if people started coming out of the closet. But why would they? Kathryn has good ideas but how many of us are willing to make that kind of effort to convince sheep and morons that water is wet?

I favor the libertarian approach. It ain’t nobodies business if I do. I would like to see every single person who is brought up on charges of growing, distributing or simply possessing marijuana, accompanied by a competent attorney. Fight every charge and appeal every conviction. Make it a civil rights issue. That’s what it is after all.

I suppose you want all the Hippies to disappear too?

Sorry, no can do. I don’t care how much you whities are frightened of my culture, we are not going to disappear just so you can legalize pot.

My Rec?

You picked the wrong state. Massachusetts had local, non-binding ballot initiatives that appeared in 70+ towns in the state which would either legalize marijuana, or legalize medical marijuana. It won in every single state rep district and won in all towns it appeared on the ballot, save one. Many of these towns were very conservative ones. This on top of the fact that the decriminalization initiative was passed in Massachusetts in ’08. I think Bay Staters are ready to legalize, regulate and tax pot.

Third Party.

The state that imports billions in drugs and launders billions in drug money. Follow the money.

Oh right, let’s sniper fire all of our own leaders.

I think that is one reason the scary Hippie people like me need to come out of the closet and not be vilified.

People have to get over the FACT that some of us are going to be spiritual users. It is not like it is actually going to hurt them or anything to see us so they need to just adjust to it. Same with the leaf and the word marijuana.

Decriminalize marijuana first – like Massachusetts did:

Massachusetts voters today approved a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, making getting caught with less than an ounce of pot punishable by a civil fine of $100. The change in the law means someone found carrying as many as dozens of marijuana cigarettes will no longer be reported to the state’s criminal history board. …

[Proponents] argued it would save the state millions of law enforcement dollars and match similar marijuana possession laws in 12 states, all of which have adopted some form of decriminalization. (emphasis added)

According to NORML, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana in California is not an arrestable offense, but it is still a misdemeanor. Decriminalization would make possession of less than an ounce a civil violation instead. Civil violations don’t go on a person’s criminal record.

The initiative could also reduce the penalty for possession of paraphernalia to a civil fine of $100. Right now, possession of paraphernalia is a civil fine that starts at $200-$300 “and goes up to $5,000-$6,000 for a fifth or subsequent violation within a five-year periood.”

RE: the mom ‘n’ pop growers — they’re about to be forced out of business by the cartels from Colombia and Mexico who are invading National Parks and Forests to set up their plantations, so they might as well back legalization.

In Sept Ahnold signed the law for decrim…but if you have over an oz you still face felony charges..and even though you may have less than an oz it is still grounds to search you car, person and house for other offenses including felonies.

and by the way
In 1975 then-State Senator George Moscone got a bill passed and signed by Governor Jerry Brown to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. oy vey deja vue

I think the next try in Cal has to include forcing the Democratic Party to get on board. I think you should name the Prop after George Moscone and get Don Solem to raise money for it and get John Burton on Board – these are the people who worked on marijuana legislation in Cal in the early 70′s…in the state senate

John Burton for National Democratic Chair..he is the biggest jerk in America –he is what the Republicans have earned and deserve

It was a lot of things that came into play i do believe the prop would have passed if we had some more team players i have noticed a lot of rumors that are being passed around from how big tobacco are going to come and take over the marijuana trade and chemically alter the cannabis like they did tobacco and make genetically alter all pot seeds into seeds that wont produce cannabis and you will have to buy their swag weed which come on i know that we pot heads come up with stupid ideas but really?? frankinseeds?? another thing is a few people are afraid that marijuana will go mainstream and posers will come out of the wood works but what we forget is it will still be federally illegal so i doubt the “posers” will have the balls to break federal law anyhow the biggest threat is the stoners against legalization and dealers who’s cash will diminish once people will no longer need them so of course their going to be afraid to let their cash crop go but if we can just educate the soccer moms and the corporate workers the truth we can later have a better chance not to mention the people who want to keep marijuana in the black market are selfish and are not working to help the cause but hurt it i am from Oklahoma and if i get caught with a joint it is a possible five years with no chance of parole where Californians will get a slap on the wrist so i as much as other good honest cannabis smokers need to take a stand and show other states what the world could be like and that we cannabis smokers are responsible and give us other states a chance for others in Colorado or California yeah it is a slap on the wrist but for us in Oklahoma and many others you can get off a murder charge with less time than a marijuana charge

Let’s face it, the pro-pot coalition is largely white and male. We need to target WOMEN and deal with their concerns and fears.

Mainstream media helped kill this proposition by providing a free forum for those with vested financial interests in keeping marijuana illegal. How to fight that?

Specific campaign commercials can make an entire race of humans disappear? Learn something new everyday.

So, the benign manipulation of the racial and socio-economic bias inherent our culture is an unacceptable price for maximizing the likelihood of ending the disproportionate incarceration of people of color? Got it.

Listened to Rachel Maddow (11-04-2010) and her explanation of the right wing information system on the internet. Unless and until that, and Fox Noise can be reduced, getting real information out will not happen. One example is that Obama’s trip to India will cost $200 million per day. Democrats and Republicans live in two different countries and the people elected to office live in a third area – one lined with cash.

I have a suggestion for next time:

Why not use the word “relegalize” instead of “legalize”? I’ve been using it for decades, and it always elicits a comment: “It was legal once?” and that provides a marvelous opportunity to tell about hemp’s glorious American history, and the shame of its being made illegal by false pretenses.

Let’s go! Gonna happen eventually; let’s keep pushin’ ~a

I feel we need to start getting ready for 2012 and start now…. we need to get out and hold meetings with people and address there fears and concerns about prop 19 and pass out questioners so that these concerns can be looked at so that maybe we can offer something more people can agree on….. I am ready to get some work done and bring voter in for 2012….. no more prohibition