Steven S. Epstein from the grassroots Massachusetts legalization Bay State Repeal announced via Facebook last night that their initiative petition for the 2016 ballot fell short of the required threshold of signatures.

“Thanks and gratitude to my friends who expended effort soliciting and delivering signatures of registered voters (you know who you are) for Bay State Repeal,” wrote Epstein. “Alas, our proposed law will not be introduced into the legislature as an initiative petition in January 2016.”

The same message was posted to Bay State Repeal’s webpage under the heading “Too Many Relied on Too Few”. The initiative had been endorsed by Harvard Professor Emeritus and pioneering medical marijuana researcher Dr. Lester Grinspoon, the Massachusetts affiliate of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (MassCANN), and the Boston Globe newspaper.

That leaves only the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol (CRMLA) as a legalization option for Massachusetts. Last month, Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), the organization sponsoring CRMLA, announced they had submitted more than 100,000 signatures of the 64,750 signatures required to make the ballot.

The Globe, in its endorsement of Bay State Repeal, derided the MPP-backed CRMLA as a “flawed proposal” that creates “another industry ripe for special-interests politics”. While both initiatives proposed age limits of 21 years, home grows that must be locked and hidden, landlords that can ban home growing, and a system of taxed pot shops, the Globe dismissed CRMLA for its “caps on the number of growers”, “fees up to $15,000 for licenses to grow”, and “an arbitrary cap on possession” by limiting adults to just one ounce of marijuana in public and ten ounces at home.

Epstein now vows to defeat MPP’s CRMLA if it should make the ballot. Epstein told the Globe that he will “use every skill in my power” to oppose the marijuana legalization initiative, which he called a “bad law” that supports “crony capitalism”.

But other Massachusetts activists are more pragmatic. Bill Downing, chairman of MassCann NORML, the state affiliate, told the Globe that he personally supports CRMLA and expects the board of MassCann to endorse the initiative.

Massachusetts CRMLA would legalize for adults 21 and older the possession of one ounce of marijuana flower, 5 grams of marijuana concentrate, and cultivation of 6 cannabis plants per adult with a limit of 12 per household, plus possession of 10 ounces of marijuana flower at the home.

Commercially, marijuana would be produced by growers and sold at pot shops, taxed at 3.75 percent excise tax plus state and local sales taxes. Localities could also add up to 2 percent tax and ban marijuana establishment through a vote of the people.

CRMLA also extends protections to cannabis consumers. Child custody and visitation rights cannot be affected solely because a parent uses marijuana. Organ transplants and other medical procedures cannot be denied solely due to cannabis consumption.

Massachusetts CRMLA is equal to or better than the legalization that currently exists in four US states. It would be foolish to reject this legalization initiative in 2016 on the promise that the group that just failed to gather signatures in a presidential election year will be able to produce something better for the ballot in the future. Legalization ALWAYS trumps Prohibition.

I just received an email from Madeline Martinez, the proprietress of the World Famous Cannabis Café here in Portland, Oregon. “OHA [Oregon Health Authority] stopped by to inform us that, effective January 2016 we will no longer be allowed to consume indoors.”

The Cannabis Café is one of at least three cannabis clubs that have opened up in Portland, including The Other Spot and the NW Cannabis Club. None of these clubs sell any marijuana. The marijuana laws do not allow for on-site consumption at dispensaries. It’s all BYOB – bring your own buds. They don’t sell alcohol or allow tobacco. They are run by volunteers. They consider themselves “private clubs” and require entry through purchase of daily or monthly memberships.

It’s all for naught, according to the health authority, thanks to the passage of House Bill 2546. This bill was crafted to deal with the emerging technology of e-cigarettes and cannabis vaporizers by adding a definition for an “Inhalant delivery system”. It updates the law to provide prohibitions and penalties for the use of vaporizers by minors just as we forbid cigarettes to minors.

But included in the act is a section updating the Oregon Clean Air Act. In Section 16, the bill amends Oregon law, as indicated by boldface text, to read:

A person may not smoke, aerosolize or vaporize an inhalant or carry a lighted smoking instrument in a public place or place of employment except as provided in ORS 433.850 [medical marijuana use in a medical facility].

“Public place” means an enclosed area open to the public.

“Inhalant” means nicotine, a cannabinoid or any other substance that is inhaled for the purpose of delivering the nicotine, cannabinoid or other substance into a person’s respiratory system.

The penalty for allowing smoking or vaping to happen in your club will be held to a maximum of $500 per day. The reason the state gives for shutting down clubs that allow pot smokers to gather and socialize?

The people of Oregon find that because exposure to secondhand smoke, certain exhaled small particulate matter or other exhaled toxins is known to cause cancer and other chronic diseases such as heart disease, asthma and bronchitis, it is necessary to reduce exposure to such smoke, matter or toxins by prohibiting the smoking, aerosolizing or vaporizing of inhalants in all public places and places of employment.

That is not entirely true. There is considerable scientific literature about the health dangers from secondhand tobacco smoke. The science is not established on the secondhand e-cigarette vapor, though what does exist shows it to be far less harmful than secondhand tobacco smoke. E-cigarettes themselves are a harm reduction alternative to conventional tobacco cigarettes.

However, when it comes to secondhand cannabis, smoked or vaporized, there is no scientific backing to the notion it may “cause cancer and other chronic diseases such as heart disease, asthma and bronchitis”. What little research there is on secondhand cannabis smoke focuses on whether it causes bystanders to test positive on a workplace urine screen. Researchers found that “positive tests are likely to be rare” and that “room ventilation has a pronounced effect on exposure to secondhand cannabis smoke.”

But despite the state deciding it needs to protect us from secondhand cannabis smoke and vapor, the state does allow an exception for people who want to gather and smoke – not vaporize – tobacco. The OHA will certify “smoke shops”, businesses that do at least 75 percent of their business in tobacco products and allow for sampling of tobacco products. OHA will also certify “cigar bars” that have a capacity of 40 persons or fewer and allow for smoking of cigars. Both cigar bars and smoke shops have to abide by regulations for adequate ventilation and both must absolutely forbid the smoking or vaporizing of cannabinoids on their premises.

So, all indoor consumption of cannabis must be banned, even when vaporized, which produces no known secondhand harm, even when adequate ventilation eliminates any chance of this unknown harm. But exceptions can be made for indoor consumption of tobacco, even when smoked, which we know produces toxic secondhand effects, just so long as there is adequate ventilation.

Thus, following the Washington legislature’s felonization of any club that would dare allow indoor cannabis consumption, Oregon will soon be civilly fining cannabis clubs out of existence. Meanwhile, Coloradoans continue to lobby for indoor consumption rights, Alaska has gone ahead and allowed for indoor public cannabis consumption, and the leading 2016 legalization initiatives in Maine, Massachusetts, and California all allow for some sort of on-site public consumption.

Thanks to the infamous West Idaho Compromise, licensed cultivation, processing, distribution, and retailing of marijuana – also known as marijuana businesses – are banned in 52.7 percent of the state of Oregon.

Bans on marijuana licensees have been instituted in Baker, Crook, Harney, Klamath, Malheur, Morrow, Umatilla, Union, and Wheeler counties. These counties’ bans are immediate and not subject to a vote of the people. The legislature’s West Idaho Compromise allows these counties and any others that voted against legalization with more than 55 percent of the vote to ignore the will of the people, despite the statewide Measure 91 vote that said the people should decide all marijuana business bans.

License bans are also in effect in Douglas, Jefferson, Linn, and Marion counties. There the people will have a chance to weigh in on the decision to ban.

The combined land mass of those 13 counties comes to 51,810 square miles, over half of Oregon’s total 98,381 square miles. There are 825,921 people living in those counties, making up 20.8 percent of Oregon’s estimated 2014 population.

Also, there are 46 cities that have enacted marijuana business bans, with 26 of them requiring no vote of the people. Adding in the cities not already covered in the county bans comes to an additional 139,537 people, a total of 965,458 or 24.3 percent of the population.

For sound-bite purposes: almost one-in-four Oregonians lives in over half the state where marijuana businesses are illegal.

The California Adult Use of Marijuana Act, the so-called “Sean Parker Initiative”, is gathering more support, with Drug Policy Alliance and Marijuana Policy Project now considering backing it, and the recent bombshell news of ReformCA board member Richard Lee openly supporting it.

UPDATE: I have now linked to the new, amended version of the Sean Parker Initiative at http://rad-r.us/CA-AUMA2. Some of the details below have changed, see new post for the changes.

I’ve spent the holiday weekend going through every word of the 60-page initiative. To make understanding it easier, I’ve created the Hyperlinked Text of the California Adult Use of Marijuana Act which you can download for free as a PDF. It contains my notes on understanding the sections of text cannabis consumers most want to know about, including:

1. Adults 21 years of age and older can possess 1 ounce of flower, 4 grams of concentrates, cultivate 6 mature plants per household and possess the marijuana they produce at home out of public view in an enclosed, locked space.
2. Public toking is a $100 fine, toking in a non-smoking area or within 1,000′ of a school is a $250 fine, possessing an open container in a car is a $250 fine, publicly-visible grows or growing too many plants is a $250 fine, possession in a school is a misdemeanor with a $500 fine and ten days in county jail, possessing over 1 ounce flower or 4 grams concentrate is a $500 fine and six months in jail, manufacturing volatile solvent concentrates is subject to 3-7 years in prison and $50,000 fine.
3. Employers can still maintain “drug-free workplaces” and landlords can ban personal possession and growing in their properties.
4. Peace officers can inspect marijuana licensees at any time.
5. License violations can be fined up to three times the cost of the license per day, and localities collect that money if they bring the complaints.
6. There will be five cultivation licenses: Type 1 (up to 5,000 sqft), Type 2 (up to 10,000 sqft), Type 3 (up to 22,000 sqft indoors or 1 acre outdoors), Type 4 (nursery) and Type 5 (over 22,000 sqft or 1 acre outdoors). Cultivation licenses can also be Subtype A (indoor) or B (mixed-light).
7. There will be six commercial licenses: Type 6 (non-volatile solvent manufacturers), Type 7 (volatile solvent manufacturers), Type 8 (testers), Type 10 (retailers), Type 11 (distributor), and Type 12 (microbusiness).
8. Licensees may hold multiple types of licenses, except for Type 8 (testers), which can only be testers.
9. Licensees must be California residents as of January 1, 2015. Residency requirements expire in 2020.
10. Existing medical marijuana operators get priority for commercial licensing.
11. Licensure is subject to denial for certain violent, sexual, or fraudulent felony convictions.
12. Licensees may not engage in marijuana give-aways.
13. Advertising is limited to mediums with >=71.6% adult audience, no freeway billboards, 1,000′ from schools, and unappealing to minors.
14. Appellations (like “Humboldt Gold” or “Mendocino Purps”) will be protected.
15. Localities cannot interfere with the lawful delivery of marijuana across their jurisdictions.
16. Localities can enact reasonable regulations on personal grows, including bans on outdoor growing, but cannot ban indoor growing.
17. Localities can restrict time, place, and manner of licensees, but cannot enact complete bans without a vote of the people.
18. Localities may allow for the licensing of on-site consumption (“cannabis cafes”).
19. Marijuana will be taxed at 15% excise tax, plus $9.25/oz flower harvest and $2.75/oz leaf harvest tax.
20. Taxes from marijuana will pay for regulation, then give $10 million to public universities, $10 million to business and economic development, $3 million to California Highway Patrol, $2 million for medical marijuana research at UC San Diego, and then the remainder will be divided 60 percent to youth drug education and prevention, 20 percent to environmental protection, and 20 percent to law enforcement.
21. People with previous marijuana convictions have a path to appeal their sentence under the new law.

Download the Hyperlinked Text of the California Adult Use of Marijuana Act now!

Tom Angell, writing at Marijuana.com, broke the news yesterday of Richard Lee’s endorsement of the Sean Parker-led initiative to legalize marijuana in California for the 2016 ballot. It’s a seismic shift in California marijuana reform politics.

For me, it’s like watching a telenovela – ¡La Gravedad Del Dinero!

Money is the key to winning elections. We can – and should – lament that reality, but we must accept that for the next election cycle, at least, it is reality.

Money is even more key to winning an election in California, especially this particular election. Legalization of marijuana in California hastens legalization everywhere, inside and outside the United States. A loss keeps prohibition on life support and maybe gives it a chance to recover. We will see a greater ad war from the enemies of legalization on California airwaves than ever seen; see Florida’s fight for medical marijuana in 2014 for just a taste of what’s about to unfold. Our side will need a lot of money to fight back.

With the greatest battle in legalization about to unfold, I’ve had the honor of getting to know many of the people fighting against the War on Drugs. Now, big money has stepped in and dramatically altered the relationships and strategies of reform advocates, some of whom have put more than four decades into this battle.

I first met Tom Angell through his work with LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. He’s since taken his considerable public relations skills and advocacy work in an independent direction by founding Marijuana Majority. Tom’s special mutant ability is getting a quote in for almost every major marijuana story in the mainstream media.

I met Richard Lee back in late 2009. After an accident in Texas left him paralyzed, he came to the Bay Area and founded a successful coffee shop, then the first training institute for marijuana, Oaksterdam University. I met him as he was funding and leading the Prop 19 campaign in 2010, sinking $1.5 million of his own money into it, against all conventional wisdom. Only late into the campaign as it was topping 55 percent in the pools did any other funders or organizations get involved, too little, too late, and it lost. But it began the national dialogue on marijuana legalization; I believe Colorado and Washington don’t succeed without it.

Sean Parker, I do not know. I understand he co-founded Napster, invested in Facebook, and has something like a $3.2 billion net worth. I know that he has proposed the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA, or as I say it on the radio, “ow, ma!”)

So we have the young billionaire getting a political endorsement from respected activist. But it gets more telenovela. See, Richard Lee is on the board of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform (CCPR), which arose from the ashes of the failed Prop 19 campaign in 2010. The spokeswoman for that Prop 19 campaign was Dale Sky Jones, who is also the chancellor of Oaksterdam University that Lee founded.

Oh, and Jones is the chair of CCPR, who has been fundraising for the CCPR legalization initiative under the ReformCA campaign. Awkward. And it gets more awkward.

According to Angell’s interview, Lee said, “I believe a majority of the [CCPR] board is ready to endorse the Parker initiative at the next board meeting.” So now Lee is undermining Jones in public prior to the next ReformCA board meeting. ¡Ay, caramba!

ReformCA was supposed to be the consensus-building group that would come forward with a sensible marijuana legalization plan that could get majority support and attract the funders necessary for signature gathering and advertising. Since the fall of Prop 19, Jones has worked diligently to build strategic political alliances from outside marijuana reform, such as bringing in the California NAACP‘s Ms. Alice Huffman as Vice Chair and Antonio Gonzales from the William C. Velasquez Institute, a prominent Latino public policy org.

Most of all, ReformCA would unite the marijuana legalization activists who’ve put so many years into California reform. Their board reflects that promise, with membership including California NORML‘s Dale Gieringer, Students for Sensible Drug Policy‘s Stacia Cosner, LEAP‘s Neill Franklin, and Americans for Safe Access‘ Don Duncan. Add Lee, Jones, Huffman, and Gonzalez to this group I’d call the “activist bloc” – eight votes.

The board also includes industry leaders like Hezekiah Allen of the Emerald Growers Alliance, Yami Bolanos of the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance, Nate Bradley of the California Cannabis Industry Association, Debby Goldsberry of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, and David Bronner of Dr Bronner’s Magic Soap. Jones’ husband, Jeff Jones, is also on the board, representing the Patient ID Center, as is industry attorney Joe Rogaway. Call them the “industry bloc” – seven votes.

So now my telenovela has me in the classic cliff-hanger mode: who are the ReformCA board members who’d be this “majority” Lee says will endorse the Parker marijuana legalization initiative? It’s safe to say the two Jones votes are likely “no”, unless that marriage is incredibly strong. Lee is clearly “yes”, and Nate Bradley told Tom Angell he’s “very excited” about Lee’s endorsement and that “It’s important for CCPR to join the coalition, so we can all stand in support as one unified voice.” Looks like a 2-2 wash so far.

How will the activist bloc of ReformCA react? The Parker initiative may be a bit more restrictive than some reformers like, but enough to try to compete with a separate initiative in a difficult fundraising atmosphere? Will the industry bloc find the Parker initiative to be a worse option than the status quo and find the funds necessary to compete?

Tune in next week for another exciting episode of ¡La Gravedad Del Dinero!

It’s another fantastic day for drug law reformers here at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Alexandria, Virginia. Today’s opening plenary session featured speakers from around the globe discussing their perspectives on ending drug prohibition.

First up was Damon Barrett, cofounder and director of the International Center on Human Rights & Drug Policy. He greeted us at first in Gaelic to make a point about human rights being debated not far from us in the nation’s capital. “I saw congresspeople with names like Connolly, Fitzpatrick, and Murphy, passing an act that will stop refugees coming in to this country.” The audience chuckled at the hypocrisy. “One hundred and seventy years ago, Irish people fled famine and repression by the hundreds of thousands and they came here. And as babies are being washed up on the shores of the Mediterranean, I ask if they’ve got no sense of history and no shame?”

Damon brought the point home to the specific case of drug prohibition endangering human rights. “We have three drugs treaties which enshrine a certain strategy on how to deal with drugs. And what they require states to do is hugely risky from a human rights perspective. So let’s look at why states have to ban private behaviors; have to ban indigenous people from doing what they’ve been doing for millennia; they have to stop religious minorities from pursuing their beliefs; they have to conduct surveillance, arrest people, prosecute them, extradite them; they have to eradicate crops; they have to ban certain forms of expression because of an ill-defined idea of incitement to use drugs.”

The next presenter was Deborah Peterson-Small, the founder and executive director of Break the Chains. “To me it’s really important,” she said, “if this movement is really a movement about elevating people who use drugs, that we have at the forefront people who actually use drugs and are not ashamed to say it.”

She continued with her amazing oratory. “The Western Civilization we are a part of, the Anglo-American enterprise of which the US was the most successful project, was built and financed by promoting addiction for profit – to sugar, tobacco, alcohol. The slave trade was developed in order to support the promotion of addiction for profit.”

Deborah is a master speaker who kept the applause coming with more great lines. “What is it to be a country that defines itself in terms of [an American] dream – which is by definition not real?” she asked. “So one of the messages I have for you all is like it’s time for us to wake up.”

She continued questioning the concepts we use to define ourselves. “Three strikes laws. For me, this is something I really want us to think about, because we not only apply that in sentencing, we apply that in treatment, we apply that in schools, and we never ask ourselves, ‘where the hell did three strikes come from?’

“It’s a baseball metaphor. Why do you have strikes in baseball; because there is no clock… so the purpose of balls and strikes is to add some level of boundary and finality to an otherwise untimed game. But people are not like baseball, we’re more like football and basketball, because our clock starts running from the moment that we’re born. We are finite people.”

Deborah wound up her talk with a line that only needed a handheld microphone to drop as she walked off stage to be any more powerful. “To all of you pot entrepreneurs out there, my question to you is, are you going to be a parasite or a social engineer? Are you going to use your money to keep sucking the blood out of our [African-American] community, or are you actually going to be a part of the solution of applying reparations. Yes, I said that word because, God damn it, I am done with the idea of people having policies that screw over people for decades and then one day say, ‘oh wow, we’ve become enlightened, my bad,’ and all of a sudden it’s all good. And we’re still left with the scars, we’re still left with the hurt, we’re still left with all of the damage that has been done. You guys owe us and I’m here to collect.” With that, she walked off the stage to a thunderous standing ovation.

There were more speakers, including the Minister of Justice of the nation of Jamaica, Mark Golding, who won the now-rechristened Kurt Schmoke Award, given for excellence in changing drug laws, for his role in ushering in the island’s recent ganja decriminalization laws. I don’t mean to give them the short shrift, but the break-out panels are beginning and I’ve got to run. I will have the audio from all the plenary sessions and a few of the marijuana-related break-out sessions on my Soundcloud page soon.

We’re at the lunch break of Day One of the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Washington, DC. This is the largest gathering the Drug Policy Alliance has ever held, with over 1,400 attendees from 71 countries. You can find plenty of photos and notes at the #ReformConf15 hashtag on Twitter.

Our day began with our emcee, DPA’s asha bandele, greeting the crowd with an almost evangelical tone. asha let us know “Brooklyn is the house,” which elicited call backs from the other New York activists in the audience.

Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey addressed us first, via a pre-recorded video message. He detailed the work being done through his CARERS Act and other federal legislation to roll back the war on drugs, which Booker describes accurately as “a war on people”. He closed by reminding us of the old African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”

Next, my congressman, Earl Blumenauer, addressed the audience. He discussed being a freshman state legislator when Oregon decriminalized marijuana in 2015. “You are here at a fascinating time in our nation’s capital,” Rep. Blumenauer said, “you at are a time when a wave is building and the train is leaving the station.”

Then Rep. Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn took to the stage. “We’ve got the largest incarceration rate in the world and it is time to end our failed war on drugs,” Rep. Jeffries announced to a cascade of cheers. “Abraham Lincoln about 150 years ago once asked the question, ‘how do we create a more perfect union?’ … We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.” He recalled the legacy of Harriet Tubman, who when told she was a hero for helping free over 200 black slaves, said, “’I could’ve freed more if they only knew that they were slaves.’ Sometimes what holds us back is self-doubt.”

asha then welcomed to the stage Jim and Stephanie, two of the lead organizers for the Reform Conference for the announcement that the next conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 11-14, 2017.

We then got to here from Kemba Smith, an African-American woman who had been sentenced to over 24 years in prison for being a pawn in a conspiracy conviction meant to take down her then-boyfriend, a crack dealer. “I thought like some of the other college girls that what he did was his business and I was just going to school,” she explained. “The government stated that I never handled, sold, or used the drugs in the case, in the hopes by having me in custody they could eventually get to him.”

She talked about how she had turned herself in while seven months pregnant, with the promise she’d be able to give birth outside the prison. “They lied,” she told us, “and five minutes after I gave birth to my son my leg had to be shackled back to the bed.” President Clinton had commuted her sentence following journalistic attention to her case from Emerge Magazine and the NAACP Legal Defense taking up her case pro bono. She also talked about her “survivor’s guilt” of knowing so many other women just like her are still locked up.

Kemba introduced Jason Hernandez, another prisoner who was granted clemency, but by President Obama. “Of the 89 people who’ve been granted clemency by President Obama, only ten percent have been Latinos,” Jason stated. “And of them ten percent, not one was a female.” Jason lamented the lack of attention the Hispanic community pays to ending the drug war, which he calls “a war on minorities” to applause from the crowd.  About the clemency stat he cites, Jason tells us “Nobody’s fighting for us, not even our own people.”

“There’s nothing that can describe what I felt on that day of clemency,” Jason continued. “But the one feeling I will never forget is that I had to return back to my cell and look at my friends who were still serving life without parole, and to tell them that I was going home. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. And though they were grateful and happy for me, and told me ‘don’t worry about it,’ that one day, they would get their chance. In the back of my mind I knew that the percentages were that they were going to die right there in that cell that I was standing in with them.”

The plenary concluded with the always captivating Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of Drug Policy Alliance. Ethan exhorted the younger activists in the crowd to learn their history and discussed the era of McCarthyism from the 1950s. “The worst part about it is that the people went along,” said Ethan. “Even in the 1960s when people began to repudiate that history of McCarthyism, there was some lacking of accountability. There was some failure to call it to account and come failure to ensure that future generations knew about McCarthyism.”

Ethan also lamented, somewhat, the success of the marijuana legalization movement and how that’s brought in moneyed interests with no knowledge of reform history or best practices. “Oh my god,” he moaned, “those guys in Ohio, if you’d have won it, it would’ve lit up American politics and if you’d have won it, oh my god. A constitutionally mandated oligopoly for an agricultural product that every American should be free to grow, I don’t know…” he trailed off, drowned by the raucous cheers and applause from the crowd.

Update: Thanks to the cannabis community rallying, the Medford City Council tabled their vote on banning personal gardens, but may send the issue to voters. The Mail Tribune reports:

The Medford City Council voted down an ordinance Thursday night banning all growing of residential marijuana inside city limits, indoor and outdoor.

However, the council directed city staff to explore putting two ordinances to voters, one banning the outdoor growing of marijuana and the other banning indoor growing of pot.

***

The vote and motion came after what was intended to be a 30-minute comment period swelled to 90 minutes of impassioned speeches in favor of recreational cannabis and medical marijuana from growers and users brandishing green ribbons. Earlier Thursday, more than 100 people spoke against the ban before the council decided to hold another meeting later in the day to accept more comments.

The Mail-Tribune reports that a proposed Medford marijuana grow ban would affect 1,942 growers in this small Southern Oregon city.

Medford’s city council is considering an ordinance that wouldn’t just ban big commercial cannabis farms supplying marijuana for adult personal consumption. Tomorrow, the ordinance receiving a second reading would ban indoor and outdoor grows for any purpose, not just the new commercial licensees created through our 2014 marijuana legalization initiative.

That means nearly two-thousand medical marijuana grow sites and the patients who depend on them would be wiped out. Growing one’s own marijuana would become a civil violation under the ordinance.

A plain reading of state law shows that Medford has no legal justification for such an all-encompassing ban. Fifty-six percent of Oregon voters passed Measure 91 in 2014, which was amended by House Bill 3400 in 2015. Fifty-three percent of Jackson County voters voted yes, which drills down to support as great as sixty-five percent in the Medford downtown Precinct 58. The relevant portion of the law is in Section 134:

The governing body of a city or county may adopt ordinances to be referred to the electors of the city or county… that prohibit or allow the establishment of any one or more of the following… Marijuana processing sites… Medical marijuana dispensaries… Marijuana producers… Marijuana processors… Marijuana wholesalers… [and/or] Marijuana retailers…

The ability to ban, as decided by the voters and the legislature, applies then to just the commercial marijuana world, from grow to sale, not to the personal four plants allowed for all adults and the medical six plants allowed for medical marijuana cardholders.

Even then, since Jackson County didn’t oppose Measure 91 by 55 percent, as per the West Idaho Compromise, they would have to refer any commercial marijuana bans to the voters at the next general election.

But the City of Medford isn’t concerned with state law. They are basing their right to ban on the twin pillars of local home rule and the federal prohibition on marijuana.

“The ability to ban grows is pre-empted by state law,” says Portland marijuana attorney Leland Berger. “However, in Medford, the Jackson County Circuit Court has ruled in civil cases that federal Controlled Substances Act pre-empts the state marijuana laws, specifically as to HB 3400 and medical marijuana dispensaries. The reasoning is broad enough it would cover the adult-use home cultivation as well.”

Berger speculates that the ordinance, if it were challenged, would likely prevail in trial court, only to be taken up in appeal, along with a current case from Cave Junction that ruled the southern Oregon city could refuse to issue business licenses to medical marijuana dispensaries.

The City Council feels the need to institute a marijuana grow ban because of the threat of crime and the neighborhood nuisance of marijuana odor. Yet in last Thursday’s first reading, Lt. Kevin Walruff gave a presentation showing that since 2012, there have been 44 criminal cases involving marijuana, declining from a high of 17 in 2012 to just eight this year. Lt. Walruff also said that there have only been 27 official complaints about marijuana odor, and that most of the cases were resolved through mediation.

A lack of actual data, however, hasn’t stopped a majority of the City Council from believing that marijuana growing is an existential threat to peace and harmony in Medford. Mail-Tribune reporter Damian Mann has been covering the council and their justifications for the ban ordinance are appalling.

Councilor Tim Jackle claims he’s received numerous complaints about marijuana grows and Councilor Dick Gordon believes the low numbers of official complaints don’t accurately represent the problem, because “After a while, you don’t complain because you want to get along with your neighbors.”

Most disturbing is Councilor Daniel Bunn, who agrees with Gordon that “There are a lot of people who don’t like it but are afraid to complain. [They] don’t want to go on record saying my neighbor does drugs,” he said. “[They] are afraid of these people, and they should be.”

It’s always a telling sign of prejudice when you hear someone use the term “those people”.

I’m on my way to the Drug Policy Alliance’s biennial International Reform Conference in Washington DC. I’ll bring you daily diaries here on MarijuanaPolitics.com, social media highlights @RadicalRuss on Twitter, Instagram, Periscope, and Facebook, and live coverage on CannabisRadio.com. The Drug Policy Alliance Conference is notable for its broad scope of not just marijuana law reform but policy examination for all drugs, from safe-needle injection sites for heroin to helping make rave culture safer through onsite pill testing, and from use of powerful hallucinogens for spiritual and medical purposes to discussions of pharmaceutical addiction and overdose.

We begin Wednesday with a Federal Lobbying Day, where we’ll get matched up with others from our same state and district to go speak directly to our federal representatives. Since mine are Earl Blumenauer, Jeff Merkeley, and Ron Wyden, who are great on our issues of legalization, I will follow along activists from Southern and Midwestern states as they make their case.

Thursday begins with an opening plenary, followed by three breakout sessions. I’ll be bringing you the marijuana sessions, specifically:

• The End is Nigh: When Will Congress End Federal Marijuana Prohibition? Featuring Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Dana Rohrabacher;
• The Drug War and the Militarization and Bastardization of Police Practices, featuring #BlackLivesMatter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition’s Diane Goldstein;
• Porro, Ganja, Mota, Gras: Models for Cannabis Regulation from Around the World, featuring representatives of Mexico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Jamaica, UK, and Germany.

Thursday concludes with a powerful Black Lives Matter Town Hall – Connecting the Dots: Where the Drug Policy Reform and the #BlackLivesMatter Movements Intersect.

Friday starts with another plenary session, followed by three more breakout sessions:

• Beyond Marijuana: Legalization and the Movement to Reform Other Drug Policies, featuring the executive directors of Drug Policy Alliance, LEAP, and NORML;
• Case Studies: A Racial Justice Approach to Marijuana Policy Reform, featuring activists from NAACP and ACLU;
• Coerced Treatment: The Treatment-versus-Incarceration Model, featuring journalist Maia Szalavitz.

Friday evening ends with a guided night tour of Washington, DC.

Saturday includes three more breakout sessions:

• Ensuring Inclusion, Repairing Damage: Diversity, Equity and the Marijuana Industry, featuring asha bandele of DPA and Shaleen Title of THC Staffing Group;
• Medical Cannabis in 2015: From the Lab to the Clinic, featuring cannabis researchers Dr. Ethan Russo and Dr. Sue Sisley;
• From Illicit to Licit: Challenges of Marijuana Legalization; featuring Larisa Bolivar from Cannabis Consumers Coalition and Karen O’Keefe from Marijuana Policy Project.

Saturday concludes with a closing plenary session followed by an awards ceremony and closing reception.

My live coverage begins at 6pm Eastern / 3pm Pacific on CannabisRadio.com.

UPDATE: It appears now the 18 Karat Reggae post was false, according to Urban Islandz:

“No she (Rihanna) is not going into the marijuana business at least not anytime soon,” sources told us. “As of right now she is fully focused on finishing her album as well as her other business ventures and endorsements. But right now the album is her priority.

The original report suggest that Rihanna was in Jamaica last weekend at a weed convention where she made the announcement. She would be launching marijuana based products such as edibles, blunts and concentrates.

But our sources told us that the “BBHMM” hitmaker was not on the island.

I apologize for making the mistake of passing on that rumor. Still, I hope the original point of the article stands. –“R”R

Ever since the popularization of marijuana in America, there has always been a concern from cannabis consumers that Big Tobacco would swoop in and create the “Marlboro of Marijuana”, full of additives. For the opponents of legalization of marijuana, “Big Marijuana” is the corporate bogeyman that adulterates cannabis to make it more addictive and markets it to kids.

So far, however, “Big Marijuana” looks like three pot-smoking musicians cashing in on their celebrity, and one private equity firm cashing in on another pot-smoking musician.

I’m writing from Jamaica where HIGH TIMES just held their Cannabis Cup in conjunction with the Rastafari Rootzfest. Superstar pop singer Rihanna, a native of the Caribbean island of Barbados, was in attendance. According to 18 Karat Reggae, she took the Cup stage to announce the launching of her new cannabis brand, cleverly called “MaRihanna”.

Rihanna’s brand will offer edibles, concentrates, and island-themed flower like Karibbean Kush, Haitian Haze and Jamaican High Grade. “MaRihanna by Rihanna is truly the first mainstream cannabis brand in the world and proud to be a pioneer,” Rihanna said. “MaRihanna is blazing a trail for the industry.”

The first? Hardly.

In 2014, Privateer Holdings announced its exclusive partnership with the estate of the late reggae icon Bob Marley to create a mainstream cannabis brand called “Marley Natural”. VICE News described the “American private equity firm led by a team of white, Yale-educated go-getting fitness freaks” who would be cashing in on the legacy of both Bob Marley and Jamaican ganja.

But since ganja cultivation is still illegal in Jamaica, all “Marley Natural” cannabis will be grown in the United States. Poor Rasta ganja farmers who have always struggled economically will benefit in no way from the brand.

Then country music legend Willie Nelson got into the act early this year, announcing the creation of his “Willie’s Reserve” brand of marijuana. The Daily Beast talked with Willie’s spokesman, Michael Bowman, who described what would be a vertically-integrated brand, from the farmers growing the cannabis to the stores it will be sold in.

“Let’s just call it the anti-Walmart model. Personally, internally, that’s what we call it,” Bowman explained. “Willie’s Reserve” would be like a Whole Foods store that sells its own brands, as well as others that meet Willie’s moral guidelines. “A certain standard by which growers have to account for carbon and such,” said Bowman, “in a way that empowers small growers who are doing the right thing.”

Then just last week, rapper Snoop Dogg announced his premium “Leafs by Snoop” brand. The Guardian reported that it “makes Snoop the first celebrity to front a line of personally branded marijuana products,” clearly not aware of “Marley Natural” and “Willie’s Reserve”.

“Leafs by Snoop” are being grown and sold by LivWell in Colorado. Snoop himself isn’t the owner of the brand, because Colorado marijuana companies must be owned by Colorado residents. LivWell is a controversial choice by Snoop, considering the company was sued in 2014 for handing out medicated chocolates at the Denver County Fair that its vendors claimed were THC-free. This year, LivWell had 60,000 plants quarantined over use of pesticides, leading to protests by the Cannabis Consumers Coalition and a lawsuit by two consumers.

Are the fears of “Big Marijuana” justified? Prohibitionists would argue that celebrity-endorsed weed, especially a top-of-the-pop-charts 20-something superstar like Rihanna, is exactly the kind of corporate marketing to kids they predicted. Rastas would argue that the corporate mining of Bob Marley’s legacy without giving back to the poor Jamaican ganja farmers is an insult to Marley’s beliefs. Tokers would argue that Snoop’s pesticide-pot-peddling LivWell represents exactly the sort of profit-over-people corporate model we want to avoid.

And I would argue that Willie Nelson much more than the others has put his money where his mouth is when it has come to legalizing marijuana and creating these economic opportunities, though donations and appearances for NORML, and more generally toward farmers with his longtime Farm Aid concerts. If there is going to be a Big Marijuana, let’s make sure it’s more like “Willie’s Reserve” by voting with our weed dollars.

In Part 1 – Can Massachusetts Legalizers Learn from Maine?, we began our look at competing marijuana legalization initiatives for the 2016 election.

2010 was the year when medical marijuana shifted away from being primarily about compassion and started focusing on being about money.

It was then that Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) was fighting for their medical marijuana initiative in Arizona. Despite the fact the state had already passed medical marijuana in 1996 and re-affirmed it in 1998 by well over 60 percent each time, MPP felt that a conservative approach was necessary to win marijuana reform in Arizona. Indeed, the 2010 measure got just 50.13 percent of the vote, but was that because it lost support for its controversial home grow provision?

MPP’s Arizona initiative was the first medical marijuana law proposed that did not allow every patient to cultivate his or her own cannabis plants. Instead, a comprehensive system of dispensaries would be established where patients could buy medical marijuana. If a patient lived within 25 miles of a dispensary, he or she was forbidden from cultivating cannabis at home.

Shockingly, when MPP was asked for the reason why patients should have to be bound to purchase expensive marijuana from dispensaries rather than grow their own, their spokesperson explained that it was to ensure the dispensaries would be viable and to give them a market. The 25 mile radius around legal dispensaries became referred to as a “halo”, contrary to the nefarious effect it had on invalidating the medical grow rights of over 97 percent of the population of Arizona.

In another Southwestern state, the legislature of Nevada in 2013 applied MPP’s Arizona halo to their medical marijuana program. The bill finally established a system of legal dispensaries for Nevada patients who’d been going without since their law passed in 2000 with almost two-thirds of the vote. In exchange, however, almost all the Nevada patients who live within 25 miles of a dispensary lose their right to cultivate as of April 1, 2016.

Nevada’s got one of MPP’s Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol (CRMLA) initiatives already on the ballot for 2016. To comport with the legislature’s newly-established medical halos, the Nevada legalization initiative similarly bans home growing, but in a very sneaky way. In Section 6 of the initiative, CRMLA promises that adults may cultivate six mature plants with no more than 12 plants per household, “except as otherwise provided in Sections 1 to 18…”

You have to look further down into Section 14 before you discover “any person who cultivates marijuana plants within 25 miles of a retail marijuana store…” is guilty of a misdemeanor with fines that start at $600 for the first offense all the way up to a felony for the fourth offense.

But while MPP’s Nevada CRMLA is instituting Arizona’s 25-mile halo rule, MPP’s Arizona CRMLA is dismantling the halo. Included in the proposal are the same six mature plants with no more than 12 plants per household, but no additional penalty for cultivating near a marijuana store. Presumably, the medical marijuana halo rule would still be in effect, but it would be unenforceable if a patient stayed within the adult personal cultivation limits.

Arizona CRMLA also provides protections for cannabis consumers. Drug testing for “components of marijuana” (read: not just metabolites) can’t be the sole basis for punishment by the state. That means an end to per se DUID laws in Arizona, where there is “zero tolerance” for any amount of THC or metabolites in your system with a mandatory 24 hours jail. Decisions regarding parental rights and child care are also protected from discrimination on the basis of lawful cannabis use.

Arizona’s CRMLA this week announced they had topped 100,000 signatures to make the ballot. They need over 150,000 valid signatures and are aiming for over 230,000 to be sure they qualify.

Meanwhile, a grassroots group called Arizonans for Mindful Regulation (AMR) continues its quixotic attempt to place “REAL marijuana legalization” on the ballot for 2016. They propose greater limits on personal possession of marijuana and concentrates, greater allowances on home cultivation, unlimited licensing of commercial producers and processors and ten times CRMLA’s proposed limit on retailers.

The problem, as it often is for the grassroots, is a lack of funding, which translates to a lack of paid signature gatherers, which means not making the ballot. The most recent report on AMR’s signature count was around 6,000 through August.

There is a fascinating development in the world of marijuana legalization.

At first, our struggle was over whether or not marijuana should be legalized. Now it is a question of how it should be legalized or which legalization shall prevail.

In four states, that question is boiling down to a battle between progressive local grassroots activists and moderate nationally-funded reformers. Massachusetts and Arizona have two groups fighting to make the 2016 ballot. Michigan has three and there are at least four groups working to legalize California in the next election.

Today we begin in New England, where Maine may present the most reasonable path forward for these other states.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), the well-funded national legalization organization based in Washington, DC, has branded its initiatives for 2016 as “the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol” (CRMLA). The message that “marijuana is safer than alcohol” was used to great success in legalizing marijuana in Colorado, so much so that the architect of that “safer” messaging, Mason Tvert, was elevated to Communications Director for MPP.

In Maine, the big news is that the two competing marijuana legalization campaigns have now gotten behind just one campaign. Even bigger news is that it was MPP that folded their CRMLA tent to get behind the grassroots Legalize Maine campaign. The grassroots campaigns in every state propose marijuana legalization with less restriction than what MPP proposes in their initiatives.

In Massachusetts, however, MPP’s CRMLA continues the battle. This week, Massachusetts CRMLA’s Will Luzier announced the campaign had already gathered over 100,000 signatures toward the goal of almost 65,000 validated signatures needed to make the ballot. CRMLA in Massachusetts proposes a decent legalization plan: personal possession an ounce, up to a dozen plants per household with ten ounces of harvest allowed at home.

The grassroots effort in Massachusetts is Bay State Repeal (BSR), backed by MassCann/NORML. Personal possession and cultivation would be allowed with virtually no limit but to prove what you have is truly “personal”. BSR also protects rights to employment, child custody, and organ transplants for adult marijuana consumers.

Could Massachusetts legalization follow in Maine’s footsteps and unite behind one initiative? I don’t think they will, until only one of them makes the ballot, most likely CRMLA. Maine’s two initiatives were not significantly dissimilar, so MPP dropping CRMLA is potentially just a cost-savings measure. Why put in time and resources into legalizing Maine if there’s another viable campaign with similar language to split the bill with?

But in Massachusetts, BSR’s language is significantly different than CRMLA. Unlimited personal marijuana is too easy to attack in a political ad and may be too expansive to expect voters to support. Why would MPP drop what would be a sure win in Massachusetts for a risky bet on greater freedom?

On the other side, the activists behind BSR have a long track record of successfully passing local advisory questions on legalization that always show huge levels of support for reform. Consecutive victories in the 60-percent range for decriminalization and medical marijuana plus favorable rulings from the Supreme Judicial Court leave grassroots activists questioning why MPP would move so cautiously in Massachusetts.

But the Massachusetts activists are pragmatic enough that should CRMLA make the ballot and BSR fail, they will support the more moderate attempt to end marijuana prohibition. Then they’ll be right back in the thick of activism to expand their new marijuana freedoms.

“Ya gotta hand it to ‘em,” Johnny said. “This legalization they cooked up is giving me, like, two thirds of the state!”

Johnny is the pseudonym of a prolific eastern Oregon weed dealer, or, as I like to call it, “West Idaho”. I coined the term to describe the pot-hating, rural, conservative eastern Oregon counties that have been granted permission to operate under a different set of commercial marijuana laws than their western pot-tolerating counterparts.

“Congrats,” I told him, “you’re the king grower of West Idaho!”

He laughed. We’d both grown up in actual Idaho, a land where merely being high, absent any possession, is a misdemeanor crime. In our younger days, we’d often drive Interstate 84 eastbound to Ontario, Oregon, right across the Snake River, to buy our pot pipes, because Idaho’s paraphernalia laws were so strict there were no headshops anywhere near us.

“I just don’t get it,” Johnny continued. “Marijuana is legal all throughout Oregon. Anybody can possess an ounce of it anywhere!”

“Or, really, up to two ounces if they don’t mind a ticket,” I reminded him. “Oregon decriminalized up to twice the legalized amounts.”

“Right. But then they go and ban any commercial grows or pot shops? I mean, they don’t like my kind, right, us so-called ‘black market dealers’, right?” Johnny used the air-quotes gesture as he said it.

“But then they give the entire marijuana business to you,” I concluded for him.

“No, dude, even better than that!” Johnny jumped up, he was so excited. “They took my criminal customers and made them legal to possess, they took my criminal couriers and made them legal to possess, they made any smell on my couriers or evidence of my grows harder to bust, and they stopped any legal business from setting up here to compete with me!” He took a bite off a Slim Jim he seemed to procure out of thin air. “They gave me the best possible deal – legal weed with illegal profits!”

“Then you’re going to love what OLCC did this week,” I told him, referring to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission that writes the regulations for the commercial marijuana industry. “They are going to allow deliveries of marijuana, but they won’t let the couriers carry more than one hundred dollars-worth of marijuana at a time…”

Johnny couldn’t help but interrupt. A fleck of Slim Jim barely missed my left eye as he sputtered, “Wait a minute. A hundred bucks-worth? Like less than half an ounce? How could you possibly make that work? You’d waste all this time and money going back and forth to the supply. Yeah, let’s burn more gasoline trying to get a weed to the people, that makes sense.”

“Wait, I didn’t even tell you the best part.” I paused to get Johnny’s full attention. “They’ve banned any deliveries to localities that ban marijuana retail.”

“Ha!” Johnny exclaimed. “Legal deliveries, but not to West Idaho? Thank you very much, OLCC, for wiping out the only other form of legal competition I might’ve had.”

“Well, maybe not,” I replied. “You know Über, right? What’s to stop someone from setting up Über-style weed deliveries? Call it Düber. If the driver is an adult, he can possess an ounce of weed. He’s legal to drive that ounce of weed anywhere in the state. Düber sends him to meet another adult and gifts that ounce of weed to that adult, perfectly legal under the law. Nobody has exchanged anything of consideration and all Düber did was perform a matchmaking service.”

Johnny stopped chewing on Slim Jim and just eyed me for a second. “Who do you know that does mobile apps?”

A Canadian marijuana legalization poll taken this week by Forum Research found that 59 percent support the new Liberal government’s stance on legalizing, taxing, and regulating cannabis for adult use, closely mirroring a recent Gallup poll showing 58 percent support for legalization in the United States.

However, there are some strong differences in Canadian and American opinions on how marijuana should be legalized.

One key difference is that while both North American countries support legalization at about the same rate, US legalization is aimed at all adults age 21 and older, but the Canadian legalization question is aimed at all adults 18 and older.

In the United States, only people age 65 and older still oppose legalization, with just 35 percent in support. By contrast, Canadian seniors age 65 and older approve of legalization by a 50 percent to 40 percent margin. There is no age demographic in Canada that still approves of prohibition.

In fact, Canadian citizens in all provincial regions of the country support legalization, as do citizens belonging to every political party except the Conservative Party that was just swept out of leadership as the Liberal Party took majority control of Parliament.

The most interesting data from the poll is the question that asked Canadians how they would like to see marijuana taxed and regulated. The majority, 57 percent, preferred a system where the Canadian government only licenses large corporate growers, compared to 33 percent who preferred some other kind of system.

Such a system was proposed last week to voters in the US state of Ohio. In that state’s Issue 3, which was defeated with just 36 percent support, the state constitution would have designated just ten pre-owned plots of land for commercial growing, where a handful of large corporations would supply marijuana to over 1,000 independent retail marijuana outlets.

The Canadians who supported large corporate grows are dominated by those who’d prefer an even tighter system than what Ohio proposed. While 12 percent of all respondents supported “Licensing corporate growers only, then selling and taxing it through retail outlets” similar to Ohio’s plan, 45 percent supported “Licensing corporate growers only, then selling and taxing it through government agencies”, more like a US state-run liquor store model.

Only 16 percent of Canadians supported “Allowing private citizens to grow and sell their own product, and self-report their taxes” and another 17 percent chose “something else” or “none of these” three options.

Almost one-in-five Canadians, or 18 percent, admitted to using cannabis in the past year, including over a third of those aged 18-to-34, or 34 percent. One quarter of adults in the Atlantic provinces and British Columbia admit to annual consumption, as do over a fifth of Liberals (22 percent) and over a third of Greens (35 percent). Another 11 percent of Canadians who do not use cannabis say they are “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to try it once it is legal, meaning three-out-of-ten Canadian adults would be likely cannabis consumers if the prohibition were ended.

The devastating defeat of Ohio Issue 3 has been interpreted by some observers as a victory against the corporatization of marijuana. Bill Maher opined on his HBO show that marijuana was “The one seed Monsanto hasn’t [messed] with” and “Can’t the hippies control it a while before RJ Reynolds takes over?” Willie Nelson spoke out against the advance of so-called “Big Marijuana” monopolizing the weed industry.

The implication is that if a marijuana legalization plan doesn’t sufficiently open up the marijuana growing and selling to “the little guy”, prohibition should be allowed to continue. Corporate-controlled marijuana has been elevated to a greater bogeyman status than the police who strip search and kill people over the smell of marijuana.

This economic re-framing of the marijuana legalization debate restricts the options for marijuana legalization. The Ohio model was based on a suggested framework from a report written by the RAND Corporation for the state of Vermont, which wanted to know all the possible ways marijuana laws could be reformed.

RAND came up with something of a spectrum of twelve marijuana legalization options, from the most-repressive to the most-liberal. “Extreme Options” were to double-down on the Drug War (“prohibit and increase sanctions”) on the repressive side and to complete Deregulation (“repeal-only of state prohibition”) on the liberal side.

Then in the “Commonly-Discussed Options”, RAND talks about Decriminalization (“prohibit but decrease sanctions”) on the repressive side versus Regulate Like Alcohol models that are already in place in four states (“standard commercial model”).

Of those four options, capitalist reformers certainly won’t support more Drug War and should support decriminalization. Complete repeal of prohibition without some commercial regulation seems unlikely. So for that one “standard commercial model”, what will qualify as “standard” for capitalist marijuana advocates? How many grow licenses must be made available and how low must the application and licensing fees be to not be interpreted as an oligopolistic cash grab like Ohio’s Issue 3?

Next in the “Middle-Ground Options”, RAND discusses eight other possibilities for regulating marijuana as a legal product. How many of these options would be vetoed now by capitalist marijuana reformers as “anti-free market”?

Grow and Give (“allow adults to grow their own”) is the system currently in place in Washington DC and was the system in Alaska for decades before their legalization. Adults can cultivate a small amount of marijuana and possess and share it, but there is no commerce allowed in marijuana. Since this isn’t giving the market to anybody and legalizes the consumers buying from the black market, there shouldn’t be any conflict for capitalist marijuana reformers.

Buyers’ Club (“communal own-grow and distribution”) is a model like the Spanish collectives, which allow consumers to grow in co-operative gardens and sell the marijuana among the members at cost. This model would exemplify the small, artisanal-style grows favored by political left of the capitalist marijuana reformers, but would the business-minded right find it to be an unfair restraint on trade?

Coffee Shops (“retail sales only”) is the Dutch model, where the growing and wholesale distribution of cannabis is still strictly illegal, but the sales of small, personal-use amounts of marijuana are tolerated in well-regulated coffee shops. This model ends the arrests for personal possession and use, but home cultivators and commercial growers remains criminals. Could capitalist marijuana reformers bring themselves to support this scenario?

Government Control (“government operates the supply chain”) would be a system similar to Uruguay, where the government produces and sells all the marijuana, perhaps also including a registration system for marijuana consumers. Capitalist marijuana advocates would be sure to reject such a system, since it would be an actual monopoly.

Public Authority (“public authority – near monopoly”) would have a single government-sanctioned private entity in charge of marijuana production and distribution. This model insulates the state from its employees and agencies being charged with federal law violations. Functionally, however, it would be similar to the government control and monopolistic enough to earn the ire of capitalist marijuana reformers.

Allowing only Non Profit Organizations to grow and distribute marijuana may be one option governments consider to slow the growth and control the marketing of the marijuana industry. Perhaps some capitalist marijuana reformers could accept that growers would at least have those business opportunities available. But perhaps some would oppose this model for its lack of for-profit opportunities.

A compromise between non-profit and for-profit would be to allow For-Benefit Corporations to have sole control of the marijuana cultivation and sales. Twenty-seven states have this sort of corporate structure that allows some profit-making but also incorporates public-benefit considerations. This might be a more palatable option for some capitalist marijuana advocates.

Finally, there is the model just rejected in Ohio, the Structured Oligopoly (“very few monitored for-profit licensees”) where just a few licenses are granted, giving the government closer oversight of just a few regulated entities. Indeed, the ResponsibleOhio campaign explained that benefit to Ohioans in RAND’s own words: “A rogue company could more easily break the rules if it were one of 1,000 licensees than if it were one of just ten.”

This is a war my government declared on me. My enemies are not investors and capitalists. My enemies are cops and drug testers. So I will support every one of the options RAND proposes that moves us further from marijuana prohibition. Sadly, though, it seems there is now a faction of capitalist marijuana reformers who would only accept fewer than half of these options.