As California moves toward the legalization of marijuana — next month, voters will decide on Proposition 19, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 — a key question remains: could the new law produce a whole generation of stoners?
California's Proposition 19, the tax and regulate marijuana legalization initiative, is certainly the most talked about ballot measure in the land this year. It is just as certainly the most polled of any initiative this year.
Dustin Moskovitz confirmed tonight that he has recently given $50,000 in support of Proposition 19, which is seeking to legalize marijuana in California this November.
Democratic strategists are studying a California marijuana-legalization initiative to see if similar ballot measures could energize young, liberal voters in swing states for the 2012 presidential election.
Obama seems to be taking his cues from the failed Presidency of Jimmy Carter. During his campaign Carter said that no law should be more harmful than what it is trying to regulate and that he favored the re-legalization of marijuana. Then he re-started Nixon's Drug War and lashed out at his naive supporters.
"The U.S. over the last four decades has spent $1 trillion of our tax dollars, made 38 million nonviolent drug arrests and quadrupled our prison population. And the rate of addiction today, 1.3 percent, is the same as it was in 1970, when we started."
Richard Lee founded the nation's first marijuana trade school and is a leading advocate for legalization. He's long skirted the edge of the law — and if he ever gets arrested, he says, he's prepared.
Proposition 19, California's "tax and regulate" marijuana legalization initiative, is winning, according to the latest poll results. A Public Policy Institute of California poll released Thursday had support for Prop 19 at 52%, with 41% opposed and 7% undecided.
In Los Angeles, medical marijuana dispensaries once outnumbered Starbucks. But after months of a major crackdown, the number of pot clinics has plummeted.