Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the swimming complex near the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles.

This week’s is somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

Nina Shapiro in the Seattle Weekly writes about Norm Stamper’s regrets about I-502:

“I now question whether Washington state’s initiative needed to be as restrictive as it is,” Stamper says.

One of the restrictions he’s referring to is the initiative’s dui provision, which establishes a so-called “per-se” standard that would result in a conviction for anyone found to have 5 nanograms of active THC (a compound found in marijuana). This provision was the subject of fierce controversy during the campaign, with some activists arguing that pot affects people differently, so it doesn’t make sense to set one standard for impairment. Medical marijuana activists also insisted that the provision would essentially render them unable to drive because of all the THC in their bloodstream from regular use.

One of my biggest concerns about the DUI provision wasn’t even so much the language itself, but the fact that it could serve as a foothold towards a “bi-partisan consensus” that our existing DUI laws aren’t sufficient and that stoned driving is some new and unique challenge that we have to deal with. It isn’t. But with the ONDCP sounding the alarm about it, it’s easier for them to point to drug law reform activists who’ve exaggerated the danger in order to open the door to even worse provisions. Seeing that Stamper (and Rep. Goodman) both recognize the need to fix the DUI provisions is a good sign that we might not slide down that slippery slope.

Shapiro makes another important point about the DUI provisions in I-502:

But here’s the thing: Colorodo’s successful legalization measure, Amendment 64, didn’t have any dui provision at all. It also allows limited home-grows (six plants, to be exact). And yet, Stamper points out, that amendment passed by a “very, very healthy” margin, with 55 percent of voters giving it the thumbs up–almost the exact same as Washington’s more restrictive initiative.

I’ve been very critical of New Approach Washington over this point, but I still have a ton of respect for the work they did to get this passed. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that including the DUI provision was a mistake, but it was an understandable one. Only a fool expects perfection in any voter initiative. And now other states can learn from our experience and win the next battle.

– I haven’t written about local prospective high-end marijuana entrepreneur Jamen Shively, but in this article he says something interesting:

Shively said that under no circumstances would his company violate federal law.

“Let’s suppose tomorrow that Washington state issued licenses and said, ‘Go ahead, guys, have at it.’ We would say to the state of Washington respectfully, ‘Thanks, but no thanks, because we haven’t heard from the federal government.'”

I doubt the federal government is going to “back off” before the state starts issuing licenses. I tend to think that they’ll be too timid about the political repercussions to do anything at first, but they’ll eventually try some sort of crackdown once people start making real money. If that’s how it plays out, I’m not sure Shively’s move is a smart one. Cornering the high-end market for marijuana won’t be that hard once the market gets going (as we might see delivery services instead of storefronts until the fear of fed intervention dies down). In fact, with the ease in producing a legal product, “high-end” marijuana will likely cost close to what it does today. There will be a number of enterprises out there willing to work quietly and under the radar, and some of those will weather the storm of a fed crackdown.

– Dylan Matthews discusses what the Obama Administration could do from a rescheduling standpoint. Most scenarios discussed involved rescheduling rather than simply removing it as a controlled substance. But removing it entirely probably makes the most sense from a policy standpoint if we feel the proper approach is to treat it like alcohol.

– You’ve probably also seen that Frankie’s in Olympia is the first bar set up to legally allow the consumption of marijuana on its premises. They were able to do this because they fought to gain an exemption from the state’s anti-smoking laws years back. One thing I expect to see is a push for other establishments (bars, arcades, movie theaters) to come up with clever ways to welcome pot smokers (roof seating, outdoor patios, etc) even without resorting to a fight with the state.

Last week’s contest was won by Geoduck. It was in Dortmund, Germany.

This week’s location is another random one, this time with Google Maps. Good luck!

Amanda Reiman writes about the tragic story of Michael Saffioti, the Lynnwood man who died in a Snohomish jail for doing something that will now finally be legal on Thursday.

– Gene Johnson writes about how we got to this point.

– Based on Washington state data, a national market for regulated marijuana sales could be a nearly $50 billion a year market.

– In a letter to UW students, Eric Godfrey (Vice President and Vice Provost for Student Life) emphasizes that marijuana is still not allowed on University grounds. I’d imagine that’s probably true for alcohol as well, but hopefully someone can clarify in the comments. I’m curious to know if there’s a place on campus where alcohol is allowed, but marijuana would not be (for those over 21 of course).

– This Thursday at the Space Needle, people will gather to mark the milestone. Technically, using it outdoors is still illegal. But you only get to celebrate the end of prohibition once.

Last week’s contest was solved by Ted. It was a building on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

This week’s is random location somewhere on earth, good luck!

In my last job, I was a software test manager for a company that did most of its work out of Omaha. As a result, I developed some good friendships with the engineers there, and even after that job came to an end, I’ve been able to keep in touch with them over Facebook. About a month before the election, I saw a photo of one of my ex-co-workers, with a bunch of his buddies, sitting around the couch getting ready to watch the Cornhuskers take on Ohio State. There’s nothing unusual about that for someone living in Omaha, but what struck me was that he was born and raised in India, and the nearly 10 people in his living room were Indian-Americans as well.

It’s not news to anyone that America’s demographics continue to change. But when we talk about it in terms of politics, this trend can be hidden. Asian-Americans are now a significant voting bloc in this country, and they’ve been voting more and more Democratic in the past two decades.

Goldy posted recently about the post-mortem on Rob McKenna’s failed campaign. Republicans blame a lack of support from the national GOP, but Goldy points out that McKenna still had more money to work with. Jay Inslee just put his money towards more effective GOTV efforts rather than the silly ads that polluted the airwaves in October.

A lot of variables go into an electoral outcome, and Goldy’s certainly right that the Democrats in this state have a strong edge in GOTV and ground game. But I’m growing more and more convinced that the most significant event in this campaign was the incident in July involving a staff member with an anti-Asian tweet in her Twitter feed.

For a Republican like Rob McKenna to win in this state, he has to be completely invulnerable to being seen as a typical GOP extremist. For the most part, McKenna has always been very good at this. But finding out that a staffer had sent an offensive tweet and then taking a few days before forcing her resignation was his biggest blunder on that front.

This incident tied McKenna to one of the ugliest traits of the GOP in recent years – xenophobia – and it certainly resonated with the large Asian-American population in this state. Looking at the polling for this year, you can see that the polls abruptly shifted in Inslee’s direction right at the time that this incident occurred (week of July 16-20) and never went back.

Recently, Josh Marshall at TPM has been discussing this topic and received this note from an Indian-American in Iowa:

And as time went on, it became clear in other polling that PPP early on was on to more than just snarky telephone survey replies, there really is a disturbingly large percentage of Republicans who are openly hostile to Obama specifically because of his race, his national origin, and his partial religious ancestry. That GOP electeds from Boehner to McConnell to all the GOP Presidential candidates were unwilling to call out any of it just reinforced the point, since it established they were afraid because these people were a very large part of the GOP base. You don’t worry about calling out your own party’s cranks in public if they’re marginal figures whose votes you don’t need and don’t think you’ll lose because they have no other options…Republican candidates and electeds know that they can lose primaries for openly challenging racial and other bigoted hostility toward Obama. And all this is very personal to me. When I was a small child in Ames, Iowa, in my immigrant family, neighborhood teenagers assaulted our home regularly, pelting fruit and whatever else at our house. Several times my dad had the police come and lecture this group of kids. It was all about race, and these kids’ parents did nothing. So when Mitt Romney in a Michigan stump speech snarks that no one asked him for his birth certificate, and his GOP allies defend the racism as “just a joke,” when so many GOP federal and state electeds endorse or tacitly condone questioning of Obama’s citizenry and engage in other dog whistle racism, these are always personal attacks equally on me…if Obama is not an American and does not legitimately belong, then they’re saying the same about me. I imagine I’m not alone, that people of color across the board see what I see, and the election results confirm this.

There’s nothing more damaging to the GOP right now that the (well-earned) reputation that they’re beholden to an intolerant base, one that still defines American-ness through skin color, religion and ethnicity, not by culture and upbringing. And I’m convinced that a single intolerant thought from a brainless staffer dragged Rob McKenna too far into that cesspool.

In the Huffington Post, Lucia Graves repeats one of the biggest myths of the entire I-502 campaign:

As voters in Washington state this month legalized marijuana for recreational use, they overrode the concerted lobbying of a conspicuous interest group: The dispensaries that already had the right to sell marijuana for medical use, and who now risk relinquishing that lucrative marketplace to new competitors.

Though one might assume that legalization would be opposed primarily by law enforcement and social conservatives, nearly all of the money donated to fight the ballot measure in Washington came not from such groups but rather from the existing medical marijuana industry, according to state campaign contribution filings.

All things told, the anti-502 forces dabbled in far more fantasy and myth-making than those who supported the initiative. But the idea that the anti-502 crowd was simply a bunch of greedy dispensary owners trying to protect their turf was also a fantasy. As a supporter of the initiative, I mostly bit my tongue throughout the campaign over this point, but now that the vote passed, I feel compelled to kill off this myth once and for all.

The opposition to I-502 from the activist and medical marijuana community had two primary reasons. First, it was a result of various aspects of the bill. The per se DUI provisions were a very big part of that, but so was the lack of home growing and the 1 ounce possession limit. What New Approach Washington (the group behind I-502) saw as necessary regulations to appeal to undecided voters, many activists and medical marijuana patients saw as new open doors for the police to go after medical marijuana patients and even regular users.

The second reason was due to longtime internal divisions in the state’s activist community. When Sensible Washington was trying to get a legalization initiative on the ballot in 2010, an expected source of funding mysteriously dried up at the last minute. At the time, I tried to investigate (this was long before I had any affiliation with the group), but couldn’t get anyone to divulge what happened. The leaders of Sensible Washington blamed Alison Holcomb (who eventually founded New Approach Washington), and since then, there’s been a serious rift in the community between the two groups. If you look at the folks who were most outspoken in opposition to I-502 this year, almost all of them had some affiliation with Sensible Washington. In fact, they even wrote the No on I-502 argument for the voter’s guide.

In her post, Graves writes about how the funding for the opposition came primarily from the medical marijuana community, but that’s only because the opposition received almost no funding at all. The I-502 campaign raised $5.6 million, compared to the opposition’s $16,000. If the medical marijuana dispensaries were in such a lucrative marketplace and needed to guard their turf, they could’ve scared up far more than $16,000.

Beyond that, Graves is simply incorrect when she talks about “dispensaries that already had the right to sell marijuana for medical use”. Dispensaries in Washington state are still technically illegal (thanks to Governor Gregoire’s veto in 2011). It’s only in Seattle and a limited few other places where the authorities have generally looked the other way. In that environment, it’s possible that some folks were making good money, but just about any of those people would stand to benefit far more by becoming a totally above-board dispensary that sold to everyone. If anyone was opposing I-502 because they wanted to keep a system where they were quasi-legal and could only sell to a smaller segment of the population, they’re likely too dumb to stay in business for that long anyway.

Sadly, one of the biggest purveyors of this myth was our friend Dominic Holden from The Stranger. Back in April, he wrote this in the New York Times:

In late February, Dr. Gil Mobley, a physician with a local clinic providing medical-marijuana authorizations, began a campaign called No on I-502, a new name for a group that, before, called itself Patients Against I-502. It anticipates donations from lawyers and doctors, said its treasurer, Anthony Martinelli, and pot dispensaries may also finance a fall volley of television commercials.

Needless to say, the pot dispensaries never did that. There wasn’t a single anti-502 television ad made. And Holden never explained what basis he had for saying that. He never quoted any dispensary operators who opposed it. Nor did he explain what Mobley’s financial motive was. In fact, because I-502 bans home grows for non-patients, Mobley’s clinic will likely see increased profits from folks who still want a doctor to authorize their green thumb to cure whatever ails them. And at no point this year did anyone manage to explain how it made financial sense for the state’s few dispensary operators to oppose I-502.

At the end of Graves’ article, she quotes several dispensary operators who opposed the measure, and they all repeated what has long been known:

Trek Hollnagel, a spokesman for the Conscious Care Cooperative in Northern Seattle, also dismissed the notion that his dispensary fought the measure out of self-interest, saying that while the law does take away some patient “rights” — he again cited the provision on driving — he added it’s a victory to a certain extent, because there will be some form of arrest protection for everybody.

“I would say it’s kind of a mixed emotion,” Hollnagel said.

Hollnagel continued that the new law might be good for business, because it would make patients feel more comfortable about seeking help.

“In my professional opinion I think this will be beneficial for the cannabis industry as far as the dispensaries and all aspects of business go,” he said.

A lot of people don’t want to believe this for one reason or another, but it was the truth. Dispensary operators were somewhat caught between a rock and a hard place. They had customers who vehemently opposed the measure (and who on Facebook tried to identify dispensaries who didn’t oppose it and organize boycotts), but also knew that I-502 would have some pretty serious benefits as well. In the end, most dared not offend their customers. And now that I-502 has passed, a lot of them could potentially make a lot more money in a fully regulated system.

It’s good to remember that if I-502 is implemented without federal interference, incidents like this will be a thing of the past in this state. People will still have small personal grows (which is still legal for authorized medical marijuana patients), but large-scale commercial grows will finally be where they belong, in non-hidden commercial spaces regulated by the state.

Last week’s contest was won by Deathfrogg, who identified the building, and Two Dogs, who found the link. It was the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham.

This week’s contest is related to something in the news from November, good luck!

A few more items in the new world order:

1. Jonathan Martin writes about how the world of drug-testing job applicants remains largely unchanged by I-502. Marijuana may become legal on December 6, but a number of employers (especially ones who have no choice due to federal policy) will still be having potential employees pee in a cup before they can start. Thankfully, most of this area’s top companies are generally smart enough not to waste their money on this.

When I was hired by Boeing during my senior year in Ann Arbor, having to take a drug test caught me off-guard. At the time, head shops sold both pre-mixed drinks and un-mixed powders that you’d consume the morning of the test in order to pee clean. I’ve heard that drug testing firms have gotten better about detecting those, but at the time, it was rather simple to beat those tests. As the internet has grown, pre-employment drug screenings have often been referred to as “intelligence tests” since it only tests to make sure you’re smart enough to get on Google and find out how to beat them.

Being in the software/internet/IT world, I don’t have to worry about this any more. In fact, if I come across a company that actually wants me to take a drug test (and isn’t being forced by federal policy to do so), I’d take it as a sign there’s something wrong with the company. It’s like saying “we’re so dysfunctional, a person with a drug problem can pass the interview and work here unnoticed”. Almost no companies do it.

The state of Florida recently implemented a program to drug screen welfare recipients. Despite a lot of rhetoric about how this was a fiscally responsible decision, the program actually cost taxpayers more money. There’s little reason to believe that the dynamic is any different when it comes to pre-employment screening and is costing companies money that they could be spending elsewhere.

2. Joe Fryer from KING5 looks at Colorado’s strict regulations for medical marijuana dispensaries. It’s an informative piece, although I take slight exception with this wording:

Washington has been hesitant to regulate businesses that grow and sell medical marijuana because the federal government still considers it a Schedule 1 drug with no medical benefits.

It wasn’t “Washington” that was hesitant to regulate them. The voters of this state have long supported it, and the legislature passed a bill to have it done very similarly to how Colorado does it. The only one who was hesitant was Governor Gregoire, who vetoed those regulations and left us miles behind Colorado. Because of that blunder, Colorado will have a much easier transition into regulated sales than we will, although I’m starting to become more confident that Governor-Elect Inslee will be a little smarter on this subject.

3. Why is so hard for the Tacoma News Tribune to find someone who isn’t a complete moron when talking about the drug war? I don’t have time to dissect the whole thing, so let me quickly summarize the things that Brian O’Neill gets wrong:

– The relationship between the Mexican government’s concern for drug trafficking and the level of the violence is the exact opposite of what O’Neill assumes. Over the years, as the Mexican government has intensified its fight against the traffickers, the amount of violence in the country has gone way up, not down. If the reverse happens, and Mexico stops worrying about them, the violence would start going back down again.
– Mexican drug trafficking organizations have shown that regardless of what the Mexican government does, they can still make billions of dollars from American drug consumption. The total amount of money spent by Americans isn’t the main variable here. In other words, if the Mexican government eased up on its enforcement, the main thing that would likely happen is that prices in the U.S. might go down a bit, not that drug trafficking organizations would make that much more in profits.
– Regardless of what happens with marijuana policy in Mexico City, neither the Mexican nor American government has ever been able to stop cocaine, meth, or other drugs from being smuggled into the United States. The idea that it will become harder if Mexico stops trying to interdict just marijuana is absurd. If anything, it would make it easier, since it can focus on a smaller percentage of the overall drug trade.
– There’s some disagreement about the extent that I-502 (and Colorado’s measure) will impact Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations, but believing that it will lead to a more porous border and higher profits for illegal gangs is pure lunacy. The amount of money they make is a function of how much Americans spend in the black market. If laws (like Washington’s and Colorado’s) re-direct that consumer spending away from the black market, the gangs make less. It’s not rocket science, and the News Tribune should really try harder to get someone on their staff who understands it.

Last week’s contest was still unsolved as of Thursday night. It was Stockton, CA.

This week’s is somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

Chris Grygiel reports on Governor Gregoire’s meeting with the feds over I-502:

Gregoire met with Deputy Attorney General James Cole in Washington, D.C. She told Cole she would prefer to know “sooner rather than later,” because Washington state is getting ready to decriminalize pot, which is still illegal under federal law.

“I told them, ‘Make no mistake, that absent an injunction of some sort, it’s our intent to implement decriminalization,’ ” Gregoire told The Associated Press. “I don’t want to spend a lot of money implementing this if you are going to attempt to block it.”

The cynical side of me wonders if Gregoire sought this meeting as a way to fish for excuses to block the implementation of I-502. Whenever I discuss Gregoire and her history with drug policy, I’m always reminded by folks that she’s a potential contender for Eric Holder’s job. And maybe just having this meeting is enough for her to play nice with an Obama Administration that’s been more mute than I expected so far.

But for the potential marijuana entrepreneurs here in Washington, there’s a much bigger concern about moving forward with the regulations only to have the federal government come in later. I-502 requires state licensing of all retailers, producers, and processors. If the state starts licensing all these people for a year, there’s a danger that the feds now have a good list of names to start with if they decide to crack down. I’m sure that’s not Gregoire’s biggest concern, but it’s certainly a much more serious one.

UPDATE: Governor-elect Inslee put out a very positive statement about supporting and defending the implementation of I-502. I was definitely disappointed that he didn’t support this initiative during his campaign, but I’m cautiously optimistic he’ll start to recognize how drug law reform is as important a pillar of good progressive governance as clean energy, health care, public education, and equal rights.

One of the key reasons why I saw tremendous value in passing I-502 had little to do with what would actually happen here in Washington, but with what would happen across the globe:

The United States is again in violation of international law. That is a strong statement and one that reminds us of the invasion of Iraq, Guantanamo bay, water-boarding, rendition, and the strong international legal arguments made about these situations.

But in this case the violation will be hailed by many as a positive step.

On 6 November various ballot initiatives were voted on in the US, from abolishing the death penalty to allowing assisted suicide, to legalising gay marriage. Three had the clearest potential to render the US in breach of international law if they succeeded. With the votes in Colorado and Washington which established a legally regulated framework for non-medical production and sale of marijuana, that breach has now occurred.

The laws in question are the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and the 1988 UN drug trafficking conventions (which has a longer, duller title). Alongside one other treaty (which deals with synthetics) these form the bedrock legal foundation of the global drug control regime. Most countries follow them very closely, including the US.

The United States doesn’t just follow these treaties, they’re very aggressive about ensuring that other countries follow them as well. A good example of this effort is how we’ve been expanding our military presence in West Africa, as a way of stopping smuggling from South America to Europe. Despite the fact that this trafficking doesn’t start, travel through, or end in the United States, American taxpayers are paying to stop it. America’s drug war has long been more than just an attempt to keep Americans from obtaining drugs, it’s been an effort to stop drug trafficking globally, and marijuana has always been part of that.

With that in mind, it’s also important to remember that marijuana use was legal and socially acceptable in many parts of the world before the US stepped in with pressure. And now, people are starting to point that out:

NEW DELHI: What two American states, Washington and Colorado, have decided to do – legalize recreational use of marijuana – was the norm in India until 1985. All cannabis derivatives – marijuana (grass or ganja), hashish (charas) and bhang – were legally sold in this country. As a matter of fact, most state governments had their own retail shops to sell these drugs. India has known, consumed and celebrated ganja, charas and bhang for millennia.

Their consumption was never regarded as socially deviant behaviour any more than drinking alcohol was. If there was any bias against ganja or charas, it was that these were often viewed as the poor man’s intoxicant by the upper classes. But come Holi, these prejudices would melt away as rich and poor savoured the joyous high of bhang. Even now, despite a legal ban, recreational use of these drugs is widespread in India.

Keeping marijuana legal was actually an enlightened view. It is now medically proven that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol. In fact, the good weed has medical uses (as many as 19 US states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes). However, moderation is the key. While excessive and sustained consumption of alcohol can cause severe liver damage leading to death, excessive use of marijuana too can cause some damage, mainly to our sensory abilities. In moderation, marijuana is a gentle mood-altering relaxant.

So, if there is a rational policy towards intoxicants and we allow the sale and consumption of liquor, there is no good reason to not similarly allow sale and consumption of marijuana, hashish and bhang. For years, India has held this position. For 25 years since 1961, it has withstood American pressure to keep marijuana legal. Which brings us to the story of why it was banned in India.

Since 1961, the US has been campaigning for a global law against all drugs, both hard and soft. Given that ganja, charas and bhang were a way of life in India, we opposed the drastic measure. But by the early ’80s, American society was grappling with some drug problems and opinion had grown against the “excesses” of the hippie generation. In 1985, the Rajiv Gandhi government buckled under the pressure and enacted a law called the Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

The rest of the world has been understandably sheepish about challenging a policy that they’ve known was dumb, but was so aggressively sought by the country with the world’s most powerful military. Thanks to the voters here and in Colorado, that sheepishness might finally be wearing off.