I don’t know enough about the specifics of the state constitution or state law to know if the AG’s office is right that localities can ban marijuana shops. The law is the law and if the office has come to that conclusion, then, they should say as much.
Nonetheless, I’m glad to see that this isn’t the last word, and that the ACLU is going to fight it. It won’t do as much to stem the illicit trade if you have to drive another county or two to purchase marijuana. Especially with the current setup where it’s legal to own marijuana but there’s nowhere to legally purchase it.*
Still, the politics is perplexing. I suspect given this, and given their history the Pierce County Council will try to ban marijuana shops once again. In a municipality that supported legalization and a market by 54%. The exec vetoed it last time, but her argument was that state law ought to be the driving force. Not that hey, we don’t want to encourage drug dealing on the street corners, so we should have a better place to go. Not, hey, we can best make sensible regulations if it’s legal. Not that localities should tax marijuana when budgets are still tight.
Now, in fairness, that’s a good deal of speculation on my part. I don’t know if the County Council will try again, and I don’t know if Executive McCarthy would veto it. But the argument she relied most heavily on is now gone, or at least weakened.
And I can’t help wondering if part of the reason is a fear by some politicians, especially outside of urban areas, of being labeled one of those damn hippies if they support this reasonable policy. I mean how can you possibly support a legalization policy if you aren’t lighting up yourself? How can you support a live and let live policy on these sorts of issues? Of course, it’s silly; It seems like people unwilling to support marriage equality for fear that people might think they were gay in the not too distant past. Still, I think the fear of the attack ads they’ve written in their minds is worse than the reality they would face, at least in municipalities that supported I-502.
I’m also worried about what this will do to medical marijuana patients if the law gets interpreted that way by the courts. It looks like the legislature is moving toward pushing medical users into the recreational market (Daily O link). If the state outlaws collective gardens, that could be problematic anyway. But if they outlaw collective gardens and they aren’t replaced by shops in some cities and counties, that would seem to be more problematic.
* I realize that’s the setup everywhere in Washington right now. But it’s supposed to change.
It’s going to take some time for all this stuff to work its way out. Marijuana is legal for recreational use in Washington and Colorado, and medically OK in many other states. What the opposition is afraid of is that the average guy or gal is going to finally wake up and realize that all the BS he or she has been fed by the government is just propaganda and mostly false. Marijuana is NOT a gift from the Devine nor is it the Black Scourge of Calcutta either. It’s a substance that adults have a right to use if they want to do so. It’s also none of the government’s damn business either!
This is one of those issues where, consistently, the public has been way ahead of the politicians. This isn’t as true of Democratic politicians as it once was (though there are still plenty of bad examples), but it’s especially true of Republican pols – even a lot of the supposedly libertarian-leaning ones – who are so bought into the DFH narrative on this issue – in other words, legalization only benefits people in their tribe, not our tribe – that they’re oblivious to the reality that a lot of their Republican constituents also smoke pot.
They’re more likely to respond to the financial arguments – Less government expense! More revenue! And it only comes from DFH’s! – than the welfare of their own pot-smoking constituents. Part of this is the DFH myth, compounded because even though use is similar across racial lines, the people most often jailed for pot use are non-white (and therefore not their problem). Part of this is War On Drugs propaganda, especially conflating pot use with meth (which is, in fact, a very serious problem in a lot of WA’s rural areas). And a lot of it is people who just haven’t had a new thought in 20 years.
Whatever. Eventually this initial foot-dragging will crumble – not only because the sky won’t fall in the places where it’s actually implemented the way voters intended, but also because the demand per capita is going to be just as high in Garfield or Okanogan Counties as it is in Red Seattle. They may not care about their constituents, but when struggling local business owners in Othello or Republic who want to cash in on a pent-up demand start getting annoyed, things will change.
The ACLU??? THIS is a priority for them?
Weird.
This could turn into a tourism boon for the red counties if they play their cards right.
@3 It’s a priority for them because Alison Holcomb, their very ambitious legislative director, was a primary force behind the original initiative.
And, oh yeah, because the War on Drugs is responsible for a disturbingly high proportion of our country’s civil liberties violations. Before 9-11, it was the main political and legal rationale for our ever-expanding security state.
This is what an out-of-control “war on drugs” looks like.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....ss-person/
Meh. What the AG seems to be positing is a local-option situation similar to that which is generally the case with booze, although that’s really a holdover from the repeal of prohibition, and creates some interesting anomalies. (Think, for instance, of Jack Daniels’ being made in a “dry county”.)
As to the GOPers going along from a “small-government” angle, that might be true to an extent in these parts, although in general they’re pretty hypocritical about that–there’s always plenty of money for the military, but not for food stamps. The further south you get, the more obvious the connection between the War on Killer Weed and racism. To the white-sheet-and-burning-crosses crowd, the echoes of Harry Anslinger’s rhetoric about “the drug-crazed negro mind” are still ringing loud and clear.