Legalize pot, former San Jose police chief says

Joseph D. McNamara
Sunday, July 25, 2010

California voters have a chance on this November's ballot to bring common sense to law enforcement by legalizing marijuana for adults. As San Jose's retired chief of police and a cop with 35 years experience on the front lines in the war on marijuana, I'm voting yes.

I've seen the prohibition's terrible impact at close range.

Like an increasing number of law enforcers, I have learned that most bad things about marijuana - especially the violence made inevitable by an obscenely profitable black market - are caused by the prohibition, not by the plant. Legal marijuana is long overdue, but leading up to November, wrongheaded opponents will implore Californians with the same old mistaken arguments to stay the course. Prohibition advocates will promote fear, and they will ignore the vast bulk of law enforcement and medical experience on marijuana. People should not be fooled by cannabis opponents' appeal to prejudices and emotions when they argue:

-- Regulating cannabis will result in an explosion of use by young people.


On the contrary, pot smoking may decrease. Experience and research show that the United States has among the world's harshest marijuana laws, yet our consumption rate leads the world and is twice that of the Netherlands, where cannabis sales to adults have been allowed for decades. Prohibition doesn't keep marijuana away from young people. Annual U.S. government surveys consistently show that more than 80 percent of teenagers say that marijuana is "easy" or "very easy" to obtain. In a recent study from Columbia University, teenagers said it is easier to get illegal marijuana than age-regulated alcohol. Under today's laws, pot-dealing criminals getting rich on marijuana Prohibition don't ask for ID, but licensed dealers selling alcohol do.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/25/IN1K1EGQRJ.DTL

Go CA voters!!!!!!

We need leaders to get the momentum going so the rest of the country will follow.

Some things about Prop 19 you may not have heard:

**Prop 19 legalizes only one ounce or less. That's right. 28 grams. Any amount over 1 oz will still be illegal.

Some supporters of this proposition are running around with their hair on fire saying those of us against this scam are trying to "keep people in jail". Well no one in California has been in jail for under an ounce of pot since the '70s. So these people are both ignorant of history and ignorant of this "legalization" proposition.

**Prop 19 makes *all* private sales *illegal*.
Nice work, create a new law while saying you're "legalizing" something.

**Prop 19 legalizes only a 5' by 5' square of growing space *Per Parcel* (not per PERSON). SO even if you have 20 acres if you have 4 roommates everyone gets a whopping square foot to grow on.

There are more things very troubling about this. Such as:

"Myth #9: Anyone can obtain a license to legally sell cannabis and compete in the market.
Fact: Few people will be able to compete in the multibillion-dollar marijuana market if the initiative passes. This is because the licensing process, engineered in Oakland, is exceptionally restrictive. Of the more than a thousand dispensaries operating in California until a recent L.A. crackdown, only a handful were licensed. (Conveniently, Richard Lee, the millionaire behind the initiative, owns one of them). In Oakland, the city that’s setting the precedent in the tax cannabis push, a license costs $30,000. Per year. Not to mention the rigorous application process, in which even well-established, law-abiding dispensaries have been denied.

Furthermore, Oakland has started a trend of capping the number of licensed dispensaries allowed to operate (in Oakland, that number is four). This all but guarantees that the average, small-time marijuana grower will be shut out of this multibillion-dollar industry, concentrating the profits of the potential economic boon in the hands of a small minority of wealthy entrepreneurs who are already making moves to monopolize the industry. Under this initiative, the marijuana industry will not be a free market in which everyone has a chance to compete. Instead, the initiative could mark the beginning of the corporatization of marijuana. (See also Fact #15)


WHY PRO-POT ACTIVISTS OPPOSE THE 2010 TAX CANNABIS INITIATIVE: 18 REASONS TO VOTE KNOW
by Dragonfly De La Luz who is:

"...a long-time pro-marijuana activist and professional stoner. i travel the world, find the best ganja, smoke it, and write about it for pot magazines (cannabis culture magazine, west coast cannabis, and skunk). i am the global ganja correspondent for "cannabis planet," a tv news show focused on cannabis news around the world. follow my column, "getting high with dragonfly," in which every month i evaluate a different strain."

http://votetaxcannabis2010.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-pro-pot-activists-oppose-2010-tax.html





“People think it’s legalization, it’s being sold as legalization—even though it’s the opposite of legalization.” - Dennis Peron, author of Prop. 215 that legalized medical marijuana in California (many 19 supporters have no idea who this person is)

But none of it surprises me in the slightest..

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"**Prop 19 makes *all* private sales *illegal*."

All sales all illegal? Hardly.
Selling without a license is illegal? Yes.

Kinda like alcohol and tobacco.

I can buy alcohol and tobacco from a legal vendor (one with a license).
I can also grow/brew my own.
However if I try to grow/brew my own and then sell it without a license I have violated the law.
The larger the size of the illegal operation the more likely law enforcement is to take notice.

I see nothing wrong with this.

The same standard that applies to alcohol and tobacco would apply to marijuana.

If you want to grow your own - fine.
If you want to legally purchase - fine
If you want to get into the marijuana industry - fine (but get a license).

He's at Stanford's Hoover Institute, basically a conservative think-tank.

When he was chief of police for San Jose, he supported gun control because he didn't like his cops getting shot.

Also when he was top cop, he was adamant about not condoning the police "code of silence." If we had more conservative cops like McNamara, we'd have a lot fewer assaults by police and subsequent cover-ups.