Pubdate: Wed, 26 Sep 2012
Source: Herald, The (Everett, WA)
Copyright: 2012 The Daily Herald Co.
Contact:  http://www.heraldnet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/190
Author: Ken George

INITIATIVE BASED ON MANY MYTHS

Voters really need to consider the potential consequences of 
legalizing marijuana. The present initiative relies on uneducated 
voters to pass it based on several misconceptions.

First is that Washington will have a windfall of new tax revenue. 
This assumes that the tens of thousands of the people who possess and 
grow legal medical marijuana (up to 15 plants) will stop growing it. 
It assumes that all of the illegal marijuana dealers will also stop 
and not attempt to compete with legal sales.

These are false assumptions, which lead to another myth -- that law 
enforcement will no longer need to focus on marijuana laws. As a 
former special agent for a narcotics task force, I can comfortably 
state that there are very few law enforcement agencies that focus on 
marijuana laws. However, if this initiative passes, you will have 
legal distributors losing business to non-licensed distributors 
calling on law enforcement to stop these non-licensed dealers from 
growing, selling and distributing illegal marijuana.

Another myth is that it will prevent teenagers from accessing 
marijuana. That same argument was posed with medical marijuana, and a 
recent study in Colorado found that over 70 percent of their sample 
study of teenagers in treatment had used someone else's medical marijuana.

Another concern is that the federal government will enforce its law, 
keeping marijuana illegal, which is what happened with medical 
marijuana. A more important question is will the government withhold 
funds that should come to Washington for schools, roads and other 
federal projects? The government has withheld funds to states before 
when it forced states to lower their DUI levels to .08.

Passing this initiative could be one of the dumbest things we can do 
for our state, and the risks far outweigh any possible benefits we 
would get from additional tax revenues.

Ken George

Everett
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom