Pubdate: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 Source: Day, The (New London,CT) Copyright: 2014 The Day Publishing Co. Contact: http://www.theday.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/293 Author: Rick Lyman, New York Times News Service MORE STATES CONSIDER LEGALIZING MARIJUANA "Some feel it's not an appropriate issue for an election year, and others want to wait and see what happens in Colorado. But a lot of other people are very anxious to take the revenue part of this very seriously." A little over a year after Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana, more than half the states, including some in the conservative South, are considering decriminalizing the drug or legalizing it for medical or recreational use. That has set up a watershed year in the battle over whether marijuana should be as acceptable as alcohol. Demonstrating how marijuana is no longer a strictly partisan issue, the two states considered likeliest this year to follow Colorado and Washington in outright legalization of the drug are Oregon, dominated by liberal Democrats, and Alaska, where libertarian Republicans hold sway. Advocates of more lenient marijuana laws say they intend to maintain the momentum from their successes, heartened by national and statewide polls showing greater public acceptance of legalizing marijuana; President Barack Obama's recent musings on the discriminatory effect of marijuana prosecutions; and the release of guidelines by his Treasury Department intended to make it easier for banks to do business with legal marijuana businesses. Their opponents, though, who also see this as a crucial year, are just as keen to slow the legalization drives. They are aided by a wait- and-see attitude among many governors and legislators, who seem wary of pushing ahead too quickly without seeing how the rollout of legal marijuana works in Colorado and Washington. "We feel that if Oregon or Alaska could be stopped, it would disrupt the whole narrative these groups have that legalization is inevitable," said Kevin A. Sabet, executive director of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which is spearheading much of the effort to stop these initiatives. "We could stop that momentum." Still illegal under U.S. law Despite the drug still being illegal under federal law, the Obama administration has said it will not interfere with the rollout of legal marijuana in the states, as long as it is kept out of the hands of minors. At least 14 states-including Florida, where an initiative has already qualified for the ballot- are considering new medical marijuana laws this year, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, which supports legalization, and 12 states and the District of Columbia are contemplating decriminalization, in which the drug remains illegal, but the penalties are softened or reduced to fines. Medical marijuana use is already legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia. An even larger number of states, at least 17, have seen bills introduced or initiatives begun to legalize the drug for adult use along the lines of alcohol, the same approach used in Colorado and Washington, but most of those efforts are considered unlikely of success this year. The allure of tax revenues is also becoming a powerful selling point in some states, particularly after Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado said last week that taxes from legal marijuana sales would be $ 134 million in the coming fiscal year, much higher than had been predicted when the measure was passed in 2012. In Rhode Island, which is struggling financially, national and local advocates for legalization say the Colorado news is sure to help legislation introduced in February to legalize the drug. "Some feel it's not an appropriate issue for an election year, and others want to wait and see what happens in Colorado," said state Sen. Joshua Miller, a Democrat who is sponsoring the Rhode Island legalization law. "But a lot of other people are very anxious to take the revenue part of this very seriously." Opponents of legalization, meanwhile, are mobilizing across the country to slow the momentum, keeping a sharp eye on Colorado for any problems in the rollout of the new law there. "Legalization almost had to happen in order for people to wake up and realize they don't want it," Sabet said. "In a strange way, we feel legalization in a few states could be a blessing." California had been considered a possibility to legalize marijuana this year through a ballot proposition - one to do just that failed in 2010 - but the Drug Policy Alliance, which had been leading the effort, decided this month to wait until 2016. While much of the recent attention has focused on these legalization efforts, medical marijuana may also cross what its backers consider an important threshold this year - most notably in the South where Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina are among the states considering such laws. A narrow majority of Americans - 51 percent - believe marijuana should be legal, according to a New York Times/ CBS News poll conducted last week, matching the result in a CBS News poll the previous month. In 1979, when The Times and CBS first asked the question, only 27 percent wanted cannabis legalized. There were stark differences in the new poll, though. While 72 percent of people under 30 favored legalization, only 29 percent of those over 65 agreed. And while about a third of Republicans now favored legalization, this was far below the 60 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents who did so. In Alaska, sufficient signatures have been collected to get the legalization initiative on the ballot. "Alaska is a red state, but with a heavy libertarian streak," said Taylor Bickford, spokesman for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Alaska. "The idea of personal freedom and responsibility is uniting Alaskans on both sides of the aisle." Under state law, however, the vote will occur during the Aug. 19 primary, not in the general election. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom