Pot Legalization Gains Momentum In California

[babylonsister]

Pot Legalization Gains Momentum In California
MARCUS WOHLSEN | 10/ 7/09 09:49 PM | AP


SAN FRANCISCO — Marijuana advocates are gathering signatures to get as many as three pot-legalization measures on the ballot in 2010 in California, setting up what could be a groundbreaking clash with the federal government over U.S. drug policy.

At least one poll shows voters would support lifting the pot prohibition, which would make the state of more than 38 million the first in the nation to legalize marijuana.

Such action would also send the state into a headlong conflict with the U.S. government while raising questions about how federal law enforcement could enforce its drug laws in the face of a massive government-sanctioned pot industry.

The state already has a thriving marijuana trade, thanks to a first-of-its-kind 1996 ballot measure that allowed people to smoke pot for medical purposes. But full legalization could turn medical marijuana dispensaries into all-purpose pot stores, and the open sale of joints could become commonplace on mom-and-pop liquor store counters in liberal locales like Oakland and Santa Cruz.

Under federal law, marijuana is illegal, period. After overseeing a series of raids that destroyed more than 300,000 marijuana plants in California's Sierra Nevada foothills this summer, federal drug czar Gil Kerlikowske proclaimed, "Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine."

The U.S. Supreme Court also has ruled that federal law enforcement agents have the right to crack down even on marijuana users and distributors who are in compliance with California's medical marijuana law.

But some legal scholars and policy analysts say the government will not be able to require California to help in enforcing the federal marijuana ban if the state legalizes the drug.

Without assistance from the state's legions of narcotics officers, they say, federal agents could do little to curb marijuana in California.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/pot-legalization-gains-mo_n_313418.html

[Dulcinea]

1. I have no problem with that.

Tax and regulate pot the same way that alcohol is taxed and regulated. The state could use the money! I don't smoke it myself (it makes me sleepy,) but let others toke all they want, legally!

[Ganja Ninja]

2. If it becomes legal in California then legal California pot will ...

find its way into every state in the union and before long those states will see the revenue California is making and want a piece of the action for themselves.

[thunder rising]

3. Legalize ... from a person that has seen every side of use, addiction, recovery, education ...

Legalize and educate, since every citizen makes his or her own decision anyway.