Fine. Shoot Prop 19 down. At least metro Washington won't turn into a refugee camp like So Cal will when Mexico falls to the cartels.
First off, I voted for it, and for exactly the foreign policy reasons laid out. All I was doing was correcting the facts. The cartels make much more money on cocaine, heroin and meth than they do on pot, and they make much more selling pot in states not named California.
2 biggest complaints that i hear about Proposal 19 (legalization of pot in CA)
- individual growers were allowed 25 square feet - 5' x 5' - to grow their own. too small, people cried.
- would turn a mom-and-pop, DIY industry into Big Business, it'll be generic weed, all the same strains, profits will replace love of the plant, yadda yadda( neglecting the fact that a lot of pot in CA is already grown on an industrial basis...).
Nobody voted against it for those reasons though. Sure those were valid complaints, but those are complaints of pot smokers, who overwhelmingly supported it.
Prop 19 failed because it wasn't well thought out. Yes, current growers and dealers were opposed, but there's not enough of them to swing the vote. Nobody bought the argument that we should not vote for prop 19 because the black market will collapse - the consumer was smart enough to know that with the elimination of the black market the price of pot will come down.
And nobody voted against it because 25 square feet isn't enough room - they'd vote for the ability to grow it in a tea cup.
Legalizing pot polled well back in April when it was seen as a way to shore up the state coffers. But this proposition was different than the law that was proposed and it was so indecisive on how to handle the taxing of weed that it didn't do enough to convince voters that don't smoke that it's ok to vote for this anyway because you will see a benefit. Thus it didn't garner the votes in Southern California that it needed to pass. They also never should have put it on a mid-term ballot when turnout is low, especially among the young.
If they put it back on the ballot in Nov 2012, have a clear tax plan that benefits the state, and do more to protect the medicinal houses that already exist, I bet they can pass it.
