Pubdate: Sun, 07 Apr 2013
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2013 McClatchy Newspapers
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Rob Hotakainen, McClatchy Newspapers
Page: 6A

POT BACKERS EUPHORIC OVER SMOKE SIGNALS

Foes Point to Perils, Say U.S. Won't Necessarily Follow Trend to Ease Laws

WASHINGTON - After working for marijuana legalization for 23 years, 
Allen St. Pierre said, he pinches himself every day as he watches 
events unfold across the United States.

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 
possession of marijuana, removing the possibility of jail time.

Now, in a flurry of new momentum, pro-marijuana bills have been 
introduced in 27 statehouses this year. Nine would tax and regulate 
marijuana like alcohol, while the others would lessen penalties or 
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 the biggest prize of all - California - along with others, in 2016.

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

For St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for 
the Reform of Marijuana Laws, it adds up to one indisputable 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, sitting at his desk next to 
a plastic pot plant, just two blocks from the White House.

Opponents say the promarijuana 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."

Bills to tax and regulate marijuana for recreational use have been 
introduced by state lawmakers this year in Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, 
Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island and 
Vermont. The legislation is dead for the year in Hawaii, Maryland and 
New Hampshire.

The legalization efforts are worrisome for Joyce Nalepka, president 
of Drug-Free Kids: America's Challenge, based in Silver Spring, Md. 
The public is awash in misinformation because the media have not done 
their job in warning the public about carcinogens in marijuana and 
other health risks, she said.

"Isn' t that what their job is?" Nalepka asked. "I've always thought 
the media gets the facts and spreads it to the public."

Nalepka said the media should not even be using the term "medical 
marijuana" because the drug has never been approved by the Food and 
Drug Administration and it does nothing but confuse kids, who think 
marijuana has medicinal qualities and are more likely to use it.

Marijuana advocates, though, say it sends the wrong message to kids 
to have uncompassionate laws that criminalize ill patients who want 
to relieve suffering.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom