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When half of the pot-heads are against it - you know it is a bad measure.
And even if it does pass - the feds will be all over it.
Predict it will go down - and be the last measure for quite sometime to legalize any drugs.
NC passed a pot tax decades ago.
NC passed a pot tax decades ago.
NC passed a pot tax decades ago.
Pot is not legal here.
You almost gotta laugh. Cigarettes are regulated and taxed to death and they want to sell marijuana to your kids without worrying about being arrested.?
Colorado's measure doesn't make any changes to the state's driving-under-the-influence laws, leaving lawmakers and police to worry about its effect on road safety. "We're going to have more impaired drivers," warned John Jackson, police chief in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village.
Washington's law does change DUI provisions by setting a new blood-test limit for marijuana — a limit police are training to enforce, and which some lawyers are already gearing up to challenge. "We've had decades of studies and experience with alcohol," said Washington State Patrol spokesman Dan Coon. "Marijuana is new, so it's going to take some time to figure out how the courts and prosecutors are going to handle it. But the key is impairment: We will arrest drivers who drive impaired, whether it be drugs or alcohol."
Drugged driving is illegal, and nothing in the measures that Washington and Colorado voters passed this month to tax and regulate the sale of pot for recreational use by adults over 21 changes that. But law enforcement officials wonder about whether the ability to buy or possess marijuana legally will bring about an increase of marijuana users on the roads. Statistics gathered for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that in 2009, a third of fatally injured drivers with known drug test results were positive for drugs other than alcohol. Among randomly stopped weekend nighttime drivers in 2007, more than 16 percent were positive for drugs.
Marijuana can cause dizziness and slowed reaction time, and drivers are more likely to drift and swerve while they're high. Marijuana legalization activists agree people shouldn't smoke and drive. But setting a standard comparable to blood-alcohol limits has sparked intense disagreement, said Betty Aldworth, outreach director for Colorado's Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. Most convictions for drugged driving currently are based on police observations, followed later by a blood test. "There is not yet a consensus about the standard rate for THC impairment," Aldworth said, referring to the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. Unlike portable breath tests for alcohol, there's no easily available way to determine whether someone is impaired from recent pot use.
MORE
And while many details surrounding the state's Dec. 6 decriminalization of pot remain, the department didn't shy away from answering what questions it could about Initiative 502, posting a funny, question-and-answer blog that has become a big web hit — having been viewed more than 120,000 times and shared more than 15,000 times on Facebook since it was posted Friday. The result was "Marijwhatnow? A Guide to Legal Marijuana Use In Seattle," by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, a former journalist who wrote for The Stranger, a weekly alternative newspaper. He was hired by the police department earlier this year.
Here, he and Sgt. Sean Whitcomb, a police spokesman, explain the thinking behind the blog, which included some of these memorable passages:
Q: SPD seized a bunch of my marijuana before I-502 passed. Can I have it back? A: No.
"I just try to write posts I'd want to read," Spangenthal-Lee said, via email. "I knew we were probably going to be inundated with questions about 502, so I figured I'd try to get answers to the kinds of questions Seattle residents (and reporters) might ask, and put them out there."
Q: What happens if I get pulled over and I'm sober, but an officer or his K9 buddy smells the ounce of Super Skunk I've got in my trunk? A: Under state law, officers have to develop probable cause to search a closed or locked container. Each case stands on its own, but the smell of pot alone will not be reason to search a vehicle.
Whitcomb noted that pot cases have not been a priority in Seattle for some time. "This is a city where marijuana possession has been the lowest (enforcement) priority. There's a built-in expectation that Seattle is going to have something to say about it," said Whitcomb, referring to the fact that voters in this liberal city directed police nearly a decade ago to treat adult pot use as its lowest enforcement priority.
More http://cnsnews.com/news/article/seattle-police-produce-users-guide-pot
End Cannabis Prohibition!
September 29, 2012
Cannabis prohibition has failed. Its time we take a sensible approach to our cannabis policies, and legalize it for adults.
As we move forward in preparation of our 2013 initiative, here are some key reasons why we should re-legalize cannabis:
- Cannabis prohibition has inflated our prison populations with nonviolent individuals. Many have heard this statistic before, but its a powerful one: as a nation we possess 5% of the worlds population, yet harbor 25% of the worlds prisoners. The failed war on drugs (which has primarily been a war on cannabis) plays a large part in this.
- Without full legalization the black-market will continue to thrive, financially benefiting criminal organizations, and further endangering public safety. This dangerous black-market has fueled violent crime throughout the country, and many of the most dangerous criminal syndicates get a majority of their profit from the illegal cannabis market. For example, Mexican drug cartels, which have been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in recent years, gain roughly 60% of their profit from U.S. marijuana sales.
- Cannabis is a multi-billion dollar industry. One of the top cash crops in our country. Legalization would bring a substantial and worthy revenue boost at a time when we could desperately use it.
- Legalization would create jobs. If we legalize one of the top cash crops in the country one that for decades has benefited the black-market well legitimatize an industry that will quickly generate tens of thousands of jobs throughout the state and nation. Medical cannabis has already created thousands of jobs throughout the country, yet these workers are subject to arrest working at locations that are allowed under state law. Our national job market isnt strong enough to ignore what will surely be an expansive new industry.
- Prohibition disproportionately affects minorities. Studies consistently show this to be true. For example, according to past reports, African-Americans and Hispanics make up 20% of cannabis consumers in the country, yet comprise nearly 60% of those sentenced under federal law. Further reports show that African-Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for a marijuana offense than someone whos white, and 8 times more likely to go to jail for a drug offense.
- Cannabis prohibition ruins lives. Whether its a student losing college loan and grant money, a parent being refused employment or food stamps because of a current or past cannabis related conviction, or a person being sentenced to life in prison, cannabis prohibition consistently destroys the lives of those undeserving of punishment all over their choice to use a safer alternative to legal substances such as alcohol.
- Cannabis is a vastly beneficial medicine, yet, because of prohibition, we refuse to take full advantage of what this plant has to offer, and we continue to imprison and ruin the lives of medical patients. We need to repeal cannabis prohibition in order to fully protect those who truly need it, and so that we can end the federal blockade on further research.
- An end to cannabis prohibition is an end to hemp prohibition. Hemp is one of the most diverse and useful products on the planet. Its illegality is a travesty, as is the fact that we import hundreds of millions of dollars of hemp from Canada and China, rather than allowing our farmers to take advantage of this useful crop.
- Cannabis is a non-lethal and therapeutically beneficial substance that adults should have the right to use without fear of criminal prosecution.
- Its a plant. Outlawing nature in its rawest form should always be seen as unacceptable.
First of all it isn't "weed", it's marijuana and the issue isn't about regulation, it's about the pipe dream of nut case junkies that they might be able to make a "legal" buck by selling drugs to our kids.
At a time when cigarette smoking is so restricted how the hell can we even consider legalizing a smoking substance that is not only as unhealthy but can cause you to kill yourself if you are driving under the influence?
They say that at first in order to get the bills passed or pimp for votes on a ballot initiative, but the money almost always end up getting blown on welfare handouts or other social engineering boondoggles.OK so legalize it in states that agree to fund health care with the profits.
To pay for cancer treatment and therapy for the addiction and paranoid personality changes related to marijuana use.