Attend your town meeting next week and speak to your representatives about their votes on S. 54!

Yesterday, in a historic 90-54 vote, the Vermont House approved the bill to legalize, regulate, and tax cannabis sales. S. 54 passed in a final voice vote today, and it will now return to the Senate. Next, we expect the Senate will work with the House to resolve differences before sending a final version of the bill to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk.

Since the House did not pass S. 54 by a veto-proof majority, it’s especially important that we thank the representatives who voted in favor and speak to those who voted “no.” The legislature is off for Town Meeting next week, so that will be an ideal time for you to speak with your state legislators. Please take a moment to see how your representative(s) voted and plan to attend your town’s meeting on Tuesday, March 3!

If you’re not able to speak to your representative(s) in person, you can look them up here and either email or call them to follow up on their votes.

You can read an updated summary of the bill here.

Vermonters have already waited far too long for legal, regulated sales of cannabis. Please share this message with your family and friends!

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Bill passes final committee — urge your representatives to vote in favor.

Today, Vermont’s House Appropriations Committee approved S. 54 in a 6-5 vote. The bill to legalize, regulate, and tax cannabis sales appears likely to receive a vote in the full House later this week.

Please contact your representatives now and ask for their support!

The House has amended the bill, including by changing the tax rate to a flat 20% (in the Senate’s version, it’s 16% plus a 2% local option tax), but none of the House’s changes should be considered final. Assuming the bill passes the House, it will proceed to a conference committee, where members of the House and Senate will work to resolve their differences and agree on a single version of the bill to send to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk.

You can read an updated summary of the bill here.

Vermonters have already waited far too long for legal, regulated sales of cannabis. After you contact your representatives, please share this message with your family and friends!

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A new poll released on Tuesday concluded that the vast majority of Americans are not impressed with the results of the nation’s anti-drug efforts. A full 82% of respondents answered “no” to the question: “Is the United States winning the war on drugs?” This is a significant increase from a poll released in June of this year, in which 66% of respondents characterized the drug war as a failure. Only 7% answered “yes” to the most recent poll question, while 12% were undecided.

As the Huffington Post reports, several other marijuana-related questions were asked in the same poll. One of these found that 45% supported legalizing marijuana, with 45% opposed and the remaining 10% undecided. This is consistent with two earlier polls released this year on the same question. Asked which was more dangerous, alcohol or marijuana, 51% of the latest poll’s respondents answered “alcohol,” while only 24% said “marijuana,” and 24% were undecided. Contrary to the traditional image of marijuana’s legalization being an issue of interest only to its users, 88 % said that they had not smoked marijuana even once in the past year, which is similar to the national average.

Thirty-four percent of respondents agreed that the government spends too much money on the war on drugs, and only 23% of all respondents claimed that the government should be spending even more. According to the New York Times, the enforcement costs alone have been $20 to $25 billion per year over the past decade.

In the wake of the recent successful ballot initiatives in Colorado and Washington to legalize the marijuana industry, as well as Massachusetts becoming the 18^th state with an effective medical marijuana law, one more question from the poll is worth noting. A full 60% said that marijuana laws should be left to the states, while only 27% said that the federal government should determine the marijuana laws in any particular state. As MPP’s Steve Fox noted yesterday in the Chicago Sun-Times, the federal government’s authority to prohibit marijuana has always been highly questionable on constitutional grounds.

The survey of 1,000 adults nationwide was conducted on November 9-10, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. The exact wording of all of the questions in the poll can be found here, and information on methodology can be found here.

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