DIANNE FEINSTEIN TRIES TO PLAY THE BIG VILLAIN IN THE FIGHT FOR LEGAL POT

Feinstein Is the Poster Figure Against Prop 19, Trotting Out
Lame-Duck Allies and Hackneyed, Incorrect Arguments.

Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein signed the dotted line on
California's Proposition 19, which would responsibly decriminalize
cannabis for personal use after ballot results this November. But she
signed the wrong side, becoming co-chair of the No on 19 Campaign --
the latest in a long line of out-of-touch positions by Feinstein in
California politics.

There are so many reasons for Feinstein to support legal pot in
California: Legalizing cannabis for recreational use would generate
over a billion dollars for the state's parched coffers, during a time
its deficit has fully dwarfed that of other American states and its
hyper-inflated housing market has run out of air. In any sane world,
that alone would be reason to vote yes on 19. But once you add all in
the ancillary benefits -- whether it's the millions of dollars saved
from not having to imprison and process weed patsies, or the millions
of sick and elderly who would have access to cannabis, which would in
turn become more culturally accepted as the millennia-old medicine
that it is -- it's pretty much a no-brainer.

Feinstein's Priorities

But while Feinstein has opposed Prop 19, it's clear she hasn't quite
figured out whether marijuana is a priority. A cursory glance at the
venerable California senator's official Web site reveals her public
positions on many issues. Feinstein's press release page has a menu
bar featuring over 30 issues that have consumed her legislative time
and concern. But not one of them is dedicated to cannabis
legalization or even criminalization proper, even though her own
state is about to vote on it in November. Feinstein's inability to
side with her state on what the polls have consistently shown is a
local winner is instructive: Recent polls show there is more local
support for Prop. 19 than for many of the state's major politicians,
including Feinstein herself.

Her Math Sucks

Despite her official site's deafening silence on decriminalization,
Feinstein is nevertheless determined to kill Prop. 19. But when she
summons the courage to criticize it publicly, she's lacking in sense and cents.

"California will not see a single positive result if Proposition 19
passes," Senator Feinstein claimed, in a statement announcing her
co-chairmanship of the No on 19 campaign with L.A. County Sheriff Lee
Baca. "It is a poorly constructed initiative that will cause harm to
Californians on our roadways, and in our schools, workplaces and communities."

Look past the loaded rhetoric, and Feinstein's data doesn't work.
Although she offered up multiple scary political and economic
certainties in defense of her co-chairmanship, Feinstein cited a RAND
Corporation study concluding that the only certainty from Proposition
19's passage would be lowered cannabis prices and increased
consumption. "Tax revenues could be dramatically lower or higher than
the $1.4 billion estimate provided by the California Board of
Equalization (BOE)," RAND's report Altered State? Assessing How
Marijuana Legalization in California Could Influence Marijuana
Consumption and Public Budgets explained.

Meanwhile, California's State Board of Equalization -- which unlike
RAND is actually tasked with collecting sales and use taxes from
alcohol, tobacco and fuel -- has crunched the numbers on Proposition
19 (PDF) and found that excise and purchase fees could bring in $1.4
billion to cash-strapped California, which is about 10 percent of the
$14 billion the plant pulls in annually. And the BOE is standing by its math.

"The BOE's revenue estimate was a sound analysis based on a specific
proposal with specified revenue measures applicable to a defined
commercial market, where supply, demand, and price could reasonably
be estimated," BOE chairwoman Betty Yee (PDF) explained in late
September. But even she admitted that how much revenue the
proposition will ultimately generate depends on how much local
governments choose to tax it. In other words, parsing the RAND
nerdspeak, Proposition 19 could generate way less than $1.4 billion
if local governments decided to tax it hardly at all, or way more if
local governments decided to tax it heavily. Which do you think they'll pick?

Feinstein's Weak Allies

Feinstein is lined up against Proposition 19 with a bong-load of
compromised political animals. That includes Republican candidate for
governor Meg Whitman, whose latest disgrace is getting caught railing
against illegal immigration, even though she employed an undocumented
housekeeper for years. Feinstein's No on 19 ally and Republican
candidate for the U.S. Senate Carly Fiorina is similarly flawed: She
was named one of the 20 worst American CEOs off all time, after her
tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard ended with a forced resignation and
a 50 percent devaluation of the company's stock. But Feinstein's most
compromised No on 19 ally probably has to be outgoing California
governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose cannabis hypocrisies range from
smoking a joint (while eating fried chicken and birthday cake) in the
weight-training film Pumping Iron to actually helping kick-start the
state's decriminalization process.

"I think it's time for a debate," Schwarzenegger argued in 2009. "And
I think that we ought to study very carefully what other countries
are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect
it had on those countries, and are they happy with that decision."

More recently, Schwarzenegger signed a new California law that
demotes possession of up to an ounce of cannabis to no worse than a
speeding ticket. And you could hear his creaky rationale all the way
to Washington.

"Notwithstanding my opposition to Proposition 19," Schwarzenegger
hedged, "I am signing this measure because possession of less than an
ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name. In this
time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law
enforcement, and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources
prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket."

Schwarzenegger's bald-faced political equivocation has a strong ally
in Feinstein. She similarly hedged in a 2009 letter on legalization,
decrying in one paragraph cannabis' community harm and in the next
praising its broad possibilities.

"I do recognize that marijuana may have medicinal properties that
could alleviate conditions such as AIDS-related wasting and
chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting," Feinstein said. "I do not
oppose further research on the potential medical efficacy of
marijuana and support compassionate use in medical situations when
prescribed by a physician in writing for serious and/or catastrophic
illnesses."

Feinstein Standing In the Way of History

Contrary to Feinstein's confidently dystopian prophecies, cannabis
and hemp have been around for centuries and we're all still here.
Evidence of its usage dates back to the third century B.C.E.,
although its real record probably stretches back further. Its
criminalization as we know it didn't start until the UK and America
started banning it in the early 20th century. By the time this
century is over, it is certain to be decriminalized, meaning this
last century or so of criminalization is a vanishing coordinate in
the temporal stream. A recent Rasmussen poll showed that 65 percent
of respondents believe that cannabis will be legal within a decade.

"It is worth remembering that our last three presidents, Bill
Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, would have been stigmatized
for life and never would have become presidents if they had been in
the wrong place at the wrong time and been busted for pot during
their reckless youthful days," former San Jose police chief Joseph
McNamara wrote in defense of legalization. "Countless other Americans
weren't so lucky."

She Won't Go Green

Apart from being a historical inevitability, decriminalization of pot
also makes serious environmental sense. Which ought to sit with
Feinstein just fine, given how worried she is about global warming.

"I am working on a comprehensive package of legislation to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions - the leading cause of global warming - from
all sectors of the economy," Feinstein's mission statement on the
global climate crisis explained. "Every business, home, and industry
will have to do its part."

One would hope that would mean ramping up local industrial hemp
production, currently illegal, which made obvious sense to George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who both grew it. California's
lumber industry had its worst year ever in 2009, which would smart
less if hemp, one of the fastest-growing and environmentally friendly
biomasses on Earth, was grown and forested locally rather than
expensively imported from Canada and China. Hemp should also make
Feinstein smile, since her environmental mission mandates that
America increase its supply of biofuels.

"The fact that hemp does not need to have land cleared to grow it,
grows faster than any of the crops currently used and leaves the
ground in a better state when it is harvested should surely be enough
for it to be considered a perfect crop to offset the carbon currently
produced by fossil fuels and by the less efficient biofuels," argued
Giulio Sica in the Guardian. "Surely if it was mass-produced," he
added, its drawbacks "could be overcome and its many benefits as an
efficient biofuel could be harnessed."

But in spite of convincing economic, political, cultural and
environmental arguments, to say nothing of history itself, Senator
Feinstein has added her clout to an opposition running on empty.
Whether this is because she doesn't feel like staving off critics --
although even anachronistic whiners like Glenn Beck and so-called tea
partiers are leaning towards decriminalization -- or because she
honestly believes her astounding claim that "California will not see
a single positive result if Proposition 19 passes" is besides the
point. In California, we like to get ahead of history when possible,
and Proposition 19 is an obvious example of our revolutionary
political spirit. Feinstein is standing in the way. Let's hope she
moves out the way before she's steamrolled by history.