Pennsylvania state Sen. Daylin Leach, a long-time supporter of marijuana reform and previous sponsor of several medical marijuana bills, announced Monday that he will introduce a bill that would make adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana legal and would tax and regulate the substance. According to The Times Herald, the latter policy is what may eventually swing lawmakers in his state:
But money, more than moral appeals or anything else, might talk the loudest in the drive to decriminalize marijuana in Pennsylvania, particularly in the current era of budget shortfalls and lingering economic uncertainty. And with financial concerns helping to fuel the passage of historic pot legalization laws in Colorado and Washington State in November — as well as the introduction of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday that would legalize and levy an excise tax on the sale of the drug — perhaps now is a better time than ever to convince skeptical state lawmakers of the cash benefits of getting into the marijuana business.
Sen. Leach truly believes in this issue, and he wants people to start talking about it more. He tells Raw Story:
“This is inevitable. This will pass. It may take two, it may take four years,” Leach added. “A majority of people don’t support marijuana legalization simply because they haven’t really had cause to revisit the issue in their minds. Once you sit down with people and explain the harm it does in a wide variety of ways, and the be[ne]fits(sic) we can accrue through legalization, I think that people will very quickly change their minds.
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… So there’s many who won’t put their name out front on an issue until it gets [mainstream] in their minds. If there was a secret ballot, I predict legalization would pass.”
If you want to help start this conversation with your members of Congress, it has never been easier.
After I got busted in NJ in 2008 I came out of the closet and became an activist for the legalization of marijuana. I emailed all my family and friends and told them to support me. Most of them cut me out of their lives for good.
Well, now that marijuana will be legal soon, I hope those sorry motherfuckers who cut me off have the guts to come back and KISS MY ASS and APOLOGIZE TO ME!!! I told you all I was right all along, but you woudn’t listen. FUCKING COWARDS.
Give that state senator a gold star…and, re-elect him in the next state election in Pennsylvania, or better yet…send that guy to Washington you all Pennsylvanians from the ‘Quaker State’!
Now, that’s some mighty fine quake’n going on there by Senator Leach.
Might as well stir in a bill to make hemp farming legal there, too.
For seed, and for rope, and for sail, and for sheet!
Robert Hempaz, PhD Trichometry™
Victoria British Columbia CANADA
Follow me on Twitter @hempaz
I tip my hat to Senator Daylin Leach. I’m sure he is not the only Pa legislator that wants this to happen. There is big money in the cannabis industry, and it will provide lots of jobs.
The war on drugs has been a war against the personal freedom of each and every American.
With the latest scientific news, and lots of good things to come from cannabis, now is the time.
“GO GREEN PENNSYLVANIA”
Mr Corbett, get your head out of your butt, and do the right thing, legalize Cannabis, hemp, marijuana what ever you choose to call it.
“Marijuana is SAFER, so why do we drive people to drink”
This is a book that you need to read, that anyone who is interested or concerned about cannabis and it’s use needs to read. Time to open your mind.
Hey Corbett, get your head out of your butt. ^^^^^ We ARE NOT in the 60′s/70′s anymore. I’m sure you think you see colors, sort of like a tiedye shirt. When really. It makes you a little giddy and pretty much soothes 99% of the pain. My grandmother is addicted to prescription ambien, ADDICTED, hallucinations without it. Cannabis is a non addictive substance. The last time I checked, you have a patent, well the government does that states that is PROTECTS the neurons in your brain. So why the contradiction? You make MILLIONS OF DOLLARS on a substance that is less harmful than baby aspirin. Get your head out of your ass and start thinking you Prohibitionist bastard. Thanks.
Pennsylvania prohibitionists seem to come in two types: 1) the ones who have an emotional ax to grind because of some tragedy in their lives related to drugs or 2) inbred Republican types to whom the facts are irrelevant because as far as they’re concerned as far back as they can remember cannabis has been illegal and that’s they way they think it should stay forever.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil, and the types screaming about family tragedies, true tragedies of lost lives and devastated lives such as those of Katie True (former Republican representative & former head of the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs) and those like in MomsTell (http://www.momstell.org/) have suffered personal losses. They’ve got an emotionally charged motivation to exact their revenge on liberals like cannabis legalizers whom they view as part of the problem.
The problem, however, of the violence is because of prohibition itself, the lack of legal recourse, along with the government’s attitude that hard drugs addicts are basically human garbage, a lost cause, and therefore government does not adequately organize and support enough drug treatment facilities, retraining, and repatriation back into the work force.
Certainly, if you judge prohibitionists by their actions, by whether they put their money where their mouth is, then that is the conclusion.
The obstacles are the same old lies and prohibitionist propaganda: the gateway theory, all cannabis legalizers want to legalize all drugs, no medical use, has to be smoked and ignore eating and vaporizing, thinking that the more potent the pot is the more dangerous it is for you when really less smoke is needed, and why should we legalize pot when the costs from tobacco and alcohol outweigh the revenue they generate, and blah, blah, blah.
Pennsylvania does not have the ballot initiative so anything on the ballot or any referendum has to be put there by the general assembly, which is dominated by Santorum-style Republicans.
The state is full of self-righteous Republican right-wing Christians who are well-funded and receive a majority of the lines in print and majority of the minutes in air time. They’re the kind of East Coast assholes people leave the state for the West Coast for, the kind of East Coast know-it-all types folks on the West Coast love to hate, love to ignore.
You’re going to need a sustained major public re-education publicity program about cannabis to counter years of cannabis prohibition. Keep the pro-cannabis drumbeat going, just like Republicans in the state, even Romney, often figure that if they buy more air time and more ads more frequently than the opposition that they’ll get their message through and win the state. If very often works. That’s what needs to be done with cannabis. Once the editorial boards can no longer deny the facts, they, as opinion leaders, can start to influence public opinion in favor of legalization. In turn, the prohibitionist politicians will quickly run out in front of the people with an American flag to act as though they were leading the people all along, when actually they were following them, you know, but being the media whores that politicians need to be, quickly adapted and adjusted.
It’s gonna take a lot of money, more than in states with ballot initiatives. Pennsylvania is the Keystone State, so once its walls of prohibition fall, it just may be the last state needed in order for the feds to legalize. They don’t call it the Keystone State for nothing.
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