Will the California Legislature Lead on Pot? Or will they again show they aren't worth their pay?

It is April 2016, and almost everyone in California seems to believe that recreational marijuana will be “legalized” through a November ballot initiative.  According to LA Times, at least one of the 20 propositions will make it onto the ballot.  It is pretty clear from the results in Colorado that the drug armageddon that the right-wingers threatened would happen, has not occurred there, or on other states where pot has been legalized.  Polls in California seem to show that the public is overwhelmingly in favor of legalizing pot, and local governments are trying to position themselves to maximize the possible increased revenue.

One of the problems with ballot initiatives is that they are not always written well.  They are written in order to gain public support, but are not always well reviewed.  Opponents don’t always want to correct flaws, because they hope to exploit those flaws in advertising against the initiatives.  After a ballot initiative is passed, it is very difficult to amend.  The legislature is bound by the initiative and can’t easily change parts of it to “tune” it or make necessary changes after it becomes law.   Proposition 13, for example, was a cumbersome law that could have been made unnecessary with corrective legislation passed months or years prior to its passage.  After it was passed, it took years of legislative wrangling, and additional propositions to correct some of its obvious flaws. The same thing happened with Proposition 184 in 1994, the three strikes law and the anti gay marriage Proposition 8. The state legislature could have easily passed laws that would have accomplished what the propositions did, and then later could have passed changes to that law that would have corrected any flaws discovered after enactment.  I wondered why the legislature failed to act on those issues, but in all fairness, it was not clear from polls in advance of those initiatives that they would, in fact, pass.  However in this case it is different!  According to Orange County Register, polls are clearly pointing toward legalization.  

Our legislators are our elected representatives, and should be passing laws that the people of the state want.  That is their job!  Why do they refuse to take the important steps necessary to do that?  They now have an opportunity to pass legislation to legalize marijuana before the ballot initiatives are finalized.  They could look at what works in other states, and quickly draft and pass the new law.  Democrats have control of the legislature and the governor, so legislation should not be held up by political infighting. In general Democrats seem to be in favor of personal freedoms, while Republicans generally try to restrict our freedoms, and try to protect the jobs of their higher paid constituents that include prosecutors, judges, and higher ranking police. Even so,  I believe many Republicans would also be willing to vote for legalization to show they are in sync with their constituents, and also interested in getting the new revenue source without raising taxes.

This is our legislature’s opportunity to show their leadership.  Will they do it?     .  

Nixon's Rationale for Starting the "War on Drugs"

In the 1960s I really didn't understand why the US stepped up the "drug war." Yes, we heard stories about drug abuse. But during my 5 years of college, I had never seen anyone have, buy, sell, or use drugs. Of course, we did tap an occasional keg of beer at our fraternity on Saturday night. There was a news report that Penn State police arrested someone for selling marijuana, but it turned out the man was selling oregano, so he was released. I understand that to prevent similar embarrassment many states later passed laws to make selling of non-drugs as drugs illegal. As I became an officer in the Air Force in 1968, the military gradually ramped-up drug abuse training & surveillance. Yes, we certainly didn't want people flying planes, piloting ships, or carrying guns under the influence of drugs. In the "civilian world" though, it seemed that the Government's efforts were only making the drug problem worse, and the Government was gradually taking away our rights with the "drug war" as justification. It always seemed like a mystery how Government could get away with violating so many of our constitutional rights to prevent people from doing something that affected only themselves in the privacy of their own home.

Last week, Dan Baum published an article in Harper's entitled "Legalize It All:  How to Win the War on Drugs/" Dan Baum says that in a 1994 interview he had with John Ehrlichman, he finally resolved the mystery. Ehrlichman said that Richard Nixon stoked the fires of the drug war in order to continue his war in Vietnam, and his battle against Blacks. Once he got the drug war going, it was hard to stop. All subsequent administrations found it useful to continue. Since that time, the drug war-industrial complex has grown HUGE. I don't think that anyone has ever been able to add up the amount of money spent each year by all levels of government involved in the drug war. I don't believe there is any branch of our government, at any level that doesn't have to consider some aspect of the drug war in their operations or budget.  Even neighborhood parks have to consider the drug war in their design and operation. Ehrlichman's statement, if true, does make sense, and at least partially explains why the Government did what it did.  Each participant in the "drug war" has continued to do what they think is the right thing to do to fight that war.  As a result, we now allow the Government to search everyone going in and out of our borders for money and drugs using both expensive and sophisticated equipment and highly trained dogs.  We use powerful computers to monitor all of our money transfers through the banking system, and monitor and track all of our travel, phone calls, and internet browsing.  When will it stop?  How much further will they go?  If we can't keep drugs out of prisons, how can we keep them from the public.  

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