There’s been some big news regarding the medical marijuana bill that appeared ready to be signed into law this week:
The top federal prosecutors in Washington sent a stern warning to Washington State that a medical-marijuana law passed by the legislature this week, which would license dispensaries and growers, could result in a wave of criminal charges against cannabis providers and even state employees. At the same time, in a mixed message, they telegraphed that the Obama Administration’s policy of tacitly permitting states with medical marijuana laws would proceed.
“The Washington legislative proposals will create a licensing scheme that permits large-scale marijuana cultivation and distributions,” wrote US Attorneys Jenny Durkan and Michael Ormsby, respectively representing the Western and Eastern districts of Washington State, in a letter sent today to Governor Chris Gregoire. “This would authorize conduct contrary to federal law and thus, would undermine the federal government’s efforts to regulate the possession, manufacturing, and trafficking of controlled substances. Accordingly, the Department could consider civil and criminal legal remedies regarding those who set up marijuana growing facilities and dispensaries as they will be doing so in violation of federal law. … In addition, state employees who conducted activities mandated by the Washington legislative proposals would not be immune from liability…” including “criminal prosecution.”
The letter was sent in response to an inquiry from Governor Gregoire to Attorney General Eric Holder (The federal prosecutors’ letter is here and Gregoire’s letter is here).
Dominic’s take is that Gregoire sent this letter and received the predictable reply because she intends to veto the bill. There’s a good chance he’s right. Eli Sanders speculates even further:
Someone who works in Democratic politics floated this theory my way last night, and it makes sense: Gregoire is looking at the medical marijuana bill with an eye toward future confirmation hearings—her possible future confirmation hearings.
Think about it. No one expects Gregoire to run for governor again. Everyone knows she’s been brought up as a possible Team Obama member in the past. And, obviously, having signed a medical pot bill that can be seen as flouting federal law would be a liability during any upcoming D.C. confirmation process.
So it’s worth asking: In Gregoire’s political calculus, is it the Washington State medical marijuana bill vs. her future in Washington, D.C.?
The answer here is probably no, and here’s why. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico championed and signed a medical marijuana bill in 2007 that was groundbreaking in that it was the first to try to involve state agencies in the implementation. And this was at a time when the Bush Administration was still aggressively going after state medical marijuana laws. Here’s what Governor Richardson said:
“So what if it’s risky? It’s the right thing to do,” said Richardson, one of the candidates in the crowded 2008 field. “What we’re talking about is 160 people in deep pain. It only affects them.”
The legislation would create a program under which some patients – with a doctor’s recommendation – could use marijuana provided by the state health department. Lawmakers approved the bill Wednesday. The governor is expected to sign it in the next few weeks.
Despite this very bold flouting of federal law, Richardson was still chosen by Obama to be his Secretary of Commerce (although he later withdrew for reasons completely unrelated to the medical marijuana law). It may be hard for a lot of Democrats in this state to admit, but if Gregoire vetoes this bill because of an imagined conflict with federal law, it’s because she’s a shitty Governor. This bill is not much different from what Colorado already allows and what other states are already planning to implement.
UPDATE: The interesting irony here is that some of the most recent changes to the bill have been causing some medical marijuana advocates to call for the bill to be scrapped as well. The concerns are definitely over different areas though. Gregoire’s main concern is over the licensing of production and distribution, while the CDC is concerned with the extra power that a late amendment from Rep. Christopher Hurst has given to law enforcement to continue to search and arrest authorized patients. I’m not convinced the CDC’s concerns are bad enough to scrap the bill (I think some law enforcement folks will screw over some patients regardless of what the law says), but Gregoire’s concerns over the bill are far less grounded in reality.
Even sadder (or perhaps funnier, depending on your predisposition), folks like Steve Sarich – who’s been fighting this bill since the beginning of the session – would be the big winner if this bill gets scrapped. Sarich, as you’re probably familiar with, is the entrepreneur who holds clinics where a doctor comes in for a fee and authorizes patients (occasionally those patients are 19-year-olds who later try to rob Sarich in the middle of the night) and then supplies them with their “medicine”. This bill pretty clearly shuts down operations like that. That’s just one more of the problems that this bill was meant to solve that reappears if Gregoire takes out the veto pen.
UPDATE 2: While I was writing up this post, Dominic posted a follow-up that makes it clearer that Gregoire intends to veto the bill. Please call her office if you have time: 360-902-4111
It’s been clear for a long time now that our Governor only does the right thing when it coincides with her political interest.
A Democratic president, a Democratic governor…and it’s just the same old bullshit.
2 – And a Republican Senate (lockstep minority, 60 votes to pass anything) who’ll do anything to hobble a Democratic administration.
Same old bullshit indeed.
@1 and 2
ya think?!?!?!?!
Please raise your(anyone) hand if you voted the for queen and her court.
what a joke.
Hmmm. In 2004 and 2008 I voted for Christine Gregoire for Governor.
The alternative was to let a right wing degenerate Dino Rossi win.. See Wisconsin – it was right choice by far.
I wish we had someone better but sometimes you have to take what you can get.
That’s reality.
Obama continues to break promises:
“What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue. Simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with.” -Barack Obama in 2008
@4
Yeah, I voted for her twice and for the exact same reason both times, she was a better choice than the other guy. Do you think this bill would be sailing through if Rossi was the governor?
As bad as Gregoire is, she’s better than Rossi would have been. But who knows, maybe what we need is 4 years of a really, really, shitty governor. The folks in Wisconsin and Ohio sure are waking up.
It shows how pathetic this country is in kow-towing to the ignorant and small-minded.
The way to determine what actual policy in this country will be is by checking the prejudices of the loudly ignorant.
The only way to win this battle would be to license Monsanto to develop seeds that only thay can sell.
@8
Congress would sign off on that in a heart beat and give them a tax break to boot!
Fucking piece of shit @4: I voted for her twice and would vote for her again against anybody the R cretins would conceivably nominate.
Yikes! I never thought Queen Chrissie wouldn’t do the right thing simply because it would be better for her precious career. These politicians will do just about anything to look out for themselves.
I fully support legalization of marijuana and have recently made a donation to help overturn our ridiculous laws against it. I support both legalization for medical reasons and for reasons of personal liberty. Everyone out there, let’s tell Gregoire that vetoing the right bill is not the proper thing to do, even if it means altering her career plans for higher and higher office.
Cool…then all you who voted for the queen are partly to blame for the budget shortfall then.
how much did she and her court increase spending? 30%?? 40%?? 50%??
aint nobody to blame but the democrats in this state…the own the states problems 100%.
may I quote the queen? “we dont have a budget problem”….LMFAO.
but hey, legal pot will save us all….LOL.
Ironically, I hope she does veto this bill.
Pot is medicine, medical privacy (sacrosanct)should be consistent with the use of all other medicines. The registry requirement (in and of itself) is a deal breaker for me.
@11
She’s about a 20 years or so behind the times in everything she does.
Legalized MJ would help Roger Rabbit swallow the news that WI finished the statewide canvas and published the supreme court election results. Prosser won, up 7,316 votes.
@15
Perhaps after he has a few tokes and gets the munchies, he can feast upon some fine Florida-raised grain-fed beef…..
@16
All of that THC and saturated fat might end up getting him a ride in a WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!mbulance if he isn’t careful.
Lee,
I did like you suggested and called Gregoire’s office to urge her NOT to veto the medical marijuana bill. It only took a couple of minutes, so I urge everyone to make that call and tell Gregoire’s people that she shouldn’t veto the bill. 360-902-4111
Thanks!
This whole thing has imploded very quickly. The CDC is pissed, NORML is glancing over the bad staff in order to declare a victory a la Bush 43 on the Abraham Lincoln and most constituents are completely clueless as to what’s happening.
And BY THE WAY @15, when you and your buddy @16 are done creepily fellating each other, you can read that Koppenburg is trailing by 0.488% and she can elect for a recount. Like your buddy Dino did.
Back on topic (I know it’s hard when you get paid to post X number of comments each day) even I’m wary as to whether we should support the bill or not, but is ANY reform better than no reform at all?
@19
Recount would cost the state $1M. How many teachers does that put out of work?
Just sayin’.
There’s a fucking REVENUE problem you twit…
http://slog.thestranger.com/sl.....er-gets-it
Chris Gregoire is NOT the “Queen” of anything. She is a really hard working if somewhat un-flashy public servant. You however have a decidedly infantile view of government and it’s role in modern life.
Plus…you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Dori Monson, Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson are NOT great sources of accurate information and/or baalanced opinion.
@12…
…you’ve got all the sophistication of that platypus character…
so let me get this straight:
if I increase my household spending by 50%, and then find that my budget is all whacked, its really income problem?..and not a spending problem? hmmmmm…….
huh?
@22
so says the guy still renting a room from his parents.
mayeb someday when you grow up, you will see how the world really works…just saying.
@23…
You can’t read can you…
@23…
It would be GREAT to have a substantive discussion with someone who had a real opnion based on real facts…
@4 Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
House Republicans committed political suicide today by voting to slash health benefits for senior citizens by two-thirds in order to create a cash cow for the insurance industry by privatizing Medicare.
You’ve gotta wonder why they did it, because the so-called Ryan Budget is going nowhere, it’s DOA in the Senate (and even if GOPers controlled Congress, Obama would veto it). This vote is mere grandstanding and it probably says worlds about how much fear Teabaggers have struck into the hearts of GOP pols. They’re more afraid of the Teabaggers than of the senior citizen voting bloc.
Of course, this vote also exposes the utter lies and hypocrisy of the Republican Party — the folks who whipped senior citizens into a frenzy at townhalls by darkly telling them that Democrats would take away their Medicare and march them before government “death panels.”
@24 You’re not someone to be telling others to “grow up,” little boy.
@23 This tripe really shouldn’t be allowed to go unanswered. Federal tax revenues, as a percentage of GDP, have hit an all-time low. So, yes, there’s an “income problem” (as you phrase it). The GOP borrow-and-spend monkeys inherited a balanced budget from Clinton and then cut taxes and increased spending at the same time. Which, of course, pushed us into deficits and boosted the public debt. Through egregiously reckless economic, regulatory, and financial mismanagement the GOP also pushed us to the brink of another Great Depression, necessitating further spending to save the financial system (which, btw, was initiated by Bush) and restart the economy. Oh, and did I mention that GOPers dragged us into two hugely expensive wars, and very expensively mismanaged those wars, too? (See, e.g., $150,000-a-year mercenaries and $110-a-case Coca Cola.) Then a stupid shit like you comes along and blames the deficits on Democrats!!! The only proper response to you is FUCK YOU and the horse you rode in on. A firing squad is too good for people like you. You should be kept alive to suffer along with the rest of us.
If ONLY there wasn’t a state income problem that kept citizens’ salaries from increasing 35% over a two-year period to keep pace with the growth of spending dictated by Gregoire and the legislature right after she became governor.
Because clearly increasing incomes by 17.5% per annum is something fully sustainable and justifies huge increases in spending.
Right, RR?
I just read a huffington post q & a with Grover Norquist and aside from the fact he’s the most dishonest obnoxious asshole liar you’ll ever have the misfortune to experience in your life, you gotta admire his single-minded dedication to his cause: taxes have only one direction to go – down. If Government has problems making ends meet, there’s only one solution – cut spending.
If you wonder where these trolls get their “they’re stealing from me” mentality, he’s the source.
By focusing on taxes, the right has its prime pressure point. Nobody likes paying taxes and we’ve seen that even if you propose taxing the people who can most easily foot the bill too many people buy into the notion that “I’m next”.
If taxes can only be reduced then government can only be tasked to do less and less – there’s goes Social Security, there goes Medicare/Medicaid, there goes HeadStart and other programs for the poor, there goes science and other r&d, there goes EPA (can’t afford it!), there goes OSHA (what part of there’s “no money” don’t you understand?) – till there’s just military, courts (so rich people can keep suing each other) and a little State Dept to bully the rest of the world.
hey roger, tell us kids again how that florida beef tastes!
you fucking moron.
hey, do you have lots of stock in the florida beef market? hahhhhhahaahahhahah
I especially loved how silly magoo rabbit framed his “where the beef come from” question…throwing out all those obvious answers like Texas and Kanses, and then throwing down TEH LOGIK BOMBB on all of us unsuspecting citizens with FLORIDA! Hell, he even made us wait for a while before giving us his wise answer!
and for the coup de grace, he proceeds to tell us how those bastard farmers in the conservative west dont do shit, while those mega-beef producing farmers in the east are supporting TEH WURLD WIF TEH MEATE!
HOLY SHIT! TALK ABOUT OWNING YOURSELF TWICE IN ONE POST, MEGA STYLE! freekee stylee roger! you da man!
shit, with that kind of knowledge and wisdom, you should be a stock market guru or judge or something!
GHAHAHAHHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHAHAHHA
correction: Kansas, not Kanses…gotta love little keyboards…
You are just fucking WRONG, “Bob”.
Get your head out of your god-damned ass.
See commernt #21.
I am so sick of idiots like you going on about shit that is just WRONG.
Boca Raton, FL….the beef capital of the world!
@36
hey momma’s’ boy – did spending go up or did it not?
fools like and the rest of the progressives raise the shit out of state spending during the boom years, and then wonder why you cant maintain that spending during the lean years – you are fucking idiots with no clue.
only a short sighted moron, like the WA D’s and their queen, establish a spending pace based upon a growth rate that cant be sustained. Fuck you morons, this is Econ 101 stuff!
EVERYBODY knew the market was going to slow down eventually, because thats how economies run – they go up and down…they ebb and flow. But you morons cant figure that out because you are stupid, and greedy for everyone else’s cash.
dumb fucks never learn your lesson do you.
Asshole @38…
I SAID READ THE FUCK UP ON THIS SHIT INSTEAD OF BELIEVING THE GARBAGE FLYING OUT YOUR OWN ASS.
@39
awww poor momma’s boy is getting all frustrated and stuff….HAHAH.
you will excuse me if I dont click on a link from The Thtwanger….Im sure all the info there is on the up and up..LMFAO.
You fool, get a clue. The D’s have had their way with this state and how its budget is shit.
try and connect the dots fool.
@36:
One of the problems in reading shit here is that everyone is so inbred in where they get their data. We have Rujax, a Goldy blog reader, quoting from a Goldy Stranger column in which in which Goldy references an article from another Goldy Stranger column as his source. Quite incestuous.
And Rujax takes it as gospel and everyone else is flat-out WRONG.
Rujax, look at the graph in the Goldy article you have been jerking off to all day. It compares revenue to PERSONAL income. That’s not all the sources from which the state derives revenues. It gets revenues from lots of fees on just about everything, from B&O taxes, from real estate taxes, and I could go on but you have ADD so I won’t. I shouldn’t need to.
From another ERCF forecast article:
http://www.erfc.wa.gov/forecas.....7color.pdf
if you scroll down to slide 9, you will see that after accounting for growth in personal income, state tax revenues actually are still growing in almost all years (past couple excepted). That means state revenues are growing faster than personal incomes, Rujax. That’s the opposite of what Goldy’s chart shows. It’s what happens when you consider NON-personal income sources of revenues to the state. It makes it DIFFERENT, doesn’t it?
It means that WA state revenues are increasing faster than incomes already, and that there should be enough to meet needs if the spending were not so out of control.
Finally, Rujax, I will point out that Goldy’s graph and my graph were taken from the same source, the ERFC. That’s the Washington State Economic Revenue and Forecast Council. See those words on the bottom of Goldy’s graph? Same thing.
I’ll refrain from telling you what you can do to your mother and merely point out that you need to either look beyond HA for your information or at least go a little bit further than Goldy has gone for you.
@41
Well done Bob. The ownage of Rujaxoff is now complete.
He’s always been a little lackey of Goldy, YLBleeder, Magoo Rabbit and a few others. The classic little sycophant.
I am sure his reply will be epic… epically idiotic I mean.
Correction:
should have wrote: Florida-beef eating Magoo Rabbit.
@ 36, 42:
Damn. Missed this the first time through. Had I gone down one more slide, to slide 10, I would have seen this slide title:
GF-S revenues as a share of personal
income are rising, but still below trend
It’s the same graph Goldy used, except it includes the forecast years through 2013. Contrary to Goldy’s article, the state revenues are forecast to INCREASE as a share of personal income.
Rather convenient for Goldy’s purposes that he chose to leave that off the graph he used, isn’t it? I think Goldy got his data modification skills from Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and Phil Jones. Hide The Incline.
You understand now, Rujax? Even without the tax increases you’re dying to see, the revenues relative to income are going to go UP.
Returning to the original thread, I gave Gregoire’s office a call to say, “Don’t veto the medical marijuana bill!”
Thanks to Lee for keeping this issue alive.
I’m really hesitant about these sorts of things as I’m pro federal law being above state law. If we can get away with flaunting the rules on pot, why not asbestos or immigration?
@de….
You’re just a wet-dreaming winger aren’t you “Bob”? Washington State rely’s on sales taxes, property taxes and B&O tax for revenue in this moronic Rube Goldberg tax system we have.
Sales tax and property tax revenue are TANKING where does all this “magic money” this “revenue” come from “Bob”…npr’s ass?
@47
You dont read charts too well do you, rujaxoff?
I know, its a bit over your head.
Michael at 46,
Yes, but when the laws against marijuana are based in racism and xenophobia and just plain bad information and silliness, I think it’s important for state governments to assert their authority to declare such laws null and void. Everyone out there knows that marijauna is no more harmfull than alcohol, yet our federal government persists in maintaining an insane drug policy and prohibition against a drug that has become part of the culture.
Sometimes the federal government needs to whacked “up side the head” with a two-by-four to get it to do the right thing.
I am confident that we will eventually come to the conclusion that marijuana should be legalized, rationally regulated, and appropriately taxed as an additional source of revenue. God know we can use it with a $14 trillion debt to pay-off!
Matbe npr can quit sucking “Bob”‘s cock long enough to read this…
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/reports/budgetprocess.pdf
@50:
From the PDF you linked to, here’s what WA has spent, per biennium, and the change from previous biennial spending. Note what happened right after Gregoire took office and the absence of precedent for that jump in spending.
Biennium Dollars in Millions Change in Millions
1989-91 12,822.3 2,481.9
1991-93 15,179.9 2,357.6
1993-95 16,315.1 1,135.2
1995-97 17,732.4 1,417.3
1997-99 19,157.8 1,425.4
1999-01 21,046.4 1,888.6
2001-03 22,548.8 1,502.4
2003-05 23,671.7 1,122.9
2005-07 27,766.1 4,094.4
2007-09 29,233.1 1,467.0
2009-11* 29,743.0 509.9
Now just imagine how much smaller our problems would be if that huge increase, which has been continued to be spent each biennium since, had not occurred.
You think that any expenditure is justified and that taxation should be rammed down our throats to justify its continued existence. Good luck with that at the polls next year.
Rujax didnt even take the time to read and comprehend his own link.
What a fucking moron.
rujaxoff masters self-ownage.
@ 52 re 50:
Was thinking the same thing, about how useless it is to throw out a large publication without specifying the intent.
Next time he’ll send a link to the whole Bible without telling us he wanted us to look at John 3:16.
He does an incredibly good job at making himself irrelevant.
http://www.sdc.wa.gov/budget_show.pdf
Maybe “Bob” can take a break from getting his dick sucked by his “cabana boy” npr long enough to digest this report…
…it’s probably too complicated for the little tea-brains, but it MAY keep them occupied for a while