At 10:30 AM on Thursday June 30 in Phoenix, Arizona, the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol (CRMLA) submitted petitions with 258,582 signatures to state officials in order to place an initiative to tax and regulate marijuana on the November ballot.  Their total submission far exceeded the required number of 150,642 signatures.

The ballot initiative would "allow adults 21 and older to possess limited amounts of marijuana; establish a system in which marijuana is regulated similarly to alcohol; and enact a 15 percent tax on retail marijuana sales, from which a majority of the revenue would be directed to Arizona schools and public education programs."

The submission took place during a news conference at the campaign's temporary office hosted by CRMLA chairman J.P. Holyoak and Parents for Responsible Marijuana Regulation co-chair Kathy Inman.  The conference was attended by representatives of the Arizona Secretary of State's office who accepted the signatures for review.

“We are very encouraged by the strong levels of support and enthusiasm we found among voters during the petition drive,” said CRMLA Chairman J.P. Holyoak. “Arizonans are ready to end the antiquated policy of marijuana prohibition and replace it with a system in which marijuana is regulated and taxed similarly to alcohol. We look forward to continuing the public conversation about the initiative, and we think most will agree it is a sensible step forward for our state.”

The submission comes a day after the Joint Legislative Budget Committee announced their findings that the initiative would generate around $82 million a year in tax revenue, at least $55 million of which will go to K-12 education, including full-time Kindergarten.

California voters will soon have the opportunity to vote on an initiative that would end marijuana prohibition in the state and replace it with a system in which marijuana is legal and regulated for adult use.

The Los Angeles Times reported this morning:

The Secretary of State’s Office certified that a random sample showed sufficient signatures among the 600,000 turned in to qualify the measure. The initiative is backed by a coalition that includes former Facebook President Sean Parker and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Today marks a fresh start for California as we prepare to replace the costly, harmful and ineffective system of prohibition with a safe, legal and responsible adult-use marijuana system that gets it right and completely pays for itself,” said Jason Kinney, a spokesman for California’s Adult Use of Marijuana Act.

The initiative is being supported by a broad and quickly growing coalition of activists, community leaders, and organizations, including the Marijuana Policy Project, which has formed a committee to contribute directly to the campaign. 

“We think voters in California are ready to end marijuana prohibition and replace it with a more sensible system,” said Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which has about 200,000 supporters nationwide.

Tvert is confident this year’s measure will do better than past attempts.

He expects activists from all over the country will get involved in the California campaign, either through campaign contributions or working phone banks to get out the vote.

“We are moving to mobilize our supporters,” Tvert said. “There are folks throughout the country who recognize the importance of making marijuana legal in the largest state in the nation. There are a lot of folks who recognize that passage of these laws in other states will make it easier for their state to move forward.”

Click here to join the campaign and learn more about the initiative.

In an exciting new development, the District of Columbia Department of Health issued a report that, in its conclusion, recommends the legalization of the sale of marijuana within D.C.  The 32-page report calls on the District to "[i]mpose state taxes on production, distribution, and sales along with a licensed market participation, age restriction, and prohibitions on advertising and marketing to minors" and to "[u]se current regulatory models for tobacco and alcohol to base legislation to enact effective marijuana controls under District of Columbia laws".

Additionally, the report urges the strengthening of addiction recovery programs, the improvement of marijuana education--especially for expecting and new mothers--and the monitoring of alcohol and tobacco use among both users and non-users of marijuana.

The D.C. Department of Health's recommendation is highly encouraging, but is currently met with obstacles put in place by Congress. Check out our D.C. page to learn more about the situation

You can read the full D.C. Department of Health report here.

On Monday, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap announced that the initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol will appear as Question 1 on the November ballot.

Question 1 will read:

“Do you want to allow the possession and use of marijuana under state law by persons who are at least 21 years of age, and allow the cultivation, manufacture, distribution, testing, and sale of marijuana and marijuana products subject to state regulation, taxation and local ordinance?”

The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which is supporting Question 1, issued the following statement from campaign manager David Boyer:

“The wording of our ballot question is far more important than the order in which it will appear. It conveys to voters that the cultivation and sale of marijuana for adult use will be subject to regulation, taxation, and local control. We are pleased, as those themes comprise the core of our initiative and help explain the benefits of ending marijuana prohibition. Residents of Maine will be hearing a lot more about regulation, taxation, and local control as we spend the next four months encouraging them to vote ‘yes’ on Question 1."

MPP is supporting the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol and its efforts to encourage voters to vote "Yes" on Question 1 in November.

Over the weekend, the Democratic National Committee's Platform Drafting Committee established a party platform calling for states' rights to decide their own marijuana laws, allowing for greater research on the medical properties of cannabis, and protecting the rights of legally established marijuana businesses:

“We believe that the states should be laboratories of democracy on the issue of marijuana, and those states that want to decriminalize marijuana should be able to do so. We support policies that will allow more research to be done on marijuana, as well as reforming our laws to allow legal marijuana businesses to exist without uncertainty. And we recognize our current marijuana laws have had an unacceptable disparate impact, with arrest rates for marijuana possession among African-Americans far outstripping arrest rates among whites despite similar usage rates.”

An earlier proposed measure called for the total removal of marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, but that measure did not make it to the draft that was unanimously approved by the drafting committee.

Click here for more information on the DNC's new marijuana plank.

The Rhode Island legislative session came to close early on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, despite overwhelming public support for reform, leaders of the House and Senate did not allow legislators to vote on the Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act this year.

Other notable outcomes of the 2016 legislative session include:

-- Passage of Article 14 in the state budget, which makes significant changes to the medical marijuana program. You can find a summary of the new regulations here.

-- Passage of legislation to add post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to the list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana.

-- Passage of legislation to regulate hemp cultivation.

We will continue our efforts to build support for ending the failed policy of marijuana prohibition in the summer and fall, with plans to work with lawmakers to re-introduce legislation to legalize and regulate marijuana in the 2017 legislative session.

In the meantime, we encourage supporters of sensible marijuana policy reform to become engaged in local legislative races and make marijuana policy reform a salient electoral issue. You can find information about local races in your district by visiting the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s website.

[caption id="attachment_9862" align="alignright" width="200"] Prime Minister Justin Trudeau[/caption]

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has publicly supported ending prohibition in that country, is becoming something of a trailblazer when it comes to world leaders' positions on marijuana policy.

Washington Post reports:

Speaking Wednesday at an economic conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made one of the more buttoned-down, straight-edged arguments for marijuana legalization I've heard in recent years. It's worth quoting at length so I've done that below:

Look, our approach on legalizing marijuana is not about creating a boutique industry or bringing in tax revenue, it’s based on two very simple principles:

The first one is, young people have easier access to cannabis now, in Canada, than they do in just about any other countries in the world. [Of] 29 different countries studied by the U.N., Canada was number one in terms of underage access to marijuana. And whatever you might think or studies seen about cannabis being less harmful than alcohol or even cigarettes, the fact is it is bad for the developing brain and we need to make sure that it’s harder for underage Canadians to access marijuana. And that will happen under a controlled and regulated regime.

The other piece of it is there are billions upon billions of dollars flowing into the pockets of organized crime, street gangs and gun-runners, because of the illicit marijuana trade, and if we can get that out of the criminal elements and into a more regulated fashion we will reduce the amount of criminal activity that’s profiting from those, and that has offshoots into so many other criminal activities. So those are my focuses on that.

I have no doubt that Canadians and entrepreneurs will be tremendously innovative in finding ways to create positive economic benefits from the legalization and control of marijuana, but our focus is on protecting kids and protecting our streets.

Trudeau made these remarks in response to a conference participant who said that "Canada could be to cannabis as France is to wine." These enthusiastic predictions about the burgeoning marijuana industry — billions of dollars in revenue and taxes, thousands of jobs created -- should be familiar to anyone who's followed efforts to legalize pot here in the United States.

But Trudeau's argument for legalization is concerned less with creating benefits, and more with reducing harms. He starts from the same place that many legalization opponents start from — concern for the safety of children.

Rates of marijuana use among Colorado teens have NOT increased since the state made marijuana legal for adults, according to results of a statewide survey released Monday by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). Rates of current and lifetime marijuana use among Colorado teens also continue to be lower than the national average.

“The survey shows marijuana use has not increased since legalization,” according to a CDPHE press release.

The biannual Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) found that 21.2% of high school students in Colorado reported using marijuana within the past 30 days in 2015, down slightly from 22% in 2011, the year before Amendment 64 was approved and enacted, and 24.8% in 2009, the year hundreds of medical marijuana stores began opening throughout the state. The HKCS also found that the rate of lifetime use among Colorado high school students dropped from 42.6% in 2009 to 38% in 2015. The decreases do not represent statistically significant changes, and the state agencies that support the survey have reported, “The trend for current and lifetime marijuana use has remained stable since 2005.”
Nationwide, 21.7% of high school students used marijuana in the past 30 days and 38.6% had used it during their life, according to results of the 2015 High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) released earlier this month by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The executive summary for the 2015 HKCS notes, “Colorado does not significantly differ from the national average in lifetime or current marijuana use.”

The HKCS also found a slight drop in the percentage of Colorado high school students who reported using marijuana at school (from 6% in 2011 to 4.4% in 2015), and a very slight increase in the percentage of students who believe it is wrong for someone their age to use marijuana (from 60% in 2011 to 60.6% in 2015).

The HKCS is “the state’s only comprehensive survey on the health, well-being and resiliency of young people in Colorado,” according to the CDPHE.

The District of Columbia held its Democratic primary yesterday, and the results are mostly good news for supporters of marijuana policy reform. Below are the (unofficial) results, along with the grade the council candidates received in MPP’s voter guide:

Ward 2: Jack Evans (A+) won (unopposed)

Ward 4: Incumbent Brandon Todd (F) beat challenger Leon Andrews (A), 49% to 41%

Ward 7: Challenger Vincent Gray (C+) beat incumbent Yvette Alexander (D), 60% to 33%

Ward 8: Challenger Trayon White (C+) beat incumbent LaRuby May (D), 51% to 42%

In the at-large race, all the candidates received an A or A+ from MPP. Challenger Robert White beat incumbent Vincent Orange 40% to 37%.

As the general election on November 8 approaches, MPP plans to update our voter guide to keep you informed on all the candidates’ positions, so stay tuned!

MPP has formally endorsed Libertarian Party nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in the race for president. Johnson is one of two candidates who received an "A+" grade in MPP's presidential candidate report card.

Below is a statement from our Executive Director, Rob Kampia, that contextualizes MPP's endorsement.

"MPP is a single-issue organization, and our mission is simple: 'Regulate marijuana similarly to alcohol in the United States.' We don't take a position -- and we therefore don't take into account a candidate's position -- on other issues, such as abortion, guns, gay rights, Iraq, taxes, or Social Security. We also don't work in Canada or Portugal.

"Of the three presidential candidates who will appear on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C., Gary Johnson clearly has the best position on marijuana policy. When he first advocated for legalization in 1999, he was the highest-ranking public official in the U.S. to do so -- as the sitting Republican governor of New Mexico, no less.

"Shortly after he left office, Johnson and I drove around New England lobbying the governors of VT and RI, the speaker of the NH House, and staffers in the NY governor's office. Johnson is a forceful advocate for legalization and is still one of MPP's strongest allies.

"Legalization has been Johnson's number-one issue for 17 years. MPP's endorsement of Johnson was an easy call; the more difficult question is whether MPP should support a candidate who's good on medical marijuana but bad on legalization, when the candidate is facing an opponent who's bad on everything.

"It's fine if voters prefer to consider a candidate's marijuana position in the context of a dozen other positions, but that's not MPP's mission. We're narrowly focused on marijuana policy and are happy to work alongside anyone who shares our mission, whether they're Socialists, Republicans, or otherwise."