Pubdate: Thu, 20 Mar 2014
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Column: Weed Between the Lines
Copyright: 2014 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

'A NEW LEAF' CHRONICLES THE DEMISE OF PROHIBITION

If A New Leaf: The End of Cannabis Prohibition sometimes reads as if 
it were being written as history was unfolding, that's because it 
was. Journalists Alyson Martin and Nushin Rashidian began working on 
A New Leaf as the cannabis reform movement was gaining momentum.

"I'm from upstate New York, and I traveled to California," Martin 
said during a recent interview. "I had never been to Venice Beach. I 
opened the car door and smelled marijuana and asked how they were 
able to have it. They said it was legal there. It was immediately the 
kind of federal-state clash that attracted me. It was illegal in most 
places and legal in California."

Martin and Rashidian met in classes at Columbia University. They 
began working together and found they made a good reporting team.

"When we got back to New York, we started digging," says Rashidian. 
"'Why were they using it as medicine in some states and not others?' 
And we realized it was an ongoing trend."

They left New York in September of 2010 and found the growing 
community of cannabis supporters across the continental United States.

"We drove 30,000 miles," Rashidian said. "We hit every state with 
medical laws except Alaska and Hawaii. My background is in daily 
journalism. This was a challenge - the idea that, while I was 
reporting, the story was still unfolding.

It required a great deal of flexibility, patience and persistence 
when we were traveling."

Martin and Rashidian witnessed federal crackdowns on medical 
businesses. They went to California for the Proposition 19 effort. 
They were in Seattle for the vote on legalization in 2012. They spent 
time in Denver with leaders of the campaign, including Mason Tvert of 
the Marijuana Policy Project. They visited the federal farm at the 
University of Mississippi near Oxford, where the federal government 
grows cannabis.

"The road trip really helped us," said Martin. "We continued to do 
reporting. We wrote up to deadline in April 2013, and we edited it 
through the summer. We had to write it that way."

What they came up with is a refreshing, personal up-to-date - it 
mentions the James Cole federal guidelines for states last September 
- - account of the long road from prohibition to the current momentum 
for decriminalization/legalization. They look at the long history of 
cannabis usage before the United States outlawed it in the 1930s. 
Along the way, they talk to the people - activists, medical patients, 
caregivers, lobbyists, farmers, physicians and business owners - 
involved in building a new green economy from the ashes of 
prohibition. One of the key stories in A New Leaf is the 2010 
Proposition 19 ballot initiative. Proposition 19 would have allowed 
adults in California to possess cannabis and grow it for their own 
personal use under local government regulation.

"It was so clear that something was happening with Proposition 19," 
said Rashidian. "We were in D.C. when that was up, and we decided we 
should be there. We jetted across the country and hung out two days 
before the vote. It was clear that it was strategically brilliant, 
but nobody saw it at the time."

Proposition 19 was ultimately defeated by voters on Nov. 2, 2010, but 
it got people talking about cannabis around the country. "Proposition 
19 revealed many of the dos and don'ts for Colorado and Washington," 
Rashidian explained. "First, by obtaining 46 percent of the vote, 
Prop 19 revealed that legalization was within reach. The campaign 
unveiled coalitions and brought together groups like the NAACP and 
UFCW. They moved the messaging from 'legalization' toward things like 
tax revenue, civil rights and jobs. The proposition forced a national 
conversation about legalization that wasn't happening before."

The book follows closely the legalization campaigns in Washington and 
Colorado. Both states learned from Proposition 19, but Martin and 
Rashidian outline the similarities and differences in each state's 
approach. All in all, they find Colorado to have taken a more measured stance.

"If I had to sum up a major difference in the two states' approaches 
when it came to legalization, particularly in light of the 
possibility of a federal backlash, it would be that the Colorado 
campaign thought about how to keep the state's thriving cannabis 
community happy while Washington's focused on how to keep the Feds at 
bay," Martin said.

"For example, Amendment 64 allowed home growing, in part as a safety 
measure in case the state-licensed production and retail was shut 
down, and existing shops had first dibs on the new retail stores. 
Home growing was not included in Initiative 502 because the plant was 
less regulated that way," she said. "The Colorado campaign's message 
was that cannabis is safer than alcohol. The Washington campaign's 
message was focused on the harms of prohibition."

But Proposition 19, even in defeat, served an even bigger purpose for 
Colorado and Washington in their successful campaigns just two years later.

"The failure of the proposition, in part due to loose wording, let 
the drafters of future legislation know that voters wanted solid 
regulations," Rashidian said. "All of this in 2010 gave the 2012 
campaigns a lot to draw from and made them stronger."

More information on A New Leaf: The End of Cannabis Prohibition, 
Alyson Martin and Nishin Rashidian (The New Press 2014) can be found 
at www.anewleafbook.com. http://bit.ly/PKzQ3P.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom