CA MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION INITIATIVE TO QUALIFY FOR BALLOT TODAY

Today, an initiative that would legalize personal marijuana
possession and allow regulated sales of marijuana to adults will
qualify for California's November general election ballot. A win at
the ballot would be a first of its kind in U.S. history. This is a
remarkable moment in the struggle to change our decades-old marijuana
policies.

Marijuana was prohibited in 1937 before most Americans had ever heard
of it. Today the U.S. leads the world in marijuana
consumption. Nearly 26 million Americans used marijuana last year
and more than 100 million have tried it in their lifetimes. A huge
commodity of the underground economy, marijuana is the nation's top
cash crop, valued at $14 billion in California alone. Our state
Board of Equalization has estimated we would generate $1.4 billion a
year by taxing marijuana like alcohol.

Like it or not, marijuana has become a mainstream recreational
drug. It is second only to alcohol and cigarettes in popularity and
is objectively far less harmful than either. Marijuana is
drastically less addictive and cannot cause an overdose. Every major
independent study has debunked the gateway myth; for the profound
majority of users, marijuana is the only drug people sample not the
first. Children across the country consistently report that
marijuana is easy for them to get from their peers and the black
market while significant barriers exist to buying alcohol and cigarettes.

Unthinkable carnage in Mexico has claimed 15,000 lives since the
Calderon government declared war on drug cartels three years
ago. Our government estimates the cartels generate at least 60% of
their profits from marijuana alone. Following the murders of several
U.S. consular workers, Secretary of State Clinton returned to Mexico
this week, acknowledging that demand in the U.S. dominates these
markets. But she didn't acknowledge that rampant violence is not a
byproduct of the cannabis plant itself but of the prohibition that
creates a profit motive people are willing to kill for.

Americans are increasingly turning against the prohibition that fails
to protect our kids and guarantees a monopoly of profits to violent
criminal syndicates on both sides of the border. While polls have
long confirmed that large majorities favor treating marijuana
possession as an infraction without arrest let alone jail, support
for ending marijuana prohibition outright is quickly gaining
speed. A Gallup poll last year reported that a historic 44 percent
of Americans favor legalization, a 10-point jump since
2001. Meanwhile, sizable majorities of Californians are ahead of
that curve, giving rise to the historic initiative we'll vote on this fall.

With this cultural transition underway, you might think enforcement
of our marijuana laws would reflect their unpopularity. Sadly, quite
the opposite is the case. Arrests for marijuana offenses have
actually tripled nationwide since 1991. In California, which
decriminalized low-level possession in 1975, arrests have jumped 127
percent in the same two decades the arrest rate for crime in general
fell by 40 percent. Police made nearly 850,000 marijuana arrests
across the country last year, half of all drug arrests and more than
all violent crime arrests combined. No law in the United States is
enforced so widely yet deemed so unnecessary.

Worse still, marijuana laws are enforced selectively with racist
results. In California, African Americans are three times more
likely than whites to be arrested for a marijuana offense despite
comparable or even lower rates of consumption. An expose by the
Pasadena Weekly found that blacks, who represent 14 percent of that
city's population, accounted for more than half all marijuana arrests
in the last five years.

It's hard to overstate the significance of the vote this
November. Banning marijuana outright has been a disaster, fueling a
massive, increasingly brutal, underground economy, wasting billions
in scarce law enforcement resources, and making criminals of
countless law-abiding citizens. Elected officials haven't stopped
these punitive, profligate policies. Now voters can bring the
reality check of sensible marijuana regulation to California.