If you have NO expertise whatsoever, and live in Canada with no self-admitted interest in Prop 19's passage, you get to write stories for the LA Times! Really bad ones, even. LA Times is pushing its "No on 19" editorial board endorsement as hard as they can through a series of articles that falsely push the "it's a good idea, but 19 is written badly" meme.
Much thanks to George Soros- he just dropped $1 million on Prop 19.
Soros, a high-profile liberal, was one of the top financial backers of the 1996 measure that made California the first state in the nation to legalize marijuana for medical use.
The same cowards who said Prop 215 would get denied by the feds would have us believe that Prop 19 is DOOOOOMMMMEEED. Funny that- last time I checked, hundreds of legal marijuana dispensaries are still open in California.
oh yeah- Yes on 19 tv ads are on the air !
In an earlier diary, I posted a link showing that respondents' support goes UP after reading the 4 pages of the ballot initiative in full. However, the Tea Party version of potheads like to show up at Prop 19 gatherings in California, with dumb names like "Stoners against 19", because the law will supposedly criminalize weed. The ballot initiative to legalize weed will...somehow make it illegal....?? With stoners like that, who needs stereotypes?
You are either for legalizing marijuana, or you are against it. Period.
First of all, LA Times is just wrong that Prop 19 delegates decisions about personal cultivation and possession to local authorities. The measure would legalize possession of up to an ounce, and allow cultivation in a 25 sq. ft. grow space by all adult Californians, and even allows home storage of personal harvests larger than an ounce. Only taxation and distribution are left to cities and counties to regulate, and it's a shame that LA Times' opposition to the measure is informed at least in part by their ignorance of this key distinction. Worse yet, there's no excuse for misinforming voters about something as significant as the fact that Prop 19 absolutely will legalize personal possession and cultivation throughout the state.
Once this is understood, their fundamental problem with Prop 19 amounts to little more than a bizarre objection to the notion that cities and counties could make their own decisions about whether to allow sales and taxation. What alternative would they propose? Something tells me that if Prop 19 didn't include that provision, LA Times would instead attack the measure for failing to give local government any say over whether or not to allow retails sales.
The No on 19 stoner groups are truly, truly idiotic. I saw them firsthand for myself at BuddhaFest in downtown LA this past weekend. Former Governor Gary Johnson was there to speak as a marijuana legalization supporter, and gave a pretty good speech. Meanwhile, there were idiots with conspiracy theory banners posted up, saying that Prop 19 was some kind of Big Tobacco conspiracy theory. I would have laughed, but we need every vote we can, and these corrupt medical marijuana dispensaries that tell customers to vote against Prop 19 are simply trying to protect their profits. If this thing loses, it will be because women voters didn't come around, and the youth vote didn't come through due to apathy and/or widespread availability of marijuana in general.
I'm sad to write, much less read, what I anticipated ever since the "drug warriors" crowed about burning over 130 tons of a plant called 'cannabis sativa" south of the border: retaliation by the cartels.
Gunmen stormed a private drug treatment center in Tijuana and executed at least 13 men at close range, authorities in Baja California said Monday.
The Sunday night attack was the first big assault on a clinic in the border city, where Mexican officials say their crackdown against drug gangs has weakened criminal groups and restored relative calm. Similar attacks have taken place on treatment centers in the northern state of Chihuahua, home to Ciudad Juarez, the country's most violent place.
Elsewhere in Mexico, treatment centers have served as havens for fugitives and outlets for drug sales, making them targets for drug cartels and ordinary street gangs. In June, 19 people were slain in an attack on a clinic in the city of Chihuahua.
Baja California's prosecutor, Rommel Moreno, said Sunday's attack may have been tied to the Mexican army's record-setting seizure last week of 134 tons of marijuana in Tijuana.
Soon after the killings, someone broke into the police frequency, playing narco-ballad music and warning that the attack was "a taste" of Juarez-style carnage, a police official said. Moreno confirmed a news report that the radio voice threatened that a person would die for every ton of marijuana seized.
This terrorism in Mexico is fully supported by American drug consumption and Prohibitionist marijuana laws. If the United States had a sense of conscience, we'd feel guilt for causing this unnecessary bloodshed over our refusal to accept reality on marijuana policy.