Pubdate: Mon, 08 Apr 2013
Source: Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Copyright: 2013 McClatchy Newspapers
Contact: http://web.commercialappeal.com/newgo/forms/letters.htm
Website: http://www.commercialappeal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/95
Author: Rob Hotakainen, McClatchy Newspapers
Page: 6A

WITH NEW MOMENTUM TO LEGALIZE, POT BACKERS AIM HIGH

WASHINGTON - As one of the nation's top marijuana lobbyists, Allen 
St. Pierre has come to believe in his product, which is why he tries 
to smoke high-potency, one-toke weed every night.

It's an experience that St. Pierre, executive director of the 
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, commonly 
known as NORML, hopes more Americans will soon have, with no fear of 
prosecution.

After working for marijuana legalization for 23 years, St. Pierre 
said he pinches himself every day as he watches events unfold across the U.S.

Since 1996, 18 states have approved marijuana for use as medicine. 
But lobbyists scored their top achievement in a generation in 
November, when voters in Washington state and Colorado approved 
recreational use by adults. Thirteen states have decriminalized the 
possession of marijuana.

Now, in a flurry of new momentum, pro-marijuana bills have been 
introduced in 27 statehouses. Nine would tax and regulate marijuana 
like alcohol, while the others would allow more states to lessen 
penalties or to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes.

On the recreational front, lobbyists expect to prevail at the ballot 
box again, possibly first with Alaska voters next year. And they're 
eyeing California and others in 2016.

On Thursday, a poll by the Pew Research Center showed that for the 
first time a majority of Americans favor legal pot. On Capitol Hill, 
a few dozen Democrats send representatives to meetings to figure out 
how to move pro-legalization bills introduced in February.

For St. Pierre, it adds up to one fact: Marijuana has gone 
mainstream, and the legalization push has grown so powerful that it 
will be hard to stop.

"The genie's out of the bottle," he said.

Opponents say the pro-marijuana leaders are deluding themselves.

"There must be something about marijuana that induces false 
optimism," said John Lovell, a Sacramento, Calif.-based lobbyist for 
the California Narcotics Officers Association, which helped defeat a 
2010 ballot measure to make pot legal in the Golden State. "They won 
two ballot measures, and there's euphoria over that, but there are a 
whole host of ways this could play out."

Both sides can point to competing studies.

Opponents have ammunition in a report released by the National 
Institute on Drug Abuse in December, which said that regular 
marijuana use by young people can have a long-lasting negative impact 
on the structure and function of the brain.

More teens now smoke marijuana than tobacco, the report said, and pot 
use among young people has risen since 2007, corresponding to 
diminishing fear of the drug's risks.

Marijuana lobbyists cite a 1999 report by the National Academy of 
Sciences' Institute of Medicine that said marijuana could mitigate 
nausea, appetite loss, pain and anxiety for severely ill patients.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom