Prop 19 To Legalise Marijuana Defeated In California

[Oz]

The movement to legalise marijuana suffered a blow as a ballot proposition that would have allowed the growth, use and taxation of the drug in California was rejected by voters.

 

The loss of Proposition 19, though not unexpected, was still a disappointment to many of those who had fought and campaigned hard for a measure that had won a lot of support for a subject once considered politically taboo.

 

The movement was based in the Bay Area city of Oakland and spearheaded by Richard Lee, who has founded Oaksterdam University, a cannabis business school that is flourishing around the already legal medical marijuana trade.

 

That industry has already made the drug commonplace over large stretches of California where it is widely available with a doctor's prescription and dispensed in cafes. Though nominally for medical use only, there are few controls on who gets prescriptions and what for. It is even dispensed in the form of marijuana-infused ice-cream.

 

In downtown Oakland, several city blocks have undergone urban renewal because of Oaksterdam and the numerous marijuana-themed gift shops and cafes that surround it. The businesses also bring hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to the city's cash-strapped coffers in the form of local taxes.

 

But full legalisation has for now been defeated. Not least among the reasons was the fact that the federal government – in the shape of attorney general Eric Holder – had vowed to crack down on any legalisation process, using federal authority.

 

However, the mood among activists was not all doom and gloom. They have said all along that the process was about starting a debate. "We've already won in terms of education. We are making the case that prohibition of marijuana is wrong and people will eventually come around to it," said pro-Prop 19 volunteer Rosalinda Montez Palacios.

Author: Paul Harris

Date: 03/11/2010

Source: Guardian UK

Copyright: guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

[brick]

I saw on the tv the other night (can't remember when or where)that a few Med Dispensaries were against it because they were scared of big companies monopolising it like they do with everything else and they could go out of business. Like the big s/market chains forcing the little ones to shut up shop.

 

It was pretty close considering the stigma associated with cannabis.

[cybergenesis]

Wow this is bad.. This was probably the biggest hope of the legalization movement worldwide...

 

Its quite possible I will die before marijuana is ever legalized.

 

But quite simply, fuck the system.

[jimbojones5678]

A hardly surprising result - but it still sucks...

 

Jimbo

[BudJones]

I agree with the small amount of Med Dispensaries that are scared of big companies monopolising cannabis. That is EXACTLY what will happen.

[The Hash Nibbler]

It sucks but America is maybe not so much the land of the free, maybe more the land of the right wing Tea Partier at the moment.

Such a shame, so close, yet so far. Gh72

[Syb3 rm3nt41_%20]

I dont doubt that the majority of citisens voted against prop 19, but regardless of the ballot.... Its quite easy to manipulate a computerised ballot system when the government wishes to abolish any kind of proposition that they would rather not have passed.... Its not very hard to speculate that the government would rather citisens feel that their vote is heard and that their voice is heard..... regardless of the insecurities of computerised voting systems.... The same people have been running the US now for the last 65 or 70 years.... Its really simply a smoke and mirrors strategy, give people the feeling of having power over the country, that their voice counts... but money talks, and only money .... elite bankers rule the world and will continue to do so as long as the current global economic system is in place.... Governments throughout the world consistently back .... only products that they can control the market of .... yes, thats right ..... We pay for kicks, they wouldnt have it any other way.... Dirty swine, every last one of them... If the words life liberty and the pursuit of happiness doesnt include the right to freely experiment with ones own consciousness.... then the declaration of independence isnt worth the hemp paper it was written on. These very global financiers are the same people who funded both sides of the last 2 world wars.... They dont care about our childrens children they only care about global world domination.

 

The cannabis community has suffered a huge blow but ....As always fellow advocates, take it easy, but remember .... TO STILLLL TAKE IT !

 

As always ... Peace n pot,

[motherflower]

For the same reasons that cybermental mentions, I guess personally i'm selfishly glad that the proposition fell over. One of the reasons i love pot is that it IS illegal, given that we're all slaves to corporations now. Who wants what should be free turned into a commercial enterprise, spun off into complex derivatives and thrown back at us through crippling taxation? Marijuana like the other best things in life that are free, is one of the last bastions of sanity in a world where they're even thinking of ways of taxing us for the air we breathe.

[Sylar420]

Yes this is a fucken shame Ive been hanging for so long on the hope that prop 19 would get thought and start a revolution that would eventually be world wide but to no avail

I hope they just take it on the chin got back to educating ppl and try again and maybe in a few years they will get it through.

 

Motherflower that's just dumb yea it may grow free under the sun but if you have ever grown dope you would know that there is a bit more to it than just throwing seeds in some dirt and hoping for the best, have you ever thought about how many years it takes develop stable a verity that will grow the way you want them too not to mention the effort in selecting desirable phenotypes, cross breeding them(which has to be done indoors or green houses to avoid unwanted pollination), and then getting it to a point in which you can say "we have our own unique variation"?

 

The only dope growers that would want to see prop 19 fall over is the growers selling there dog shit cash crop cos they loose an illegal income. If the powers that be don't have any incentive to legalese it such as taxation then they never will, if i had to pay a small fee for the right to grow dope so be it! i pay for my drivers license, i pay for my firearms license, i pay for a dozen other licenses so y shouldn't i be able to pay for a dope license? And if i had to pay tax when buying it from a dispensary cos my crop hasten come through yet then so be it again, at least it wont be the turds dealers sell and i know im not supporting organized crime or some cock just trying to get rich from selling shit weed cos he cant be fucked growing properly.

 

Yes i agree that some major player would more than likely come in and take the market and that's the sad thing about the whole state of affairs, welcome to capitalism. The only way to avoid this is to only limit licenses or doing as they do with tobaco and allowing only a set amount of product to be sold, so if a tobacco farmer grows 12 tons rather than his 10 ton quota he can either opt to have the 2 extra tonns destroyed or stored untill the next crop and plant less.

[rosscopico0]

Its a shame that the young voters in California failed to turn out in numbers to actually vote.

This is a very good example of why voting should be compulsory in every democracy, to get a true representation of what the constituency wants.

 

Land of the free and home to the brave.......what a load of crap!