Pubdate: Sun, 06 Apr 2014
Source: Day, The (New London,CT)
Page: A11
Copyright: 2014 The Day Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.theday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/293
Author: Adam Nagourney, New York Times News Service

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS RESIST MOVES TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

Los Angeles - California voters strongly favor legalizing marijuana.
The state Democratic Party adopted a platform last month urging
California to follow Colorado and Washington in ending marijuana
prohibition. The state's lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, has called
for legalizing the drug.

But not Gov. Jerry Brown. "I think we ought to kind of watch and see
how things go in Colorado," Brown, a Democrat, said curtly when asked
the question as he was presenting his state budget this year.

At a time of rapidly evolving attitudes toward marijuana legalization
- - a slight majority of Americans now support legalizing the drug -
Democratic governors across the country, Brown among them, find
themselves uncomfortably at odds with their own base.

Even with Democrats and younger voters leading the wave of the
pro-legalization shift, these governors are standing back, supporting
much more limited medicalmarijuana proposals or invoking the kind of
law-and-order and public-health arguments more commonly heard from
Republicans. While 17 more states-most of them leaning Democratic-
have seen bills introduced this year to follow Colorado and Washington
in approving recreational marijuana, no sitting governor or member of
the Senate has offered a full-out endorsement of legalization. Only
Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat in Vermont, which is struggling with a
heroin problem, said he was open to the idea.

"Quite frankly, I don't think we are ready, or want to go down that
road," Dannel P. Malloy, the Democratic governor of Connecticut, which
has legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized possession of small
amounts of marijuana, said in an interview. "Perhaps the best way to
handle this is to watch those experiments that are underway. I don't
think it's necessary, and I don't think it's appropriate."

The hesitance expressed by these governors reflects not only governing
concerns but also, several analysts said, a historically rooted
political wariness of being portrayed as soft on crime by Republicans.
In particular, Brown, who is 75, lived through the culture wars of the
1960s, when Democrats suffered from being seen as permissive on issues
like this.

"Either they don't care about it as passionately or they feel
embarrassed or vulnerable. They fear the judgment," said Ethan
Nadelmann, the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization
that favors decriminalization of marijuana. "The fear of being soft on
drugs, soft on marijuana, soft on crime is woven into the DNA of
American politicians, especially Democrats."

He described that sentiment as, "Do not let yourself be outflanked by
Republicans when it comes to being tough on crime and tough on drugs.
You will lose."

In Washington and Colorado, the Democratic governors had opposed
legalization from the start, though each made clear that he would
follow voters' wishes in setting up the first legal recreational
marijuana marketplaces in the nation. "If it was up to me, being in
the middle of it, and having read all this research and having some
concern, I'd tell people just to exercise caution," Gov. John W.
Hickenlooper of Colorado said in a recent interview.

In Colorado, where recreational marijuana went on sale Jan. 1, revenue
figures released in February suggested that taxes on drug sales could
bring in more than $100 million a year for the state, a figure that
made other states take note.

Washington has yet to let its first marijuana stores open - that is
expected to happen later this spring - but Gov. Jay Inslee has made
his position clear. "As a grandfather, I have the same concerns every
grandfather has about misuse of any drug, including alcohol and
marijuana," he said in a telephone interview, adding, "All of us want
to see our kids make smart decisions and not allow any drug to become
injurious in our life.

"I recognized the really rational decision that people made that
criminalization efforts were not a successful public policy," Inslee
continued. "But frankly, I really don't want to send a message to our
kids that this is a route that is without risk."

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has said he would oppose outright
legalization of marijuana but would support legalizing, to some
extent, medical marijuana in the state, and might be open to
decriminalizing the drug.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, invoked her state's
struggle with heroin abuse in arguing against weakening marijuana
laws. "Legalizing marijuana won't help us address our substance use
challenge," she said in her state of the state address this year.

"Experience and data suggests it will do just the opposite."

Even in California, the first state to legalize medical marijuana and
where marijuana advocates are moving to put a legalization initiative
on the ballot in 2016, Brown has flashed a yellow light.

"All of a sudden, if there's advertising and legitimacy, how many
people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?"
Brown said in an interview on "Meet the Press" last month. "The
world's pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay
alert, if not 24 hours a day, more than some of the potheads might be
able to put together."

"I don't tell other governors what to do," Hickenlooper said, "but
when they asked me, I said, ' If I was in your shoes, I would wait a
couple of years and see whether there are unintended consequences,
from what is admittedly a well-intentioned law.'"  
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D