Marijuana Legalization: A Matter of Time

The push to legalize marijuana may have fallen short in California, but support for ending cannabis prohibition can no longer be labelled a “fringe” position -- Proposition 19 received hundreds of thousands more votes than the GOP candidate for governor -- with activists optimistic they’ll emerge victorious when they try again in 2012.

And as one of the country’s leading drug policy reform advocates tells Change.org, while the wait for a saner policy on pot unfortunately continues, legalization is only a matter of time -- and not just on the West Coast.

“I would say that there’s a better than 50/50 chance that both California and Colorado will have marijuana reform initiatives on the ballot in 2012,” says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “And there’s some chance that we’ll see it in a range of other states like Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Nevada, Maine -- basically the same states that were the first to legalize medical marijuana.”

Colorado in particular looks ripe for legalization, with polls suggesting a plurality of voters support allowing the recreational use of pot by adults. And despite the narrow defeat of Prop. 19, which would have done just that in the Golden State, local activist groups including the state chapter of NORML and the Women’s Cannabis Movement are aggressively campaigning to get a legalization initiative placed on the ballot in 2012, a presidential election year when young voters typically turn out in much greater numbers.

As the drive continues, though, activists will no doubt continue to debate what if any lessons they can draw from Prop. 19’s failure. Echoing many in the election’s aftermath, Russ Belville, NORML’s national outreach coordinator, argues the proposition’s drafters erred by including provisions that would’ve increased penalties for cannabis use among 18 to 21 year olds and prevented employers from firing people based solely on the fact that they might smoke pot outside of work -- the latter a provision that was grossly distorted by the California Chamber of Commerce in the lead up to the Nov. 2 election as enabling school bus drivers to drive stoned.

But Nadelmman cautions against drawing any sweeping conclusions. “When you look at the provisions, there’s a lot of speculation about you know, maybe if it had included this or not included that, it would’ve made a difference. But we don’t have any hard evidence one way or another.”

“I don’t even know if a different proposition may have passed, because I think to some extent what happened this year is this was the first time when we really began to talk about this issue,” says Nadelmann. “Ultimately, people are wary of change: they say they want things to change, but then when you present them with a specific option, they get nervous about the details.”

Illustrating that point, just under a third of those who voted against Prop. 19 nonetheless told pollsters they were supportive of legalization. While perhaps confounding -- and more than a little infuriating -- it’s also a reason to hope for the future.

Another reason for optimism? The increased acceptance and availability of medical marijuana, with Arizona this month becoming the 15th state to legalize its use. It’s no coincidence that support for legalization is highest in those states that have experience with a quasi-legal marijuana market, as residents soon realize the dire predictions made by fear-mongering opponents never come to be and the sky does not, in fact, fall. Even California's oft-bashed medical program retains the support of an overwhelming majority of voters, Republicans and Democrats alike.

“If one looks at what’s the contribution of the medical marijuana progress to broader marijuana legalization, I describe it as basically five steps forward and one step backward,” says Nadelmann. For one, the push to legalize medical marijuana in the 1990s changed the face of the typical pot smoker “from a 17 year old high school drop out with blonde dreadlocks and a tie-dye t-shirt to a middle-aged person struggling with some medical condition.” It also led to cannabis reform being discussed somberly -- sometime tearfully -- rather than with giggles and tired, Cheech-and-Chong era stoner jokes.

“And you know which group supports legalizing marijuana even more than people who have used marijuana? It’s people who know somebody that they believe uses marijuana for legitimate medical reasons," says Nadelmann. "Knowing a medical marijuana patient, personally knowing such a person, seems to increase support for the legalization of marijuana.”

But there's also that step back. By creating a means for people to obtain marijuana relatively easily and generally without fear of prosecution -- in California, just about anybody can obtain a medical card to buy pot from a dispensary -- medical marijuana programs can create a sense of complacency, as well as a constituency for whom the status quo really isn't all that bad, or at least not unbearable. And as evidenced by the majority opposition to Prop. 19 in California's pot-growing capital of Humboldt County, medical marijuana programs can also create a lobby of self-interested dispensary owners and growers eager to maintain their jacked up prices and black market profits -- and willing to campaign against further reform.

Overall, though, Nadelmanna argues medical marijuana has indisputably "advanced the broader movement" to end marijuana prohibition. And with support for legalization at an all-time high, he looks to be right, encouraging hope that, rather than ushering in the end of the world as according to Hollywood-ified Mayan lore, 2012 just might be the year voters start turning the corner on the country's destructive drug policies.

Photo Credit: Chuck Schneider