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in Colorado and the state of Washington
they voted to legalize marijuana not for
medical use but for recreational use
Oregon turned it down This means that
states can regulate control and tax the
sale of marijuana in small quantities
Today the state of Washington looked at
75 years of a national marijuana
prohibition and said "It is time for a
new
approach." Initiative 502 was an
initiative to legalize tax and regulate
marijuana We collected 355,000
signatures and turned them in on
December 30th 2011 which then made it a
bill before our local government which
they didn't choose to enact it And so it
became a ballot initiative for the
November 6th general election And
initiative 502 passed by 55% majority of
votes Initiative 502 makes it legal
after December 6th for individuals 21
and over to possess 1 ounce of marijuana
in bud form 16 ounces of a marijuana in
infused uh solid form and 72 ounces of
marijuana infused products in liquid
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form Welcome to the Green Buddha patient
co-op Um the uh we are the oldest
established uh co-op dispensary in the
city of Seattle in Washington state and
we're about 3,000 patients I would say
50% of my patients are cancer patients
and um maybe about um one fifth of our
patients are MS or MD patients I love it
You can tell he's a ham am I right he
knows what a camera is
He's a very special bird He detects for
my seizure disorder I have three
conditions um for which I'm authorized
for medical cannabis and one of them is
seizure disorder It's like a mild
epilepsy and he gives me a 15 20 minute
notice before I'm going to have a
seizure Really yes How they don't know
how Um in this country about 15% of dogs
can be trained for such um about 15% of
parrots and as an interesting FY 100% of
the snakes get it Really yes So can you
prevent the seizure itself i then get
medicated off of cannabis and it stops
my seizures down cold What do you think
about the success of I502 i am overjoyed
I am uh 54 years old I have waited all
my life to see uh cannabis be legal I
think it is absolutely the same position
Reappropriate resources so that we can
actually go after true crime Um I really
think that what one person does
individually in his home if it's not
bothering other people it should not
really have any concern whatsoever of
the federal
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government This is not just an issue
about marijuana It's not just an issue
about raising revenue by taxing
marijuana This is an issue of social
justice In Seattle for instance 35% of
all of the marijuana arrests for years
had been of African-Americans even
though African-Americans made up only 9%
or 8% of the city's population Whites
actually use it a little bit more But
African-Americans are arrested at three
times the rate of white people On
average there's about 9,000 to 10,000
marijuana arrests in Washington state
per year Since 2000 to
2010 over $216 million has been spent
statewide for the enforcement of small
amounts of marijuana possession charges
across the
state The Washington State Look at
Control Board will issue licenses to
growers and producers and sellers It
will then enforce adherence to the rules
and regulations that it's written It
starts a one-year rulemaking process in
December where the liquor control board
which is our statewide agency will start
promulgating all the rules when it comes
to the supply side There's no industry
right now in the United States or in
Washington state for the cultivation and
distribution of marijuana So there's a
lot of regulations and rules that need
to be promulgated with input from the
public and input from the experts who
know how to deal with marijuana those
that are growing right now You have to
be a resident of Washington state to be
one of these licenses You can be both a
grower and a processor but you can't be
all three because we wanted to prevent
vertical integration within the system
and didn't want to have a monopoly
established by one organization
Washington is best known for apples We
export them all over the world and
marijuana would be our number two cash
crop after apples And now what we're
able to do is we're able to tax that
market and bring some of those proceeds
back to our own state The Office of
Financial Management which is an
independent agency within our government
did an analysis of the initiative 502
tax structure and a projected about a
half a billion dollars would be
generated every year from the tax
structure We know that the number one
reason or a huge reason why people end
up misusing drugs is because they lack
certain basic health care And so we
wanted to make sure that we were
addressing that harm reduction approach
by giving money money to basic health
The state of Washington I think did it
the right way and it substituted for
criminal penalties what I believe is a
solid public health approach Earm
funding will go through the Department
of Health to establish an education
campaign public education to provide
treatment resources throughout the state
Funding will go to the Department of
Social and Health Services to set up
statewide prevention programs targeting
young people in middle school and in
high school Funding will also go to the
two major research universities in the
state of Washington to conduct research
on marijuana
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For some people marijuana is
legitimately harmful And they ask a
legitimate question If marijuana is
harmful then why increase the harm by
legalizing it that misses some of the
point because they don't see the harm of
criminalizing it and they don't see the
benefits of legalizing it The access to
marijuana already appears to be very
high uh something like 50% of uh kids by
the time they've graduated from high
school have already uh had exposure to
and experimented with marijuana and u
something like 50% of adults in
Washington state uh report that they've
used marijuana uh in times past So
access is already very high We have many
states in uh in the United States that
have decriminalized marijuana and they
did not see a large increase of uh use
The difference between those states and
this one is we are actually creating a
mechanism where you can have the lawful
production and sale of marijuana There
was another type of opponent for I502
that we hadn't really seen before and
those were medical marijuana industry
activists Everybody who was against the
initiative was basically making money
off the unregulated environment of
marijuana Whether that's the Washington
Sheriff's Association which in essence
makes a living off the unregulated
environment or um many of my fellow
medical marijuana dispensaries We went
from five dispensaries to about 140 in
the space of 6 months My belief is that
once 502 has fully come in and the
stores the state licensed stores are set
up that whole industry kind of
collapses I don't like it personally but
it's time for a conversation about
legalizing marijuana What if we regulate
it have background checks for retailers
stiff penalties for selling to minors we
could tax it to fund schools and
healthcare Less profit for the drug
cartels and police will have more time
to focus on violent crime instead Yes on
502 It's just common sense I think that
the campaign being based on polling data
concerning the public's fears and the
public's hopes was a very critically
important aspect of how the campaign
succeeded The polling data made it very
clear that the public did not want
public safety to be endangered by people
smoking marijuana and then driving The
initiative needed to be written to
include provisions for penalties and
those penalties needed to be widely
publicized The public does not want
nextdoor neighbors to have marijuana
gardens They want the sale of marijuana
to be tightly restricted to specific
stores The campaign also succeeded I
think by making it very evident that
leading law enforcement authorities
supported no longer wasting law
enforcement resources on uh prosecution
and imprisonment of marijuana users We
know firsthand that decades of marijuana
arrests have failed to reduce use and
the drug cartels are pocketing all the
profits Initiative 502 brings marijuana
under tight regulatory control 502
generates new revenue for education
healthcare and prevention And if 502
passes we'll have more resources to go
after violent crime Join us in voting
yes on 502
The fierce scenario of the DEA coming in
and busting down doors is highly
unlikely As a practical matter 99% of
all drug charges for small amounts of
possession are done at the state and
local level So we're talking about city
and county law enforcement officers The
federal government not only doesn't have
the time but they don't have the
resources to start enacting and
enforcing those charges at the local
level But we could see a lawsuit um
there might be some injunction you know
as far as implementation of the
licensing structure but again 502 was
drafted with that year-long rulemaking
process in order to have that
conversation and to have the time for
that conversation with the federal
government These sorts of federal
challenges are not a drawback for the
marijuana law reform movement This is
how we have a national conversation
about drug policy about not only whether
marijuana should be legal in an abstract
sense but in a very concrete way what
sort of proposals we want where should
it be sold how old should someone be
what should the advertising for
marijuana look like and that is a very
responsible conversation we can really
change 75 years of failed policy I think
the fact that 502 had 55% majority isn't
that perfect indication that we're ready
and can be a model not just for the
United States but for the world
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