Another legislative season begins across the land, and with it comes another crop of bills demanding drug testing of people receiving public benefits, from unemployment to food stamps to state medical assistance. They're expensive, they're impractical, and they're most likely unconstitutional, but that doesn't stop drug war demagogues from promoting them.
San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi wants the city's residents to vote on a measure that would make it city policy to license, tax, and regulate marijuana cultivation and sales, and not just medical. Now, he has to convince the rest of the Supes to agree with him -- or at least a majority.
With the Obama administration having removed the threat of federal prosecutions, the door is swinging open for an expansion of medical marijuana dispensaries. Activists in Oregon are walking through that door, and they are carrying a whole bunch of gathered signatures with them. Look for a dispensary initiative on the ballot there this fall.
The cops lined up against it -- literally! -- but that didn't stop the California Assembly's Public Safety Committee from voting to approve a marijuana legalization bill. And so, history is made this week in Sacramento.
In a pair of votes Monday afternoon and evening -- the last day of the legislative session -- New Jersey lawmakers gave final approval to a medical marijuana bill, which Gov. Jon Corzine (D) has said he will sign. The bill is one of the most restrictive yet, but it's one more state on the bandwagon.
Having apparently run out of other ideas, opponents of marijuana legalization are now arguing that people are going to die. Seriously:
Carnage? Lost Lives? Ok guys, you just keep on talking like that and see what happens. Frustrated and desperate, the anti-pot crusaders have finally and firmly established themselves as the true nutjobs in the marijuana debate.
For decades, the prohibitionists have taken pot politics for granted and their sudden struggle to adapt to the current political climate is indeed an ugly thing to behold. The very notion of an organized, intellectual and popular movement for marijuana reform is utterly incompatible with their deeply ingrained prejudices. By shielding themselves from even a vague comprehension of the case for reform, they're now entering the debate armed only with the same antiquated rhetorical weaponry that's been alienating the public by growing margins each year.
In other words, let them claim that legalization will kill people, let them childishly insult and stigmatize our supporters, for it is precisely those behaviors which have served to expose their ignorance, while catapulting our cause into the political mainstream.