Pubdate: Sun, 06 Apr 2014
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2014 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
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Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Adam Nagourney, The New York Times

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS RELUCTANT TO LEGALIZE POT

Even Amid Shifting Views in Own Party, They're Standing
Back

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. Matthew Staver/The New York Times Marijuana
legalization like Colorado's is gaining in popularity, but Democratic
governors are hesitant. Fear of being portrayed as soft on crime could
be one reason, analysts say.

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 medical marijuana 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," said Dannel Malloy, the Democratic governor of Connecticut,
which has legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized possession of
small amounts of marijuana. "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.

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."  
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