Rolling Cannabis Politics Thread

[i]which TOTALLY sounds like bullshit to me except that I always have this "no, that's not how I responded at all" reaction to indica strains. like, people'll say "a fun, mainly physical high" and I'll try it and go "by 'fun' do you mean 'contemplate your failures while lying on your back in the dark for three hours'"[/'i]

haha yeah I find this penchant for attempting to pseudo-scientifically quantify how weed affects various people to be really specious. It's such a variable drug and people respond so differently to it, I tend to dismiss any dispensed "wisdom" regarding effects to be mostly psychobabble.

damn bbc coding

Not to psychobabble, but indica is usually known as the fall-asleep variety, and not the laugh-your-ass-off variety.

no I know! my dude out here gave me indica strains for sleep - they did not have that effect at all. sativa strains? feel great and I can go directly to sleep or stay up and design desktop games for hours. it really is like they're totally different drugs which act differently in my body than they do in others'. I am otherwise a pretty baseline dude medically, ibuprofen for headaches, NKA, etc, but this is something I keep testing and it keeps coming up "indica is the one that keeps you awake"

i like getting blasted into space 9 times out of 10 but i know what you mean and the trick (IME) is just to smoke less weed. like even the weenciest little bit, an implausibly small amount that you would scoff at and say "bah! that wouldn't get me high for half a second!" of the most BYISI will do the trick

― flopson, Thursday, August 13, 2015 7:40 PM Bookmark

Yeah, usually a hit or two and I'm good. It's very rare that I smoke a whole bowl at once.

Texas?!?!

http://houston.cbslocal.com/2015/05/07/texas-house-panel-approves-full-legalization-of-marijuana-in-unprecedented-move/

“As a Christian, I recognize the innate goodness of everything God made and humanity’s charge to be stewards of the same,” wrote Simpson. “I don’t believe that when God made marijuana he made a mistake that government needs to fix.”

from may though? idgi, a panel approved it but it appears that is only one step to legalization? still seems like it needs some additional voting idk

yeah, it probably is not going to pass a full house vote, but I guess it is a step in the right direction

i'm very interested in seeing what happens w/ ohio tomorrow

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/us/on-ballot-ohio-grapples-with-specter-of-marijuana-monopoly.html?ribbon-ad-idx=5&rref=us

hope it fails. what a bizarre bill.

er proposition

truly an odd coalition

With help from Mr. Gould, he found 10 investment groups willing to put up a minimum of $2 million each to finance a campaign to pass an amendment that would legalize marijuana for medical use and personal use in small amounts; set up a commission to regulate it; and designate 10 parcels of land — each owned or optioned by funders of the initiative — where marijuana could be legally grown and cultivated for commercial use.

Adults 21 and older would also be allowed to grow small amounts of marijuana — up to four flowering plants — for themselves. The state commission would license retailers, who would be required to win elections in local precincts.

The backers call themselves ResponsibleOhio. Among the investors: the former professional basketball player Oscar Robertson, the fashion designer Nanette Lepore, Mr. Gould and two great-great-grand-nephews of President William Howard Taft. Each investment group has committed as much as $40 million to build facilities if Issue 3 passes.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2015/08/buddie_the_marijuana_mascot_dr.html

all my family lives there, i go there all the time, may move back someday

very confusing ballot questions, if i understand correctly:

1)if issue 3 passes, 10 facilities will be granted the exclusive right to cultivate/sell cannabis commercially (individuals can grow up to 4 plants for personal use) essentially creating an oligopoly (though people are calling it a monopoly)
2) if issue 2 passes, such state-sanctioned monopolies will be outlawed, effectively nullifying issue 3?

very weird idk

personally i think it is more important to have legal weed even if the commercial system is fucked up. lots of angry potheads don't like the monopoly but imo we can sort that out later

^ possibly the best outcome would be for the Ohio proposition to fail, but very narrowly, showing deep and widespread support for legalization, then a better proposition gets sponsored next election cycle or the legislature decides to act on its own.

yeah i wouldn't really care about the monopoly cuz i'd be growing my own. this would be huge just for the fact that we'd have a legal state o this side of the county.

country*

you can do it Ohio!

http://d47hr5yd1ya83.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ivoted.jpg

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/willie-nelson-crusade-stop-big-pot.html

wish i got to vote on cannabis legislation today but my state's fucking legislature sucks

"big pot" is really much better than no pot

the monopoly argument is not a good one imo . gotta ride the momentum when it's there

yea, if it fails bc of the monopoly thing it could be a very long while before OH sees it on the ballot again, it takes a shit load of money and effort to get rec weed on the ballot

also i <3 willie but willie has 24/7 access to small-farm homegrown pot anywhere he travels in the world and the same cannot be said for most of us so idk man

i don't smoke, but I'm more interested in keeping people out of jail so it was a yes vote for me

ppl are voting no bc they're concerned about it becoming a monopoly? HELLO PEOPLE there are important things at stake here!!!

Yeah from what I read the monopoly narrative stems greatly from the prohibitionist crowd as a last ditch effort to slow legalization on Ohio

the prohibitionists put the monopoly language in the bill iirc. (it's more like a cartel, but whatever)

do you get any sense that this will pass ?

everybody I know mostly favors legalization but most are voting against this because of the "monopoly". this is just my handful of friends tho. I get the sense it's doomed. hope I'm wrong.

from what i hear both issue 2 (anti-monopoly language) and issue 3 (legalization) are likely to pass

which will probably result in some messy legal shit

^ possibly the best outcome would be for the Ohio proposition to fail, but very narrowly, showing deep and widespread support for legalization, then a better proposition gets sponsored next election cycle or the legislature decides to act on its own.

― Aimless, Monday, November 2, 2015 2:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think this is the best outcome, like i said it takes a lot of effort to get something on the ballot and it could be a long time before it happens again. i don't see the ohio legislature acting on this independent of a ballot initiative fwiw

like 10 facilities permitted to grow/sell commercially plus individual growing rights is not a bad situation tbh

i mean it could be a lot better for sure but as brownie stated this cartel system is way better than people being imprisoned

I voted the same way brownie did for the same reasons. If it helps get rid of the idiotic "odor of marijuana" pretext for car searches, and the dumb cycle of petty drug bust --> convert to confidential informant --> bust the next guy --> turn him into an informant, and if it stops letting our police departments turn drug busts into ATMs via civil asset forfeiture, then I'm all for it.

so far it is getting killed by a 2-1 margin

RIP

oh wow. Are all precincts reporting? Recent polls indicated it would be much closer

welp RIP

lame Ohio

I'm considering the source while reading this, but this certainly *seems* suspicious. A small increase in the number of precincts reporting should not generally result in such a huge vote shift, assuming precincts are uniformly sized.

http://www.alternet.org/comments/drugs/was-ohios-marijuana-vote-stolen-tv-screen-shots-show-massive-number-votes-flipping

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/11/11/veterans-drop-hundreds-of-empty-pill-bottles-in-front-of-the-white-house/

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2015/12/02/the-marijuana-legalization-push-mass-just-got-little-more-clear/ysj6Ow9JBCocrMRwERAEdJ/story.html

A possible 2016 decision about marijuana legalization in Massachusetts got less complicated this week.

Massachusetts voters had faced the prospect of answering two separate pro-legalization ballot questions next November. But only one group believes its question is still standing.

The Committee to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol said Tuesday it had submitted enough signatures to the secretary of state to advance in the long process of getting a proposed law in front of voters.

“People can see that our current prohibition policy isn’t working, and they’re taking action to replace it with a more sensible system,” CRMLA campaign manager Will Luzier said in a statement.

Meanwhile the leader of Bay State Repeal, the group behind a competing ballot question, conceded Wednesday night that it had not gathered enough signatures.

“We didn’t make it,” Bay State Repeal’s Steve Epstein told Boston.com.

The two groups have pitched very different approaches to legalization.

CRMLA, backed by the national Marijuana Policy Project, proposes a tightly regulated system including a new state commission and an excise tax on pot sales.

Bay State Repeal, led by longtime local activists, sought what it called the least restrictive laws possible, such as allowing most existing retailers to sell marijuana and dividing light oversight of the industry between several existing state agencies.

The contrast between the groups spoke to a divide in national pot politics about how marijuana should be regulated as legalization becomes increasingly common. With only one question still standing, Massachusetts voters will not be thrown into the middle of the fight next fall.

But the rivalry will persist, in a form. On Wednesday Epstein said he would “use every skill in my power” to oppose CRMLA’s question, which he called a “bad law” that supports “crony capitalism.” (That marks a change in tune from earlier this fall, when Epstein said he “might hold my nose” and vote for CRMLA if it were the only one to make the ballot.)

i'm happy about that

i was definitely worried there would be 2 initiatives on the ballot and infighting between different legalization camps would mess things up enough to prevent any initiative from passing

But the rivalry will persist, in a form. On Wednesday Epstein said he would “use every skill in my power” to oppose CRMLA’s question, which he called a “bad law” that supports “crony capitalism.” (That marks a change in tune from earlier this fall, when Epstein said he “might hold my nose” and vote for CRMLA if it were the only one to make the ballot.)

this is bullshit imo, just suck it up dude and support the one that made it!!!

i sent hillary a letter yesterday by post asking her to support medical marijuana explicitly (so far she has just called for "more study" on the issue). it's so weird to me that she won't just embrace it though - medical marijuana has a huge amount of support, not just among democrats but for the general pop.

i dont follow politics especially closely but it does seem there is a conservatism on the issue among boomer politicians with a national profile who prob remember vividly when taking any remotely pro-cannabis stance would tarnish them