Prop 19 failed in Humboldt at the same rate that it failed in the state overall. Even if you count people indirectly employed in the cannabis industry who may have voted no, how many votes is that?

OK, you said “small but real” but how real is it? Probably you could make a better case that it was a bunch of LA voters who were convinced their sweet 215 situation might be changed by 19. Lots more voters down LA way.

Demographics due make a difference. Why did supporters of this initiative put it on the ballot in a mid-term election? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to wait till 2012, considering the cost and effort needed to get an initiative on the ballot?

I’m in Florida and not in California but at 58 years of age, I (and many of my friends who smoked back in the ’70s were firmly convinced that marijuana would be legal by the ’90s at the latest. Especially after a few states back then “de-criminalized” things to the status of a “tokin’ ticket”

Boy were we wrong. And for those folks who pushed the idea that the work was done when Ahnuld signed the CA de-crim law earlier, don’t hold your breath on that remaining in place for too awfully long.

And to the point of the post. I’d have to wager there were a lot of folks who for whatever reason, forgot the days when they snuck the joint out back with friends.

I know there are a lot of folks I smoked with when I was in college, including fellow ROTC types and again when I was enlisted in the USAF who like to pretend that they never.

But they did and they are now hypocrites when they deny deny deny.

Saw a lot of that in the early eighties when Raygun instituted his zero tolerance policy.
Suddenly the weed wasn’t “cool” anymore

Among the people I know who favor pot legalization, more of them opposed Prop 19 than not. Unfortunately, the authorship of the initiative didn’t include all relevant stakeholders, and being shut out made old line growers and pot activists suspicious.

Nobody wants Phillip Morris to control pot. Nobody wants child services involved in pot. Nobody wants strains to be controlled by multi-nationals. Nobody wants to see the Humboldt growing culture destroyed like logging.

Not that any of these things are true; just that they are truthy. And truthiness wins nowadays.

I’m a little surprised the Humboldt ‘no’ vote wasn’t higher than the rest of the state, actually. There you have mom-and-pop family operations who have no interest in the state getting involved in regulating and taxing their home business, plus people who fear Monsanto or Phillip Morris, plus (on the other side of the current divide) residents who are tired of the pot culture after decades of close-up exposure. They hate it when their kids come home from playing in the woods talking about trip wires and hippies with guns. They hate having to screen their kids’ friends’ parents’ homes.

Old-line pot folks resent the hell outta the arrivistes at Oaksterdam, with whom this initiative was closely identified. Finally, this is a community suffering from PTSD already, given the logging industry’s predation and pullout.

Nobody wants Phillip Morris to control pot.

I think that’s exactly what would happen, just like the way underground numbers houses went out of business when state run lotteries became legal.

but but they were many of the reasons I heard from friends in Humboldt.. Actually because of all the 215 people they find it better to get their smoke from the dispensaries rather than from the growers… some of who can’t get rid of their crops now. And under prop 19 they would be even worse off. Just saying what I have been hearing…

The “drug war prohibition” policy is even more evil when you stop to consider not only private run for-profit prisons, massive “homeland security” subsidies for police departments to maintain large agressive force structures, but also how the FDA works hand in glove with drug manufacturers to exclude certain drugs from, and steer consumers to certain other drugs. The whole system is beyond obscene.

there are still numbers games outside the system, just like sports betting but yeah they are way underground and hard to find unless your practically a criminal anyway.

I have friends up in Humboldt and they specifically stated that the growers opposed legalization because they were doing great supplying the Medical Marijuana and “grey” markets. MM has allowed them to shift some of their crop to the street market. If lower quality home-grown substitutes for their “cabernets” they fear they will lose income. And that income stretches out to support schools, shops, and other businesses up in Humboldt and other North State counties.

New, mostly supportive, young adults turn 18 every day, while, to put it bluntly, every day, older, less supportive individuals pass on.

But as Tyler Cowen noted yesterday on his blog, this cuts both ways: every day, today’s young adults are a day closer to becoming old farts. As dakine01 observes above, supportiveness in youth is no guarantee of supportiveness in your fifties (look no further than the Oval Office). So increasing tolerance among the young may be offset by increasing conservatism among the formerly young. How that horse race plays out is harder to say. Cowen thinks support for legalization is going to top out below 50%. My hunch is that it gets over the hump, but either way it’s more complicated than just “every year a pro-MJ 18-year old replaces an anti-MJ 80-year old.”

Nobody wants Phillip Morris to control pot. Nobody wants child services involved in pot. Nobody wants strains to be controlled by multi-nationals. Nobody wants to see the Humboldt growing culture destroyed like logging.

That’s one thing I worried about. And I don’t remember pro-Prop 19 folks ever disputing that Prop 19 would allow large companies to come in and squeeze out smaller growers and dispensaries. It might not be Phillip Morris, but it could follow a path similar to Whole Foods Market, which started out small and is now a behemoth.

I read an interview with the founder of Tom’s of Maine where he talked about why he and his wife sold out to Colgate-Palmolive. He said when Tom’s started, there were lots of small & regional grocery stores which were willing to carry a product made by a small company. Nowadays, the small groceries have been decimated, and the large chains only want to do business with large corporations.

I shop at a mid-size co-op, but they centralized their buying with other co-ops, and now the store is filled with “natural” and organic products produced by large companies and investment funds who bought up smaller vendors and slashed the quality of their products. It’s reasonable to fear this outcome in the marijuana business, too.

Do I see the mirror of Prohibition here?

The Humboldt crowd represent the ostensibly “legal” alcohol trade (it was legal for some “medical uses” in Prohibition, too…which was why a lot of people drank “medicine” and that substance was retained in a variety of cough medicines later). Of course, they also supply a grey market…as some manufactures did during Prohibition.

Then you have the Mafia = Mexican Mafia. Organized crime.

Oaksterdam people represent the home-growers (= home distillers, folks who made home wine), and they see a market in supplying seeds and hydroponics. Of course, the Humboldt folks see this as a threat if it really takes off. Why buy stuff for $100-$500 when you can get something equivalent for $20? Or grow your own supply…more than enough for casual use.

Some of the MM retailers see opportunity -more diversity in sources, and possibly opening up “coffee shops” (which would have to be a “smoking club” like cigars). Others are tied in with the Humboldt growers…subsidiaries, as it were.

My college campus was inundated with anti-19 literature…all from the angle that the initiative would set you up for arrest and that the current situation was better for smokers. It expressed the view that “toxic” would be made available (as if it isn’t already on the street…and would actually reduce with home-grown). The posters claimed that thousands of kids would be sent to prison i.e.Better to keep the pot in Medical Dispensaries.

Yet at the same time it claimed that the government would over-regulate. As if that isn’t precisely what is happening now…in all the worst ways. They argued that Holder would still prosecute and that only a FEDERAL Act would succeed…how many important changes in Federal law did not first initiate at the local or State level? The idea that one is going to get a Federal Act passed is zilch.

The supposed source of this poster were “Mendocino Marijuana Grower Cooperative”…which if not a cover front for the prison unions, must be a group who are simply concerned about how much money they are banking.

I suspect that the current situation with Medical Marijuana is a better route to that. For one thing there is the Pharmaceutical/Prescription element. Once the Feds break down and accept MM there will nothing to prevent growers (at least those that legally own the title to their land) from selling their operations to Lilly, Bayer, Procter-Gamble, etc.

The only thing that will actually prevent that from happening is for personal cultivation to be the first stage in legalization and only later the legalization of large scale growing. But there again the Humboldt/Mendocino crowd will oppose THAT. I don’t believe that these folks see anything other that $$$ down the road. They aren’t out there producing lower grades of pot and giving it away as “sacrament” after all. These ain’t your 60′s generation hippies!

Demographic explanations make the most sense, but if the youth vote isn’t motivated by legalization of cannabis what does it take? If you’re only voting in Presidential elections, then you’re not really much of a patriot or citizen in my view.

There will ALWAYS be a premium for the “kind.” Jeffrey Miron, Ph.D from M.I.T., and Harvard professor believes that prices for legalized cannabis will be likely to replicate the Amsterdam model, where current prices are 50%-to – 100% of the cost in the U.S. (see his CATO Institute white paper).

Ending the black market however, does and will require a significant price shift for low-to-medium grade quality. So, really the only growers who have to worry are those depending on the sun, (sorry boys and girls it’s true) and those not educated on growing the right strains.

The ultimate truth is that democracy deserves legalized cannabis as a way to provide a safter alternative to alcohol and prescription drugs. You know, harm reduction and all that.

If you think about it, it’s actually a pretty neat trick that government can demonize one of the safest therapeutic substances known to mankind. Propaganda works when the people have little knowledge of history and/or fundamentals of democracy and representative government.

American voters have proved time and time again that logic and facts don’t have much juice on election day. So, here’s a message to the kids that legalization depends on….THANKS FOR NOTHING.

And, while I’m not a fan of cultivator’s who chose to vote no, at least they were voting in their own self interests which is more than you can say for a lot of voters.

The tobacco companies (Philip Morris, et.al.) do not own vast acres of cropland in VA, NC, and KY. They buy from tobacco farmers (many of them family operations) on a regulated market with price minimums set by the government. The tobacco company merely chooses their custom tobacco blends (while adding a bunch of other shit) and manufactures the cigarettes.

I don’t see any very large landowner taking over the production side of the market. Any future law/proposition should have limits to discourage monopolies.

My main concern in a future “semi-legal” situation is the fight over genetics, genetic engineering, strain ownership, strain names, etc. There needs to be a “small man” ethos to prevent a Monsanto, Anhauser-Busch, Philip Morris from emerging in the pot industry.

So, buy that logic, if we made ALL consumer products illegal, it would solve the problem!

They had to go underground with their smear campaign because every time some legitimate group came out against us, I’d ask them why they wanted to discriminate against me/us for my/our religion. That worked perfectly, I hope other ministers of my/our faith will do likewise.

Reverend Unruh
THC Ministry

I started two pipes years ago and stopped work on both of them for quite a while.

Lately I’ve been thinking it is time to come back to that – but, which one? The rattlesnake or the baby cradle?

If you think about it, it’s actually a pretty neat trick that government can demonize one of the safest therapeutic substances known to mankind. Propaganda works when the people have little knowledge of history and/or fundamentals of democracy and representative government.

What is that? A venomous snake, or a new born baby?

Obviously, the only shades that exist in your universe are black and white.

You don’t need to open the floodgates to unbridled capitalism and big business in order to legalize marijuana. You could simply open the existing cooperatives to every adult, and eliminate the need for a doctor’s consent.

The growers in Humboldt are part of the organized crime cartels who get rich from selling contraband. It makes sense that they would vote against Prop 19.

I don’t believe that these folks see anything other that $$$ down the road. They aren’t out there producing lower grades of pot and giving it away as “sacrament” after all. These ain’t your 60′s generation hippies!

Yeah, I’m with you on that one. I live in Humboldt and whenever you get in to a discussion with these folks they have all sorts of high minded reasons for why they opposed the measure but none of them have the ring of truth. One thing the discussion would always come back to is that the price of ALL weed of any grade is falling noticeably. You can get a square of marijuana fudge for $5 and if you are not a heavy user you can cut that into quarters and get a VERY respectable and pleasant ummm, treatment for $1.25 ! There are of course larger amount smoking equivalents that I am not familiar with but I do know the price is dropping. More and more people perceive it as effectively legal and are raising a few plants in the attic or wherever. All this supply adds up over time.

I grew up in the San joaquin Valley (it does not have to be in the mountains of Humboldt or wherever to be amazing quality, ugly valley floors with plenty of sunshine do just as well, maybe better) and I have a hard time not believing that full legalization with commercial operations plus homegrown availability would turm pot into the equivalent of say, celery. Just another cheap commodity. At that point I think the new market would be for hemp products that I believe do not require high quality psychotropic qualities but physical strength instead. (Although I confess I don’t know much about that.)

And finally, yes, I would not bet on the youth vote taking over in time and legalizing it. I heard the same thing, lo those many, many decades ago . . . .

large segment of newspaper editorial boards that the initiative was poorly written, a claim that was ridiculous. This probably turned off some voters.

I assume by ‘poorly written’ the writer is commenting on the content of Prop 19 and not the style or grammar. My mind was elsewhere leading up to the elections and I automatically voted yes on 19 without doing any due diligence. After the election, I ran into one of the drafters of the original Prop 215 who opposed 19 for a number of reasons none of which I was aware.

There are a number of problems the bill would have created:

1 – Taxation. Taxes were to be determined by the local city, town or municipality. Why? Rancho Cordova, a town outside Sacramento had already jumped the gun and passed their tax law. Tax would be $600 per square foot per year. One plant will need at least 5 square feet. Growing one plant a year outside would cost $15,000 a year in taxes, a prohibitive amount for anyone growing to sell or for their personal use. Anyone growing or using pot without a permit would be liable for criminal and or civil charges. Suburban towns like Rancho Cordova proliferate around every large more liberal urban area in California. Many would have followed the Rancho Cordova nodel which would have driven the trade back underground, even for medical card holders. Law enforcement would then have more than likely gone after the illegal market aggressively to generate income for cash starved local government. Fines could be tacked on to property taxes and they could have been considerable. A legal medical card holder, especially one whose condition is chronic and uses pot on a regular basis would no longer be allowed to grow their own supply could no longer afford to do it.

At the same time, Richard Lee, the sponsor of 19 and others called the Prop 19 Cartel had already secured large scale growing permits in the city of Oakland. Is that why Prop 19 gave all taxation rights to the local authorities?

2 – The 18-to under 21 crowd. The recent bill Schwarzenegger signed reduced penalties for possession of up to an ounce to the equivalent of a speeding ticket with a maximum fine of $100. The only exception was possession on a school property would carry higher fines and criminal charges. Prop 19 excluded anyone under 21 from possessing pot and instead criminalized it. a 22 year old, passing a joint to a 20 year old would criminalize both parties. For that age group, Prop 19 was regressive, criminalizing any possession. Prop 19 left the definiion of “criminal’ up to the local authorities.

My daughter is 17 1/2 and although she doesn’t do an drugs shse knows a lot of people who do as well as a lot of college freshmen and most were well aware of the position and were almost unanimously against Prop 19 so their either voted no or stayed away completely.

These two flaws in the law would have created an insanely chaotic quilt of local rules all across California. While Prop 19 legalized growing and consuming pot, it was via a very confined process that would have favored some and punished others as well as creating a criminal class for anyone growing or consuming outside that framework.

One has to question why Prop 19 didn’t create one uniform tax rate for the state other than to create self serving commercial advantages for the drafter of Prop 19.

I support the legalization and taxation of marijuana but Prop 19 wasn’t the solution.

“One has to question why Prop 19 didn’t create one uniform tax rate for the state other than to create self serving commercial advantages for the drafter of Prop 19.”

Because then all the communities that didn’t want legal pot at all would complain that it was being shoved down their throats. Prop 19 offered tremendous flexibility for local governments. That is a feature, not a bug.

Yeah, it’s really quite similar to the “local option” that allows cities and towns and even precincts throughout the south to vote on whether it is “wet or dry” for alcohol

There is also the possible unintended consequence of driving growing and consumption outside the legal framework followed by aggressive policing to generate revenues through fines for the local authorities. In the Rancho Cordova scenario I believe that would be a very likely scenario.

$600 per square foot per year with each plant requiring five square feet per year is $3,000 per year, not $15,000

I’ve posted this in other forums, and wanted to share my response to anyone trying to justify non-support of Prop 19 (which applies equally well to all groups that joined with much of the Medical Pot industry and of course the Drug Warriors):

It was never ONLY about the ‘few thousands’ of Grower-voters up there who not only cast a ballot … but played an integral part with all guilty parties, even encouraging others to do so as well.

Dispensary owners, employees, marketing agents, etc., who continue to maintain shamefully (prohibition-)inflated prices.

Doctors – some rubber-stamping hangnails for $150.

And then there’s the Patients … some hurting, and some not so much. Scared into voting NO against THEIR own best interests.

The Medical Pot INDUSTRY is already corrupted, as it co-exists with the Black Market (and overlaps at times I’m sure). No need for Big Corp. to step in and make medicating/relaxing a risky, and expensive proposition.

This effort to end COMPLETE PROHIBITION needs every victory it can get, starting last century … and a coalition of supposed CANNABIS-supporters, not to mention PEOPLE-supporters(patients?, responsible adults?) helped sink one of OUR best chances to put a HUGE crack in the wall, for an ENTIRE WORLD waiting for so many FREEDOMS!

Anyone who did not vote or vote YES on 19 did it for the reasons I mentioned above – fear, ignorance, greed. Or some combination thereof.

The WAR goes on, thanks to vested interests who support the current prohibition of Cannabis – this inestimable natural gift to ALL OF US – vested interests who hate others and love MONEY(themselves).

You’ve switched sides. You’ve joined the oppressors.

And if you’re a farmer who just got caught up in all of this you’re just going to be one more casualty, and by no means the most serious (think: the incarcerated & their families, the targeted minorities and poor, the sick and tired and stressed and depressed …).

Don’t talk to me about crop prices – we all struggle to survive, some more than others. The freedom to use the Cannabis hemp plant is it’s own issue … not to be confused with U.S. economic policies on farming.

EXCEPT that opening restrictions on Cannabis for non-medicinal uses would have allowed something wonderful to happen – a start to the experiment of allowing this one plant to revolutionize FOOD, FIBER, FUEL and SHELTER industries (in addition to the medical) – while leading to otherwise unachievable ENVIRONMENTAL gains. All of which means one thing: a better ECONOMY for MORE people than you may even care about.

Thanks for aiding the continuation of modern slavery.

I’m all for continuing and unifying the movement, especially by open & honest education and correcting how cannabis users are perceived.

But I’m thoroughly convinced of something now, of what I will be doing and what I would encourage all others to do.

Boycott EMERALD [all about their green] TRIANGLE [for stabbing others in the back] bud wherever possible.

Boycott DISPENSERS [of DEA 'justice,' by proxy] against 19 bud wherever possible.

Boycott CARTELS [and their U.S. government sponsors] bud wherever possible.

GROW YOUR OWN!!!Take control of your own health and happiness by taking the time to learn how to grow … it’s a plant! We do not need these people. Dry up their source of power over us – OUR OWN MONEY!

The information on how to nourish the plant that nourishes you, is widely available. The costs associated with growing are less than purchasing in any market – OVERGROW THE GOVERNMENT and all others who would gladly see us in cages before giving up their ignorance, fear and greed!

EVERYWHERE YOU ARE – SPREAD THE SEEDS OF CANNABIS HEMP AND THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT THEY HOLD FOR US!