Welcome to Hempfest 2010
The headline read: “Pot initiative Nipped in the Bud.” But it’s not nipped in the roots. Notice, I didn’t say “grass” roots. I’m trying to stop making pot puns. When people make pot jokes I snarl at them. Cannabis has been trivialized for so long by the media and the rest of us that we just take it for granted that it should be talked about that way. “Pot Initiative Nipped in the Bud.” And so on. You can’t find a cannabis related headline that doesn’t have some sort of pot pun in it. The 15,000 or so folks who will be busted for cannabis in Washington this year won’t be grinning much. Neither will the 850,000 busted nationally. Many of them will lose their jobs. Some will be forced to piss into a bottle for years in order to visit their children, or have them taken away. Drivers Licenses will be suspended; insurance rates hiked. It’s not a punny matter.
That’s why it’s so sad that Sensible Washington’s I-1068 did not make the ballot. Sensible Washington was formed this year. Its goal: stop messing around with the hogtied legislative process and legalize cannabis for adults. Period. Initiative is the only way to go. There is more than one lesson to be learned from prohibition. Not only does prohibition not work, it is a social policy with a catch 22: Once it’s there, no body of elected representatives is capable of removing it. Prohibition wasn’t ended by professional politicians. It took constitutional conventions and citizen's initiatives, where members were not necessarily professional politicians who had to face re election by fickle and often ignorant voters, and where a few well positioned opponents were not capable of putting in the monkey wrench.
We have the numbers. 56% of the people in the entire state think there should be no penalty for adult use of marijuana. We almost got it on the ballot this year, collecting a substantial portion of the roughly quarter million needed signatures with no paid gatherers. Had our funding not been torpedoed by aggressive bad mouthing to our potential funders, ostensibly on behalf of or by the ACLU, we’d be looking at a legalization initiative on this year’s ballot, and asking every one of you to go out there and work for it. I am aghast that a few ACLU officials--in particular my former law partner Alison Holcomb--took unfounded positions against the initiative. I believe they are complicit in the arrest of 15,000 Washingtonians who could have been saved this year.
The good news is that Sensible Washington is reorganized, and, I might say, well organized, with even more supporters, and gearing up to put our initiative on the ballot next year. Our website is sensiblewashington.org
We hope that the ACLU will reconsider its position. Remarkably, the two reasons given by the ACLU for opposing the initiative have proven to be groundless. First, ACLU spokesperson Alison Holcomb stated that the poll numbers did not look favorable, and that running a failed campaign would be a setback. While we disagree with her recitation of the state of the polls, a quick look at history shows that many progressive causes failed more than once at the polls before finally being accepted by voters. Such a defeatist attitude guarantees failure. As Mickey Rooney said, “you always pass failure on the way to success.”
You have to have long range goals to avoid being stopped by short term failures. Our goal is to remove all criminal penalties and all stigma from the responsible adult use, manufacture, or distribution of cannabis.
Ms. Holcomb’s second reason was that our proposed initiative contained no civil regulations, and that the rules/law around initiatives prevented the legislature from enacting regulations for two years after passage. Having worked with Ms. Holcomb, this one surprised me—it’s simply wrong—a clear misstatement of the state of the law. I know she knows how to read the law, so I just can’t explain why she would take that preposterous position. Within hours of her statement our Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna issued a statement making it clear that we had properly drafted the initiative and that the legislature could amend to include regulations immediately. We sincerely regret that the ACLU has chosen not just to not support us, but to aggressively fight our attempts at legalization. We hope they will come to their senses and work with Sensible Washington in a unified effort.
In other developments, this has become the year of the dispensary. At our office, Douglas Hiatt and I get dozens of calls each week, asking how to set up a dispensary or a legal medical grow. If what we are seeing is any indication, soon we’ll be seeing more dispensaries than 7-11s and more pot growing in Washington than apples or tomatoes. Problem is, the rules vary from county to county and even from city to city. The resulting legal thicket is difficult and treacherous to navigate. The issues here are very complicated and are at the intersection of state and federal laws. Anyone interested in the opportunities presented by the emerging "cannabussines" area needs top flight counsel and representation.
Although they are not well publicized, raids on previously “tolerated” dispensaries or collective grows have been increasing. Earlier this year several respected and well known dispensaries and collectives in Spokane were raided and threatened with federal action. Recent raids in Tacoma have left the medical community shaken and wondering where it is all going in the midst of what appear to be orchestrated raids coordinated with the prosecutor’s office. These issues and many others, including outright intolerance of any medical community make getting accurate and up to the minute legal advice a necessity. Anyone in the medical community in need of legal advice and representation should call us. Our trial team, including Douglas Hiatt and David Arganian has tried more medical cases and represented more medical patients than anyone in Washington state.
We have now counseled dozens, probably hundreds of interested persons on the subject, and represented many persons charged with crimes for attempting to comply with the law. We’d be happy to provide you the information you’ll need.
Jeffrey SteinbornFor the Cannabis Counselors