Pubdate: Sun, 27 Sep 2015
Source: Oklahoman, The (OK)
Copyright: 2015 The Oklahoma Publishing Co.
Contact: http://www.newsok.com/voices/guidelines
Website: http://newsok.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/318
Author: Ryan Lovelace, Washington Examiner

DEMS WANT HIGH VOTER TURNOUT, USE POT LEGALIZATION TO GET IT

On Election Day, Nov. 8, 2016, people waiting in line to vote may be 
less interested in choosing a president than in legalizing marijuana.

A total of 17 states will have marijuana measures on their ballots 
next year, almost triple the number in 2012, when there were pot 
questions in just six states.

Democrats hope these reefer referendums will bring more left-leaning 
voters to the polls and have an impact on all the other questions on 
the ballot, most especially, who should be president. But the 
unintended consequences of politicizing pot have already materialized 
in states that have just begun experimenting with the drug.

Of the 17 states that could vote on marijuana next year, 10 went red 
for Mitt Romney in 2008 (including Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, 
Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming) 
and seven went blue for President Obama (including California, 
Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico).

Florida had 29 electoral votes in 2012 - its number of electoral 
votes has increased in every census since 1930 - and pot may help the 
Democratic Party keep the Sunshine State in its column come 2016.

"I think Florida is the big one," said David Dinenberg, CEO of Kind 
Financial, a budding financial services firm for the legalized 
marijuana industry. "Last year, in 2014, they had a governor election 
as well as medical marijuana legalization on the ballot. More people 
voted for [marijuana] than voted for the governor who's sitting in 
the office today."

He's right. More than 2.8 million Floridians voted to re-elect 
Republican Gov. Rick Scott, which amounted to 48.1 percent of the 
total vote. Marijuana won more than 3.3 million votes, which is 
greater than 57 percent of all votes cast. Still, the measure did not 
pass because changing the Florida constitution requires 60 percent of 
the voters' support.

John Morgan, a successful trial lawyer and one of Florida's most 
influential Democratic donors, supported Amendment 2, the medical 
marijuana initiative, in 2014 and has devoted more resources to it 
for next year. He thinks the main reason his side lost in 2014 is 
because of his failure to persuade voters aged 60 and older and 
because of low turnout in key areas, including Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

"It wasn't about who they liked the most. It was who they liked the 
least. It wasn't a vote for Rick Scott or Charlie Crist," Morgan 
said. "They might come out and vote for an issue like this. ... You 
may not come out and vote for a person, but you may come out for a cause."

Morgan is a prominent donor to former Secretary of State Hillary 
Clinton's presidential campaign, and hosted her at his home this 
summer. He said he discussed his efforts to pass the medical 
marijuana initiative at length with Clinton and told the Washington 
Examiner, "I was comfortable with her positions," while declining to 
provide specifics about their conversation.

Morgan thinks the marijuana issue in Florida could help deliver the 
state for Clinton, especially if she is up against a native son such 
as former Gov. Jeb Bush or Sen. Marco Rubio.

Another southern Democrat who has pledged his support to Clinton, 
Georgia State Sen. Curt Thompson, has renewed his effort to legalize 
marijuana statewide in 2016. Thompson opposed an effort by the 
legislature to legalize some forms of medicinal marijuana this year 
because he said it did not go far enough.

As he looks to build a coalition around his amendment, he said he 
believes some conservatives are wary of jumping onto his bandwagon 
because of how the social issue could play during their primaries. 
But Thompson thinks Georgia Republicans' fiscal conservative nature 
may ultimately bring them into the fold when they hear promises of 
how much money it could raise in the Peach State.

Mile-high anxiety

But tax revenue resulting from marijuana in Colorado has failed to 
live up to pre-legalization projections. Colorado, with Washington 
state, legalized marijuana in 2012 and have begun implementing the 
policies statewide.

Colorado earned nearly $53 million in tax revenue from marijuana 
during in 2014. It's the latest number to fall below the state's 
expectations. This year, the Denver Sun-Times noted that, "Colorado's 
marijuana tax [is] bringing in 42 percent less than projected." 
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who opposed legalizing 
marijuana, also faces a bevy of other problems that pot has caused.

Drug traffickers have set up shop in Colorado since legalization, 
according to Tom Gorman, director of the Rocky Mountain High 
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program. Gorman's division of the 
program falls under the larger federal program created by Congress in 
1988 to provide assistance to federal, state, local and tribal law 
enforcement agencies that operate in areas identified as "critical 
drug trafficking regions of the United States," according to the 
Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"Colorado has become a source area for marijuana for much of the rest 
of the country," Gorman said. "We try to eliminate the black market, 
we've become the black market for so much of the rest of the United 
States. And that keeps going up and up and up, it hasn't even leveled out yet."

While Gorman said investigations prevent him providing certain 
details of criminal activity, his program has indications that drug 
trafficking organizations have tried to intimidate and extort legal 
marijuana dispensaries, while also seeking to exploit the legal 
market to further their own illegal aims.

A preview of the Rocky Mountain program's 2015 report regarding 
marijuana legalization's impact on the state shows seizures of 
marijuana leaving the state rose 25 percent from 2013 to 2014, when 
retail stores opened for business. The number of interdiction 
seizures has risen 592 percent since Colorado's commercialization of 
medical marijuana in 2009, according to the report.

The drug's legalization also may have had an effect on children's 
health and teenage delinquency. The average percentage of children 
less than five years old who were exposed to marijuana in Colorado 
was approximately 8.6 percent from 2006 to 2009. That rate has since 
spiked, up to nearly 18 percent. The national average grew just 2 
percent during the same time period.

The number of hospitalizations for children under age 12 due to 
marijuana ingestion decreased each year from 2011 through 2013, but 
doubled in 2014 to 16 total cases in Colorado, according to 
information provided by the Colorado Children's Hospital.

Drug-related suspensions and expulsions of students ages 12 to 17 had 
decreased each year since the 2010-2011 school year, but ticked back 
up during the 2013-2014 school year following legalization, according 
to the Rocky Mountain report. After legalization, past month 
marijuana usage among the same age group grew by 6.6 percentage points.

While the report finds several negative unintended consequences 
resulting from legalized weed, Gorman said he does not know whether 
the rise in crime in Denver, Colorado's largest city in terms of 
population, has a direct connection to legalization. But, he adds, 
law enforcement in the state could not be more confused.

"It's very confusing, very complicated, and in my opinion a major 
hypocrisy on the laws of this country because what Colorado 
essentially has done is license and authorize people to violate 
federal law," Gorman said. "For a cop it doesn't compute with us 
because we take an oath of office [and] it's like how does this work?"

The Obama administration has favored a handsoff approach to 
Colorado's drug legalization, and Democratic presidential candidates 
have remained mum about pot on the campaign trail. While Morgan said 
Clinton's answers satisfied him, she has long refrained from offering 
a clear public stance on the issue. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont 
socialist also running for the White House, has admitted using the 
drug in the past but has not offered a forceful position on the campaign trail.

Marijuana as a voter tactic

Debate rages among Republicans, and several of the party's 
presidential candidates appear sharply divided. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz 
has expressed support for letting individual states make their own 
decisions about marijuana, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has 
co-sponsored a bill to end federal medical marijuana prohibition.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said society should never legalize 
marijuana and has called tax revenue collected from the drug's sale, 
"blood money." Ohio Gov. John Kasich has said he would not allow the 
legalization of marijuana, but Ohioans will have the opportunity to 
vote on marijuana legalization this year. Kasich is the only 
presidential candidate sitting in office where marijuana is on the 
ballot in 2015 and could have an impact on his presidential campaign 
during the primary season.

Some political insiders question marijuana's effect as a motivator 
for voters. Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who has examined 
the coattail effect of marijuana initiatives over several years, is 
skeptical that any conclusion can be drawn about whether it affects 
voter turnout.

She added that California's legalization effort and Florida's medical 
marijuana legalization effort seem poised to succeed, in part because 
there is no formidable paid opposition. Greenberg noted that 
marijuana-advocacy efforts differ from the fight over gay marriage, 
another controversial social issue, because traditional marriage 
proponents put money behind their vocal resistance.

Thompson also sees a connection between the gay marriage fight and 
his struggle for marijuana legalization in Georgia.

"I think that people are afraid of this issue in the same way they 
were afraid of gay marriage in '08, and by 2012 all of a sudden you 
saw this sea change where even...where you even had Republicans that 
weren't from New England supporting gay marriage," he said. "It's not 
something that the courts are going to weigh in on like gay marriage. 
. I think you're just a couple more states away from that being a bit 
more palatable. So it sort of feels more like 2010."

He said he thinks that if several of the 17 states considering 
marijuana pass their measures, a few presidential candidates could 
"evolve" on pot by 2020. He cited Clinton as one candidate who might 
choose to change her position, and indicated that she was not his 
ideal candidate despite his endorsement. He ultimately chose to 
endorse her because he thinks she has the best chance of winning, he said.

But he also refused to rule out endorsing any candidate who has not 
yet joined the presidential race.

"I'm from Atlanta; I don't like Shermanesque statements. So never say 
never," he said. "There's a part of me as a small 'd' Democrat, not a 
capital 'D' Democrat, that wishes Rand Paul were running a stronger 
campaign and was less willing to bow to social conservatives on some 
political issues."

As Democrats' concerns about Clinton's candidacy blossom, they hope 
the weed advocates among their grassroots supporters help get out the 
vote in 2016.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom