If the Government Won't Fix Marijuana Laws, the People Will Do it Themselves

Opponents of marijuana reform have been arguing for years that ballot initiatives are the wrong way to make laws because they circumvent the input of state legislators and other stakeholders, thereby creating a risk of unintended consequences. We've heard this complaint repeatedly in regards to medical marijuana, and now the same is being said about Prop 19. But as far as we're concerned, anyone who doesn't want marijuana legalized this way has only one option: beat us to it.

It's really that simple. If public officials don't want to see laws enacted by popular vote, then the obvious solution is to go ahead and fix failed policies instead of endeavoring desperately to defend them year after year. Given the popularity of Prop 19, there's no reason California legislators couldn't have enacted some of these reforms a long time ago. The same goes for every other state where polling shows strong support for significant marijuana reforms. Unless legislators begin taking the issue seriously, the next generation of marijuana laws will be written by activists.

Thus, it's really quite fascinating that Governor Schwarzenegger finally just signed decriminalization into law only a month before the Prop 19 vote. Even the widely-acknowledged stupidity of arresting people for small amounts of marijuana wasn't addressed until full legalization appeared to loom right around the corner. And to top it off, opponents of Prop 19 are now cynically claiming that we don't need legalization because people won't be arrested anymore anyway. How convenient. Something tells me these same idiots would have been our biggest adversaries if we'd launched a decriminalization initiative five years ago.

Fortunately, it's getting more and more difficult to find anyone in the marijuana debate willing to defend the practice of arresting people for mere possession, so rather than waiting for advocates to push further-reaching reforms, state legislatures should be working to enact decriminalization policies on their own terms. Doing so may not prevent legalization from eventually emerging through the initiative process, but it does offer you the ability to modernize state policies before reformers come along and do the job for you in ways you might not like.

America's war on marijuana is simply too unpopular to continue indefinitely. Change is coming, and anyone who worries about what that means is better off taking a seat at the table than working in vain to disrupt the process with paranoid anti-drug propaganda. When it comes to reforming marijuana policies, you're either with us, or you're wasting your time.