RESTANCE

By Chiristopher Ingraham

Voters in California, Massachusetts and Nevada approved recreational marijuana initiatives Tuesday night, and several other states passed medical marijuana provisions, in what is turning out to be the biggest electoral victory for marijuana reform since 2012, when Colorado and Washington first approved the drug's recreational use.

Of the five recreational marijuana initiatives on the ballot, three passed and one more — in Maine — was leading early Wednesday in preliminary vote totals. A similar measure in Arizona was trailing with 68 percent of votes counted.

On the medical side, voters in Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas have approved medical marijuana initiatives. A separate measure in Montana that would loosen restrictions on an existing medical pot law was leading early Wednesday with only 30 percent of votes counted.

Reformers were jubilant. “This represents a monumental victory for the marijuana reform movement,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement. “With California’s leadership now, the end of marijuana prohibition nationally, and even internationally, is fast approaching.”

California has long been seen as a bellwether by both supporters and opponents of marijuana reform. The state is home to about 12 percent of the U.S. population. Given the size of the state's economy and the economic impact of the marijuana industry there, California's adoption of legal marijuana could prompt federal authorities to rethink their decades-long prohibition on the use of marijuana.

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In a recent interview with Bill Maher, President Obama said that passage of the legalization measures on Tuesday could make the current federal approach to the drug “untenable.”

Still, the likelihood of a Trump White House leaves a lot of uncertainty about the fate of marijuana measures in the next four years. Under Obama, federal authorities largely took a hands-off approach to state-level legalization efforts. But an incoming administration more skeptical of drug reform could easily reverse that approach.

“The prospect of Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie as attorney general does not bode well,” the Drug Policy Alliance's Nadelmann said in an interview. “There are various ways in which a hostile White House could trip things up.”

Still, Nadelmann pointed to the success of marijuana measures in the midst of an evident Republican wave as a sign that support for legalization now cuts deeply across party lines. And citing Trump's often contradictory statements on marijuana and drug use in the past, Nadelmann added that “Donald Trump personally could probably go any which way on this.”

With today's votes, legal marijuana is also making significant inroads in the Northeast. “Marijuana legalization has arrived on the East Coast,” said Tom Angell of the marijuana reform group Marijuana Majority in an email. “What Colorado and other states have already done is generating revenue, creating jobs and reducing crime, so it’s not surprising that voters in more places are eager to end prohibition.”

Opponents of legalization said they were disappointed by the outcomes. “We were outspent greatly in both California and Massachusetts, so this loss is disappointing, but not wholly unexpected,” said Kevin Sabet of the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana in a statement. “Despite having gained considerable ground in the last few weeks, the out-of-state interests determined to make money off of legalization put in too much money to overcome.”

Votes on medical marijuana in Florida and North Dakota were decisive. Florida's Amendment 2 passed with 71 percent support, according to the Associated Press. In North Dakota, the AP reports that 64 percent of voters approving of the medical marijuana measure.

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Two years ago, a medical marijuana measure in Florida earned 58 percent of the vote, just shy of the 60 percent threshold needed for passage. Then, as now, opposition to the measure was fueled by multimillion-dollar donations from Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate and GOP donor. In 2014 Adelson spent $5.5 million to defeat the measure. This year he's spent $1.5 million in Florida, and several million more to defeat recreational marijuana measures in other states.

“This is a major tipping point,” said Tom Angell of Florida's vote. “With Florida's decision, a majority of states in the U.S. now have laws allowing patients to find relief with medical marijuana, and these protections and programs are no longer concentrated in certain regions of the country like the West and Northeast.”

The victory in North Dakota is something of a surprise as no polling was done on the measure.

The Florida amendment has the potential to be one of the more permissive medical marijuana regimes in the nation. In addition to diseases like HIV, cancer and PTSD, the measure also allows doctors to recommend medical pot for “other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated, and for which a physician believes that the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the potential health risks for a patient.” While the 2014 measure allowed doctors to prescribe marijuana for any illness they believed it would be useful for, the new measure requires they show the illness is severe — though the wording gives physicians considerable leeway in determining which conditions would meet those criteria.

The medical pot measure in North Dakota allows doctors to recommend the drug for a number of severe medical conditions.

With the passage of Amendment 2, Florida will become the first Southern state to enact a robust medical marijuana regime. Medical marijuana is already legal in 25 other states and the District.

“Better late than never,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the drug reform group Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement. “Most states outside the South already have legal medical marijuana, but the overwhelming victory today in Florida is likely to accelerate the momentum for reform throughout the region.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

By THOMAS FULLERNOV. 9, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO — California, Massachusetts and Nevada legalized marijuana on Tuesday in what advocates said was a reflection of the country’s changing attitude toward the drug.

Leading up to the election, recreational marijuana use was legal in four states: Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, along with Washington, D.C.

With the addition of California, Massachusetts and Nevada, the percentage of Americans living in states where marijuana use is legal for adults rose above 20 percent, from 5 percent.

Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon and a supporter of legalization, said Tuesday’s votes would add to the pressure on the federal government to treat cannabis like alcohol, allowing each state to decide on its own regulations.

“The new administration is not going to want to continue this toxic and nonproductive war on drugs,” Mr. Blumenauer said.

The federal government’s ban on the drug precludes the interstate sale of cannabis, even among the states that have approved its use. But Tuesday’s votes created a marijuana bloc stretching down the West Coast, and Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, said he saw an opportunity for the states where recreational marijuana is now legal to “coordinate and collaborate” on the issue, including applying pressure in Washington to relax the federal ban.

A Gallup poll in October found nationwide support for legalization at 60 percent, the highest level in the 47 years the organization has tracked the issue.

Support is rising even though some public health experts warn that there have been insufficient studies of the drug’s effects and that law enforcement agencies lack reliable tests and protocols to determine whether a driver is impaired by marijuana.

Supporters in California portrayed legalization as both a social justice and a criminal justice issue, saying the measure would help redress the disproportionate numbers of arrests and convictions among minorities for drug crimes.

“I think of this victory in California as a major victory,” said Lauren Mendelsohn, the chairwoman of the board of directors of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a group that has campaigned against the government’s war on drugs. “It shows the whole country that prohibition is not the answer to the marijuana question.”

Ms. Mendelsohn spoke at a celebration in Oakland for the passage of Proposition 64, as California’s legalization measure was known.

Supporters of legalization in California vastly outspent opponents.

As of Nov. 6, pro-legalization committees in the state had raised around $23 million, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Chief among the backers were marijuana companies and tech entrepreneurs, including Sean Parker, a founder of the file-sharing service Napster and a former president of Facebook, who was the single largest donor to the campaign. The anti-legalization campaign had spent less than $2 million in California.

Kevin Sabet, the president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, one of the country’s major funders against marijuana legalization initiatives, attributed the imbalance in campaign spending to investments by marijuana companies hoping to profit if the industry was legalized.

“There’s a lot of money to be made if marijuana is legal, not a lot of money to be made if it remains illegal,” he said.

Opponents of legalization say the adoption of medical marijuana laws in more than 25 states has led to a popular perception that cannabis is good for you. They have called for more studies on the drug’s long-term effects, particularly on the developing brains of young people.

“There is likely medical promise in the marijuana plant, but that is different than saying smoked marijuana is medicine,” Mr. Sabet said. “We wouldn’t smoke the opium plant to get the beneficial effects of morphine.”

A bill to legalize marijuana in Vermont, supported by Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, failed earlier this year. But in Massachusetts, public support for legalization rose during the fall, even with bipartisan opposition from the state’s top elected officials — including Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, and Attorney General Maura Healey, a Democrat — and an organized anti-legalization campaign.

Lawmakers in Rhode Island were watching Massachusetts closely, and they are expected to take up a legalization measure of their own now that one has passed there.

Two other states — Arizona and Maine — were voting on recreational marijuana legalization Tuesday. In Maine, a state with a libertarian streak that began decriminalizing marijuana decades ago, the referendum on legalization drew scant funded opposition.

Still, proponents of legalization said California would represent the biggest victory because of its huge economy and population and also its fertile soil and amenable climate.

Tuesday’s vote reinforced the state’s position as the epicenter of marijuana cultivation for the country, a role it has had illicitly for decades. Marijuana companies have been positioning themselves for the prospect of interstate commerce, buying large plots of land in areas that now grow vegetables and other crops.

The California measure allows people over 21 to possess limited amounts of marijuana for personal use and also permits the personal cultivation of up to six plants in private residences, provided they are shielded from public view. The sale of recreational marijuana will not be allowed until licenses are issued, a process that will take at least two years, said Steve DeAngelo, the founder of Harborside, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland.

California officials expect additional tax revenue of around $1 billion from marijuana sales. The revenue is earmarked for the study of medical marijuana, for the California Highway Patrol to develop procedures to determine driver impairment due to marijuana consumption, for youth education on drugs, and for the prevention of environmental damage from marijuana production, among other programs.

Support for legalization in California cut across all age groups except voters over 65, according to a Field poll released on Friday. Among those older voters, 42 percent were in favor, and 57 percent were against.

A large majority of Republicans in the poll, 65 percent, were against the measure, compared with 72 percent support among Democrats.

Support has been rising steadily since the 1960s, when only around 10 percent of California adults favored legalization, according to a 1969 Field poll, and legalization was the culmination of decades of campaigning by proponents. A measure to decriminalize marijuana in 1972 was soundly rejected in California, with 66.5 percent of voters opposed to it. In 1996, California voted to allow medical marijuana. But a 2010 measure to permit recreational use failed.

In addition to Tuesday’s votes on recreational marijuana, Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota all had medical marijuana initiatives on the ballot.

Original Article