PROP. 19: LEGALIZATION WILL IMPROVE PUBLIC SAFETY

Let's face facts: Our laws criminalizing marijuana have been a huge
failure. Proposition 19 on November's ballot is the perfect
opportunity for California to get things right.

As law enforcement veterans who policed the beat in California and
elsewhere for a combined total of 89 years, the three of us have
witnessed firsthand the harm our marijuana laws are doing to our
communities, and we know how badly reform is needed.

Every year California spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars
and thousands of police hours on the war against marijuana. What has
this accomplished? Has it made our communities any safer? Has it done
anything to control marijuana and keep it away from kids?

The answer is no.

Ask any teen today and they will tell you illegal marijuana is easier
for them to get than legal and age-regulated alcohol. That's because
illegal dealers on the street don't require ID like liquor stores do.

At the same time, every police hour spent targeting nonviolent adult
marijuana offenders is an hour that could have gone toward protecting
our communities from the real threat of violent crime. In 2008 almost
60,000 violent crimes went unsolved in California. That same year,
more than 61,000 Californians were arrested for misdemeanor marijuana
possession. Our public safety priorities are all wrong.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, vicious drug cartels are flush with cash from
the illegal U.S. marijuana market. According to the White House, the
cartels generate more than 60 percent of their revenue from illegal
marijuana sales. These criminals use this funding to carry out their
bloody agenda. This year alone, the cartels have so far murdered more
than 7,700 people in Mexico. That's more than the total number of
U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined since 2003.

When it comes to our marijuana laws, the status quo just isn't working.

Proposition 19 is the sensible solution to all these problems. The
initiative will protect our kids, make our communities safer and end
the senseless and wasteful practice of arresting and incarcerating
nonviolent adults for small-time marijuana offenses.

By taking marijuana out of the shadows and placing it under the
control of safe, regulated, taxed businesses that only sell to those
21 and over, Proposition 19 will cut off a huge portion of the
funding to the drug cartels, so they will have less resources for
mayhem and murder.

After Proposition 19 passes, if any adult attempts to provide
marijuana to a minor, they will be hit with increased criminal
penalties. The initiative was carefully written to protect our kids
and improve public safety.

Proposition 19 also bans smoking marijuana in public, on school
grounds and while minors are present. This sensible measure also
maintains strict criminal penalties for driving under the influence
and preserves the rights of employers to ban drug use in the workplace.

And by putting a stop to tens of thousands of marijuana arrests each
year, Proposition 19 will enable our law enforcement to cast aside
the mountains of paperwork they currently must process on low-level
offenses, and finally spend their precious time, and our precious tax
dollars, doing what we signed up for: taking violent criminals off
the streets and keeping them locked up.

But enacting meaningful reform is never easy. There are always those
who will vigorously defend the status quo.

Those who oppose Proposition 19, it seems, would rather we sit back
and keep doing what we are doing: continuing to arrest more marijuana
consumers while thousands of violent crimes go unsolved; continuing
to provide funding to the drug cartels; continuing to make it easier
for kids to get marijuana than alcohol and continuing to deny
California the billions in revenue that would come from taxing marijuana.

It's crazy to continue doing the same thing over and over, decade
after decade, and expect different results.

That's why law enforcement leaders throughout California and the
nation are joining us in backing Proposition 19, including the
National Black Police Association and dozens of individual California
police officers, judges and prosecutors who recently released a joint
letter of endorsement.

Please join us in voting yes on Proposition 19 this November. Law
enforcement is counting on California to make the sensible choice.