First of all, most people who use marijuana are in the age 18 to 29 bracket and are notorious for not voting. Nevertheless, the largest marijuana policy reform groups continue to primarily reach out to the college crowd with a sophomoric libertarian message that is a tough sale anywhere outside of the most liberal bastions.

I think the marijuana policy reformers need to think outside the box and wonder why the marijuana market is still not taxed and regulated four decades since NORML was formed. I guarantee it isn't a money issue but more of a credibility gap these groups have with parents. Marijuana Policy Project far outspent their "prohibitionist" opposition in all their tax and regulate campaigns, spending about a million bucks on their most recent 2006 campaign in Nevada (compared to the opposition's $100K expenditures in that state) and it still only got the support of 44% of the electorate in Las Vegas. If this group's reform message will not work in Las Vegas, where can it work outside of San Francisco?

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006//pages/results/states/NV/I/02/county.00...

I have a hard time believing that your "prohibitionist" opposition spending calculations include the spending of pharmaceutical companies to keep a cheap drug that anyone anywhere can produce off the market.

",,,and still got only 44% of the electorate" You make no effort to recognize the 44%. I'm 50 and smoke cannabis. This group's reform message is clear. It still works in Vegas and outside of Vegas. It's time to change your ignorance towards the 44 percent in my view. I wonder when people like you will see that change is needed. If for no other reason, it will drastically reduce the violence associated with keeping things as they are, WAKE UP!

I couldnt have said it better. Well put.

I am not surprised it failed. What idiot wants to give more tax money to a state already bloated with too much of our money and then throw in regulation of the growth of the plants too? STUPID! There aren't regulations to grow tomatoes and there shouldn't be for marijuana either. I will NEVER sign any petition to regulate and tax something which I have a GOD given right to grow and use.

It took a constitutional ammendment to ban the sale and production of alcohol but the people's right to produce and possess alcohol for personal use was never over ridden by the amendment. It is the same today for marijuana prohibition. The right to posses and produce marijuana for personal use only is lawful in all fifty states. Here are Oregon's laws on the subject.

475.125 Registration requirements. (3) The following persons need not register and may lawfully possess controlled substances under ORS 475.005 to 475.285 and 475.840 to 475.980: (c) An ultimate user

22) “Ultimate user” means a person who lawfully possesses a controlled substance for the use of the person

The problem lies with the failure of the people to distinguish between their lawful right to grow and possess for personal use only and the feds craftiness for using commercial laws to prosecute them.

The states have delegated to the federal government the power to regulate commerce among the states. So as long as the feds are seen as regulating commerce by the courts, ie. buying and selling, it will be upheld as constitutional.

The solution is for people to open the law books and read them with comprehension. Therein they will find that the misapplication of the commercial laws upon them by the fed and state agencies violate the constitutional guarantee to due process of the law. Then learn how to stand in the law against the administrative tyranny that is being foisted upon them.

I care deeply about the issue of drug prohibition. It angers me that you would delete my posts.

Friends,

Last weekend a on our web server failed and had to be replaced. As a result, we appear to have lost some comments, the ones posted subsequent to Friday's night's automatic backup, from which our site restoral was run. I am guessing that the comment referred to here was one of them.

We may be able to recover these comments, but I don't know yet if that will be possible. Please accept my apology for the lost effort on your part. I hope that those of you affected will repost your earlier words here, and that it was not too large an amount of work that you lost from this.

David Borden, Executive Director
StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network
Washington, DC
http://stopthedrugwar.org

test

I downloaded the OCTA signature gathering forms from the website when it first started, and spotted a problem with the way the forms were oriented on the page. I sent email with a correction, but never heard anything back on it. This created the impression the OCTA website was basically created and abandoned.
This despite the fact it included a mailto: webmaster link. If you guys can't be bothered to correct your website, why should I bother with OCTA?

Sure, part of it is money, That is what fuels the AARP and the NRA. But equally powerful is voices and numbers. If every pot smoker were to donate to at least one pot-legalization organization, and if every pot smoker were to write once a month to their representatives, and to the new president, if we could become as powerful as the NRA, we would have pot legalized and regulated for adults nationwide by 2010. We are up against the powerful pharmaceutical companies and the close minded Office of National Drug Control Policy. I think the general public is more flexible informing opinions on this than are these giants; they have a vested interest in keeping pot illegal. Pharmaceutical companies have much to fear from pot being legalized. But the common person is much more ammenable to a change in opinion. My 35 years of smoking pot has even gotten my mother to relax her views on marijuana, as she has seen me become a successful adult in spite off the misperceptions about pot smokers.

If you are not donating and rattling the cages of lawmakers, you have no right to complain about pot being illegal, or even to smoke pot!