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The first television ad in support of I-502 which would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in the state for adults over the age of 21, has just come out in Washington State. The ad is from New Approach Washington, the campaign behind the marijuana legalization initiative.
The ad features a female, who doesn’t use marijuana, making multiple policy cases for why legalization would be better than prohibition. Polling has constantly shown that women tend to less supportive of marijuana reform than men, so expect much of the campaign’s efforts in Washington state to be focused on trying to persuading women to support the initiative.
In addition to Washington, Oregon and Colorado also have marijuana legalization initiatives on their ballots. During the next roughly hundred days until the election it will be interesting to see to what degree the messaging of these three campaigns both mirrors each other and diverges. Having different legalization initiatives on the ballot in three states during the same election should serve as a natural experiment. It will be interesting to compare the three initiatives after the election to try to determine what ads, messaging, and strategies prove most effective.
3 Comments
I haven’t been a marijuana user for a number of years but I think it’s time to stop spending billions in taxpayer dollars that are current spent on enforcing laws a that aren’t enforcable. It’s time to stop treating marijuana users as criminals and legalize it
Sky, Like you I no longer smoke either. Legalization’s not going to happen however, because there’s too much money in it as contraban. Legalize it and the party’s over for growers, movers, sellers and bankers. Same can be said for our War-On-Drugs people in enforcement and prisons. In fact, the real purpose of the War-On-Drugs is to control supply, just like any other commodity…Limit supply and maintain high prices. Legalize grass and we’s all be growing our own. Prices would crash. I remember crashing…before I had responsibilities.
Regards, ER
What about alcohol, you can make it yourself also. Its just alot harder than going to the station (and believe me there are enough places to sell it for sure) and buy it just like Marijuana is hard to grow for you to use the THC out of it. It doesn’t have the effect you want if you don’t grow it right, so yeah it needs to be legalized and taxed and they would make a fortune in doing so but also keep it out of drug dealers hands. Then the drug dealers can sell meth and kill the idiots that use the harmful drugs like they do now anyways! So yes I welcome the fact that pot should be legal, cause for one I’m an open pot smoker that doesn’t drink alcohol, doesn’t use harmful drugs, such as cocaine, meth, Ice, etc. Also I go to work everyday, I don’t steal, I don’t cheat on the person in my life, and I don’t go to jail every time I have a “good time”.