With 2009 drawing to an end, it’s already clear that 2010 will be a banner year for potheads. A bill to tax and regulate marijuana is set for January hearings in the Assembly, and at least one initiative along the same lines is headed for the California state ballot.
Those who don’t use cannabis, though, may find the next 12 months more troubling than noteworthy. Despite a recent Field Poll of Californians showing 56 percent support for legal marijuana, the concept cannot be built or sustained on the shifting sands of public opinion. For that reason alone, it’s not enough to support legalization on principle alone. One must read the fine print of how it will work in practice, or else sound the alarm when such details are missing or subject to interpretation.
As proof of this, look no farther than the Compassionate Use Act, the poster child for the Law of Unintended Consequences. Like most voters in 1996, I didn’t approve of seriously ill people being prosecuted for using pot to ease their symptoms. Few of those same voters, myself included, imagined the act’s passage would cause a green rush of dispensaries, medipot clinics and grow shops.
These days, some 13 years later, dozens of cities and towns are rushing to ban dispensaries and pot gardens altogether. District attorneys in Los Angeles and San Diego counties are pledging to ignore their own local ordinances to prosecute any medipot shop where money changes hands. Despite passing with nearly 56 percent of ballots cast (does that figure sound familiar, pollsters?), the voters’ mandate regarding the Compassionate Use Act has been ignored and undermined at every step along the way. Any move to legalize pot in California will elicit the same type of responses and worse, regardless of its margin of victory in the Legislature or at the ballot box.
While unintended, this pushback to the Compassionate Use Act is fueling support for legalization. The disconnect between public opinion and public policy remains a huge challenge for medical marijuana, so much so that users and non-users alike may see legalization as the best fix. It may reduce the number of questionable “scrips” issued for medipot, but that alone doesn’t justify legalization. You don’t fix a law that’s sweeping and vague with law that’s even more sweeping and more vague, unless you live in California where reason is sacrificed before most elections.
Happily, there’s still time to put legalized cannabis under the microscope. Responsible pot use is not an oxymoron; it can be protected and promoted best by the passage of clear and enforceable laws. For 2010 to truly be a banner year, then, we must seek meaningful changes to our drug laws while rejecting ideas that are long on vision but short on details.
Medical marijuana was legalized by a vote of conscience, but full legalization requires a vote of confidence in proponents who may or may not deserve it. Before you vote, read the label.
Bud Green is the founder of CalPotNews.com, covering California’s largest growth industry. E-mail him at bud@calpotnews.com.
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