If you are a strong supporter of marijuana legalization like I am, then State Senator Daylin Leach (D. PA-13) is a candidate you should be supporting. Leach has long been an advocate of legalizing marijuana and he plans on bringing his fight to Washington D.C.
http://www.thedailychronic.net/...
Pennsylvania State Senator Daylin Leach has been an outspoken advocate on the issue of marijuana law reform during his tenure in Harrisburg. Senator Leach made a splash legislatively this year when he introduced Senate Bill 528, which would legalize and regulate the adult use of marijuana in Pennsylvania, the first time such a bill was introduced in the state.
State Senator Leach is now looking to take his advocacy to Capitol Hill. He is running for an open seat representing Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives that will be vacated by Congresswoman Alison Schwartz, who is stepping down from her post to pursue the governorship in 2014.
While the Democratic Primary for this position won’t be held until May of next year, Senator Leach’s campaign is already kicking into full gear and he is emerging as an early favorite in the race. In a statement released to NORML, Senator Leach has made clear that he intends to continue his fight for marijuana legalization while serving at the federal level:
“We have spent billions of dollars nationally investigating, prosecuting, incarcerating, and monitoring millions of our fellow citizens who have hurt no one, damaged no property, breached no peace. In 15 years marijuana prohibition will be some quaint thing of the past that will be the subject of exhibitions at the Constitution Center. People will think it’s crazy that it was ever illegal. As State Senator in Pennsylvania I introduced legislation to end this costly, failed policy of marijuana prohibition and replace it with a system of legalization and regulation. If elected to the United States House of Representatives I will continue to fight for rational marijuana policies at the national level and work to bring an end to this discriminatory, ineffective prohibition.”
– Pennsylvania State Senator, and NORML PAC Supported US House Candidate, Daylin Leach - The Daily Chronic, 6/19/13
Leach was also the keynote speaker at the NORML Mid-Atlantic Conference in Philadelphia back in March. You can watch his speech here:
Most recently Leach introduced legislation to the Pennsylvania bill that would propose a system of taxation and regulation of marijuana commerce:
http://www.thedailychronic.net/...
“This past November, the people of Washington State and Colorado voted to fully legalize marijuana,” said Leach. “It is time for Pennsylvania to be a leader in jettisoning this modern-day prohibition, and ending a policy that has been destructive, costly and anti-scientific.”
Supporting the bill were drug reform groups and public health professionals.
“Our nation can acknowledge the dangers of cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana while still permitting their use,” said Dr. David Nathan, MD, clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. ”The only logically and morally consistent argument for marijuana prohibition necessitates the criminalization of all harmful recreational drugs, including alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. We can agree that such an infringement on personal freedoms is as impractical as it is un-American. The time has come to accept that our nation’s attitude toward marijuana has been misguided for generations and that the only rational approach to cannabis is to legalize, regulate and tax it.”
“Cops see the ineffectiveness and harms of marijuana prohibition up close, every day,” said Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore narcotics cop and the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Keeping marijuana illegal doesn’t significantly reduce use, but it does give tax-free profits to violent gangs and cartels that control the black market. Now, thanks to Sen. Leach’s proposal, Pennsylvania has a chance to join Colorado and Washington in letting police focus on the job we signed up to do — keeping the public safe — instead of being distracted by chasing down marijuana users.” - The Daily Chronic, 6/22/13
The NAACP and the ACLU recently threw their support behind Leach's bill:
http://www.delcotimes.com/...
David Scott, chairman of the legal redress committee of the Cheltenham Area Branch NAACP, joined the bill’s prime sponsor, State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-17, of Upper Merion, at a news conference about the legislation in Harrisburg on Tuesday morning.
“This is a major issue,” said Neill Franklin, executive director of the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, who also was at the news conference. “The federal government reports that 60-70 percent of profits from illegal drug trade come from marijuana.”
The June 2013 NAACP report, titled “The War on Marijuana in Black and White,” stated there were more than 8 million marijuana arrests in the United States between 2001 and 2010. It costs about $3.6 billion per year to enforce marijuana laws, but the use and availability of marijuana has not been diminished, according to the report.
Marijuana use is about equal among blacks and whites, yet blacks are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession, according to the NAACP report.
Pennsylvania spends about $350 million a year on arrests, incarceration and monitoring of individuals found to be in possession of small amounts of marijuana, according to Leach. - Delco Times, 6/25/13
Now Leach has stated that he doesn't expect the State Senate to bring his bill up for a vote before the June 30th budget deadline but he fully intends to push the legislation again in the fall. Of course legalizing marijuana in Pennsylvania is an uphill battle in itself. The most recent Franklin and Marshall College poll showed that 36% support full marijuana legalization but 82% support using marijuana for medicinal purposes. But Leach's views on marijuana legalization are with the growing majority of Americans:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
A clear majority of Americans say that marijuana should be made legal if it will be taxed and regulated like alcohol, even though few say they use marijuana themselves, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.
According to the new survey, 51 percent of Americans say that marijuana should be "legalized, taxed, and regulated like alcohol." A much smaller percentage (6 percent) say that the drug should be legalized, but not taxed and regulated. Only 33 percent of respondents said marijuana should not be legalized at all, and 10 percent said they weren't sure.
The percentage of Americans in the new survey saying that they want to legalize marijuana is somewhat higher than on most other polls, perhaps because the question specified that marijuana could be legalized and "taxed and regulated like alcohol," while most other surveys ask if marijuana should be legal or illegal without qualifiers. But a recent Pew Research Center survey also found that a majority of Americans support legal marijuana.
In the new Huffpost/YouGov poll, a combined 70 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of independents, but only 37 percent of Republicans, said that they thought marijuana should be legalized either with or without taxes and regulations. - Huffington Post, 4/19/13
And there is a growing a majority, especially in the Democratic Party, that is shifting it's views on medicinal marijuana:
http://www.hightimes.com/...
For the sixth time in a decade, the U.S. House of Representatives last week defeated an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have prohibited the federal Dept of Justice from raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in those states with legal medicinal cannabis laws.
The bipartisan amendment was co-sponsored, as it has been each of the six times it’s been introduced, by Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), and this year they were joined by Tom McClintock (R-CA) and Sam Farr (D-CA).
The final tally was 262-163 against the amendment, with the ‘Aye’ votes falling just short of the 2007 high of 165 votes in favor of stopping the feds’ opposition to medical pot. And while the relative percentages for Reps from both parties voting ‘Aye’ was higher in 2012, the reality is that the vote total hasn’t really changed in five years. - High Times Magazine, 5/15/12
According to vote count, 72% of House Democrats voted for the amendment and only 11% of Republicans voted for it as well. Even Nancy Pelosi has condemned President Obama's constant raids on medicinal marijuana dispensaries:
http://www.rawstory.com/...
“I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medicinal marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California, and undermine a policy that has been in place under which the federal government did not pursue individuals whose actions complied with state laws providing for medicinal marijuana,” she said.
“Proven medicinal uses of marijuana include improving the quality of life for patients with cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and other severe medical conditions,” she added. “I am pleased to join organizations that support legal access to medicinal marijuana, including the American Nurses Association, the Lymphoma Foundation of America, and the AIDS Action Council. Medicinal marijuana alleviates some of the most debilitating symptoms of AIDS, including pain, wasting, and nausea. The opportunity to ease the suffering of people who are seriously ill or enduring difficult and painful therapies is an opportunity we must not ignore.”
“We applaud Pelosi’s leadership in urging President Obama to address medical marijuana as a public health issue,” Americans for Safe Access (ASA) Executive Director Steph Sherer said in a media advisory. “Rather than defending a policy of intolerance, President Obama should end his unnecessary and harmful attacks once and for all.”
“The fact that a Democratic congressional leader like Nancy Pelosi is willing to call out a president from her own party over the huge gap between his administration’s actions and its previous written pledges shows just how important and popular an issue medical marijuana really is,” added Nate Bradley, a former California police officer and current medical marijuana patient who works for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Hopefully other elected representatives from California and other medical marijuana states will soon call on the president to get control of his federal agencies and stop breaking his campaign promises. It sure would be nice to hear Gov. Jerry Brown finally stand up in defense of our state’s duly enacted laws.”
Pelosi, who has long supported medical marijuana, is not alone in rebuking the Obama administration’s medical marijuana raids, but she is the highest ranking official to do so thus far. - Raw Story, 5/3/12
Not to mention candidates can win big elections by campaigning on marijuana legalization:
http://elections.firedoglake.com/...
Last night in Texas marijuana legalization supporter Beto O’Rourke defeated incumbent Rep. Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary for Texas’ 16th congressional district. O’Rourke won 50.5 percent to Reyes 44.3 percent, winning the party’s nomination outright and avoiding a run off. Given the district’s heavy democratic leaning, O’Rourke is all but assured to win the general election this November.
While the election was about much more than O’Rourke’s support for legalizing marijuana and Reyes’ opposition to it , the issue did play a role. O’Rourke rose to national prominence in 2009 as an El Paso city councilman when he championed a resolution calling for a national conversation about drug policy reform.
O’Rourke won the election through a variety of factors. One of the biggest problems for Reyes was that he was dogged by numerous ethical issues, which the O’Rourke campaign focused on. In addition O’Rourke benefited significantly from the support of the Super PAC Campaign for Primary Accountability, which has spent money trying to unseat incumbents in both parties this year.
Still O’Rourke’s victory last night is remarkable. It is extremely rare for an incumbent to lose their party’s primary, especially when the incumbent still technically has the support of the party’s top leaders, including President Obama. - Firedoglake, 5/30/12
And with Leach in Congress, he can pick up where Ron Paul (R. TX) and Barney Frank (D. MA) left off on this issue:
http://content.usatoday.com/...
The legislation by Paul, a libertarian-thinking Texas Republican running for president, and Frank, a liberal Massachusetts Democrat, is being touted by the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).
The bill to be introduced by Frank and Paul would allow states to "legalize, regulate, tax and control marijuana without federal interference."
The bill by Frank and Paul would "end state/federal conflicts over marijuana policy, re-prioritize federal resources and provide more room for states to do what is best for their own citizens," the group says.
MPP says the bill will also be sponsored Democratic Reps. John Conyers of Michigan, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Jared Polis of Colorado and Barbara Lee of California. - USA Today, 6/23/11
Leach is running in a blue district but he's also running in a crowded primary to succeed Allyson Schwartz (D. PA-13). Two of his opponents are big names. There's State Representative Brendan Boyle (D) who made the Philadelphia Daily News' top 10 rising stars in Pennsylvania politics in 2008 and was chosen by the Aspen Institute as one of its Rodel Fellows in 2011. The other big candidate Leach is up against is former Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies (D) who recently received a pretty big endorsement:
http://www.politicspa.com/...
Congressman Steny Hoyer today announced his support for candidate Marjorie Margolies. Hoyer is the US House Minority Whip from Maryland’s 5th district.
Hoyer said of Margolies, “Marjorie Margolies is one of the most hard-working and courageous individuals I ever served with in Congress.”
Margolies is running for the seat Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz is vacating in her bid for governor.
Hoyer heaped praise on Margolies’ legislative record.
“During her previous tenure in Congress, Marjorie was instrumental in passing a ban on dangerous assault weapons, enacting the Family and Medical Leave Act, and funding greater investment in women’s health care.”
Hoyer served as House Democratic Caucus Chair during Margolies’ first term in Congress, when she cast the tie-breaking vote for President Bill Clinton’s first budget. - Politics PA, 6/24/13
With Hoyer's backing, Margolies will certainly be a top choice for the DCCC. So it's important that we help fuel Leach's campaign so he can win his party's nomination and then go on to win the general election. The FEC deadline is Sunday, June 30th. Lets help give Leach the resources he needs to win so we can have another strong voice for marijuana legalization in Congress:
https://act.myngp.com/...
And if you would like to learn more about Pennsylvania's Liberal Lion, you can check his campaign website here:
http://votedaylin.com/