I do know that once the pot dispensaries were up and running in California, the state got about 225 to 250 million a year, for Fiscal Year 2011. And had the DOJ left us alone, that figure would have been much higher.

I also know that the sheriff of either Humboldt or Mendocino county saw so much county revenue coming in, in terms of local taxes, that they became a convert to medical marijuana. That particular county could hire new police and keep those police they might have terminated. (Calif’s economy is in pink slip mode.) So the idea that growing a plant could save the county was a persuasive one.

Then Obama’s DOJ hit California’s dispensaries and hit them hard.

People in other states do not realize how much effort was put into:
1) getting the original Proposition on the ballot and getting it passed (Way back in 1999)
2) then dealing with more local situations – like seeing that a clinic could be in this neighborhood or that one. Getting exemptions if the clinic was near a school, or a school bus route, etc.

Activists have spent years of their lives on the above – which Obama effectively wiped out in just a bit over fourteen months!

it is also very hard to figure out the jobs side of the equation, since this industry has many “down line” jobs created in its wake. I do know that “after Harvest’ the restaurants are flourishing, the furniture stores feature big “Harvest” sales, etc.

3 years ago, the US alcoholic beverage industry accounted for almost 2 million direct jobs and $167B in direct sales.

http://www.discus.org/assets/1/7/2009-Economic-Contribution-Report.pdf

Annual marijuana sales in the US were estimated to be somewhere around $40B in 2010.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36179677

Keep in mind that the actual number may be substantially higher. Also, this figure would probably increase once prohibition is discarded. So, if you did a simple ratio of employment to sales using a similar industry (alcoholic beverages), you get:

$40B/$167B = 24% * 2M employees or approximately 480,000 employees for a marijuana industry.

Like I said, this is just a back of the envelope calculation. If these numbers were refined and proved to be credible, it seems like one campaign strategy would be to stress that ending marijuana prohibition could create “thousands of new jobs in our state.”

http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=10723

It was lack of female support that killed Oregon’s Measure 80. Win over this group and you win the vote. So the question becomes – how can the goal of ending marijuana prohibition be framed such that women will support it? The answer should consider that, according to recent polling, the number one issue with this group is jobs and the economy.

No need to get worried: after all, there was a pharmacy in Great Britain that would be happy to send us our marijuana providing we have a valid prescription. Talk about needlessly out sourcing our American jobs! Rural communities in California have an 18% unemployment rate – and people growing medical marijuana were helping to lower these rates.

Now those people will be back on AFDC, and Food Stamps. Or worse, they could – if they get caught growing, end up in jail, at a cost of some $ 30K a year!

Of course, it is highly likely that the Obama Administration had the clout to see that Yans got to the position he now holds in the UN, so the Obama crowd actually might have orchestrated all of this.

And people in California sure know how Obama feels Last week in September, he let Eric Holder go quite ballistic on one small neighbor hood in Santa Rosa. You had DEA, DOJ, ICE and local police bashing in doors and hauling people out to the curb for processing. Can’t have people growing their own, because well, you just can’t! The fact that a person’s assets can be seized gives agents of any agency all the motivation they would ever need.

1) We need to legalize recreational use in other states. I suggest California is the next step as well as some red state with lots of libertarian attitude, like Montana or Alaska.

2) We need to lower the age from 21 to a more reasonable age, 19 or 18. I’d prefer a younger age so high schoolers aren’t doing something illegal when they use, which would be safer for them, but the first step is to extend this new legality to young adults in college or starting their full time working career.

3) We need to extend legalization to the individual who grows his or her own supply. The individual possession limit of an ounce makes that illegal.

4) We need to change the intoxication definition for driving. Since blood tests can show high levels for someone who uses regularly but isn’t high at all, the usage of blood tests needs to be jettisoned. We need instead to have other evidence of impairment while driving be the standard.

5) Eventually we need to protect individuals from employer tests as reason to not hire or to fire when there is no evidence of impairment at work from abuse. It may make sense for employers to use drug tests to screen employees from using illegal drugs even if they never are impaired on the job; but it makes no sense to do that with a legal substance. Imagine the uproar if there was a test to show if you’d had a beer or a glass of wine on a Friday night weeks later after no drinking and you lost your job for it.

Perhaps a good step 1 would be to push to get marijuana under Schedule 2. There are good scientific grounds for this, with solid research showing that marijuana is useful as an anti-nausea treatment for chemotherapy, glaucoma, and I’m sure people can point out others. That could at least put medical marijuana on more solid ground. Step 2 would be figuring out how to move toward full legalization.

And while we’re at it, an activist DoJ could take some civil rights actions against local police forces that use bigoted stop-and-frisk policies (hello NYC).

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/27mcrm.htm

Go to 9-27.230, Initiating and Declining Charges—Substantial Federal Interest, Part B, Comment.