Mildly encourage, but a 50-40 lead is hardly secure.

One thing this campaign is not doing enough of is drawing a distinction between cannabis and other drugs, because there is a huge difference.

agree, but you only need to win my a single vote.

The ballot initiative, Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment titled Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Act, appeared on the California general election ballot in November 2008 and passed with a 52% majority.

What’s popular isn’t always what’s right.

so you think continuing a highly costly and clearly failed policy to use the law to stop people from consuming a fairly harmless plant is the “right thing to do?”

Genesis 1:29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you…..There it is….don’t like pot?…don’t use it. Aren’t we all just a little more than sick of the uninformed behaving as though they know something?

Highly costly:

• Marijuana users are less likely to finish high school
• They get lower grades in high school and in college
• They perform lower on tests of intellectual capacity
• They self report a decreased ability to excel professionally
• Heavy marijuana users self report that their marijuana habit decreases their ability to perform complex work tasks well, to learn new tasks professionally and that their marijuana usage has hampered their upwards professional climb.

Let them smoke, just for the Darwin affect.

Look for an influx of money from the prison privatizers. Lots of money is hanging in the balance.

Is that what Glenn Beck says?

clearly making it illegal has stop people from smoking. Oh wait it has been a total failure on that front. The question is if people are going to consume cannabis do we do it in a legal regulated way so the state can get tax revenue. Or do we continue a stupid war on the plant that ends up with billions of profit going to danger criminal syndicates.

So it slows down the capitalist’s gravy train , is that your bitch?

Making it legal solves the problem?

2 marijuana dispensary workers killed hours apart; LAPD probes possible links

Though MJ is as toxic and with long term side effects as alcohol and tobacco, the fact that the people tend to not take its dangers seriously and on whole do not support drug law enforcement makes me believe it just as well be legalized. The measures to decrease tobacco use could perhaps be applied to marijuana more successfully than law enforcement measures.

Two convenience store clerks were once killed hours apart. Should we outlaw Slurpees as a result or candy bars.

If they have lower intellectual capacity, how can we possibly trust their own self-reporting?

And this isn’t about letting kids use pot. But you can be sure your “save the children” argument, which worked so well to pass Prop 8, will return with a vengeance to defeat Prop 19.

Actually, the BEGINNING of reliable, trustworthy studies on the long-term effects of marijuana use is legalization. As Stevens pointed out, the current laws have a huge chilling effect on open discourse on the subject (he was talking about laws and penalties, but it applies equally to science).

These numbers seem more in line with the people I know here in Ca. then the other polls did. Many of the voters see this as the only way to stop Police, City and County Officials from trying to circumvent the will of the voters in regards to our Medical Marijuana ballots. Cops are still busting and harassing legal users and collective growers. City and County Officials continue to ban dispensaries. I don’t mean just limiting the number as has been done in LA and elsewhere, but complete bans in most areas.
Some have switched to delivery services but they can be expensive and the quality can be lacking, not to mention taking a chance on people you don’t know. I would much rather know from whom and where my meds come from over giving out my home address.

The trick to passing this Prop. will be the GOTV effort. Those that turnout their people in this midterm election will win. Hopefully our Colleges will be key with the number of young voters seeing this vote as a major vote for freedom. This is going to take lots of money to win so donations of $4.20 or more are being collected now.

Wait, so, you’re saying that in the middle of a government-created black market, legal providers will continue to suffer the side effects of the government-created black market, such as violence by criminals?

No shit, man. You should be on TV for the pro-legalization side.

Billions of profit going to danger criminal syndicates.

Who’s funding the danger criminal syndicates?

Not me.

In general, the way under 30 folks see legalization is this: we’re eliminating the capricious hand of law enforcement to ruin people’s lives, educations, jobs, and futures when cops randomly catch someone doing something that a huge percentage of people under 30 have done at some point, and a sizeable percentage do regularly.

There’s really nothing more pathetic than tax dollars wasted on a marijuana possession or paraphernalia charge, except for when the arrest wastes even more tax dollars in jails and prisons (far more likely, of course, when the suspect isn’t white). Cops have better things to do.

You’re paying taxes to the government, the government conducts the War on Drugs, the black market emerges, dangerous criminal syndicates are paid by you. Quack quack, waddle waddle.

Did you know that the MAJORITY of income to Mexican cartels is marijuana, and now it’s domestically grown BY those cartels on American soil?

You’re advocating taking money and jobs away from Americans and giving them to illegal immigrant criminals. Personally, I wouldn’t put my bets on your position.

Count me as a Certain Yes.

By the way, there is definitely a “reverse Bradley effect”, but it’s not so much that because it’s based in fear, not embarrassment. People do not want to write down anywhere that they favor legalization, or say so, even if they’re assured anonymity, because the War on Drugs is so pervasive that it’s destroyed honest discourse on a subject of national importance.

Stevens said this and exactly this – we can’t have the debate because the laws prevent advocates or even those neutral on the issue from expressing their position.

You’ll see this reflected in the contradictory response data from Gen Y about whether they tried pot in high school – when the question was asked years ago to folks right out of school, it was recorded as a DECREASE from Gen X; the same demographic, polled now, shows an INCREASE, because the chill is thawing due to discussion over Prop 19, medical marihuana in Michigan, even a couple bills in North Carolina.

I hope people were listening to Stevens, because he was around for Prohibition One. Prohibition is one of those things like World War or the Saw films; you’d think one would be enough to prevent any more, but there’s always those perverse weirdos who want a sequel against all of our interests.

Well, they still have to get the stoners to remember what day Election Day is, to find out where they’re supposed to vote, to not get lost on the way there, to come up with some kind of identification, to remember it’s 19 and not 91, etc. etc. etc. Ha ha, that should be fun.

I’m guessing the Prop loses 58% No, 22% Far Out Man, 17% Wow, and 3% Where Am I?

I don’t understand.

I do pay taxes to the government which enforces drug laws.
There is a black market selling drugs to users, but then you jump to “dangerous criminal syndicates are paid by you.”

I don’t see the connection. And I don’t understand the :Quack quack, waddle waddle. But it’s cute.

You say that the MAJORITY of income to Mexican cartels is marijuana. I’m not surprised. The dollars that BUY the marijuana are making the cartels rich. None of my dollars by the way.

I’m not really against legalizing pot. Actually I’m just jealous because my company has a no-drug policy and I can’t have fun with the rest of you.

Well stated. The black market sucks HUGE amounts of revenue out of the economy. Drug lords don’t pay taxes, don’t create jobs (except for thugs). Drug prohibition does much more harm to this nation than the substances it is speciously claimed to protect against.

Without the drug war, which you help fund with your taxes, there would be no black market. Without the obscene black market profits the crime syndicates would lose interest.

The drug war is not intended to succeed. If it did, Republics would have a difficult time finding something else to posture against.

With numbers like those in a article today at the Sac.Bee, is it any wonder Californians see the need to legalize ?

And despite a softening of social attitudes towards marijuana, California law enforcement officials arrested 78,514 people statewide for pot offenses in 2008.

Those are some of the conclusions that can be reached from an analysis of 2008 arrest data from the California Department of Justice – and statewide interactive mapping by Philip Reese of The Sacramento Bee.

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/weed-wars/#ixzz0ta5L0jCw

We have been repeating the history of Prohibitions 13 years of failure in controling peoples appetites since we outlawed alcohol and discovered that if people want something they will get it no matter what the law. The law of unintended consequences was upheled once again when what we got instead of public sobriety was public corruption, gangsters, and massive amounts of money which encouraged more outlawry.
Fast forward to Nixon starting the “war on drugs” which has, once again, proved that you can not control peoples appetites. Once again we see massive public corruption, drug gangs, and even more massive amounts of money. In addition we now have an actual war going on in Mexico which can be laid directly at the feet of our “war on drugs”. The police want to keep the war going as they can officially grab all kinds of money and goodies from convicted drug dealers. Our prisons are overflowing, once again due to convicting drug users. The laws governing illegal drugs are being ignored by massive numbers of americans, which only makes people more likely to ignore other laws and to have contempt for LEOs(Law Enforcement Official)in general.
Remember this, people who have opinions, esp if they are totally wrong, will never listen to the truth. Pols of all stripes understand this, but the rethugs have made it a mainstay of their party. While the democratic pols understand the value of the “big lie” the party as a whole does not seem to be able to adhere to the constant repetition like the rethug party does.
Remember this. Truthiness is the new reality. Facts mean nothing. You might as well not argue with an ignorant tea bagger because no matter what the facts are, they will never change their minds. Ignorance rules, intelligence is suspect. The world of George Orwells 1984 has arrived. Thought Police included
The commonocracy is dead, long live the new order.A plutonomy-a govt of by and for the wealthy.

Please provide references for your very hard to belive statement.

I mean if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck…

You drive up the price of the commodity by paying the government to seize it and prosecute the growers and sellers. You are paying the government, in other words, to increase scarcity by forcing sale of the commodity at the amount it spends “removing” it from the market.

I’m not even being figurative: the pot that is sitting in evidence lockers is the pot you bought with your tax dollars, not to mention the pot that’s been destroyed since you started paying in. In funding the War on Drugs, whether you like it or not, you’re acting like an OPEC for Mexican gangsters, just like every other tax-paying citizen.

Now, there’s certain times when this sort of policy is a good one, or one that makes economic sense, or is at least debatable, for instance when it comes to agricultural policy. In this case, though, the people seeing the benefit aren’t American farmers; they’re foreign criminals.

I’m just wondering how the people who hate others smoking remember to come here with their silly arguments. That’s what I’m wondering.
Who the hell gets off on coming to the Lake and making baseless, conservative based judgements anyway? (sort of rhetorical – I’ve never gotten a reply on that kind of question that made sense to me.)

Republican.

As one who graduated with great distinction, with university and departmental honors in mathematics and computer mathematics, I take umbrage with your ignorant, inflammatory comment. On the other hand, alcohol destroys brain cells. Bottoms up!

Yes on Prop. 19.

I do not live in CA and am not personally invested in the issue, other than as a barometer of attitudes toward social engineering through fascism. But the polls I have seen say otherwise:

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15476240?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com&nclick_check=1

response to alan1tx@6
darwin EFFECT. what, are you smoking dope or didn’t finish high school?
your conclusions that smokers are more likely to finish high school, etc. have
no validity without context.
why are we letting the dealers take all the profit instead of taxing it like any other “sin”, such as cigs
and booze?

Drunk Drivers Kill People; High People Just Miss Their Exits

This news is encouraging. If there’s one thing pro-prop groups should do in the current environment, it’s to produce ads and materials detailing what the state spends on enforcement of current law.

If you point out that CA spends a billion dollars or more (whatever it is) each year, that X% of the prison population is incarcerated for marijuana, then I suspect some of those unsure and even opposed will come around.

That is just one poll. Look at some others and you will see that the pendulum has swung the other way. All the rich repukes will be crying into their coke laden champagne.

The real people, those who know the goodness that pot can bring both to body and attitude, will be laughing uncontrollably at your discomfort. Screw it, I’ll start now, hahahahahahahahahaha!

If this passes, will CA be able to grow, sell, and distribute hemp products?

A hard-to-accept fact is that the deleterious effects of a substance are often not the best way to determine policy for sale and use, as long as that substance isn’t being sold as a foodstuff or medical treatment (and when it comes to medical marijuana, there certainly is a debate to be had, although it’s among doctors and regulators, not cops and politicians).

Alcohol-prohibition groups mustered support with hyperbole, yes, but they used a great deal of genuine fact too: alcohol can have terrible mental and physical health effects, is linked to domestic violence, and is often a factor in accidental deaths. All of this was pretty convincing to a lot of people back in the early 20th century.

The problem, of course, is that just because something is bad – even if it’s a true social ill – policy designed to eliminate it can violate individual rights, invent and empower new types of lucrative crime, destroy life-saving regulation of the substance, and, as we saw in the 1920s, become totally counterproductive as black markets make the substance easily accessible anyway.

All of these things are definitely true about Prohibition as relates to marijuana, and although we don’t have a climate right now where we can necessarily trust studies of the subject, it’s self-evident that marijuana’s ill effects are nowhere near as dire as those of alcohol (just look at your local police register). We will slowly learn the same lessons all over again.

Thanks, I wondered about that when I typed it, but was too lazy to check.

See now I think that just teaches us a lot about polling.

I didn’t realize the previous poll was a live interview.

Using that technique, and increasingly scary interviewers, they could have generated polls that had the entire country believing that California when confronted with actually legalizing marijuana, a goal we have only been working on since the seventies, will suddenly get cold feet “for the children” and decide we don’t want to legalize it.

It was very convincing. They even had me going. Thank you for illuminating it.

Plan on spending a few days reading,

C.I.A. & DRUGS
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/index.html

The whole point is to keep the price up.

I forgot to mention step two of that technique is rigged voting machines.

Yeah and what’s right isn’t always popular.

Back in the mid 70s, UC Medical Center (Parnassus) was conducting marijuana studies sponsored by the US Govt. San Francisco was chosen over other cities due to a good supply of chronic users/stoners, which the study required. As an English student at SFSU, I ended up living with 12 pre-med students, four of those were involved in the study which lasted about 3 years. I have never seen the results, other than being told the ‘feds’ canned the program due to ‘positive results’ that didn’t support prohibition. The chronics played better chess, table tennis and word games with a buzz-on than when straight. In a country where tens of thousands are killed and maimed by alcohol, pot use contributes to fewer auto accidents annually than one week of cell phone use. Who has ever seen headlines such as: Pothead causes head-on collision. This study proved how wrong pot laws have been. The pre-meds smuggled some weed for dinner–very average mexican bud, and nothing like the lung blasting polio pot often smoked today. Science has made marijuana with more varieties and ‘brands’ than your supermarket cereal aisle…and some can be pretty powerful stuff.
B Marley was right, just legalise it.

You CLEARLY speak from no experience. None of the negative statements about herb you made apply across the board.

Obama Smoked cannabis
Michael Phelps Smoked cannabis
Carl Sagan smoked cannabis

end of argument.

B Marley was right, just legalise it.

Actually that was Peter Tosh rather than Bob Marley