[vta]

Stoners Against Legalization II: Colorado Boogaloo

By "Radical" Russ Belville



Kathleen Chippi (top right): "(T)his will be (P)rop 19 all over again, and we will help kill it with smiles on our faces."



Remember all the fun we had in 2010 with the “Stoners Against Legalization”? These were a loose collection of starry-eyed idealists, anti-authority anarchists, and unscrupulous medical marijuana business owners who believed that keeping healthy people out of jail for using pot would end the gravy train they’re enjoying from their current medical marijuana laws. I dubbed them the “I Gots Mine” crowd and unleashed a torrent of blogging fury to call them out and expose them as the enemies of legalization they are.

Well, get ready for Round Two. An unprecedented coalition of pro-legalization groups, including Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, Safer Alternatives For Enjoyable Recreation, Sensible Colorado, National NORML, Colorado NORML, and Mile High NORML, filed eight ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana in Colorado. From those eight they will see which pass muster from the Secretary of State’s office, which gets the best official ballot title, and which poll with the best chance of winning.

However, one group, Cannabis Therapy Institute (the folks that brought you Miguel Lopez making a scene at the Capitol that killed a patient-friendly amendment… and then blamed the legislator who submitted it!) is fuming mad that they weren’t given the chance to vet the language before submission. Here are some of the reasons why CTI thinks we should continue to lock up people who are too healthy to be a part of their marijuana club:

Ironically, Denver conservative cannabis group SAFER has always espoused the belief that marijuana should be treated like alcohol. But the MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER (MDSS) initiative treats cannabis much stricter than alcohol. By limiting cannabis consumers to one ounce at a time, unlike alcohol with no limits, the MDSS initiative will ensure greater scrutiny on cannabis consumers than any alcohol consumer ever had.

“Conservative cannabis group SAFER”? Wow, I’ll have to check with National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, and The Christian Science Monitor so they can write articles on their conservative brethren. Oh, and FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, all those AM talkers on right-wing radio, they’re all big fans of SAFER and marijuana legalization.

So let’s get this straight: because a legalization initiative might limit you to purchase and possession of an ounce, instead of allowing you to buy as much as you want and possess as much as you want, you’d prefer that healthy Coloradoans continue to be arrested, jailed, and saddled with a lifetime criminal record? If your input is “We ought to be able to have all the marijuana we want!” and you seriously think that will pass in a state that rejected one ounce legalization by a 59% vote in 2006, I’m not surprised if you weren’t consulted.

The MDSS Initiative would also allow for and set Constitutional standards for driving discrimination, employment discrimination, and tenant discrimination of marijuana users. The MDSS Initiative makes “Driving Under the Influence of Marijuana” a new Constitutional crime, completely wiping away victories scored by patient advocates to kill a THC/DUI bill in the state legislature this year.

News flash: Driving under the influence of marijuana is a crime in Colorado NOW. Here is the scary language in Section 6 of the initiatives CTI is scaremongering:

6. Employers, Driving, Minors and Control of Property.

(A) Nothing in this section is intended to require an employer to permit or accommodate the use, consumption, possession, transfer, display, transportation, sale or growing of marijuana in the workplace or to affect the ability of employers to have policies restricting the use of marijuana by employees.

So… employers can continue to do to cannabis consumers what they do NOW, but at least those consumers won’t be arrested and jailed for cannabis use. And those consumers would have a better case to fight discrimination against cannabis use since it will be legal. CTI would prefer an initiative that forbids employer discrimination and without it, those healthy cannabis consumers should continue to be locked up. Despite the fact that Prop 19 had that kind of anti-discrimination language and it was cited as a major reason the business community opposed it.

(B) Nothing in this section is intended to allow driving under the influence of marijuana or driving while impaired by marijuana or to supersede statutory laws related to driving under the influence of marijuana or driving while impaired by marijuana, nor shall this section prevent the state from enacting and imposing penalties for driving under the influence of or while impaired by marijuana.

So… the cops can still bust you under the DUID laws that exist NOW. Now read carefully, do you see any of that THC/DUI language CTI mentioned they killed? No? CTI would prefer an initiative that protects cannabis consumers from driving discrimination and without it, healthy cannabis consumers ought to still be locked up even when they’re not driving.

(C) Nothing in this section is intended to permit the transfer of marijuana, with or without remuneration, to a person younger than twenty-one years of age or to allow a person younger than twenty-one years of age to purchase, possess, use, transport, grow, or consume marijuana.

To their credit, at least CTI (to my knowledge) isn’t bellyaching about this paragraph. My personal preference would be an age of 18 but I’m politically wise enough to know that nothing under 21 has a shot in hell of passing.

(D) Nothing in this section shall prohibit a person, employer, school, hospital, detention facility, corporation or any other entity who occupies, owns or controls a property from prohibiting or otherwise regulating the possession, consumption, use, display, transfer, distribution, sale, transportation, or growing of marijuana on or in that property.

So… your landlord, boss, etc. can still prevent you from possessing and using marijuana on their property like they can NOW. CTI would prefer an initiative that allows you to take your marijuana into any public space and without it, healthy cannabis consumers should still be locked up if caught with marijuana in their private spaces.

Back to CTI. Another of their complaints is that taxes would be collected on marijuana sales and would go to the big bad gub’mint!

Some of the 8 versions of the MDSS Initiative reportedly also allow a 15% excise tax, which will create more funding for the Department of Revenue marijuana police force. The MMED already has a budget larger than the entire Colorado Bureau of Investigation, all funded by the medical marijuana industry. Do we really want to be handing over a 15% per ounce extra tax to buy more handcuffs?

Handcuffs for all those cannabis consumers who will not be arrested for buying, selling, and possessing one ounce of legal marijuana? So let’s be clear; CTI thinks if marijuana is legalized, no money should go toward the enforcement of those laws.

And let’s make one provision of the initiative perfectly clear: It specifically and directly does not affect Colorado’s medical marijuana laws:

7. Medical marijuana provisions unaffected. Nothing in this section shall be construed:

(A) To limit any privileges or rights of a medical marijuana patient, primary caregiver, or licensed entity as provided in section 14 of article XVIII and the Colorado Medical Marijuana Code;

So if you’re healthy, you get an ounce away from the home, three mature and three immature plants in the home and all the marijuana produced on the premises (a.k.a. “a shit-ton of marijuana”):

3. Personal Use of Marijuana. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the following acts are not unlawful and shall not be an offense under Colorado law or the law of any locality within Colorado or be a basis for seizure or forfeiture of assets under Colorado law for persons twenty-one years of age or older:

(A) Possessing, using, displaying, purchasing, or transporting marijuana accessories or one ounce or less of marijuana.

(B) Possessing, growing, processing, or transporting no more than six marijuana plants, with three or fewer being mature, flowering plants, and possession of the marijuana produced by the plants on the premises where the plants were grown, provided that the growing takes place in an enclosed, locked space, is not conducted openly or publicly, and is not made available for sale.

(C) Transfer of one ounce or less of marijuana without remuneration to a person who is twenty-one years of age or older.

And if you’re sick or disabled you can still get your card and have your three plus three plants, two ounces away from the home, and the new legalization allowance of all the processed marijuana at your grow site, and you still have an affirmative defense for more. But because some of the taxes might buy handcuffs, according to CTI, the healthy people should be arrested and locked up for even one plant.

Beyond complaints with the language, CTI adjusts the tinfoil hat and offers explanations why this out-of-state cabal (whose Mason Tvert and Brian Vicente are Coloradoans) went ahead with legalization initiatives without the CTI’s blessing:

This unilateral move by MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER cast doubts that any cannabis law reform ballot initiative in Colorado would be successful. These conservative groups seem to want to duplicate the strategy of dividing and ignoring the progressive grassroots, as MPP/DPA did in their medical marijuana campaigns of 1997/98 nationwide.

“These conservative groups” that WON their medical marijuana campaigns in 1997/98, you mean? That helped to WIN the medical marijuana law in Colorado? CTI keeps trying to paint this as some sort of “conservative” vs. “progressive” argument and in the very next sentence, shred any credibility one might have of their understanding of those ideological terms:

Many people don’t know that billionaire currency manipulator George Soros funded Amendment 20 in 1997/98 through the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), headed by Rob Kampia in DC, and the Open Society Institute, headed by Ethan Nadelmann. Nadelmann now works with the Drug Policy Alliance, based in New York and California, but also funded by Soros…

Yes, George Soros, the man demonized by conservatives from Glenn Beck to George Will as the liberal billionaire scourge trying to legalize drugs , is CTI’s conservative boogey man.

No, what this is really a “divide” between is the rational, educated, politically mature adults and the people who have their hearts in the right place but their brains in vapor-lock by thinking a majority of the voting public is ready to treat marijuana like tomatoes. In politics, you don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If there is an opportunity to prevent the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of cannabis consumers and you are publicly opposing it, you are my enemy as much as the prohibitionists who will be voting along with you against reform.

The real fun Stoners Against Legalization tirades take place in the comments:

Kathleen Chippi in reply to Enough CTI

I’m sick of you f’ing know nothings–I’m starting to believe your cops infiltrating to cause problems.

No matter because enough people appreciate and respect CTI and ACT and other local groups that this will be prop 19 all over again, and we will help kill it with smiles on our faces. It is better to have NOTHING different rather than have shit language screw with patients, caregivers and voters in general for years to come…we have heard the “we can fix it later” and we know that means nothing will be fixed. They also promised to fix A20 13 years ago and they have done nothing.

This language and any language will fail as the national groups have split the vote and were not even in 2012.

You read it right: she and her allies will kill legalization with a smile on their faces. That’s something you’d expect a drug czar or a narc to say, huh?

Kathleen Chippi in reply to Paul

Paul Armentino? The NORML nazi? Come on Pual where is the evidence of things I have done to hold up the ‘industry’? Love to see something other than personal attacks

.

Yeah, you Nazi, enough with the personal attacks.

Robert in reply to Paul

If this is Paul Armentano, we know about your organization and its commitment to legalization; your President said NORML did not care about legalization in West Virginia and that it is too easy to get cannabis in California — you aren’t national and you aren’t for legalizing cannabis either. Asking WW to exclude us from about the only media forum where the grassroots of Colorado can speak is a fascist impulse.

You keep using this word “fascist”. I do not think it means what you think it means.

By the way, it wasn’t Paul Armentano. Oddly enough, Paul has a little too much on his plate reviewing thousands of medical and scientific studies on cannabis to engage people who violate Godwin’s Law on WestWord comments sections.

Corey Donahue in reply to Paul

[W]hy are you supporting language in our Constitution when you reside out of state Paul? And why are you supporting language that is called “legalization” but only up to 6 plants and 1 oz, which would make it illegal over 6 plants or an oz?

Seriously, this is the level of political reason and basic logic the Stoners Against Legalization possess. If you make it legal to have six plants (and ALL the cannabis you harvest from them) and an ounce (outside the home), that’s not legalization because people with 30 grams and seven plants could be prosecuted. Which leads me to believe if it was twelve plants and a pound or a hundred plants and a pickup truck load, those wouldn’t be legalization either, because people above those limits could still be busted.

High Country Caregiver

The legal 1 oz laws are total garbage. The same laws got passed in Breckenridge and they mean nothing. An initiative like this is not legalization, and I will never be fooled into voting for fools trying to make fools of us pot heads just trying to get high and have fun. Anything shy of making cannabis as legal as tomatoes is just further prohibition and should be voted down.

If marijuana can’t be grown by anyone, anywhere, bought and sold in farmer’s markets, available to children (kids can have tomatoes), and grown in unsecured backyard gardens, then adults over 21 who possess less than an ounce and grow six plants at home should continue to be arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated. (HCG, you need nobody’s help to look the fool.)

What all these detractors misunderstand is the word “legalization”. What they want is “deregulation” – they’re looking for no regulations, as in “treat it like tomatoes”. Sorry, folks, legalization requires regulation and marijuana is never going to be treated like tomatoes. For one, tomatoes do not get you high. Nobody is worried about their kids sneaking tomatoes from your garden. Nobody is concerned with how many tomatoes you’ve eaten before you drive a car. Nobody’s worried about people overeating tomatoes and how they may behave in public afterward.

[hazy]

'Stoners Against Legalization' = huh?

im a med patient who has gone to jail a few times over weed...before i got my card.
Im all for legalization as i think nobody deserves to waist away in a jail cell over weed,
im also not a capatalist and if it cost me some of my profit to have herb legal for all sounds like a fucking plan to me...
weed should be free for all those who wish to seek it

[CaniConnoisseur]

Buncha tards. We just need ONE state to have legaliztionm so the rest of the country can see the fucking sky sky didn't fall and it will spread like wildfire

[vta]

Originally Posted by hazy

'Stoners Against Legalization' = huh?

You know....the people that are in the medical cannabis scene only to make money. They want to keep cannabis prohibition going strong. Way more profit that way. Most of these people would lose their careers if cannabis was legalized and regulated. So they want the laws to stay the same...at the cost of 800,000 of their fellow stoners getting busted each year.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=212657

This is why I posted this

[Hash Zeppelin]

Originally Posted by vta

You know....the people that are in the medical cannabis scene only to make money. They want to keep cannabis prohibition going strong. Way more profit that way. Most of these people would lose their careers if cannabis was legalized and regulated. So they want the laws to stay the same...at the cost of 800,000 of their fellow stoners getting busted each year.

they are losers that cant compete in capitalism, just like most of the ant- prop 19 growers. I cant wait till it is legalized just so I can grow quality in large amounts and under cut them till they are out of business.

[gdtrfb]

i dunno if its so much malice or greed, as Pollyanna-ish reflex to demand that the perfect be the enemy of the good.

not saying there aren't those that are just malicious greedy pricks, but overall...it seems like a lot of folks that fit the mold you describe here tend to show the same reflex in other topics unrelated to legalization.

anything less than the extreme totality of demands being met aren't a reason to keep the status quo, but it ends up being the result fairly often.

[budlover123]

medical marijuana + people = money for medical marijuana industry

the right thing (legalize it) + people = happy people/medical marijuana industry loses the ability to essentially be exempt from the law to run a black market

It's even more of a slap in the face when you consider that the federal law that classifies marijuana as Schedule 1 drug, which of course makes it so illegal, states that it must be undisputed that the drug has no medicinal value, well, California has had "medical" marijuana for how long? How many states have this loop hole now? We don't want loop holes, we want some correct federal law.

don't worry medical marijuana industry, Americans are lazy, they will still pay a lot more for your nuggets than, say they pay Chilean people for grapes (I can find them for $0.78 a pound!)

...Oh, but I guess if America legalizes it, Chile will probably be selling us nugs for $0.78 a pound

there will always be niche markets and douche bags willing to pay more just because

[cobcoop]

Originally Posted by vta

You know....the people that are in the medical cannabis scene only to make money. They want to keep cannabis prohibition going strong. Way more profit that way. Most of these people would lose their careers if cannabis was legalized and regulated. So they want the laws to stay the same...at the cost of 800,000 of their fellow stoners getting busted each year.

I'm in a med state and cannabis is not my primary source of income. After seeing the shit blow up here in Co, the main reason I (and many of my friends) am VERY leery of "legalization" is the corporitization of cannabis. It's pretty fucking sad watching how our scene has devolved here in my state. I fear that once all risk is removed from this "industry" there will be nothing left even remotely enjoyable about the cannabis culture, not to mention the Monsanto/Walmart style takeovers. IMO the best hing we can hope for is true decriminalization of all drugs, a la Portugal. Unfortunately our government and the people who put them in office will never let that happen IMO.

Originally Posted by HashZepplin

they are losers that cant compete in capitalism, just like most of the ant- prop 19 growers. I cant wait till it is legalized just so I can grow quality in large amounts and under cut them till they are out of business.

Unfortunately in the legalization scenario there will never be a level playing field. Unless you happen to be George Soros I don't see any one individual being able to break into the racket.