That’s true. The problem is that there is not enough support for legalization yet. The feds are a long way from going for full legalization and state it is doubtful that we’ll see state lawmakers pass a bill legalizing it and a governor sign that bill anytime in the near future. I doubt we get it done in any state by ballot initiative either. I think our best shot now is with decriminalization and we should push to decriminalize growing too. If people are able to grow a few plants without fear of arrest and without fear of having their property seized, a lot more will grow it. They’ll use it themselves, share a little, and yes some would be sold, but all of this means less money for organized crime. It would not hurt organized crime as much as full legalization, but the less money these guys are making the less trouble they can cause.

Marijuana is going to be legalized. It is only a matter of time now. Before it will happen though we’re going to have to get a strong majority supporting it and we’re going to have to get lawmakers in office willing to do it. We’re not there yet. In the mean time we need to keep up the pressure, keep getting state laws changed, keep winning in our efforts so that people see that legalization is inevitable. The more we convince that it is coming no matter what the more the debate shifts from whether we should legalize to how we should regulate it. I think decriminalization, especially if we can get growing decriminalized in a few states would cause more people to think that it’s practically legal anyway so we might as well go the rest of the way. It wears the other side down. Not only are we not going to crack down on marijuana like they want, but we’re going to go easier on users and those who want to grow their own.

We’re pushing for full legalization and will continue to do that. But if that’s all we pushed for we wouldn’t be winning at all. We’re seeing a lot of wins these days. More states are getting medical marijuana. Massachusetts just decriminalized simple possession. These wins wear the other side down. It shows them they can’t beat us, might as well join us. If all we did was lobby for legalization and had ballot initiatives for full legalization we’d be losing left and right and we wouldn’t have the momentum we have today. We haven’t gotten lawmakers in any state to so much as have an actual vote on legalization and ballot initiatives on legalization have failed. Our victories have been with medical marijuana and decriminalization.

Again, I’m not saying we should push for decriminalization instead of legalization. I’m saying we should do both. What I’m suggesting is that we shift focus from medical marijuana now to decriminalization, both of simple possession and personal use growing.

Note that medical marijuana is not perfect either. Most medical marijuana states do not have dispensaries and even in those that do only a small percentage of those who consume marijuana are medical users. The black market still flourishes. We’re also not stopping with medical marijuana. It’s what we push for until we can get full legalization.

I’d rather we push for decriminalizing possession and personal use growing until we can get full legalization, instead of medical marijuana. Medical marijuana was the easiest thing to sell before, but now I think people are ready in many states for decriminalization both of simple possession and personal use growing. I think there is a good chance we could get these laws passed in several states and that it will be more effective in convincing the masses that we should just go ahead and regulate the marijuana industry like the alcohol industry than medical marijuana.

And I think medical marijuana is going to cause us problems. It’s one of those “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it” situations. If we keep pushing we’ll likely get it rescheduled and make it such that it is controlled by the FDA and only sold through pharmacies by actual prescription only. There will only be a couple of producers. People will not have the choices they have today. Quality would suffer. Prices would be high, and the FDA will make it harder for us to get full legalization and when we do get it they’ll over-regulate the marijuana industry and set it up for failure.

Do you think we’d have pot dispensaries in California and other states if pot was sold a pharmacies? Do we have legal Xanax dispensaries? Hell no. Those places will be shut down. They won’t enjoy nearly the support they enjoy today once medical users with actual prescriptions can buy it at a pharmacy, and of course it will be a lot harder to get an actual prescription than it is to get a simple recommendation. The DEA will be watching doctors who write these prescriptions like they watch pain management clinic doctors who write lots of scripts for narcotic pain meds.

There are certainly some people who benefit from medical marijuana, people who need it. But, medical marijuana in California has really become de facto legalization. Anyone who wants a recommendation for medical marijuana can get it. The dispensaries are more like coffeeshops in the Netherlands than health care facilities. This is no secret to anyone. It hurts us some in that the other side says medical marijuana is a scam and we “legalizers” are scammers, but it also helps us. We can point to these dispensaries as proof that marijuana can be taxed, that most people wouldn’t just grow their own if they could. People who could easily just grow their own without fear of arrest are paying $10 or $20 a gram and sometimes more at these shops. They pay these high prices plus sales taxes. This shows that marijuana can be taxed and that most people will not just grow their own, and when you look at use statistics for California compared to other states and their own historical numbers these numbers show that even when pot is de facto legal use does not go up and it is not higher than states without de facto legalization.

If the main purpose of medical marijuana was to help us get marijuana legalized, then it has served its purpose. I know we also believe that people who are sick and could be helped by marijuana should be able to use it. They could do that with decriminalization too, and grow their own if we get that decriminalized as well. And then we wouldn’t have to come off as a bunch of scammers using sick people to get de facto legalization.

We could be crystal clear about our intent. We’re pushing for decriminalization because the people aren’t yet ready for legalization, and we could state our case for both. There is enough fear out there now about Mexican cartels, pot growing in our national forests, etc., to get significant support for decriminalizing personal use growing, and we can plant a lot of seeds in the process, get people thinking about how legalization would decimate these drug trafficking organizations. We now have the ONDCP estimating that cartels make in excess of 60% of their income from marijuana sales even though they bring in and distribute most all the cocaine, meth and heroin consumed in this country, and there have been even higher estimates of the percentage they make from marijuana from other government authorities. This kind of thing will help us sell decriminalization of personal use growing and make the case for full legalization. We’ll get it decriminalized in a few states. Support will grow for full legalization as people realize that we’re never going to crack down on marijuana and start thinking that it is already practically legal anyway so we might as well just go the rest of the way and have a regulated industry with sales taxes and excises, the works.

The members of this new anti-cannabis caucus in the Congress are: Dan Burton (R-IL), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), John Mica (R-FL), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Mark Souder (R-IN) and Michael Turner (R-OH).

Lets show them they need our vote by not voting for them when election time comes. If they are against mj then we must be against electing them into office.

Well, we aren’t a direct democracy. We have elected lawmakers who make our laws. We can vote those who don’t do what we want out of office and replace them with people who will do what we want. Right now though only a tiny few of our lawmakers openly support legalizing marijuana and the viable candidates in elections these days who actually have a chance of winning a seat in Congress or the Senate almost all say they are against legalization when asked, so there rarely is a viable candidate you can vote for who openly supports legalization. We end up having a choice of a Democrat or a Republican who both say they are against legalization and we take the one we think will hurt us the least or we can vote for a third party candidate who won’t capture but a tiny fraction of the vote.

When we get to the point that poll results are consistently showing more than 50% for legalization hopefully we’ll see more lawmakers coming out for legalization. I imagine they’ll still be cautious until we see a good bit over 50% support though because they know most of it comes from young people who tend not to vote, and they know older people who do vote tend to be strongly opposed to legalization and that a high percentage of voter contributions to political campaigns come from older voters. But, those most opposed to legalization are those who grew up before marijuana use took off in this country and they are slowly but surely dying off. Now if we could only get the 18 to 29 demographic to actually go to the polls and vote even in mid term elections so that politicians will fear them like they fear older voters today, maybe we could get something done in the not too distant future.