Tag: news

Yesterday the number of states that have approved marijuana
legalization
doubled, and they were joined by the nation’s capital, where
voters overwhelmingly
rejected pot prohibition. Even in Florida, where a medical
marijuana initiative
fell three points short of the supermajority needed to approve
a constitutional amendment, 57 percent of voters agreed that
patients should be allowed to use cannabis for symptom relief.
Meanwhile, voters in Guam
approved medical marijuana, making the Western Pacific island
the first U.S. territory to do so. Drug policy reformers were
thrilled by the results, which exceeded expectations.
Prohibitionists were less delighted. Here is a roundup of
reactions.

ON GUAM

Tom Angell, chairman of
Marijuana
Majority: The marijuana majority
is a truly global phenomenon. People all across the world are ready
to move beyond failed prohibition laws, especially when seriously
ill patients are criminalized just for following their doctors’
recommendations. With these election results, U.S. territories
stretching from Guam—where America’s day begins near the
International Date Line—to Hawaii and Alaska have sensible laws
that let patients use marijuana without fear of arrest.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy
Alliance: Guam is quite conservative politically,
and home to a significant U.S. military presence, so this
resounding victory is a confirmation of medical marijuana’s broad
support across the political spectrum.

ON D.C.

Angell: With marijuana legal in the
federal government’s backyard, it’s going to be increasingly
difficult for national politicians to continue ignoring the growing
majority of voters who want to end prohibition. I’ve been saying
for a while that 2016 presidential candidates need to start
courting the cannabis constituency, and now the road to the White
House quite literally travels through legal marijuana
territory.

Bill Piper, DPA’s director of national
affairs: This was the first legalization campaign in
which the racial disproportionality of marijuana enforcement played
a major role. Initiative 71 sets the stage for the D.C. Council to
create a new model for legalizing marijuana—one that places racial
justice front and center.

Neill Franklin, executive director of Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition: Each Congressperson must choose how
he or she wants to be remembered in history: as someone who
respected the people’s wishes and worked to end one of the most
pernicious problems of the 21st Century, or as an anachronism,
like those prohibitionists who refused to see the writing on the
wall in the 1930s.

ON OREGON

Angell: It’s clear that Colorado and Washington
voting to legalize in 2012 was no anomaly. The trend is clear:
Marijuana prohibition is coming to an end. As 2016 approaches, we
can expect to see many more ambitious national politicians finally
trying to win support from the cannabis constituency instead of
ignoring and criminalizing us.

Nadelmann: Oregon proved that Colorado and
Washington were no flukes….It’s always an uphill battle to win a
marijuana legalization initiative in a year like this, when young
people are so much less likely to vote, which makes today’s victory
all the sweeter. The pace of reform is accelerating, other states
are sure to follow, and even Congress is poised to wake from its
slumber.

ON ALASKA

Angell: Now that it’s been shown that
putting marijuana legalization on the ballot can succeed even in
midterms, we can expect to see a huge surge of additional states
voting to end prohibition during the 2016 presidential election.
And because the issue has been proven to be mainstream as far as
voters are concerned, we may even see lawmakers in several states
jumping ahead to legalize marijuana legislatively in the
meantime.”

Chris Rempert, political director of
Alaska’s legalization
campaign: People are seeing through the fear
mongering and misinformation that have been used to keep marijuana
illegal for so many years. One of our campaign’s primary messages
was that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, and that adults
should not be punished for making the safer choice.

ON FLORIDA

Angell: Tonight’s result does show that
a clear majority of voters in the sunshine state support a new
direction. We didn’t get the 60% needed to pass medical marijuana
as a constitutional amendment, but patients and their supporters
will keep pushing until the law reflects what most voters want. The
campaign this year faced several key challenges, including that it
took place during a midterm election in which turnout dynamics
don’t favor marijuana reform. Next time medical marijuana is on the
ballot, organizers should put patients and medical professionals at
the forefront of the campaign rather than relying on a well-meaning
but much less sympathetic political donor as the chief
spokesperson.

John Morgan, leader of the medical marijuana
campaign: We may not have passed Amendment 2 tonight,
but make no mistake, tonight was a victory in the fight for medical
marijuana in Florida. Our next governor will take the oath of
office having won less than a majority of Floridians’ votes. The
idea that marijuana is medicine and that those suffering and in
pain should not be made criminals, received a larger share of the
vote than the winner of the last 6 gubernatorial elections…and
every presidential campaign in Florida for decades. 

Calvina Fay, executive director of the Drug-Free America
Foundation: The people of Florida strongly and
wisely rejected efforts to make Florida the next front in the push
to legalize marijuana nationwide….By rejecting this misguided
amendment, they chose to safeguard our communities and ensure a
safer and more prosperous future.

ON THE OVERALL RESULTS

Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy
Project: The results are in, and marijuana
prohibition is on its way out….The folks trying to keep marijuana
illegal are relying on the same scare tactics today that they have
relied on for decades, but voters just aren’t falling for it
anymore. The results are particularly encouraging since voter
turnout during a midterm election is typically smaller, older, and
more conservative. Clearly, support for ending marijuana
prohibition spans the political and ideological spectrums.

Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML: The majority of voters
in these states, like a majority of voters nationwide, agree that a
pragmatic regulatory framework that allows for the legal, licensed
commercial production and retail sale of cannabis to adults best
reduces the risks associated with the plant’s use or potential
abuse.

Patrick Kennedy, co-founder of the anti-pot group
Project
SAM: Even though we did not do as well as we
wanted to, these slim margins of victory show that we are beginning
to slow the legalization freight train down. This has been a David
and Goliath battle.

Kevin Sabet, president of Project
SAM: This was not the complete slam-dunk the
legalization groups expected. Alaska barely voted to legalize, and
several cities [in Colorado] rejected marijuana retail stores
outright. We are confident the more people know the truth about
marijuana and the Big Tobacco-like marijuana industry, the more
opposition to marijuana legalization will continue to grow. We will
redouble our efforts to educate the public about the harms of
legalization.

U.S. Department of Justice (via Free
Beacon reporter
C.J. Ciaramella): When we developed our
department priorities over a year ago, we intended to set out a
consistent enforcement approach that would be applicable across the
country. As our Aug. 29, 2013, guidance memorandum laid out, the
department’s enforcement resources will continue to be aimed at the
most significant threats to our communities. This approach relies
on jurisdictions instituting strict regulatory regimes to
adequately protect public safety.

Some local victories, ballot-access guarantees, and some more
statewide numbers of encouraging size, from the Libertarian Party’s
regularly-updated midterm
election news page:

John Monds, running for the Public Service Commission in
Georgia, is currently at 31.6%, with 707,328 votes.

Several victories in Louisiana: William McBride was
elected to the town council of Washington in St. Landry Parish.
Henry Herford was elected as a constable in Franklin Parish. Justin
Bonnette was elected as a Justice of the Peace in Vernon Parish.
Chad Perry will be in a runoff for Justice of the Peace in
Calcasieu Parish……

Michael Knebel, running for Treasurer of Nebraska, is
currently at 5.3%. If he stays over 5%, the LP will retain ballot
access in Nebraska.

Several Libertarians running for state house in Washington are
getting over 30% of the vote. David A. Steenson is at 32.4%, Elijah
Olson is at 31.5%, and Tim Turner is at 31.7%……

Bobby Tullis was elected as the mayor of Mineral Springs,
Arkansas (nonpartisan race).

…..Andy Craig, running for secretary of state in Wisconsin, is
currently at 2.5%. The LP needs 1% for any statewide office to
retain ballot access.

…..Randall Lord, running for U.S. House District 4 in
Louisiana, is at 28.4% (38% of precincts reporting). In 2012, he
got 24.7% for the same office.

…..Karl Tatgenhorst, running for secretary of state in
Indiana, is currently at 3.4%. The LP needs 2% for secretary of
state to retain ballot access.

Libertarians in Arkansas have already elected
two candidates today. Jacob Faught is running unopposed
in his race for Benton County Township 5 Constable (a partisan
race). Casey D. Copeland is running unopposed for Prairie
Grove Alderman (a non-partisan race). This will be his third win in
a row.

And in addition to the
gubernatorial candidates I noted last night, Idaho’s John Bujak
is also pulling impresssive-for-L.P. numbers,
at 4.07 percent.

Candidates who have taken on the unions fared
well in last night’s elections. Initiatives related to reforming
their pensions did not, however, do so well.

Rick Snyder of Michigan and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, both
Republican, fended off challengers to earn additional terms as
governors. Both have earned the ire of unions;
Snyder for supporting right-to-work laws and
Walker for stripping public sector employees of some collective
bargaining powers. Walker already survived one recall effort from
unions over his policies.

Possibly more important, though, is the victory by Democrat Gina
Raimondo in Rhode Island. As treasurer, Raimondo hammered out
significant public employee pension
reforms, forcing them into solvency and shifting employees into
hybrid plans to reduce the amount of potential debt obligations the
state would take on. Polls then showed union workers rallying
behind her Republican opponent, Allan Fung,
42 to 30 percent. She eked out a three-point victory,
nevertheless. (Also of interest: a third-party candidate, Robert
Healey of the Moderate Party, drew in 22 percent of the vote! Now
that’s how you spoil a race.)

On the flip side, a couple of public employee reforms on city
ballots failed. In
Phoenix, a ballot initiative to fight pension spiking and to
force new city employees into 401(k)-style defined contribution
plans
failed (warning: autoplay video), losing 43 to 57 percent.
Pension reform supporters had been applying a lot of pressure to
getting the ballot measure passed (The Reason Foundation: which
publishes this site and Reason magazine, produced reports
analyzing the impacts of the initiative). Opponents of reform
insisted that the initiative would have actually increased costs
rather than reducing them. Given that pension reform has shown to
be popular in polls in the much bluer state of California, it’s
possible that argument (despite being countered) may have played a
role in the initiative’s fate.

In a smaller loss, but a loss nevertheless, bankrupt San
Bernardino, California, has failed to make changes to the charter
so that the City Council can actually have some
control over public employee salaries. San Bernardino is
unusual in that the city’s charter gives its leaders absolutely no
control over public safety employee wages. Instead, their wages are
determined by calculating an average based on the salaries of
nearby similar-sized cities in California. Given that San
Bernardino is extremely poor and many nearby cities used for these
calculations are not, it means many city public safety employees
are getting wages (and therefore pensions) in the six-figure ranges
and well above what it’s poor citizens can afford. Measure Q would
have eliminated this part of the city’s charter and allow the city
to engage in collective bargaining with police and firefighter
unions just like most other California cities. It didn’t
necessarily mean the employees would get pay cuts, but it gave the
city the flexibility to try to actually negotiate for some.
However, Measure Q failed, 45 to 55 percent. The city will continue
to have to calculate salaries based on wages paid in nearby tony
communities like Irvine even while in the middle of a bankruptcy
reorganization.

If there is a message to take away from these results (hard
since the initiatives are in no way connected to the candidates
involved), it’s that non-union voters are less likely to punish
candidates for taking unions on, even when some candidates are on
the left. But pension and reform-based ballot initiatives have a
tougher fight because they are complicated, people don’t
necessarily grasp the long-term impacts, and they may not trust
ideology-driven analysis. And if they don’t grasp the outcome of a
ballot initiative, they’re probably likely to vote no.

Colorado, Washington, and now Oregon and Alaska
are more or less following the model for legalizing and regulating
a drug that was set out after alcohol prohibition ended. The

initiative that passed in Washington, D.C., yesterday is a
little different.

Over at Slate, Mark
Kleiman notes that the law, as written, suggests something like
a “grow and give” system, in which residents are permitted to
cultivate, consume, and gift the drug, but the current ban on money
changing hands between growers and consumers remains in place.
The Daily Beast
chimes in in favor as well, decrying the “green rush” that has
occurred in other states and noting that “as we’ve seen with the
alcohol industry, the private profit-driven market of a drug can be
dangerous.”

(The D.C. City Council is
already working on a more conventional system, which would
permit the licensing of growers and distributors, but the future is
hazy.)

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s right:
Three cheers for the laboratories of democracy and all that.
But “grow and give” is not going to work. And it’s not going to
work for reasons succinctly described
right in the middle of that Slate article about how
well it’s going to work:

It wouldn’t generate any tax revenue, or offer consumers the
same convenience or product variety as a commercial system, and of
course policing the boundary between “giving” and “selling” would
be virtually impossible. But it might be a big improvement on
the current prohibition. Eliminating organized marketing would
likely lead to a much smaller increase—if any—in cannabis abuse
than we would expect if we sell pot the way we now sell beer.

That “of course” is a really big deal. Contained in that “of
course” is all the violence and seediness of black markets, abuse
of search powers by the police, the large scale incarceration of
low-level drug offenders, and much, much more. “Grow and give”
would be an improvement on total prohibition, but it would also be
a step backward, a failure to learn from the lessons
of the experiments in Colorado and Washington State.

Kleiman quite reasonably asks: “Are we really satisfied with the
results of the current alcohol system?” Reason‘s answer
has long been clear: Nope! 

But the addiction, safety, and health costs associated with
alcohol use aren’t caused by the fact that people can legally buy
and sell the stuff. Money changing hands for a bottle of clearly
labeled, cleanly manufactured gin in a well-lit store with regular
hours is by far the most wholesome part of the whole life-cycle of
booze. 

By taking the money out of legal weed in D.C., the city will not
somehow elevate the exchange of marijuana to a higher, more
altruistic plane. Instead, it will force users and providers to
continue to operate outside the law and live with dangerous
uncertainty about what they’re buying, who they’re buying it from,
and what happens if the deal goes bad.

President Barack Obama are
likely to have informal talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin as
tensions continue to rise over the war in Ukraine.

Both the leaders are scheduled to be at the Asia-Pacific (APEC)
summit in Beijing and the G20 summit in Brisbane next week.
Although an “official bilateral meeting between Obama and Putin
[is] not anticipated,” a senior U.S. official
tells Reuters, “there [is] a good chance they would find time
to talk informally at the APEC gathering.” The two will also likely
talk about Syria and the ISIS insurgency.

The State Department this week
blasted Russia for supporting “sham” elections that put
pro-Kremlin puppets in power in the war-torn eastern regions of
Ukraine. “Should Moscow continue to ignore the commitments that it
made [honoring Ukraine’s electoral law] and continues its
destabilizing and dangerous actions, the costs to Russia will
rise,” the department stated.

The U.S. and its European Union allies have been trying to
de-escalate Russian aggression through both targeted and broad
economic sanctions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel today
suggested more robust sanctions to punish Putin. Russia’s
economy is suffering,
due in large part to Putin’s own poor handling, and the
nation’s currency is at record lows.

The war, which has already taken the lives of about 4,000 people
and displaced countless others, shows signs of getting worse.
Russia continues to violate ceasefire and political agreements made
last month, called the Minsk Protocols. “Recently we are seeing
Russian troops moving closer to the border with Ukraine. … Russian
special forces [are] inside eastern parts of Ukraine,”
says Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO. The U.S. is
the largest supplier of troops and funding for NATO.

Russian-American relations look like they’ve hit their lowest
point since before the Soviet Union crumbled. Reason
recently highlighted the fact that American diplomats are being
harassed, White House computers have been hacked, and Russia is
flying provocative,
nuclear-capable flights over Europe. Also, a Moscow art gallery
just opened featuring a caricature of
Putin spanking Obama.

Before
yesterday’s election,
Ann Coulter warned liberty-loving citizens against voting
Libertarian because “nothing matters more to the country than
Republicans taking a majority in the Senate.” It’s this sort of
mindset that distracts us from defending something far more
important than either party: individual liberty.

Democrats want government control of the economy and more
regulation of speech, innovation, medicine, school, and all kinds
of things. But Republicans want to control our personal lives and
fight constant wars abroad. It’s time America obsessed less about
Republicans vs. Democrats, argues John Stossel, and more about
electing liberty, in all its forms.