Pubdate: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 Source: Orange County Register, The (CA) Copyright: 2015 The Orange County Register Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321 CALIFORNIA CREEPS TOWARD LEGALIZATION If current trends hold, it is likely that California will soon legalize marijuana for recreational use if not in 2016, then in the not-too-distant future. To prepare for this eventuality, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy, chaired by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, was established in 2013 to analyze questions and policy issues arising from legalization. The commission released its final report last week, and the results are a mixed bag. The report details 58 strategies, goals and other recommendations, including focusing on education and treatment programs, limiting youth access and ensuring that smaller businesses have as much opportunity to enter the market as larger ones. Though the "highly regulated market" the commission envisions would require too much government involvement for our taste, there were some positive suggestions, such as engaging the federal government to try to get it to at least relax federal banking regulations and IRS rules to facilitate legalization. Furthermore, the commission "was emphatic that the goal of legalization and regulation should not be to maximize tax revenue, arguing that such a goal could potentially run counter to the goals of protecting youth and promoting public health and safety," Lt. Gov. Newsom's office noted in a statement. Legalization is not the boogeyman drug warriors make it out to be. A new report from the Drug Policy Alliance shows, for example, that, since marijuana was legalized in Washington state, violent crime is down 10 percent, burglaries are down 6 percent, the overall crime rate remains at a 40-year historic low, the number of traffic fatalities is down, marijuana usage rates are unchanged for sixth- and 12th-graders and slightly lower for eighth- and 10th-graders, and millions of dollars are being saved each year by not prosecuting low-level "offenders." One need not endorse marijuana use to recognize that, contrary to critics' fears, legalization has brought many benefits where it has been tried. By contrast, just as with alcohol during the 1920s and early 1930s, drug prohibition has cost a fortune, increased violence by militarizing the police and forcing users to deal with criminals willing to skirt the laws (thereby depriving consumers of quality control and legal protections) and destroyed the lives of many nonviolent people simply because they chose to put a substance into their own bodies which the government did not approve. The drug war has done much more harm than good and should be ended as swiftly as possible. Fully legalizing marijuana would be a good first step. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom