(Almost) Secret Commission May Decide How We Legalize

(Almost) Secret Commission May Decide How We Legalize

Editorial by David Fiedler SacNORML member

Cannabis activists in California have been trying to get marijuana legalized for decades. Apart from the success of Proposition 215 for medical marijuana, the "big year" was supposed to be 2010, when Prop. 19 was on the ballot. Prop. 19 failed for a number of reasons, and there’s still controversy around whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. A number of efforts were launched in 2012, but none of them even made the ballot.

But the “perfect storm” is likely to hit next year. 2016 is a presidential election year, so we can expect a high voter turnout. In addition, four states have already legalized adult recreational use of cannabis, and the first two (Colorado and Washington) are already seeing enough financial and other success that a surprising number of other states are looking at it too. The last factor is that, for the first time, a majority of Americans polled finally are ready to see marijuana legalized for adults over 21.

Gavin Newsom, who was previously mayor of San Francisco and now is the Lieutenant Governor, reputedly wants to ride this legalization tidal wave all the way to the Governor’s Mansion in 2018. To do that, he’ll have to be seen to spearhead a method of legalizing that makes the soccer mom voting contingent happy, at least if you believe conventional political wisdom. That may be why he made it a priority to set up the so-called Blue Ribbon Commission On Marijuana Policy. This commission just issued its first progress report last month, although it’s almost impossible to find on their website.

The commission members come from a wide range of backgrounds, including addiction medicine specialists and others who have a vested interest in keeping cannabis taboo, but there are also some people who are likely to have positive input as well. Here’s what I sent to the commission through their comment form, and it sums up the basic problem I found with the commission itself:

I'm wondering why, if this is a "commission comprised of leading policymakers, public health experts and academics from across the state and the nation that have done significant work and research related to marijuana", that it has not a single representative from the community of growers, patients, or medical marijuana dispensaries that actually work with marijuana on a daily basis in the real world of California politics?

And the progress report isn’t much better. Much of the discussion regarding medical marijuana is a similar type to what just destroyed Washington state’s MMJ program: implying that the state wants all the taxes it can get, and it’s likely willing to throw those inconvenient patients under the bus to get them.

Here’s the real secret that I discovered about public input to the commission. There isn’t any. At press time, only about two dozen people have even registered on their public forum discussion site. This is not totally surprising, because it’s hosted on a completely different website, and the link to access it only appears in a limited number of places on the commission’s main site.

As a cannabis activist, if you register on the discussion site, you will be one of a handful of people who have the ability to vote on and discuss important policy topics -- ranging from DUIs to environmental concerns -- to be seen by the eyes of the commission itself. The more of us that express our opinions (in a well-written, respectful way, of course), the more likely we’ll be to get what we want. So go there now, register on the site, and vote and write wisely!


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