Pro-Pot Campaign Gets Big Names, Deep Pockets

Marijuana legalization in Washington has been an activist’s pipe dream for decades, but a new campaign with deep pockets and prominent supporters is poised to force the state Legislature to vote on the issue or send it to the 2012 presidential ballot. But absent from the list are some longtime advocates of legalization. In fact, a growing group of activists is pledging to campaign against New Approach’s Initiative 502 if it makes it to the ballot.

In a bid to sway skeptical voters, I-502 would continue to ban pot possession for people under the age of 21 and set a new standard for driving while stoned, based on saliva tests of recently consumed THC. Questions about the science behind that test, as well as the mechanics of the state regulation, drove Vivian McPeak, co-founder of Hempfest, to oppose I-502. ”I cannot, in good conscience, support New Approach Washington,” he said this week.

More Here

Feds should back off medical-marijuana dispensaries

The federal crackdown on medical-marijuana dispensaries in California is wrong — a wrong policy and a wrong use of federal power to block social change. President Obama was supposed to be for change. He appointed a drug-policy adviser, Gil Kerlikowske, who announced that the War on Drugs was “over.” That was an exaggeration, but for medical marijuana it seemed to be so. Our political leaders, particularly our senators, representatives and governor, should push back. They have to tell the Obama people: Don’t do this.

Washington was one of the first three states to legalize medical marijuana, along with Oregon and California. All did it by popular vote. Over the past decade and a half, 16 states plus the District of Columbia have made this decision, 10 of them by popular vote. More such votes will be coming in 2012 — in Montana and possibly in Idaho, Ohio and other states.

More Here

Montana: Second Amendment, Up in Smoke

The federal government says it will deny Second Amendment rights to about 26,000 Montanans. Some people are upset about it, but that probably won’t last long. After all, these lost freedoms only apply to medical marijuana cardholders. Last week, one of our readers, a volunteer on several local boards, stopped by our office in Kalispell. He was on his way to renew his concealed weapons permit but was afraid he would be denied, or worse. He has a medical marijuana card. You see, a day earlier news broke that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives clarified for gun dealers that it is illegal to sell any guns to medical marijuana users, regardless of its legality in states like Montana.

To his credit, Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association and a conservative who supported a number of bills last Legislature that raised a few eyebrows (such as one that would allow the state to form armed paramilitary groups), has expressed outrage.  It is egregious that people may be sentenced to years in federal prison only because they possessed a firearm while using state-approved medicine,” Marbut said in a statement.

More Here

Feds target California “pot industry”

Federal prosecutors in California announced a series of actions Friday targeting what they characterized as the “large, for-profit marijuana industry” that has developed since the state legalized medical marijuana for select patients 15 years ago. They include letters of warning to landlords and lien holders of places in which marijuana is being sold illegally, “civil forfeiture lawsuits against properties involved in drug trafficking activity” and numerous criminal cases. In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215 to exempt doctors and seriously ill patients from marijuana laws and allow them to grow and use it in treatment. The bill didn’t legalize marijuana for all, but it did lead to the emergence of hundreds of dispensaries where people — legally only those with medical conditions and a doctor’s authorization — could get the drug.

More Here