My second article for Marijuana.com went up late yesterday afternoon.
Let me know what you think!
Coloradans Will Vote On Marijuana Legalization This November
The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol held a press conference Monday morning, to announce that Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office had certified Amendment 64 for the ballot.
Many advocates were concerned that Amendment 64 wouldn’t make it onto ballots, when Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office announced that the Campaign had not raised enough signatures earlier this month. Although they had raised nearly double the required signatures, the secretary’s office certified 2500 fewer signatures than were needed, leading many to believe that the fight was lost.
Fortunately, Colorado law required that the group be given an additional two weeks to find more support, during which time they pulled in an additional twelve thousand signatures. The announcement was made during a protest outside of President Obama’s Lakewood, CO campaign office, and featured a speech from Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. It would also appear that, somewhere in those 12,000 signatures, were the 2500 or so needed to place Amendment 64 on ballots this November.
During yesterday’s press conference, former Colorado House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann took some time to share his thoughts on the proposed Amendment, and why he chooses to support it.
“As someone who was once referred to as ‘the Capitol’s best-known bartender,’ it is especially appropriate for me to be endorsing the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. Americans learned long ago that prohibiting a popular, widely used substance is a policy disaster. Alcohol prohibition ended nearly 80 years ago for many good reasons. There are just as many good reasons to end marijuana prohibition and I am proud to be a part of the effort to do that here in Colorado,” he said.
Advocates across the state are certain that the measure will pass. They point to an increased number of sponsors on Rep. Jared Polis‘(D-CO) bill to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, and the fact that another legalization measure might also end up on the ballot alongside Amendment 64.
An advocacy group called Legalize 2012 is currently collecting signatures for an alternate legalization bill, still targeting the November 2012 ballot, but that does not include any limitations on the amount of marijuana possessed by an adult.
“Voters in Colorado are ready to end marijuana prohibition and begin regulating and taxing it like alcohol,” said proponent Betty Aldworth. “By regulating and taxing marijuana like alcohol Colorado can tightly control its production and sale, generate tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenue, and redirect our limited law enforcement resources toward serious crimes.”
Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, told The Colorado Independent that he thinks the measure will pass.
“We’ve seen over the last decade or so that marijuana bills do much better in presidential elections than in other years,” he said. Fox said presidential elections typically bring younger voters to the polls.
(image courtesy of Toke of the Town)
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(Source: coloradoindependent.com)
Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Raises Additional 12,000 Signatures in Support of Colorado Ballot Initiative 30
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced that advocacy groups failed to raise enough signatures to place Ballot Initiative 30, a measure that would legalize the sale of marijuana in Colorado, on ballots this November. The announcement stunned supporters, many of whom were certain that the initial 160,000 signatures submitted would certainly contain the requisite 86,105 certified signatures needed, if not more. Ultimately, the secretary’s office certified 83,696 signatures, at which point Colorado state law guaranteed advocates an additional two weeks to collect an additional 2,409 signatures.
Now, fast forward to Thursday morning. During a protest outside of President Obama’s Lakewood, Colorado campaign office, a spokesperson for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol announced that the group has collected an additional 12,000 signatures in support of Ballot Initiative 30. While the signatures must now go through the same verification process as the initially submitted 160,000, advocates are once again certain that they have more than enough support.
The Campaign plans to deliver the newly collected signatures to Scott Gessler’s office this morning, after which they will hold a press conference featuring former Governor of New Mexico and current Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. Former Gov. Johnson is expected to endorse the initiative, and discuss why he supports regulating marijuana similarly to alcohol.
(image courtesy of Toke of the Town)
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[Friday], the Colorado Secretary of State’s office announced that the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol did not collect enough valid signatures to be placed on the ballot in November. Only another 2409 signatures are needed, however, and organizers have 15 days in which to collect the remaining signatures.
Altogether, the Secretary of State’s office certified 83,696 signatures out of the 86,105 needed to place a measure on the ballot this year. Organizers have until Feb. 21 to come up with 2409 more valid signatures. They expressed confidence today that they could do that.
Colorado’s Marijuana Legalization Movement Catches Attention of Times
The New York Times’ Kris Johnson takes a look at the marijuana legalization proposal, backed heavily by the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, that seems likely to appear on Colorado voters’ ballots this November.
Given alcohol’s long and checkered history — the tens of thousands of deaths each year, the social ravages of alcoholism — backers of the pro-marijuana measure concede there is a risk of looking as if they have cozied up too much, or are comparable, to old demon rum.
“Why add another vice, right?” said Mason Tvert, a co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which has led the ballot drive. “But we’re not adding a vice; we’re providing an alternative.”
The goal of legalization, Mr. Tvert added, is not to make access to marijuana easier, but rather, “to make our communities safer by regulating this substance, taking it out of the underground market, controlling it and better keeping it away from young people.”
The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has already submitted 163,598 in support of Colorado Ballot Initiative 30, approximately double the required signatures needed for the proposal to appear on voters’ ballots. Those signatures now being verified by the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, a process which the department is legally obligated to complete by February 3rd. This ensures that the Campaign would have adequate time to collect additional signatures, should the Secretary’s office rule enough signatures invalid.
For more information on Colorado’s existing marijuana legislation, Ballot Iniative 30, or the state’s burgeoning medical marijuana community I suggest reading the entirety of Kirk Johnson’s article in The New York Times.
(image courtesy of The New York Times)
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Colorado’s Marijuana Legalization Initiative Moves Forward
Signatures To Receive Line By Line Review
Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office announced that it will be necessary to review all 163,598 signatures, collected in support of Ballot Initiative 30, on Thursday. Colorado state law requires the Secretary’s office to review a random sample of the submitted signatures, a total of 8180 signatures for Initiative 30. Once completed, if the random sample projects that somewhere between 90 and 110 percent of the necessary signatures have been collected, then a line by line review is required.
from The Colorado Independent:
In this case, just over 54 percent of the signatures in the random sample were judged to be valid, meaning that extrapolated out over the 163,598 signatures collected, it can be predicted that 88,719 valid signatures were collected, which is 103.4 percent of the number needed, which puts in the range that triggers an automatic line by line review.
Mason Tvert, one of the organizers of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol, says the need to validate each signature is no big deal.
“This is just part of the process,” he said. “We are confident that we collected more than enough valid signatures to make the ballot. This is why initiative campaigns collect so many more signatures than they need.”
The Secretary of State’s office has until February 3 to complete the review. Spokesperson Rich Coolidge said the office “will be cranking to get it done.”
The need for a line by line review shocked many though, with Secretary Gessler’s spokesman, Rich Coolidge, noting that most groups either collect more than 110 percent or do not meet the threshold to trigger a review. Should the Secretary’s office find that the total number of certified signatures does not meet the required total, organizers for the initiative will have time to collect additional figures.
(image courtesy of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol)
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