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Cannabis Legal, Localities Begin to Just Say No
Posted by CN Staff on January 27, 2014 at 05:17:26 PT
By Kirk Johnson
Source: New York Times
Yakima, Wash. -- The momentum toward legalized marijuana might seem like an inevitable tide, with states from Florida to New York considering easing laws for medical use, and a full-blown recreational industry rapidly emerging in Colorado and here in Washington State.But across the country, resistance to legal marijuana is also rising, with an increasing number of towns and counties moving to ban legal sales. The efforts, still largely local, have been fueled by the opening, or imminent opening, of retail marijuana stores here and in Colorado, as well as by recent legal opinions that have supported such bans in some states.
At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues from marijuana sales — promised by legalization’s supporters and now eagerly anticipated by state governments — that could be sharply reduced if local efforts to ban such sales expand.But the fight also signals a larger battle over the future of legal marijuana: whether it will be a national industry providing near-universal access, or a patchwork system with isolated islands of mainly urban sales. To some partisans, the debate has echoes to the post-Prohibition era, when “dry towns” emerged in some states in response to legalized alcohol. “At some point we have to put some boundaries,” said Rosetta Horne, a nondenominational Christian church minister here in Yakima, at a public hearing on Tuesday night where she urged the City Council to enact a permanent ban on marijuana businesses.Though it seems strongest in more rural and conservative communities, the resistance has been surprisingly bipartisan. In states from Louisiana to Indiana that are discussing decriminalizing marijuana, Republican opponents of relaxing the drug laws are finding themselves loosely allied with Democratic skeptics. Voices in the Obama administration concerned about growing access have joined antidrug crusaders like Patrick J. Kennedy, a Democratic former United States representative from Rhode Island, who contends that the potential health risks of marijuana have not been adequately explored, especially for juveniles — and who has written and spoken widely about his own struggles with alcohol and prescription drugs.“In some ways I think the best thing that could have happened to the anti-legalization movement was legalization, because I think it shows people the ugly side,” said Kevin A. Sabet, a former drug policy adviser to President Obama and the executive director and co-founder, with Mr. Kennedy, of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. The group, founded last year, supports removing criminal penalties for using marijuana, but opposes full legalization, and is working with local organizations around the nation to challenge legalization.“If legalization advocates just took a little bit more time and were not so obsessed with doing this at a thousand miles per hour,” he added, “it might be better. Instead, they are helping precipitate a backlash.”In Washington, the Yakima County Commission has already said that it plans to ban marijuana businesses in the unincorporated areas outside Yakima city. Clark County, Washington, is considering a ban on recreational sales that would affect the huge marijuana market in Portland, Ore., just across the Columbia River. And the state’s second most populous county, Pierce, just south of Seattle, said last month it would bar recreational businesses from opening.Pockets of retrenchment have emerged in other states as well. In California, one of 20 states and the District of Columbia that allow marijuana use for medical purposes, a state appeals court said late last year that local governments could prohibit the growing of medical marijuana. Fresno County promptly did so, becoming the first county in the state, medical marijuana advocates said, to ban all marijuana cultivation.Lawmakers in Oregon are considering a bill that would allow municipalities to restrict or prohibit medical marijuana. Colorado’s recreational marijuana law opened for business Jan. 1 with retail sales, but dozens of local governments, including Colorado Springs, the state’s second-largest city, have prohibited marijuana commerce.National politicians, from Mr. Obama on down, appear just as conflicted. Mr. Obama said last week that he believed the “experiment” in Washington State and Colorado should be allowed, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday that the Justice and Treasury Departments were developing guidelines to make it easier for legal marijuana businesses to obtain banking services, currently prohibited under federal law. But at the same time, a senior federal Drug Enforcement Agency official recently expressed alarm that marijuana use and access are spreading so rapidly.Here in Yakima, an agricultural city of wine and apples, population 93,000, each side in Tuesday’s often emotional two-hour Council meeting talked about risk. Proponents of the ban said they feared that neighborhoods and cherished patterns of life would be harmed by recreational marijuana businesses. Opponents, including some marijuana business license applicants, warned of economic harm and legal liability if the ban passed.By the evening’s end, the vote was not close — 6 to 1 for a complete prohibition of marijuana businesses.Yakima’s course, council members said, was bolstered by the state’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, who this month issued a nonbinding legal opinion that local governments could ban recreational marijuana under I-502, the initiative legalizing recreational marijuana that Washington voters approved in 2012. Critics said Mr. Ferguson’s reasoning flew against the intent of the law, which says that marijuana must be available to all state residents.But even before his opinion, resistance was growing. Across Washington, local moratoriums or bans covering more than 1.5 million people — about one in five residents — were in place by mid-January, according to a pro-legalization research group in Seattle, the Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy.On a broader level, some legal experts say the emerging opposition to legal marijuana could lead to legal challenges that strike at the heart of the legalization laws in Colorado and Washington — or affirm them.Experts expect legal challenges to local bans from would-be marijuana business operators. In anticipation of such litigation, some communities are already claiming that they have the legal right to ban legal sellers and growers because the drug remains illegal under federal law. “Federal law trumps this,” said Bill Lover, a Yakima City Council member who voted for the ban.“We don’t think they win,” said Alison Holcomb, the criminal justice director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, and leader of 2012’s ballot initiative. She added that legal precedents for states ignoring federal law went back at least to the end of Prohibition, when many states simply refused to enforce federal laws forbidding the sale of alcohol. “This is essentially how alcohol prohibition was repealed,” she said.A deeper engine driving opposition to legal marijuana is anxiety about the ways that the rapid expansion of marijuana shops and increasingly easy access to the drug might change communities. None of the new local bans affect possession of marijuana for personal use, which is legal statewide in Washington.“This is not about the adult being able to smoke a joint,” said Mr. Sabet of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. “It’s about widespread access, it’s about changing the landscape of a neighborhood, it’s about widespread promotion and advertising, and it’s about youth access.”Supporters of legalization say that because voters statewide approved a system guaranteeing adults access to legal marijuana, they will push state regulators and lawmakers to meet that mandate, possibly by pushing for penalties against local governments that enact bans.But Dave Ettl, a Yakima City Council member who voted for the ban, said he was willing to risk penalties, saying he considered the promised tax revenues from marijuana sales tainted.“There’s some money that’s not worth getting,” he said.A version of this article appears in print on January 27, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cannabis Legal, Localities Begin to Just Say NoSource: New York Times (NY)Author:   Kirk JohnsonPublished: January 27, 2014 - A1Copyright: 2014 The New York Times CompanyContact: letters nytimes.comWebsite: http://www.nytimes.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/NYsFOAmCCannabisNews  -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #6 posted by schmeff on January 28, 2014 at 07:58:55 PT
"Wrong Way Sabet"-Lost in the Weeds (Again)
“In some ways I think the best thing that could have happened to the anti-legalization movement was legalization, because I think it shows people the ugly side."Seriously? Legal cannabis is uglier than Prohibition? Uglier than locking folks in cages for consuming the Creator's green plants? Uglier than shooting children in the back of the head while they're handcuffed and face down on the floor? Uglier than tearing families apart? Uglier than creating an permanently unemployable class of citizenry, mostly made of minorities? Kevin Sabet still sounds as if he's lost his mind.As for comparing localities who might still wish to insist on cannabis prohibition with dry counties after alcohol prohibition, how many dry counties are left? Sure, there are some, just as there are those who still believe the Earth is flat, but you'd be hard-pressed to call it mainstream.
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Comment #5 posted by afterburner on January 28, 2014 at 07:30:44 PT
At 1000 mpg, We Could Circle Earth 27,393.75 Times
“If legalization advocates just took a little bit more time and were not so obsessed with doing this at a thousand miles per hour,” [Kevin A. Sabet, a former drug policy adviser to President Obama,] added, 1000 mph is slightly less than the rotational speed of the Earth. 24 hours * 1000 mi/hr = 24,000 mi. "The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers)." --What is the circumference of the earth? http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzcircumference.htm If legalization advocates were really travelling at 1000 mph, why did it take 75 years before 2 states passed legalization initiatives? 1937 Marihuana Tax Act illegalizes cannabis. 2012 Colorado and Washington State pass voter initiatives to legalize cannabis. 75 years of plodding in the wilderness. Enough already! At 1000 mpg, we could circle Earth 27,393.75 times in 75 years. (75 years * 365.25 days/yr = 27,393.75 rotations). 
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Comment #4 posted by The GCW on January 27, 2014 at 19:58:31 PT
The Table of the Lord is NOT defiled.
"""we have to put some boundaries,” said Rosetta Horne, a nondenominational Christian church minister here in Yakima, at a public hearing on Tuesday night where she urged the City Council to enact a permanent ban on marijuana businesses."""-0-It's always disturbing when a Christian Church minister type opposes cannabis. What are they doing?They're saying the Table of the Lord is defiled, the Table of the Lord is to be despised. -as described in Malachi 1:6-14 subtitled, Sin of the Priests - NASB). -0-Cannabis prohibition is a tool used by the devil to separate people from utilizing the communication system, which Christ Jesus taught about, known as the “spirit of truth” (see John 14-16). It’s available to those who love one another and we cannot love someone and cage or punish them for using what God says is good on the very 1st page of the Bible, at the same time. Cannabis prohibition was predicted ahead of time in 1 Timothy 4:1-5, where it also describes who will be doing the dirty deed as those who “will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.” In that same passage is the only Biblical restriction to using cannabis: to use it with thankfulness. People and groups who wish to follow the teachings of Christ Jesus should not support or enable the devil law or influence other’s to do so. -0-More, In that section of John 14 -16 it tells Us that people who obey Christ and love one another are the "friend" of God.That leads Me to believe Rosetta Horne, a nondenominational Christian church minister is NOT a "friend" of God's.And check this out. Christians understand We have eternal life. OK. But there may be different forms of eternal life. The "Christian" who doesn't love one another and is not the "friend" of God may have a different eternal life than a Christian who obeys Christ's request and IS the friend of God.
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Comment #3 posted by wyo on January 27, 2014 at 12:28:29 PT:
Colorado
Well I purchased my first legal recreational mj in Colorado yesterday. Wait was only about 15 minutes and they had an express checkout too. I choose to wait cus I wanted more time deciding on strains. I got to meet tons of nice people while I was there. I picked up purple urkle and some lemon skunk. Wont be long before other states follow.The media completely distorted reality of low supply, high prices, and long lines. Dont believe that hype!
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Comment #2 posted by runruff on January 27, 2014 at 11:02:02 PT
She's baaaaaaaak!
Michele [DEAths R Us] Leonhart-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/27/michele-leonhart-speech_n_4674181.html#closeOverlay
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Comment #1 posted by pijion on January 27, 2014 at 10:55:57 PT
Cheap physiology
The sky is falling! the sky is falling!!!Ha ha ha!3 years later after the dust settles things will been "business as usual".“If legalization advocates just took a little bit more time and were not so obsessed with doing this at a thousand miles per hour,”NOT FAST ENOUGH IF YOU ASK ME!!
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