Posted November 4, 2004
Analysis by Richard Cowan Sponsored by

Advanced Nutrients.

I have noticed that a lot of people are quoting Winston
Churchill today: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all
those others that have been tried.”

The good news is that the mechanical problems with
American democracy were not as serious as they were four years ago. The bad news
is that there are still major substantive problems that are much harder to fix.
Making democracy work is not easy. Nor is democracy easy to understand.

Just looking at the election results, the cannabis
reform movement did not appear to do too badly on Tuesday. However, well before
election day, millions of dollars were wasted by MPP in failed efforts to get
cannabis initiatives on the ballots in Arkansas, Nevada, and elsewhere.
See

Richard Lee’s Oakland Initiative To Be On November Ballot, But MPP’s Nevada
Initiative May Not Make It, And IT SHOULD NOT! Fiasco Embarrasses and Undermines
Cannabis Movement With Mandatory Minimums!

One hopes that the major funders of the
anti-prohibitionist movement will notice that their money was not just wasted
but sometimes did actual harm to the movement. Moreover, in the states where we
failed, the money was sometimes misspent. At some point there will need to be a
“post-mortem” so that we can learn from the mistakes on “our” side.

The NORML press release below outlines the results in
the various state and local initiatives, but there are a few points which they
did not address.

First,
I think that it is important to note that in Montana, a
very conservative state,  the medical cannabis initiative passed by a huge
margin with 63% of the vote, exceeding the total for Bush/Cheney, 59%.

The same voters overwhelmingly voted to ban “gay
marriage.” The obvious message is that medical cannabis is not a “liberal”
issue. Moreover, Montanans voted for medical cannabis over the objections of
both gubernatorial candidates and the outgoing governor as well. They also
rejected the propagandizing by the Drug Czar and his little helpers.

On the other hand, Oregon, which is thought of as
socially liberal and was the first state to decriminalization cannabis in the
1970s, an liberalization of the state’s medical cannabis law lost by a wide
margin, getting only 42% of the vote. (Kerry won with 51%.)

However, it is Alaska that offers the most interesting
case study in the substantive problems in making democracy work.
See

http://www.yeson2alaska.com/
and

Legalization Initiative To Be On November Ballot In Alaska. Good Prospects for
Winning. It Should Influence Debate In Canada.

As the web site

http://www.alaskahemp.org notes, “Four years ago, 41% of Alaska voters
supported not only the decriminalization of marijuana and hemp, but also what
was probably the most “radical” amnesty proposal ever presented to voters in
this country.”

Well, this time we got 43%.

However, what I find most
interesting and encouraging – even though we lost – is the fact that 43% of
Alaskans supported the full legalization of cannabis in the face almost a
century of reefer madness, heavy campaigning by the Drug Czar, and the vicious
opposition of almost the entire state establishment, which lied shamelessly,
just as they did in 2000.
From 2000 see

Lies and Hatred From Former US Attorney In Alaska. As Bad As It Gets.

On October 30th, just days before the
election, the Anchorage Daily News carried an Op-ed by Dr. Paul Worrell, the
head of the Alaska State Medical Association, organized quackery.

Worrel claimed, “Marijuana use can lead to poor
motivation syndrome and increased rates of schizophrenia and depression.  Its
use can lead to lung diseases such as asthma, emphysema and even lung cancer….

See

Parents The Pro-Drug? Are Nagging Parents Driving Their Kids to Drink? Driving
Schizophrenics Paranoid? Can We Drive the Media to Think?
and

Claim Three: “Smoking Marijuana Can Lead To Abnormal Functioning Of Lung
Tissue.” New Scientist Special Report
and

If Cannabis Didn’t Cause Cancer, They Would Tell Us, Right? No, It Would
Undermine Cannabis Prohibition. Hiding the Truth In Plain Sight. Another One We
Could Not Make Up!

And, of course, “In addition, marijuana is a gateway
drug.”
See
The
Gateway Theory Won’t Die Because It Tells Prohibitionists Something They Want to
Believe, But The Truth Tells Them Something They Refuse to Hear.
and

Calling All Quacks: The Therapeutic Police State and the Politicization of
Medicine. Doctors Cannot Study The Violence of Cannabis Prohibition. Because
They Are The Disease, Not The Cure.

To make matters even worse, Alaska’s Lt.  Governor,
Loren Leman, illegally wrote a very biased ballot summary of the Initiative.
Even the prohibitionist media were outraged, but the damage was done.

What happened in Alaska is an extreme example of the
deliberate subversion of the democratic process by the prohibitionist
establishment. I hope that over the next two years, or however long it takes to
get another initiative on the ballot, that much effort will be devoted to
demonstrating the degree of malfeasance used to maintain cannabis prohibition in
Alaska. It is a microcosm of the global problem.

Lincoln said, you can’t fool all of the people all of
the time, but it is certainly possible to fool 57% of them every few years. What
happened in Alaska should be recognized as a threat to the democratic system.

To give Churchill the last word: “It would be a great
reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as
folly.”

We must use the Internet to do just that. We are
winning.

From the NORML Foundation
1600 K Street, N.W. Suite 501
Washington, DC 20006
202-483-5500 (p)
202-483-0057 (f)

www.norml.org

foundation@norml.org

November 3, 2004

Voters Nationwide Embrace Marijuana Law Reform Proposals

Washington, DC: Voters nationwide approved numerous
ballot proposals liberalizing marijuana laws, including a statewide measure in
Montana legalizing the use of medicinal cannabis for medical purposes, and a
citywide proposal in Oakland mandating police to make the prosecution of pot
offenses the city’s “lowest law enforcement priority.”

While this year’s election was not a clean sweep for
marijuana law reform initiatives, voters backed the majority of proposals put
before them, particularly on the municipal level.

In Oakland, California, 64 percent of voters approved
Measure Z, which directs the Oakland Police Department to make the
“investigation, citation, and arrest for private adult cannabis offenses the
lowest law enforcement priority, effective immediately upon passage of this
ordinance.”  Measure Z also mandates the city of Oakland “to tax and regulate
the sale of cannabis for adult use, so as to keep it off the streets and away
from children and to raise revenue for the city, as soon as possible under state
law.”

In Columbia, Missouri, voters backed a pair of measures
seeking to liberalize local pot laws.  Approximately 70 percent of voters
approved The Missouri Medical Marijuana Initiative (Proposition 1), which amends
the Columbia city criminal code so that “adults who obtain and use marijuana
and/or marijuana paraphernalia for medical purposes pursuant to the
recommendation of a physician shall not be subject to any arrest, prosecution,
punishment, or sanction.”

Six out of ten Columbia voters also approved The
Missouri Smart Sentencing Initiative (Proposition 2), which amends the city
criminal code to depenalize the possession of marijuana and/or paraphernalia to
a fine-only offense.

In Michigan, an estimated 75 percent of voters in Ann
Arbor approved Proposal C, the Ann Arbor Medical Marijuana Act, which directs
the city to allow qualified patients to possess and cultivate marijuana for
medicinal purposes under the authorization of their physician. Detroit voters
endorsed a similar initiatives this past August.

In Montana, 63 percent of voters approved a similar
statewide measure, I-148, which legalizes authorized patients to possess up to
six marijuana plants and one usable ounce of marijuana to treat certain
qualified medical conditions, including cancer, AIDS, and Multiple Sclerosis.

Montana is the tenth state to exempt medicinal marijuana
patients from state criminal penalties, and is the seventh to do so via state
initiative. Other states that have enacted laws protecting qualified patients
who use marijuana include: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
Maryland, Nevada, Vermont and Washington.

In Massachusetts, voters in three state Senate and eight
House districts overwhelmingly backed several non-binding “public policy
questions” depenalizing the possession of marijuana for personal use, and
legalizing the medical use of cannabis for patients who possess a doctor’s
authorization.

On the local level, only one marijuana law reform
proposal - Berkeley, California’s Measure R, which sought to replace the city’s
10-plant medical cannabis limit with an amount in accordance with a patient’s
needs - failed to gain majority support from voters.
(MarijuanaNews note: There is
still a slight hope of its passing on a recount.)

At the state level, both Oregon’s Measure 33, which
sought to greatly expand the state’s existing medicinal cannabis law, and
Alaska’s Measure 2, which sought to eliminate all criminal penalties on the
adult possession and use of marijuana and encouraged the state legislature to
establish a system to regulate marijuana “in a manner similar to alcohol or
tobacco,” failed to gain voter approval.  Oregon voters rejected Measure 33 by a
vote of 58 to 42 percent, while Alaskans voted against Measure 2 by a vote of 57
to 43 percent.

NORML Foundation Executive Director Keith Stroup said
that the outcome of yesterday’s ballot initiatives was generally positive.
“What these results appear to be telling us is that Americans strongly support
reforming America’s marijuana laws, but that they prefer to do so
incrementally,” he said.  “The results, once again, affirm that a majority of US
citizens strongly back the legalization of medical marijuana for qualified
patients, and that they don’t want adults who use marijuana responsibly to face
arrest or jail.”

For more information, please contact Keith Stroup or
Allen St. Pierre at (202) 483-5500.

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