Maine Marijuana Law Approved; Help Defeat Grassley’s Decriminalization Gag Rule
At the very same time Maine voted to repeal same sex marriage, they approved a bill that expands the state’s existing medical marijuana law. With that Maine becomes the third State to License Medical Marijuana Providers:
“This is a dramatic step forward, the first time that any state’s voters have authorized the state government to license medical marijuana dispensaries,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., which drafted the initiative and provided start-up funding for the campaign. “Coming a decade after passage of Maine’s original marijuana law, this is a huge sign that voters are comfortable with these laws, and also a sign that the recent change of policy from the Obama administration is having a major impact.”
Yes, well, one step forward…
In March, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb introduced a bill calling for a wholesale overhaul of the criminal justice system in the United States. Our system is cripplingly large, he argued, and marred by wrongful incarcerations, poor rehabilitative treatment and mental health care and a price tag of $44 billion a year on prisons alone.
Webb called the situation a “national disgrace,” and said the elephant in the room is sky-high incarceration rates for drug users due to the U.S.’s 40-year-old War on Drugs.
Two steps back:
But according to Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith, “Twenty-one amendments have been filed in Judiciary that speak to our bill. They’re largely from the Republicans [and] I imagine a large amount of them are going to be about drug policy. … They don’t want to go home and say ‘I’m legalizing drugs.’”
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, offered an amendment explicitly forbidding any recommendations that even discuss drug decriminalization or legalization.
Emphasis mine.
Understandably, this has LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) all fired up. They note that at the same moment the UK government is getting slammed for censoring its drug policy advisers (details here and here), the U.S. Senate is set to vote on what Rolling Stone is calling Grassley’s Gag Rule. LEAP is urging we visit their action center to oppose this “censorship amendment!”
Meanwhile, yesterday Breckenridge, Colorado voters made it the first town in the country to decriminalize possession of drug paraphernalia. It also decriminalized possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for personal use.
And in Seattle, the new city attorney vows, “We will not be prosecuting simple marijuana cases anymore, which is part of a bigger fix of geniunely facing public-safety threats, not nanny-state concerns.”
None of which is especially surprising. You’ll remember that Gallup poll finding U.S. support for legalizing marijuana (not decriminalizing, mind you) at 44%, an all time high. In July a CBS poll pegged it at 41%.
That makes this yet another case of the law out of step with the culture.
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I am hoping, but not hopeful, that Grassley's proposal will pass. Too bad that the Children of the '60s have become so drug addled themselves that they have taught their kids that it is OK to use marijuana, and that it should be legalised.
Needless to say, I hope Grassley's amendment succeeds, becomes even stronger, and goes on the books. I am not confident, but I can hope, right?
I was going to go vote, but then I got high.
The opening sentence to this article, and indeed the hub of the gay-marriage issue:
“At the very same time Maine voted to repeal same sex marriage, they approved a bill that expands the state’s existing medical marijuana law”
*****
The author is impying the incongruity of one being upheld and the other being defeated. Under what premise I wonder? Could it be that the author consideres homosexual conduct and being stoned 'the same type of thing?”.
This is how the more conservative voter sees it too. Even still the pot law made it based on its own unique attributes that have nothing to do with homosexuals being upheld as “normal”. Apparently the voter can tell the difference between smoking pot and having gay sex, but its interesting that some see it as the same type of moral derailing that they would lump the two into the same subgroup of laws voted on yesterday.
Just some fun things to mull over..the subconscious finds a way to express itself. Freud would call that sentence “a slip”..
So you think that muzzling the opinions of those in charge is a good idea in America? Let me re-state so you think muzzling someone's opinion so you do not have to hear it is a good idea in America?Do you think we should mandate by law what a person should say before research and studies have been done? Should we just chuck science with all of those silly tests and empirical data and just say what we want reality to be over and over, after all it worked for 8 yrs. Should we also pass laws so that no person in the Gov can discuss intelligent design or be a global warming denier since the science is currently on their side, sorry that does not work as an example because the science is also on the legalization side. The only people that benefit from this current system of insanity is the Alcohol industry, law enforcement(especially in ignoring citizens rights) and criminals.
Maybe if law enforcement was devoting less resources to pot (which is also incentive to take peoples property in what is little more than government sponsored theft) they could actually solve more real crimes. Of about 10 break-ins I personally know about only one was ever solved, and that was solved by the person who was broken into, not the cops – who didn't really seem to care.
In any case, MSF is exactly right in his comments. It looks as though Grassley is in effect pushing for is less information and greater ignorance via this muzzling. While that isn't exactly a surprising dynamic for the GOP, it is little obvious.
I think it is OK for them to use marijuana, and that it should be legalized. Great ideas, both.
AR-You really need to work on this, you are becoming the leading cause of me spitting coffee all over my keyboard with laughter and its just not right!
What the heck, let's test this one: I would like to legalize enough drugs to kill the black market.
…Either that, or have congress take it over completely, since nothing can mess up a free market like the government running it.
Grassley is a traitor and should step down. he has violated his oath to uphold the Constitution by trying to stop or thwart the will of the voters of this nation. Grassley is a disgrace to democracy.
While Iowans beg the Iowa Board of Pharmacy Exaniners 4 times in 4 months,Grassley Granstands on Iowans in wheelchairs, cans and cancer.
Medical Marijuana Hearing Wraps Up In Iowa-
http://www.ketv.com/news/21522854/detail.html
I've wanted reform of our Drug War for ages, but I'm not among the childish who simply want, Want, WANT! to do whatever they want (confusing libertarianism or all other bogus rationalizations for being as two-year-olds, never accepting the word “no” anywhere, at any time).
“Medical marijuana” is just a front for legalization and decriminalization (as are other fronts like advocacy of drug-free hemp production, for example), and proponents should be honest about what they want, and why. If they want legalization or decriminalization, they should say so, and present arguments other than those reeking (pun intended) of self-indulgence as well as self-absorption. (Stress real reforms.)
“a wholesale overhaul of the criminal justice system”
This goes well beyond the Drug War, ending civil asset forfeiture and putting non-dangerous people in dangerous, expensive institutions (you know, like health care reform will someday affect hospitals). It conceivably includes standards of evidence and evidence-taking, and DNA in capital cases, for example.
“I would like to legalize enough drugs to kill the black market.”
You won't. Different states would do things differently (this is correctly a state, not a federal, issue). There would not only be “drug tourism” but organized crime as well as ordinary people involved with smuggling marijuana into states with restrictions or prohibitions. (Even a state-monopoly-system of legalized marijuana, like state-monopoly liquor sale controls, presents smuggling risks.) I believe marijuana should be legalized, but am not naive about this or other problems that would develop.
Obviously, there would be a lot of complications, many of which would not be predicted, just as many of the problems with alcohol prohibition weren't predicted. And state monopoly and state approved systems present unacceptable opportunities for corruption, as most states have found out with gambling. The real question is, which one has the fewer number of problems. I can't image that any of the problems that legalization would cause could come close to the problems that prohibition has caused. I also personally think that actual drug usage wouldn't be impacted much, either way.
My suggestion for a state run drug system was that it would try to produce and sell the drugs as efficiently as a normal business, so as to kill off the current black market, and then wait for normal corruption to slowly work its magic. (BTW, I'm fully aware that this is a politically impossible suggestion, but I like using it as way to see how people think, or to get them thinking.)
Professor, your posting was refreshing. (I've been seeing some very poor quality behavior on this site since Obama was elected, and especially with the more controversial things the Dems have been doing, in their defense, and have dealt some harsh, though sparing, treatment to it in response.) Yes, the idea is to think about it, not just behave impulsively (“I want! I WANT!”). “Blanket” drug legalization is simply naive, at best, as actual policy (as distinguished, intelligently, from the general nature of prohibition or restriction, and government authority and responsibility for same). Marijuana is at the forefront and is probably the only drug that merits legalization, and yes, legalizing it would result in fewer problems than we have now. (This is what I've over-generously tried to explain in dispelling naivete' and worse among the proponents of federal takeover of health care. We'd exchange one set of problems for another. In the case of federal takeover of health care, proponents, among so many other wrongful things, have failed to prove the case, which they owe everyone else, that the takeover would result in fewer and in less bad problems. Legalization of marijuana actually has a better, stronger case for it than health care takeover by the federal government, despite the latter's attractiveness to so many, at least superficially and emotionally.)
Today the AMA voted to reverse its longstanding endorsement of cannabis’ Schedule I prohibitive status. The vote took place during the organization’s annual Interim Meeting of the House of Delegates in Houston, Texas, and marks the first time that the AMA has revisited its position on cannabis in eight years.
As newly amended, the AMA’s official position (see specifically pages 12, 13, and 14) regarding the medical use of cannabis no longer “recommends that marijuana be retained in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.” Rather, the Association now resolves “that marijuana’s status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines.”
The AMA also today demolished long-held pot prohibitionist claim — frequently publicized by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and others — that “no sound scientific studies have supported medical use of smoked marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data support the safety or efficacy of smoked marijuana for general medical use.”