Well, shucks. Major bummer. I was sure that the citizens of the Golden State would overwhelmingly approve. I guess I should have relocated in time to have citizen voting status.
I have to say that having 46% of voters agree to decriminalize a drug that has been persecuted and demonized for over 60 years is pretty amazing.
Still, I disliked Prop 19. Besides the fact that it violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution (though as Karl Lehenbauer pointed out, NY had done a similar thing during Prohibition) I thought there were too many problems with the measure: it was worded terribly, it touched on things it didn't need to (employee drug testing), it further gave power to the localities to make things an even bigger legal mess, it still wouldn't make marijuana legal in the eyes of the Feds, and it's fairly redundant since the current state of medical marijuana in California means it's pretty much already legal to smoke pot as everyone knows it's a fucking joke.
The proposition was conceived and sponsored by Richard Lee, douche-bag extraordinaire. Yeah, he's that gimp in a wheelchair that proclaims himself the Mayor of Oaksterdam and appears in every news special about pot. If Marc Emery wasn't incarcerated I'm sure he'd have helped fund it as well. Richard Lee has amassed a small fortune as a "Medical Marijuana Dispenser" (dope dealer).
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to get high without fear of arrest just as much as everybody else, but to abuse the legitimate use of marijuana as a medicine to do so is fucking wrong. Richard Lee has done this. He illegally sells illegally grown weed to many people without any medical problems. The guy is a tool. I support recreational drug use, but I support medicinal drug use more, and this asshole has abused and bypassed the law to make a killing without fear of arrest and made a mockery of CA medical weed laws. Meanwhile the black and latino dope dealers still face large jail sentences if they are caught.
Marijuana will never be fully legalized. We'd have to break the Single Convention on Narcotics to do that, and breaking treaties isn't cool or likely to happen. The best we can hope for is for Marijuana to be rescheduled, and for social change to cause local and federal authorities to not even bother with enforcing marijuana laws (like the Netherlands).
There is currently a proposal under review to reschedule marijuana, but this will take several years to be (most likely) denied again. Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that they do not wish to prosecute medical marijuana users. This violates Federal law, and still makes it illegal for said patients to OBTAIN weed. Under the Controlled Substances Act the Attorney General has the ability to reschedule drugs at his discretion. So a simple solution would be for him to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II. This would then allow states with medical marijuana laws to operate as they should. The government could then close down the illegal dispensaries, and patients could go to the pharmacy and get their Ole Miss grown weed legally (well, after the government cracks down on NIDA, and makes them grow real weed, and not schwag, and either relieves them of their duties or bitch slaps them into not being retarded).
The first step in my book is making sure patients can legally obtain and use quality product without fear of arrest. After that, then we can look at the rest of us lighting up for fun.
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Dave Maez
You got a Benz, I got a busket: Gimme a dollar!
Dave Maez
You got a Benz, I got a busket: Gimme a dollar!
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