Over the past couple of months, I have been asked the following question many, many times: So which states are next? What people want to know, of course, is where MPP would like to help make marijuana legal for all adults now that we accomplished that historic goal in Colorado. While our executive director Rob Kampia has provided a public answer to that question in a national alert and blog post, I did my part to signal MPP’s intentions this past weekend, with an appearance at a town hall forum in Portland, Oregon on Sunday.

I was joined by Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who kicked off the forum by discussing the need for reform of marijuana laws on the federal level. The 100 or so attendees were greatly appreciative of Rep. Blumenauer’s presence at the event, and he deserves strong praise for taking the lead on this issue in Congress. Following Rep. Blumenauer’s remarks, I focused on the major opportunity at the state level. As we see it, Oregon is one of a small handful of states where it is possible to pass a ballot initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol in the next four years. We feel so strongly about the prospects for reform, we have already hired a consultant, Roy Kaufmann, to serve as our representative in the state.

During the town hall event, I provided Oregon advocates and activists with a road map to success based on what we learned in Colorado. I placed special emphasis on the need to cooperate and educate over the coming years. The marijuana reform community in Oregon has a history marked by disagreements and division. It is time to overcome those differences so that we can focus on defeating our enemies, not our friends.

With respect to education, I explained how the Colorado campaign was built upon years of work by Mason Tvert (now MPP’s communications director) and SAFER to help the public understand that marijuana is a far less harmful substance than alcohol. We believe that this long-term public education campaign helped diminish the fear of marijuana previously ingrained in the minds of soccer moms and other swing voters. It made it easier, in the end, for people to vote Yes on Amendment 64.

Perhaps most importantly, I conveyed to the attendees MPP’s strong belief that ballot initiatives to regulate marijuana like alcohol should be run during presidential election years when the turnout — notably the much higher percentage of young voters — is more favorable for this issue. The odds of winning in 2014 are significantly lower, and every dollar invested in a signature drive in 2014 is a dollar not being spent on public education efforts that will increase our chances of winning in 2016. Moreover, a loss in 2014 could diminish enthusiasm among potential funders for a 2016 campaign. As evidence of this, we need only look to California, where the Prop. 19 campaign fell short in 2010 and essentially led to the state being off the table in 2012.

Clearly, the drive to regulate marijuana like alcohol in Oregon is going to garner a significant amount of media coverage over the next four years. In fact, the day following the town hall forum, the state’s largest newspaper, the Oregonian, published an article about the event on the front page!

There is much work to do in Oregon between now and November 2016. But if leaders of the marijuana policy reform community in the state can come together and steer their collective energy and resources toward a common goal, a victory in 45 months is not only achievable, it is likely.

The Los Angeles City Council voted, 8-4, Tuesday to approve placing
two medical marijuana initiatives on the May 21 ballot and gave
preliminary support to a third initiative proposed by Council member
Paul Koretz as a

The city won

"For MassHealth the answer is ‘No,’ " Alec
Loftus, communications director at the Massachusetts Department of
Public Health, tells the Phoenix. "Nothing in the law requires
any health-insurance provider, or any government agency or authority, to
reimburse any person for the expenses of the medical use of marijuana."

So
MassHealth won’t cover it. Will other insurance plans? "We have had
reports of patients being reimbursed by their health-insurance
companies," says Kris Hermes, spokesperson with Americans for Safe
Access. "But it’s very rare. I don’t want to give the impression that
insurance companies are regularly reimbursing customers, because that’s
just not the case. Most insurance companies would balk at the idea."

Amanda
Reiman, policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance’s California
office, says that patients in California can have their
medical-marijuana expenses apply toward their Medi-Cal deductible

Los Angeles voters will likely find three different measures on the May 21 ballot allowing for the sale of medical marijuana.

While admitting it could create some confusion for voters, the
City Council nonetheless on Tuesday agreed to place two initiatives on
the ballot and gave preliminary approval to a third measure, which is
supposed to be a compromise between the first two.

"Neither of these two initiatives are perfect and one would
have far too little regulation," Councilman Paul Koretz said. "But we
have a third proposal that would bring in tax revenue and maintain
access for medical marijuana patients."

The proposal by Koretz was approved on an 8-4 vote, with
Councilmen Joe Buscaino, Mitch Englander, Jose Huizar and Bernard Parks
voting against the measure. It will return to the council next Tuesday
for a final vote.

Under the proposal, the original 135 dispensaries approved
under an interim control ordinance will be able to open as long as they
abide by city rules on proximity to schools, churches and neighborhoods.

It also establishes a new tax of $60 per $1,000 of marijuana sold — a $10 increase over the current rate approved by voters.

The other two measures were sponsored by different medical
marijuana activists. One allows an unlimited number of clinics if they
are certain distances from schools, churches and other facilities, and
would increase the tax on sales to $60 per $1,000 of sales.

The other measure would allow the clinics that were operating prior to Sept. 14, 2007, when the city put in a moratorium, to remain open.

Councilman Eric Garcetti, a candidate for mayor, said he supports the compromise proposal.

"It does ensure access and gives us some semblance of control in our neighborhood," Garcetti said.

Don Duncan, president of Americans for Safe Access, praised the compromise proposal.

"It represents the best chance to get a majority of voters,
whose opinions about medical cannabis vary widely," Duncan said. "I am
pleasantly surprised at this compromise measure. It represents a
position that patients, providers and community members can all
support."

Residents have complained about the number of dispensaries that have opened in the city and the related problems they cause.

Parks, who has been opposed to the dispensaries, questioned
the City Attorney’s office over the measure and whether it will protect
the city if the federal government decides to enforce federal laws
against marijuana.

Huizar has been opposed to the dispensaries and authored a ban
on their operations in the city. However, the council rescinded the
prohibition after the medical marijuana supporters collected enough
signatures for a referendum to overturn the ban.

The state Supreme Court is scheduled on Feb. 5 to take up a
case on whether cities have the power to ban marijuana dispensaries in
their jurisdiction.

When citizens of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana in November they created a conflict, because pot remains illegal under federal law and anyone who lights up is committing a federal crime and could theoretically still be arrested for it. After Colorado passed the referendum, Governor John Hickenlooper said the implementation of the law in his state would be a “complicated process” and he warned residents not to “break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.”

While it seems unlikely that the federal government will make much of an effort to arrest pot users in Colorado or Washington—Obama has said he has “bigger fish to fry”— the tension between federal and state laws on marijuana remains. Just last week, an appeals court rejected a suit that sought to lower the classification of medical marijuana under federal drug laws.

That court ruling threw the issue back to Congress and the Drug Enforcement Agency, which should start a serious reconsideration of national policy toward marijuana. The federal government should start by reclassifying medical marijuana, legalizing it outright, or at least dialing down the penalties. And it should begin to have the sort of serious discussion about legalizing recreational marijuana that is now occurring in the states.

The campaign to legalize marijuana has long been viewed as a fringe cause, backed by young people and old hippies. That perception has lingered even though public opinion polls have shown that a growing percentage of the public favors legalization – as much as 68% in one recent poll. In the past two decades, supporters of marijuana have focused on legalizing medical use, and they have had impressive success. Today, 18 states and the District of Columbia have made medical use legal – and at least seven more states are considering it. Meanwhile, the DEA still classifies marijuana as a “schedule 1” drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 – a classification for drugs that have no accepted medical use. Americans for Safe Access, a pro-marijuana group, challenged this classification, but last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the lawsuit. That ruling left in place the DEA’s blunt position that there is “no currently accepted medical use for marijuana in the United States.”

The votes in Colorado and Washington were a watershed, however, because they shifted the debate from medical marijuana to outright legalization. And the votes were not even close. In Colorado, the referendum passed by more than 6%. In Washington, the margin was 10%.

Afterwards, President Obama said that the federal government has a lot of crime to prosecute and “it does not make sense from a prioritization point of view for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that, under state law, that is legal.” Last week, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said that he had a conversation with Attorney General Eric Holder that encouraged him about his state’s ability to carry out the referendum legalizing marijuana.

It is good that the Obama administration appears to be standing down now, but that has not always been the case. As recently as last year, the Justice Department was cracking down on medical marijuana producers in California and other states. There is no way to know that the federal government will continue to leave marijuana policy to the states. And whatever policy the Obama administration adopts, it could be undone when a new President takes office.

Justice Louis Brandeis once said that the states should function as “laboratories,” testing new ideas for possible adoption by the whole nation. We have seen enough over the past 16 years from the states that have legalized medical marijuana to know that the benefits are real and the alleged dangers overblown. With this data in hand, the DEA should reclassify marijuana to acknowledge its possible medical uses.

In Colorado and Washington, a bolder experiment is now underway. The rest of the nation should watch closely. It is possible that legalization will lead to higher crime rates, increased use of harder drugs, and other menaces that marijuana critics warn about. But if legalization in these states has few negative effects, we will have the strongest argument yet for why marijuana should be legal nationwide.

Source: Time Magazine (US)
Author: Adam Cohen
Published: January 28, 2013
Copyright: 2013 Time Inc.
Contact: letters@time.com
Website: http://www.time.com/time/

Last weekend, California NORML hosted Cannabis in California: Ending the 100-Year War, an inspiring conference that brought together advocates from across the state, country, and even as far as New Zealand. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the event – California will almost surely see a statewide initiative in 2016 similar to those approved in Colorado and Washington, and it appears local and national activists and organizations will be unified in the effort to get it done.

On the first panel, California NORML Director Dale Gieringer explained how the California State Board of Pharmacy quietly pushed a ban on possession of “hemp, or loco-weed“ through the legislature in 1913 without it receiving any press or opposition. In contrast to that very quiet campaign to demonize and ban marijuana, reversing this failed policy will be very public, and it will undoubtedly face some opposition.

For an initiative to succeed in California, however, it’s important that the opposition doesn’t come from our base. Hence, it was particularly heartening to see so much unity at the conference and at an MPP-hosted strategy meeting on Thursday. Reform organizations, funders, and advocates overwhelmingly supported putting a marijuana regulation initiative on the next presidential ballot in 2016, rather than 2014 (when voter turnout is much less favorable) and working together to see it through. It will be some time before the details of any measure and campaign are hammered out. In the meantime, there appears to be widespread support for advancing statewide regulations on medical marijuana.

For those who are eager to start building support for 2016, we can look to the 2012 Colorado campaign’s “Talk It Up” project, which helped build support leading up to the election by encouraging people to start conversations about the issue with their friends, family members, and others. It’s these personal discussions that change people’s minds and make them more comfortable supporting an end to marijuana prohibition, so start talking it up today!

A coalition of medical marijuana activists that fought to put an
ordinance regulating pot shops on the May ballot are abandoning their
own initiative in favor of a city-backed ballot measure that seeks
similar regulations.

Representatives for Americans for Safe
Access, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Greater Los
Angeles Collectives Alliance announced Monday that they plan to
campaign on behalf of the city