Actually, his rationale is even sillier:

Jerry Brown, who opposes legalizing MJ, says Calif can’t compete w/ China “if everybody’s stoned.” #CAgov

Brown opposed Prop 5, which would have offered much needed drug treatment to nonviolent offenders. He’s not an ally on this.

I am not just a little stunned tat this article is considered a progressive stance. First of all, are you in CA? If you were, you might know that we DO have a major problem with cartel operators north of the border growing forests of marijuana, some of them at Yosemite and the Redwoods. You might also know that if CA legalizes it, or decriminalizes it (as that is the only real goal of the ballot initiative – taxing, regulating, and controlling are non-existent in the ballot initiative contents), then we will have an unregulated quasi-legal market operating right alongside the black market. Under the scheme we’re looking at, the black market doesn’t go away at all, but increases, because it’s ‘legal’ to grow it here, so everyone is doing it – CA stoners + cartel operators. Second, Brown is right about China. Spend a few weeks studying India and China, and you will quickly get it that they are single-mindedly focused on two things: unbelievable economic growth, and establishing a society that is strong, virtuous, and drug-free. Why do they want to do this? Economic power, baby. They intend to be the next empire. They’ve got sheer numbers, in terms of people, productive capacity, and factories to do it. They’ve also got us trained and utterly dependent on cheap labor (India, for outsourcing) and cheap goods (China). Then get back on the plane, and come home to Americans whining about wanting to be stoned, legally. We’re doomed, people. If wanting that outcome is ‘progressive’, then progressivism has really reached a new low.

Mr. Brown might try to substitute “tobacco” for marijuana and then consider who gains and loses by that product’s legal manufacture and sale. State tobacco tax revenues are considerable, as are the manufacturers’ (“Make it for a penny, sell it for a dollar, and it’s addictive. What’s not to like?”) Tobacco manufacturers may act like a cartel, and may be willing to sell their products on cancer wards, but they are still legal enterprises. Despite the billions such products cost society each year in deaths, health care costs, and lost opportunities for families and businesses, their sale remains legal.

Mr. Brown may choose to be against legalizing the manufacture and sale of marijuana, but he’ll need more credible reasons to be against it.

The point is that under a legalized marijuana market, prices drop from the black market and force the cartels out of business. It won’t be profitable for them to continue to sell marijuana, which is their major profit driver, and they’ll dry up.

There’s a lot of legal money and careers to be made in keeping drugs illegal. There are judges, magistrates, lawyers. prosecutors, cops, prison guards … it’s a long list.

Alcohol is the most productive destroy drug out there. It cause far more economic lost productivity than anything else. Your argument literally mirrors one from the Prohibitionist I read in Last Call

Absofuckinglutely. It’s a jobs issue.

Yep, it’s the anchor-tenant in the “war” on drugs mall, with its federalization of local police (now in competition with “terror” as a justification), and its expenditure of huge sums on toys, staff, invasive investigatins and discriminatory enforcement against the poor.

Lots of judges and lawyers, though, would welcome retasking those resources to other purposes. But Old Testament neocons love them their punishment, especially when it stigmatizes the poor “other” (with its racist undertones) and makes so many so rich, from prison farm profiteers to gun manufacturers.

Glenn Greenwald did a nice series a couple of years ago on Portugal’s very successful experiment in legalizing various drugs. Drug-related crimes dropped considerably, which allowed public funds to be redirected toward treating some of the problems that make drugs attractive, taking away funds from the crime industry. The measurable net gains to society were considerable, but they went to individuals and families, not to corporations, bureaucracies and political careers.

Each prisoner costs over $40,000.00 to keep incarcerated. Reduction there and tax revenue will help reduce state revenue shortfall. We are in denial about our economy look at this short summary form Fortune:
While the headline focuses on her outlook for housing, Whitney is bearish across the board, seeing little reason to cheer on the employment and bank earnings fronts. She sees a 10% fall in housing prices in the next six months (!), which will hit bank earnings (Whitney has argued since at least early 2009 that banks have been goosing earning by underreserving for losses) and the economy generally (a further decline in home equity plus lack of mobility of consumers wanting to sell their houses but facing a declining market has implications for consumer spending generally). She point out that consumer credit is tightening, which puts a crimp on small businesses (both via lower revenues and via restricted access to funds), the biggest engine of hiring, and on top of that, municipalities and states are cutting spending and shedding jobs.

From Fortune (hat tip Glenn Stehle):
The belt tightening is going to increase. My landlord says more renters are losing their jobs. Krugman calls it the third Depression. From a practical and compassionate view we need to find revenues and get people out of the revolving doors.

Americans whining about wanting to be stoned

Having legalized marijuana will not increase its use. Everyone who wants to get stoned now is doing so. Walk down any block in any town in CA and I wager half of the households have grass squirreled away somewhere. For that matter-any block in the country.

Jerry Brown is like the closeted gay Republican, lambasting LGBT Americans and passing laws outlawing their lives. If Brown isn’t a hemphead, then I’m Amelia Earhardt.

Let’s take this into the real world: You want to get some marijuana. You can buy some that you know is illegal and of both questionable and possibly unknown quality and may even have toxic chemicals and other junk adulterating it. Or you can walk down to the local cannabis shop and buy some state-legal stuff that’s 100% above-board, probably being able to choose between a number of varieties and strengths, and walk out knowing you won’t be arrested.

This, to me, sounds like the polar opposite to an opportunity for organized crime to run rampant.

Besides we already have the proof of it: How many bootleggers are there nowadays, besides a few harmless home-stillers? Prohibition just doesn’t work.

Hi Mary good comment. I was on Nipomo street running the dunes. Probably have some weed patches out there by the oak groves.

Or grow your own.

The majority of crime associated with prohibition is due directly to the substance in question BEING PROHIBITED! The idea that legalizing weed is going to suddenly increase the number of users and criminals is specious and uninformed. PROHIBITION DOES. NOT. WORK.

Much of our State and National Parks are not safe because of these growers. If you stumble across their MJ farm you could become fertilizer.

I am not just a little stunned tat this article is considered a progressive stance. First of all, are you in CA? If you were, you might know that we DO have a major problem with cartel operators north of the border growing forests of marijuana

God-damn you’re willfully ignorant. Prohibition props them up as it propped up the Mafia.

I think you’re missing the point: The parks will become safer when it’s legal to grow it elsewhere, openly, and when there aren’t huge amounts of money to be made by MJ bootlegging.

There are many Asian countries in which marijuana is so very illegal that tiny amounts are punishable by DEATH. Let’s take Singapore for example: People have been imprisoned for decades there for the tiniest amount of marijuana and it’s one of those nations that allow for the death penalty for the sale of it. Yet, I’ll bet anything that I could go there right now and within a couple of hours I could find some marijuana. It would be way expensive but I could find it. I know because I have done so in my misspent youth. PROHIBITION DOES. NOT. WORK.

First of all, are you in CA? If you were, you might know that we DO have a major problem with cartel operators north of the border growing forests of marijuana, some of them at Yosemite and the Redwoods.

I’m in California.

You might also know that if CA legalizes it, or decriminalizes it (as that is the only real goal of the ballot initiative – taxing, regulating, and controlling are non-existent in the ballot initiative contents), then we will have an unregulated quasi-legal market operating right alongside the black market

You’re wrong.

Allows the collection of taxes specifically to allow local governments to raise revenue or to offset any costs associated with marijuana regulation

TAXING

Local government may authorize businesses to sell up to 1 ounce of marijuana and to regulate the hours and location of the business

REGULATING

Shred your talking points memo and fire your fact-finder, sharonevolving.

Wikipedia owns your soul.

It is time for Brown to take an economics 101 course.
You have got to be kidding me.
At a time when I am seriously considering some the of the left wing idiocay at this site while being threatened with modding and hell me if I don’t donate, this post is pushing on my last good nerve.

And if you stumble across a burglar in your home, you could become fertilizer. Should we outlaw personal valuables?

Margaret, as a personal OT, I left you a comment, last time we were talking.

If you think citizens of India and China don’t use illegal substances of all sorts, then you haven’t visited those countries.

While you raise some issues for discussion, tossing out that straw argument is a waste of time. I’ve been to both countries; people there use both illegal and so-called “prescription” meds just like people do here. If anything all drugs/meds are pretty widely available.

There are some valid concerns in terms of legalizing pot, but prohibition doesn’t work. Jerry Brown needs to get more serious about this and speak more intelligently. Sorry to hear this. Differing viewpoints are fine but now when spoken out of ignorance, as it sounds like Brown did.

In parts of India Marijuana is effectively legal having been part of the religious tradition for centuries.

To the point, how much pot usage is really bad for you? And it boggles the mind that progressives would advocate putting black smoke into the lungs. Recreational pot smoking is a pretty much worthless social activity and not worth spending any time on.

Do you not believe the clear evidence of the 21st amendment that making a previously illegal product legal dramatically reduces the criminal enterprises that sold that once illegal product?

Well, I wouldn’t know from, uh, personal experience, of course, but you are correct in all respects about your analogy with Singapore… it does have draconian laws, and if one were to make it a point, one could find illegal substances to purchase there (or so I’m told).

Why yes, but – so I’m told of course – it’s often quite easy to buy even in states where it’s technically not legal, along with various other substances. Not that I would know from personal experince.

I consider drinking a pretty much worthless social activity. The same thing with going out to eat pizza with friends.

Neither are good for you but I don’t want billions of tax dollars wasted on trying to stop people from doing them.

That’s your opinion, and you’re entitled to it. Not everyone agrees, and while we still have a putative democracy, others are entitled to hold differing opinions.

If you don’t want to smoke pot, then the simple solution for you is: don’t.

Speak to my copied comment of yours, Jon, or don’t engage. But, if you do, I will respond in the same manner.
I live in CA. I smoke pot when I can get it. Don’t be pendantical with with me please. It’s something that tweeks me and may encourage me not to come here.

Recreational drinking is also a worthless social activity, but it is legal. The laws haven’t stopped pot. They have just given crimial records to people exercising personal choices.

What about the beneficial effects of pot? Pain relief. Sleep inducing. Nausea stopping. Happy making.

Indeed you’re correct on that score, not to mention mj plantations on other types of public lands, like BLM land and national forests. There have been incidents of violence where hikers or backpackers have been endangered by quite accidentally coming across someone’s plantation. And it’s not just the drug cartels that can be nasty, even Joe Average Citizen Illegal Pot Grower can be pretty hardcore, if the grower feels the crop is threatened.

Prohibition doesn’t work and ends up with bad situations that don’t need to happen.

I read that response demi but was very busy at the time applying for a job with Ruan. :-)

The point is that I don’t know a single historian or economist who would not definitively say the 21st amendment dramatically reduce criminal alcohol cartels.

That fact should be considered economics 101

I agree about the drinking and disagree about the pizza. This country long ago legalized the distribution of poison tobacco. Since you may not have lived through an attendence at Berkeley as I did in the 70s, nothing was more depressing than being around continuous pot smoke and tobacco smoke in public places and having to watch the debilitating effect of those drugs on the smokers. In fact, smoking has its problems whether it is pot or something else. So those who want to waste their time smoking and legalizing pot, go ahead, it’s a free country, right?

Hmph! Like most young Americans at the time, I didn’t know until much, much later just how draconian the marijuana laws were in Singapore. Dodged a bullet I guess.

can’t speak of china but in india, marijuana is not an issue – heck you get govt regulated shops in some provinces/states that sell it openly, graded for quality – the only thing they are concerned about is you taking it out or bringing it in the country but that’s more to do with keeping in the good books of the west

I think if Brown wants the support of the Democratic base at large, he needs to re-evaluate his stance. It seems to me he’s pandering to the larger Police unions and Corrections Officers unions.

BigPharma frowns on all that! They’d rather citizens were forced into spending big bucks on sometimes dangerous drugs to deal with those types of issues. In terms of nausea and/or increasing appetite, esp in cancer patients on chemo, I am told (and I truly do not know, thankfully, from personal exp) that pot works the best. I also understand that for some pains, pot can be the most beneficial for treating the pain.

Clearly mj has some very useful properties beyond the fun-times stuff, but BigPharma doesn’t like it bc you can grow it in your backyard cheaply (and get good stuff). Less money for them – BigPharma’s been a big push behind the “no legal pot” movement, and citizens should also be aware of that. Sorry but no links.

You got it, and Jerry Brown knows this very well, just as he knows he’s speaking poppycock (or bullshit, if you will) on the subject of pot.

Yep. In India many people use marijuana and hashish based beverages in lieu of alcohol.

Of course that’s what’s going on! He’s swallowed the Rahm Emanuel strategy of walking and talking like a Republican.

Thank goodness you dodged that bullet!! egad. They cane you for spitting out your gum on the sidewalk. I saw Mick Jagger one night in Bugis Street in the way-back machine once.

I will vote for Brown and will vote for Prop 19.

Agreed. Hope Brown has NOT gone in that direction. I’m not a huge Brown fan, but I like him ok. But I really shudder to consider the likes of nasty snobby e-Meg in Sacramento. UGH…

Bugis Street probably was a show bigger than Mick Jagger.

I was more worried about the navy being annoyed to be honest. Oddly, they pointed out the thing about spitting…

Exactly. To say that citizens of India don’t sit around whining (which they DO… just like we do….) or indulging themselves in substances just shows ignorance about that country, its culture and citizens.

Why do you think India was forever on the “hippy trail”??

It can always be said about Brown; At least he’s not Meg Whitman.

There might also be some influence from BigPharma here. If people can self-medicate their sleep problems, wtf do we need Ambien or Lunesta for? Restless Leg Syndrome? Smoke some pot! BigPharma can’t like that too much.

Well indeed. That was a looooooooooooong time ago, and I was quite impressed with the denizens there. Very fun. Not sure if Bugis street even exists anymore or at least in the same way.

heh… I dunno, all of the “Lonely Planet” guides made a big deal about the spitting on the sidewalk prohibition, plus don’t leave cigarette butts on the sidewalk (which is good manners, but you’ll get in a world of hurt if you do it in Singapore).

Excellent Laksa in Singapore… mmm mmm mmm now I’m hungry!!! And I’m not even sto-woned… lol

This makes me think that it’s not the same. Too bad.

BigPharma does NOT like legalized pot one little iota, but I have no links to prove it. But even so, common sense indicates that they wouldn’t for the reasons that you elaborate.

When I hear people ranting about the eeeeeeeevuls of pot, I figure that they’ve been lectured to by someone bought off by BigPharma.

Thanks for that link; unsurprised. Everything has changed tremendously since I was first there over 30 years ago – but so has everywhere, I guess.

I still have a good friend who lives and works there. He says the food’s still great and there are remnants of “old” Singapore if you know where to look. But you have to really look for it.

But! You can drink the water!

Run for office, babe.

On a personal note, I’m voting for this bill. I am a recovering alcoholic who also had a rather large drug problem, have been sober almost 9 years. I will never smoke pot again, hopefully. It takes me places I no longer wish to go.

But again, I’m voting for this bill. Here’s my thinking:

If marijuana does not cause cancer, does not contribute to heart problems, does not have any of the adverse effects of alcohol on the soft organs, and (under this proposed law) will be treated like alcohol as far as sale, DUIs, minor posession, etc., then who the hell is it hurting?

I can tell you who it would be helping! My kids. The ones who don’t have a P.E. Teacher or a Crossing Guard at school anymore. So fuck Big Pharam, they can afford all the crossing guards they want. Its time for us Californians to do something, anything, to get some GD revenue back onto the books. And this is a start.

I have thought about the possibility in the future.

Congratulations on staying clean and sober for almost 9 years!! And may you remain that way forever. All the best.

Well, one could argue that smoking pot is dangerous for the lungs, and it probably is. And there is certainly a percentage of people who will be adversely affected by pot use – adverse could range from an addiction (usually not addictive for most, but I’ve had friends who I would say had some real addictions issues with it), to mental issues from an bad reaction, to possibly health issues.

So it goes. Alcohol, I believe, causes much worse problems and physical health damage than pot.

Everything in moderation is key, but people are going to go after substances they want even if they’re not legal. Pot is an easy one to legalize due to it’s many good properties. And I agree: tax the **** out it, since we’re clearly no longer allowed to fairly and appropriately tax the obscenely wealthy. CA needs funds. Let’s get it done.

The availability of it has made me treat it the same as alcohol when I talked to my kids. The added criminality means little except to make the lawmakers feel like tough guys.

The reality is, legal or not, most kids will be confronted with marijuana in their teens. I think it’s a great idea to treat it like alcohol in those conversations.

As far as making the lawmakers feel like tough guys, I think it may have a lot more to do with keeping that Federal War on Drug money coming in. And keeping those prisons overpopulated. There is a very large amount of funding at stake for LE, the judiciary, DAs offices, corrections, etc. Hell, probably 20-30% of them smoke weed anyway. But they’ll all come out against Prop 19. Their jobs are on the line.

Robert Naiman is upstairs!
Speaker Pelosi, Put Afghan Drawdown On Record w/McGovern-Obey

Jerry Brown isn’t against marijuana legalization because he thinks marijuana is bad. He is against marijuana because it is good politics. He doesn’t want lose support from the corrections union.

Jerry has a moral obligation to win.

Quit ankle biting and focus on the real problems.

This Country could easily start replacing mj possession, with a long list of war criminals and bankers to fill any incarceration concerns, in my humble opinion.

I don’t understand why this is so complicated: two posts above mention Queen Meg “I-was-a-tea-bagger-last-week-but-now-I’m-a-moderate” Whitman without getting the point: Jerry’s scared to death of non-stop “Jerry want’s your kids to get addicted to pot-then-cocaine-then-heroin-just-like-Joe-Friday-says-there’s-proof-for” ads running from now until November.

He may be craven but he knows there are more anti-Jerry votes to sow in Orange County than there are pro-Jerry votes in Mendocino and Oaksterdam…

Boy, was I wrong about Jerry Brown. Stupid fucker. I almost never write to politicians but Jerry will hear from me. I don’t live in California but I have friends there. I will find a way to hurt his campaign.

The prices haven’t dropped with the medical marijuana that is availabe now.

Just a little emotional warning to people who are getting their hopes up about Jerry Brown. He has a long history of shooting himself in the foot during a campaign. I bet he does it again.

And I live in area of the USA where pot is virtually legal and I can tell you that it definitely brings the price down. Shoot, people nearly throw it at you around here.

“First of all, are you in CA? If you were, you might know that we DO have a major problem with cartel operators north of the border growing forests of marijuana, some of them at Yosemite and the Redwoods.”

OK, here’s another Californian chiming in. In fact, I live in Redwood Country, Humboldt County specifically, and the Mexican cartel operators, while popping up now and then, have NOT been a “major” participant up here on the North Coast, according to local news reports. We do hear of significant Mexican cartel grows in other places like the Sierra Foothills. Here on the North Coast, no.

Just a minor fact in the face of what appears to be a litany of errors in your recital of conservative trolling points concern.

In response to leftdcin72 @ 38 (show text)
“I agree about the drinking and disagree about the pizza. This country long ago legalized the distribution of poison tobacco. Since you may not have lived through an attendence at Berkeley as I did in the 70s, nothing was more depressing than being around continuous pot smoke and tobacco smoke in public places and having to watch the debilitating effect of those drugs on the smokers. In fact, smoking has its problems whether it is pot or something else. So those who want to waste their time smoking and legalizing pot, go ahead, it’s a free country, right?”

What the hell? These concern troll talking points are not only stupid, they’re imaginary.

Yes I attended Berkeley in the 70s, as you claim to have done. “Continuous pot smoke and tobacco smoke in public places.”? Are you crazy? Sure, pot smoke at local rock concerts. Now and then briefly at Ho Chi Minh park, or other gathering places. Beyond that, what the hell are you talking about? If you sat in a coffee house, or stood on a corner, or walked down Telegraph Ave puffing a joint, the cops would quickly show up and ask you for ID same as any other city.

On campus, the climate was no different. Someone smoking pot in a classroom building? I never saw that in several years as a student.

I do agree that allowing tobacco smoking in public spaces was unfortunate and unhealthy. But I think tobacco is just a stalking horse in this weird fantasy you have about Berkeley and pot in the 70s. I was there and I’m calling you out about your imaginary facts.

Imaginary facts. Guess yu never went to the Rose Garden or any other place in Berkeley. Pot heads galore smoking in public profusely. Now they’re probably working at Goldman Sachs.

Bingo, we are not ready yet for the truth. You can’t just be Left of Center and hope Unions won’t fund ads against you and the Right won’t use it against you either.

He is doing the right thing, I call it a moderated attack with a captive audience, my gawd the room was full of law enforcement officials! What did you expect him to say and where’s the proof he’s a liberal?

Brown is true Pragmatist, unlike Obama. Don’t worry about what he says, both people running for his vacant seat have said they will oppose Prop 19 passage if voted into law. This is just grandstanding. Just vote for the thing and then all they can say is “The people wanted it”.

I should add much of retired law enforcement is in favor of this, its polling above the danger zone without any real push, just make sure you vote for it.

Go to Calitics for a break down of all the Props on the ballot in Nov, its not the only one we should be supporting.

While you still get the occasional bunched-pantied LEO like the one who arrested two young men of my acquaintance and made them spend the night in lockup over a SINGLE DUBE spotted on the console during a stop over a dead headlamp, most police in CA these days couldn’t care less about personal-use marijuana possession. They believe, rightly, that they have better things to do.

That’s right. Individual cops will tell you it’s a waste of their time; the official police and corrections spokesmodels will say just the opposite, because for them its all about jobs and money. I agree with earlier commenters who have said that’s most likely who Jerry Brown is pandering to, although he does have some rather conservative law-and-order stances about stuff.

And now California has some of the strictest prohibitions against smoking tobacco in public places; I suspect that will apply to marijuana too.

its all about jobs and money

Well, the attitude at the street level predates the recession, but with these both now being cut maybe the folks upstairs will finally catch on, too.

“Imaginary facts. Guess yu never went to the Rose Garden or any other place in Berkeley. Pot heads galore smoking in public profusely. Now they’re probably working at Goldman Sachs.”

You are so full of it. Sure I was at the Rose Garden many times and some weekends played softball on the field across the street. Lots of kids, families. If a bunch of stoners were sitting around smoking, it would not go unreported.

The reality is a far cry from your “continuous pot smoke and tobacco smoke in public places.” But hey, you’ve got your fantasy. Enjoy!

It’s too bad that we don’t actually have as much unbiased information about the effects of pot as we should – because the climate for those studies is chilling, as federal and state governments still consider it their charge not just to enforce the laws on the books, but to tout findings that support the positions of the War on Drugs.

Once we all calm down about what at least appears to be one of the least harmful vices on Earth, we should be able to better determine the short- and long-term risks facing marijuana users.

Sadly, as retired Justice Stevens pointed out, the laws as they stand do a bang-up job at one of the tasks performed by Prohibition in 1920s: silencing consumers of the product, as well as sane non-users who would otherwise support its legalization over and above the criminals profiting off the ban, as expressing public support for legalization invites scrutiny from law enforcement. There is the same effect on studies of cannabis use, although the ice is cracking a bit.

“And now California has some of the strictest prohibitions against smoking tobacco in public places; I suspect that will apply to marijuana too.”

Yes, I’m quite pleased that the tobacco restrictions are happening, and I agree that the (legally enforced) increasingly aware etiquette around second-hand tobacco smoke will tend to extend to marijuana as well.

Jerry Brown’s comments, if correctly reported, indicate a lack of sense, let alone of economics knowledge, on his part. The former KPFA-Berkeley radio show host doesn’t particularly worry about standing by his words, however.

But if he was sincere, maybe we shoulda dragged him to the “Post-Marijuana Prohibition Economy Forum” that was held last March 23 at the Mateel Community Center in southern Humboldt County (reported on in the Humboldt Heraldblog and in local media.

Or even, more recently, the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project’s annual forum this past June 19, titled “Cannabis Health & Safety: The Chemistry, The Economics, & The Politics,” documented at http://www.civilliberties.org/index.html and also noted in local Humboldt media at the time.

China?

The reason Communist China is growing so fast is because the movers and shakers in the good ol’ USA sent our jobs and manufacturing base over there in exchange for short-term corporate profits and short-sighted tax breaks.

Many of the locals in ShenZhen, say, work in factories run like prison camps. For $150/month including a bunk in a company run dormitory that also provides the gruel for meals. All to export to the USA a snazzy new i-phone, lap-top, tv set.

Instead of committing suicide to escape the company’s clutches, maybe they’d be happier smoking a joint after work.

MJ is one thing we have left to produce here stateside. Cheaper than importing it. Tax it heavily and raise badly needed revenues, is what I say.

Jerry Brown is running against a multi-bazillionaire eMeg Moneybucks Whitman, who already is flooding tv and radio with sleazy attack adds in June. If Jerry came out for 19 she’d bury him in propaganda.

I haven’t read all this yet, but I was so upset I called his campaign office and asked how to address this issue. I was told to write an email.

I want to encourage everyone else to also call and write. I was very upset telling his staff his position is discriminating against me for my religion and just completely wrong. She sad they would want to hear that and I would get a reply.

I then mentioned my severe PTSD from when I emailed Dianne Feinstein and somebody sent a Blackwater helicopter to threaten me with machine guns.

She told me they would want to hear my opinion since I was so well researched on the issue.

Here is his contact info,

http://www.jerrybrown.org/contact

You may contact the campaign office by email at info@jerrybrown.org or by mail at:

Jerry Brown 2010
291 3rd St.
Oakland, CA 94607

Our phone is (510) 628-0202.

To request that gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown attend an event, please send the details along to scheduling@jerrybrown.org.

If you’re looking to contact Jerry Brown in his capacity as Attorney General please visit the official Office Of The Attorney General website.

Here is what I wrote,

I am very upset by Jerry Brown’s position against legalizing marijuana.

I will be very disappointed if he loses to Meg because of it.

I was a girl scout leader for ten years when one of my girls asked me why pot was illegal. I did not know so I looked it up, and what I found absolutely horrified me. It is all about religious and racial persecution and feeding organized crime.

So being a girl scout leader, I put together a plan to END marijuana prohibition and it’s associated crime based on constitutional law. I have spent the last seven years of my life devoted to it, blogging and doing activism, now we have it on the ballot. I blog regularly at AlterNet as Sister Lauren and occasionally at firedoglake as kindGSL.

The Tea Party was also my idea, I am very politically savvy. I learned it from my father, a gay man who died of AIDS many years ago. I plan on triangulating both political parties to break through the rampant corruption.

I am very disappointed that Jerry Brown would chose to support organized crime instead of my civil rights.

Reverend Lauren Unruh
THC Ministry
Pleasant Hill, Ca

I am a medical marijuana user in California and I have seen NO public places where marijuana smoking is allowed. If anyone knows of any, please, let me know.

With all due respect, I really think the best tactic to persuade people is to talk about science and economics. Many people don’t use pot themselves, and don’t care about other people’s rights or religion. They need to know what’s in it for them if pot became legal. We need to educate people about the benefits of using marijuana for any number of medical conditions and the fact that it has little or no side effects or potential for abuse compared to the cost and rampant abuse of prescription drugs. In addition, we should talk about decreased crime, more room in prisons for violent criminals, more money for education and infrastructure, etc. People who view this as a civil rights issue are probably already in favor of Prop. 19, no matter where else they fall on the political spectrum.