Marijuana goes to voters

Source: Times Colonist

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Website: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Marijuana+goes+voters/3601827/story.html

By: Metrowest Daily News, Framingham, Mass

Published: September 30, 2010

Next month, California voters will consider the biggest change in drug policy since Congress made marijuana possession a criminal offense in 1937.

Proposition 19, if passed, will not just legalize marijuana possession, it will empower municipalities to regulate and tax it. The state legislature won't be able to stop it. Any community looking to avoid a property tax hike could open up its own cannabis revenue stream.

Marijuana would still be against federal law, which would put the Obama administration in a quandary: Should they send an army of federal agents to enforce a law that state and local police won't or turn their backs and let Californians choose their own intoxicants?

That conflict is not without precedent. Back in the 1920s, New York gave up on Prohibition before the rest of the country. The feds mostly looked the other way and New Yorkers kept drinking, which is one reason the crime wars were waged in Chicago and not New York.

Proposition 19 is no sure thing in California. Its opponents include the usual -- establishment politicians, law enforcement and some religious groups –– and the unexpected. Some entrepreneurs who have profited from the state's medical marijuana industry oppose it and major funding for the opposition campaign is coming from California beer and liquor distributors.

If California leads the way, we wouldn't be surprised to see a binding legalization measure on the Massachusetts ballot in 2012.