Marijuana Legalized In Oregon, Alaska, and Washington DC

Robotron23 writes: Coinciding with the midterm elections yesterday were state ballots proposing the legalization of cannabis. All three territories where full legalization was tabled approved the measure, joining Washington state and Colorado. The narrowest vote was that of Alaska at a roughly 52% to 48% margin. Washington D.C. meanwhile saw the vote strongly tipped in favor of legalization, at about 69% to 31% opposed. Oregon passed its measure by a vote of 55% to 45%. Buoyed by the news, advocates of legal cannabis are already contemplating the next round of state ballots in 2016.

Comments

But DC is different,no?

[cayenne8]

I believe that even though it passed in DC...that congress can put the kibosh on this pretty quick?

Re:But DC is different,no?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only "authority" they have to ban it would involve regulating imports across the national border or ports. They also do have Godlike powers over the D.C. area.

But drugs (or anything else) produced within a state and sold/distributed/consumed in the same state is not subject to federal oversight. So in order to regulate these things they need to redefine the term "interstate commerce" to include anything that might be assumed to maybe have some vague impact on interstate commerce. For example, growing wheat on your own property and NOT selling it on the national market constitutes interstate commerce since the act of withholding it from interstate commerce has an effect on interstate commerce. You gotta love the mental jumping jacks that serve as the legal foundation for much of the drug war and all federal authority. That's why I always make the case that approximately 90% of ALL federal activity is illegal.

Re:But DC is different,no?

[coolmoose25]

Actually, what they are trying to do is find out if you are an addict and are going to be using at work. The rationale is that if you can't stop using any given drug for the 30 days it takes to clear your system, then you cannot control your additiction... different drugs have different times that they remain detectable in the body. But none more than 30 days. So if you can't quit using during your job search, then you can't quit period, and thus are an addict. I, on the other hand, don't much care if you've used mary jane in the past 30 days, so when a candidate flunked his test for being "dilute" twice, my HR people recommended that I didn't hire him. I asked if they were mandating that, and they said no. So I hired him. OTOH, the company I work for today doesn't test. A woman had to be let go because used sharps (needles) started showing up in the ladies room... she was using heroin WHILE AT WORK. So go figure...

Re:Well, let's criminalize Du Pont Nylon now.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No, it's always been about racism and moralizing.

Du Pont really had nothing to do with it. And probably had more to gain from it if it were legalized because they had the capacity to grow vast fields of it. Same with Hearst. He only held minority stakes in paper mills. If hemp fiber could've out performed paper, moving his stock into hemp wouldn't have been hard.

Alaska was first, actually

[Tenebrousedge]

No, actually, possession and manufacture (growing) of marijuana has been legal in Alaska since 1975. I've grown myself, and even had the attention of the authorities called to the matter, which worked out favorably. I've also had friends have growing equipment confiscated by the police, and subsequently returned with an apology. Nota bene: the legal protections applied (almost) exclusively in one's house or primary residence.

There are some cultural differences at work here; Alaskan marijuana was (semi-)legalized under a privacy clause, which mostly stems (ironically) from a far-right desire to be left the hell alone by everyone but especially the Government. Except in the form of pork barrel projects, which everyone knows are necessary in order to compensate for the state's underdeveloped "frontier" status.

Generally speaking, while it was legalized in the sense that cops were not going to bother one for private use, public consumption was strongly discouraged. This was not the first time full legalization has been on the ballot in Alaska, there were similar ballot measures in 2000 and 2004. It's a complicated situation; Alaska is almost ludicrously conservative compared to the other states which have legalized.

One must give credit where credit is due, I think it's significant that after years of effort and a long history of consumption in Alaska, this measure did not succeed until after Colorado and Washington. However, ultimately, I think that the most influential state in marijuana politics would be California: their medical marijuana dispensary system has paved the way for the de-demonization of cannabis. Now, the onus is on all of us to reverse the damage that the War on Drugs has caused, particularly in America's having pushed its drug laws on the entire rest of the world through the UN.

A side note on that: I suspect that this last part will involve the US pushing its drug laws on the rest of the world once more, but it would be nice if there were some process by which the international community could come to sane decisions about these drugs.

Re:not quite....

[TheBilgeRat]

Really? I think "gross overstatement" is itself a gross overstatement

Drug prosecution and arrest happen most often in poor communities. Joe Biden's son is an outlier, not proof of lack of class bias.