Good Morning and welcome to the first day of the shopping season for Christmas Twennyten. I hope you're out there getting your protective gear on for the stampedes. The first shopping day is always the worst.
There is a bill in the legislature for Washington State which has the goal of legalizing marijuana in this state.
Indeed, the first and second lines in the bill are currently these:
It is the intent of the legislature to:
(1) Legalize marijuana and its derivatives;
(2) Remove all existing civil and criminal penalties for adults twenty-one years of age or older who cultivate, possess, transport, sell, or use marijuana, without impacting existing laws proscribing dangerous activities while under the influence of marijuana, or certain conduct that exposes younger persons to marijuana;
I look at this happening, and I can't think of any other law I'd rather get through our state legislature.
I do like living in this state, and in this region of the state. The Puget Sound area is a great and very special place. I realize that the WTO events of years back are still a reminder of what the police can do to advance suppression of speech and demonstration.
http://www.capitolweekly.net/...
The bill is sponsored by 5 Democrats in our State House. If you are in Washington, thank them. If you are not one of their constituents, thank them. If you have a Republican or a shy Democrat, contact that person and let them know that you will support them if they also support this bill. Especially if your rep is a Republican.
All of the House Democrats
All of the House Republicans
The bill was introduced by state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, with Rep. Roger Goodman as the principal coauthor. The two Democrats represent Seattle-area districts. Four other legislators have also signed onto the bill. Goodman was scheduled to join Ammiano on a conference call with reporters Thursday morning.
snip
While there have been numerous bills to decriminalize marijuana, advocates say these bills (Ammiano's bill in CA) represent the first two times a full legalization bill has introduced in a state legislature.
Read the short write up here.
I know that hardly anybody clicks on the links that people put here, but if please do. The article is very short, so I can't really put too much of it up here. This particular piece is discussing the initiative in comparison to Ammiano's bill in California.
However, there will be hurdles. Of course, this has to go through committees and it has to be amended and all that great process stuff that we love to forget exists when we make our wishes known.
The bill will go through the Public Safety Committee. According the the above article, the chair of this committee may be a hindrance to the passage of the bill.
http://www.leg.wa.gov/...
The story about this particular rep is pretty good. I don't really know anything about him, but he represents a fairly conservative suburban district. The one I happened to have grown up in. I would guess that it's one of the highest income regions in the state. It is adjacent to Microsoft's home, and it sprawls along the beautiful lakeside.
Apparently, this representative was running to unseat the incumbent, and his opponent tried to label him as soft on drugs. His numbers actually went up in response to that attack.
Goodman said he thinks his bill may have a better chance—though it will also have to survive a trip through a public safety committee, this one chaired by a law-and-order legislator who doesn’t want to let it out. He said that polls show support for marijuana legalization in Washington is in the high 50s, similar to California.
In the election year of 1998, this state passed Initiative 692 which gave citizens here the right to use marijuana as a medical treatment for a variety of ailments. It passed with a huge 59% win. I was happy about that law, and it was predictably fought against with hysterical complaints that it would lead to children using heroin in the school yard.
http://www.eventure.com/...
This link from the Washington State Medical Association really gives the idea that the previous medical marijuana bill is not anything other than permission for a doctor to give information about Medical Marijuana. There is a slow growth of infrastructure in WA to aid in the production and delivery of the medical marijuana, but it is nothing at all like the system currently operating in CA.
I haven't gotten a card for MM even though I am eligible due to epilepsy. One reason is that I don't want to be on a list of users at any point. I don't have any idea what that would do to future employment possibilities!
This bill has been in process for some time. It also has a Senate mirror, but really the only reference I can get to the Senate Bill 5615, is that it reduces penalties on individuals, while the House Bill actually legalizes and creates a structure for taxing. The taxes will be used for the purposes of drug education and will not go to the general fund. I think this is a great way to avoid seeing it as a cash grab for the sad state budget.
Here is one great looking item from the bill:
P7, L14. Exempting marijuana law violations (as with liquor violations) from RCW 9.92.070, which allows criminal fines to be paid in installments and disallows incarceration for unpaid fines.
Link to the text of the bill
Here is a piece of shit blog post about it and the "gateway" nonsense.
I'm just some nearly 40 year old Father of two, husband to one (as far as I can recall). I grew up around a lot of adults who used a wide variety of drugs. As a kid, I lived with heroin users, cokeheads, alcoholics, and extremely irresponsible and heavy users of marijuana. My Father tells me stories of doing speed and staying up for days while building match stick boats.
Those are the people who need help with their problems. This bill not only removes the idiotic restrictions on use of marijuana, but it also seeks to address the issue of real and serious drug use and abuse as a public health issue.
One of the main reasons for ending prohibition of marijuana is that by doing so, we avoid the need to have otherwise law abiding and responsible citizens engage with people who can at times only be classified as serious drug dealers. I am also simply in favor of civil liberties. It's really that simple.
Thanks for reading.
Hey, maybe you can even throw a few bucks their way.
Also, I don't normally ask for recs, especially when my diary from yesterday was titled Merry Chickenmask, but I think that if we get more of this on the national radar, we'll see the benefits in the long run.
Update- I have to run out to the gym for a couple hours, so I'll check back later. I did forget to mention that two of my favorite locals here are Rick Steves and Norm Stamper. Stamper is the former chief of police in Seattle, and Rick Steves is world famous travel writer. Both are on the board of NORML.