My parsing of Earl Blumenauer’s (Or-3) town hall with MPP last week is that 2016 is how Oregon is being strategized. For us I think the Washington experience will be key; their success or failure will have a major impact both on how our initiative is drawn, and how it fares at the ballot.

This is an obvious point. You put it on the ballot when you can win. That varies dramatically state-by-state. So for some states putting it on the ballot in 2014 might preserve the momentum from 2012. And for others, waiting until 2016 allows organizers to build an effective campaign. So the question is which states in 2014 and which in 2016. Current polling data can help and can help frame the way the initiative is drafted; some states might not be ready for a Colorado-style initiative but will go for a medical marijuana initiative.

In my experience in North Carolina, when I say “drugs are a medical problem not a criminal problem,” people nod. They understand that with respect to alcoholic beverages. And they get the analogy easily. And they are tired of watching kids trading baggies in the street outside their window and thinking that laws should be enforced but not seeing those same kids misbehaving otherwise.

A second point is that drug laws don’t exist if you are rich enough or white enough. The massive selective enforcement is corruptive of the respect for the law; folks get that as well.

It’s at this point that you start getting some practical questions about how to deal with addiction when it occurs in the drugs that do cause addiction. Having available health care is my answer. Strangely enough they get that too even if they are conservative and not supportive of government health care. Because they do get the privacy issue.

Elders get it. The ones with the biggest anxieties are those with kids approaching teenage years. Everyone has friends or relatives who have stories about their friends of relatives who had problems handling drugs. Parents are rightly anxious that you are taking away a tool they can use to wave off their kids. The reality is that frightening kids of being taken to jail is not a great way of parenting.

Even one win in 2014 would be sufficient to boost momentum. Moreso if it is by conventional wisdom unlikely.

The Feds: HSA, DEA, FBI and ATF will never allow this to happen at the national level. It hits their pocketbook to hard. And nobody seems to grasp the reality of local law enforcement and the PIC’s entrenched desire to keep the prisons full. Southern legislator’s love small time drug dealers, too. The racial component of their enforcement cannot be denied. The best thing to do is what Josephine Co. in southern Oregon did. Defund law enforcement until they say ” uncle “. Quit feeding the beast, please.

“It’s at this point that you start getting some practical questions about how to deal with addiction when it occurs in the drugs that do cause addiction.”

We’re only talking about legalizing marijuana here, right? Marijuana is not addictive, or at least not as addictive as, say, chocolate. Not sure why a discussion about marijuana should have to lead to a wide-ranging discussion about say, prescription drug abuse, alcoholism or kicking smoking. However, if it does, you probably know to point out that medical studies show that marijuana actually reduces use of other drugs:

http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/medicalmj08.htm

“A ground-breaking study of 4117 marijuana smokers in California1 reveals that the ‘Gateway Theory’ probably had it backwards. Instead of enticing young people to use other drugs, this study suggests that marijuana may have the opposite effect.”

As for when to put measures on the ballot, I would think as soon and as often as possible. The more information and discussion the better.

while I love states taking the inituative, in a way I think its unfair. Its similar to marriage equality and abortion. Some states will have no issue while people in other states will probably be dead and buried before anything changes. Every state also has widely differnt alcohol laws. In my state it even varies county to county, city to city. some are wet. some are dry but have membership type loop holes others are dry dry. Like my suburb was dry dry until a few years ago, one neighbooring suburb is wet for beer and wine while another is all booze. Literally in a one mile radius you could have 4 different sets of laws.

I would rather see efforts made to deal with the Feds. If pot was no longer a concern to feds then some states would simply follow suit, others might pass their own regulations and those are fights we could have. There is no real “opposition” I dont see people donating millions to NOM type groups.

My real concern is being able to grow my own pot in my backyard without having some asshole deputy sieze my house. Federal action just seems faster than waiting for conditions to be “right” in my state

What you say is true. But having folks realize it is true means at least in places like North Carolina clearing the underbrush of all that ninety-year-old disinformation campaign. It shouldn’t lead to a wide-ranging discussion but if you are talking trying to convince people, it inevitably does. Just bracketing any putative medical effects as medical issues does unblock opposition to legalization.

It has nothing to do with the Gateway Theory. Most folks have had enough folks in their families do pot now that there is very little talk of Gateway drugs (except as snark) but there are folks whose pot use was also associated with other issues and those get conflated in peoples’ minds. But if it’s a medical issue, it’s a doctor-patient issue and not a public issue except for the provision health care. The tag line “It’s a health care issue not a criminal issue” gets nods. Field tested with a random, but not necessarily statistically valid sample.

Good point. The feds are the problem.

The “premature loss” canard was concern-trolled about same-sex marriage too, and it didn’t seem to slow down society’s evolution on that.

You need to work on the Grandmothers. My mom (70) voted for the Montana Medical MJ initiatives b/c she thought it was unfair that a plant with zero casualties is worth criminalizing while alcohol kills so many drunken farmers who come to town to go to the bar and then kill them or themselves on the return trip.
Of course I had to tell her the benign 80000 year history of Cannabis over a nice glass of wine on the back porch. Before my discussion she likened MJ to heroin.

AT her age she has had friends with the sorts of cancer and joint (Ha hha) issues that plague people at her age and she thought taking a plant made more sense then the pharmaceutical route with the cost and side effects.

I think all MJ spokespeople should be nice grandma types instead of some young white guy with dreadlocks and a Bob Marley tattoo.

In ’68 they had “Go Clean for Gene” (Eugene McCarthy vs LBJ). IN this case “Go Clean for Green”

I definitely think 2016 is the way to go, more youthful and minority voters come out. 2014 might be right in Obama’Holder’s wheel house of the big crack down.

Jon, excellent post, a measured, clear-eyed, look at the tough questions.

2014!

No telling who will be in charge in 2016. MJ is gaining acceptance, sure, and it’s an ongoing process. Nonetheless, people vote on a lot of issues — how many of them will be single issue MJ voters by 2016? Hard to say.

I’s suggest 2014 is a better bet since we can reckon ahead better over two years than four.

Slightly off-topic, but I haven’t seen any coverage around here of the unbelievable prison sentence imposed last week on the Oakland, CA, dispensary operator whose name I believe is Joshua Hester.

He was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs to begin an eight year sentence for operating two very modest dispensaries. Eight years!

I believe I saw one article, probably in the SF Chronicle, and nothing in the blogosphere. Whuzzup w/dat?

This question demonstrates why liberals and progressives lose so often.

No commitment.

If you believe in something, you will work on that issue year after year after year until you are dead or you have accomplished what you believe in.

If you pick 2016, what are you going to do in 2013 and 2014? Try to raise money from people who are not committed to the cause, but are rich enough to contribute $20?

If people are committed, you can get them working on it for 2014. If it does not pass in 2014, then your restart for 2016. And if not then, then go for 2018.

If you want to be effective like the conservatives seeking to kill Social Security, Medicare, abortion rights, you never never stop working no matter how many times you lose.

Hey, work on a campaign where you hand out flyers of Obama painted like Hitler saying “Obama is going to put your kid in jail for life for one joint” and make a libertarian anti-jack boot big government, anti-Obama issue out of it in the most conservative redneck South. For farmers tout the profits to be made from growing hemp for hemp oil, for hemp fabrics, and so on, and hit hard at jack boot government agents. For the wealthier conservatives, hit them with the high cost of drug police, drug courts, and prisons which drive up taxes or starve fixing the roads.

Legalizing pot/hemp is not a liberal or progressive or even conservative issue, but an issue that should cross all political boundaries.

The anti-abortion movement has never stopped and has reframed the issue so it crosses all political lines as far as the People are concerned, thanks in part to clever rhetoric. The pro-life elimination of choice by women is described as choosing life – Palin made a point of saying she was pro-life because she was pro-choice in choosing to have a Downs child. She, she was exercising power by choosing, so that is why she wants to take away choice, based on her superior moral behavior. The pro-life movement has created a political view where abortion is opposed by the majority, but Roe v Wade is supported by 70%, leading to candidates winning for being with the majority, opposed to abortion. Meanwhile, they defeat opponents who support Roe just as 70% of the voters do. It is in this grass roots movement in the face of passive women’s right advocates that abortion is under attack.

A grass roots and continuous legalize hemp/pot movement would face astroturf opposition raising the old 50s era anti-pot gateway drug fears, but it is hard to imagine any grass roots campaign in support of any drug laws and the money will run out for pot when money is being funneled to anti-Obama, anti-immigrant, anti-Obamacare, anti-gay marriage, anti-green energy campaigns.

Note that the Keystone XL pipeline protests were over property rights as in the Kelo lawsuit that was driven by conservative-libertarian opposition to big government. When Keystone was turned into a green issue for fighting climate change, all of a sudden the libertarians and conservatives were immediately in favor of Gov Perry running landowners off their land so Canadian corporations could take Texas land for Canadian profits.

Lesson: do not make legal pot liberal or conservative or Democratic or Republican, but simply pro-liberty.

Very true. The D of J, apparently having nothing better to do, raided medical marijuana dispensaries during Obama’s first term, even though they were perfectly legal in California.

During the campaign, Obama said marijuana was not his priority, but, for excellent reason, I don’t really trust President Obama to execute Campaign Obama’s promises.

Nice sermon.

I guess what you meant is that you’ve never been a part of the hard work of any campaign that’s actually accomplished something.

Legalization is not about a subculture, it is about market protection for Big Pharma, and the protection of labor sources for the Prison-Industrial-Complex.

Please apologize to Jon and all libs and progressives who actually understand the real world obstacles.

For your penance, I suggest $20 to FDL and $20 more JustSayNow.