CALIFORNIA'S MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION INITIATIVE IS ALREADY A WINNER

Ten Weeks From Election Day, It's Clear How Much Prop. 19 Has Already
Accomplished for the Drug Policy Reform Movement.

Californians have a chance to make history in November when they vote
on Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana for adults over 21.
Polls collectively show voters split but leaning toward this momentous
stand against failed marijuana prohibition. Ten weeks from Election
Day, it's clear how much Prop. 19 has already accomplished for the
drug policy reform movement.

Conventional wisdom about changing marijuana laws previously called
for waiting until at least 2012. It was assumed waiting would allow
the reform movement time to build more support for the issue and to
rely on the larger, younger electorate that inevitably accompanies a
presidential election. Sensing the time was right this year,
Oakland-based medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee ignored that
conventional wisdom. He brought together a top notch team to carefully
draft an initiative, put up his own money to collect signatures, built
an impressive campaign, and took Prop. 19 to the people.

Today, Richard Lee already appears remarkably prescient.

Prop. 19 is arguably the highest profile voter initiative in the
nation and has unleashed a torrent of global interest. The initiative
has generated thousands of international stories, explicitly
discussing this alternative to our disastrous policies. In particular
Prop. 19 has radically accelerated the public's understanding of the
relative harms of marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol, validating the
widespread suspicion that a fundamental hypocrisy lies at the heart of
the outright ban on marijuana -- as evidenced by the endorsement of
former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders.

Prop. 19 has inspired an unprecedented coalition in support of
reforming our futile and wasteful marijuana laws. Students for
Sensible Drug Policy and Firedoglake.com organized students,
law-enforcement, libertarians and progressives to launch their "Just
Say Now" campaign. The California NAACP, the state ACLU affiliates,
and the National Black Police Association all endorsed Prop. 19
specifically citing the chilling racial disparities in the enforcement
of marijuana laws. Latino leadership, starting recently with Assembly
Member Hector De La Torre and the Latino Voters League, has just begun
to weigh in as well. Finally, organized labor -- from longshoremen to
food to communications workers -- for the first time offered
endorsements because controlling and regulating marijuana will mean
jobs and revenue that the state currently cedes to criminal cartels
and the black market.

This coalition signifies that serious people take regulating marijuana
for adults seriously. Prop. 19 is now at the heart of spirited debates
at kitchen tables, in college classrooms, and in halls of power that
once assumed the inevitability of the status quo. In fact, former
Mexican president Vicente Fox just endorsed marijuana legalization
precisely to address the prohibition-related bloodbath in Mexico that
has taken 28,000 lives in a little over three and a half years.

In this country Prop. 19 has truly sped up the political debate on
marijuana policy overall, one that was previously dominated by medical
marijuana issues. The major candidates for statewide office in
California generally oppose Prop. 19. However professional politicos,
including California Democratic Party chair John Burton, already
identify marijuana legalization as a potential game-changing issue to
drive Democratic turnout among younger, progressive voters in this and
future elections. That's precisely why Lieutenant Governor nominee and
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, with a potentially long future in
state politics, publicly agonized over his decision to not endorse
Prop. 19 ("I'm frustrated with myself on this one, to be truthful.").
Even the California PTA has acknowledged these shifting winds by
taking a neutral rather than opposing position, signaling the historic
debate that must have occurred within its venerable ranks.

All of us who have worked for years to educate and mobilize against
the failed drug war owe thanks to Richard Lee and the Prop. 19
campaign. The initiative has created opportunities that conventional
wisdom simply couldn't have predicted. Anyone sick and tired of our
disastrous marijuana prohibition has been handed a chance to make
history. California voters should not only go to the polls but to talk
to friends, family, and neighbors about Prop. 19.

Prop. 19 is already a winner. Imagine when we make this the vote heard
around the world.