Seeing as Oregon, Washington, and Colorado are all going to have marijuana legalization on their ballots this fall I thought it would be appropriate to start a little conversation around it.

Originally I thought it was a great idea and was all for it in any state, although upon further inspection I have changed my mind...somewhat. Let me break it down into each individual state, I won't be going into too much detail but there are a couple things that really jumped out to me.

Oregon and Colorado both include the personal growing of marijuana in their initiatives but Washington however does not. This is great for Oregon and Colorado and I say yea, but Washington residents are getting screwed on this portion.

Oregon and Colorado are also keeping the laws around DUI the same, where as one would have to be shown to be "intoxicated." This is where Washington is making a HUGE mistake, I-502 would add a new threshold for driving under the influence of marijuana. This threshold would be 5ng/ml blood plasma for adults 21 and up, with a zero tolerance for minors. 5ng/ml is ridiculous! To put it in perspective THC can be detected an average of 9.3-68.5 hours at 20ng/ml cutoff from 1 (low dose) cigarette.

With a threshold of 5ng/ml for 21+ year olds people would be forced to choose between smoking a joint and driving for up to 3 days! The other downfall in Washington's I-502 is that the new threshold would also apply to medical marijuana patients that are pretty much guaranteed to be well over that limit if they are medicating daily.

Overall I think Oregon and Colorado have a pretty good system figured out while Washington is only going to make problems worse by choosing to legalize.

I think I lean towards decriminalization, but am torn.

Yea, I know, i'm going all deep tonight

I didn't know Washington had made the ballot, that's cool, at least it's (sort of) a step in the right direction. It sounds like they don't have a very good bill on the ballot though. I'm also concerned that Colorado's bill is going to hurt the small time grower. I L❤VE Oregon's bill, especially the fact that it would legalize hemp, which is huge imo!

I had the opportunity to talk with Charles Shaw about the legalization bills on the ballot and he verified that Phillip Morris owns 50,000 acres of Northern California ready and waiting, he also informed me that Monsanto has been quietly working on a terminator gene cannabis strain that will give off sterile seed, this is bad news for outdoor growers to say the least. So while legalization looks to be a great political step forward, it appears in reality it's gonna be bad news overall for the small scale grower and the medicinal cannabis industry as it currently stands.

I would hate to see cannabis get industrialized. And of course this would happen: think of the $$$. Marlboro Greens, anyone? At the same time, though, it's unlikely all personal growing would be banned- think of people who brew their own beer. Totally legal, as long as they don't sell without a liquor license. And often way higher quality than commercial beers. I think we'd end up seeing a lot of parallels to that.

Let's hope that when the dust settles and the fifty states are busily repaying their enormous debts with cannabis tax dollars, that the laws we end up with are sane and fair.

Dreamer, I hadn't looked into Colorado as much, which part is going to hurt the small time guys? I do like Oregon's bill though, Oregonians are some sane ass people

Apparently Washington got through on some kind of time technicality because they waited too long.

It is only a waiting game until big business gets it's sleazy hands on pot, they have been prepping for years. I just hope that even if things get ugly for a bit, Mama Canna will show a few people that faint light at the end of the tunnel and deliver a swift ego bashing to those in need so we can all finally have our heads straight and get some real work done in this country.

Seeker, I'm all for decriminalization but that doesn't favor the government, it just allows the underground market to grow with less repercussion. So I won't count on it for long.

Oh ya, and let me correct myself in my first post; when I said people would have to give up 3 days of driving if the threshold were 5ng/ml I meant 11 DAYS!! Unless you are a minor then you're probably walking for a month for one joint of shwagg.

Usually possession gets decriminalization meaning you can still face jail time if you buy or grow. Far, far from ideal.

I post occasional updates about the situation in the USA here.



I agree with you on this dreamoar. It is about choosing the lesser evil. Bad news for small scale commercial growers and medical cannabis industry or bad news for weed users that are not patients ? As selfish as it might be, I am leaning towards the former. Legalization is totally new concept that can, literally, change the world. But sacrifices will have to be made.

archaic_architec, thanks for bringing up the DUI thing ! I haven't looked deeply into the proposals and it seems this really is a downer. Especially by applying these laws to patients.

Thanks Shaolin! I guess I should have looked a bit before posting mods feel free to combine the threads if needed.

Opting not to legalise MJ in the name of protecting it makes about as much sense as flagging down DMT Youtube videos to protect DMT. It's like killing yourself to avoid being murdered. It's like dropping out of a foot race when you start to fall behind. It's like folding a good hand in a poker game when the stakes get high. It's like turning on your own team just to be on the winning side. It's like killing your child to keep your ex-spouse from getting custody.

Anyways, I don't like it. Making enlightening psychedelic drugs harder for the average person to get just to keep money out of the hands of greedy corporations is at least as selfish/malicious as the corporations you're trying to sabotage. That's my current opinion.

I dunno, I partly agree because I think that it should be available to people but it pretty much is available in all these states to anyone who really wants it as medical marijuana. Oregon and Colorado seem to be pretty legit but Washington...

The thing with Washington is that it would cause a lot of problems with people getting DUI's and that kind of thing can really haunt you and make your life miserable, I have a few friends with DUI's and they tell me the horror stories. I don't really feel bad for the small time growers who's lives would be affected by it because they knew they were taking a chance when they started and it would be foolish of them to have so much riding on growing pot regardless of legalization.

It's not all about keeping money out of the hands of corporations, it's about changing the drug war to favor the government. If Washington passes then it would take the focus of the war on pot from sale and distribution to heavy DUI penalties galore as well as still keeping unlicensed growing and sales illegal. The penalties would change from 1-90 days in jail for possesion to 2-48 months of license suspension for a first time DUI offense.

Sure Washingtonians could buy and smoke pot but they still would have a hard time keeping a job or going anywhere when they couldn't drive for 11 days without risking heavy fines, jail time, or months of DUI classes. How much pot can you smoke if you need to drive places? 1 weak joint per roughly 11 days as a 21 year old. And if you ignored the DUI amendment how long would it take before you got so many DUI's you spent just as long in jail? Not long at all.

HAHA that is so f'ing rediculous LOL! Thats worse than it being illegal to begin with lol poor washington people!

I dont buy pot or smoke regularly other than my friends smoking me up occassionally, but I am a strong advocate for its legalization. I feel it is much safer and less toxic than alcohol OR cigarettes, and would be a good alternative for people to...'get their fix' on the weekend at the bar, or watching football games with the guys at home barbecuing. It is imho less addicting than both cigarrettes and alcohol and doesnt cause you to get beligerent.

It would also be a huge source for tax dollars for the the government, as it would likely follow the current trend for steep liqour/cigarrette taxes. Not to mention all of the new jobs that would be created as a result of marijuana becoming legal to cultivate and process, plus it would keep american money from being paid to foreign countries especially mexico for the tons of pot being smuggled across borders.

Clearly there could be many unknown x-factors associated with it's legalization as well, but the benefits seem to be very much in favor of legalization. Then again, people do think of it as a 'gateway' drug, so maybe the government is afraid of losing control of its well-behaved mainstream citizens.

Only thing that really concerns me with its legalization would be more oppression associated with it, such as DUI, testing for a rediculously low amount of THC in your system that obviously wouldnt even effect the most light-weight user to the point of disoriented intoxication... And having to get a blood test from cops for DUI? Freaking Outrageous!

I have been following this and for a good long time, I have made the decision that I will vote against this proposal. While I see where they are going with this, it is pretty ridiculous there's no sort of "impairment testing," just an archaic blood test. Government is just trying to get their fingers in something else over here after naive voters here voted to privatize liquor sales without reading the fine print.

What's sad though is it probably will pass and the same people who voted for it will bitch and moan because they'll find out eventually they are getting screwed.... just like what happened with the privatization of liquor. Unfortunately just another deboccle waiting to happen.

Ok so it seems I was misled by my source claiming it takes such a long time for active THC to dissipate from the blood.

CANORML says that in some chronic users it has been shown to be detectable around 1-6.4 ng/ml at 24-48 hours. That is still a long time to wait to drive if you are a chronic smoker.

http://www.canorml.org/h...e/drugtestdetection.html

Best get your heirloom seed now before legalization gets this stuff into the hands of people like monsanto and your only option is some kind of weird GMO weed...you know how much $$ is is cannabis? This stuff could overtake corn..you know how that has gone..

This, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit. Hopefully when people start smoking and changing their consciousness things might end up different but I really wouldn't count on it.

I hate the United States.

This, besides all the threatened lobbies (paper, cotton, pharma, fuels, etc.) might perfectly be another reason why they cannot easily see how to grab the bull properly. How to market decent weed without unbrainwashing a good deal of the consumers?

In my country they won't bug you unless you are being very conspicuous or are growing dozens of plants. One grow shop I know has been selling cuttings under the table for years. Honestly, I don't want that to change for worse. Decriminalize, not legalize. But won't happen.

This thread so far makes me think of the an old joke where a paraplegic falls off a cliff and prays "Good Lord, help me stay how I am".