FireDogLake and Students for Sensible Drug Policy are officially launching the Just Say Now campaign this week. It's an exciting new effort to amplify the marijuana legalization debate and bring out the vote leading up to California's Prop 19 in November, as well as future initiatives in 2012.
The timing couldn't be better. Everyone's talking about whether the marijuana vote could help the Democrats by bringing out young voters, yet party leadership remains shamefully silent and prominent democrats like Diane Feinstein and Jerry Brown are foolishly fighting back against legalization. As a longtime hub for progressive politics on the web, FDL is the perfect venue for reinvigorating the marijuana debate on the left and driving the issue even more firmly into the political mainstream.
The effort is already scoring big points by helping break MSNBC and CNN's traditional silence on the legalization question:
This is just the beginning. If the Democrats plan to continue relying on young voters and web-savvy campaign strategies, it will no longer be possible to ignore the marijuana vote. And if the Republicans don't want to alienate their sizable libertarian wing, they'll do well to join the conversation. The time for reform has arrived, and if you didn't see it coming, you should have.
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