If anyone knows my history, they will know that I have been here on Dailykos almost since its inception. For such a liberal group, I realize that Dailykos actually skews a little older than much of the rest of the internet... and for such a liberal group, marijuana issues do not seem to be very big or central. They are certainly given the backseat to other issues, like what a woman can and cannot do with her own body, or gay rights, but please realize that the marijuana issue is just as important for the very same philosophical reasons you support those other two positions: the government should not tell us what we can and cannot do when we are consenting in terms of our own bodies!
A long time ago, I wrote an article called "An Honest Talk about Marijuana." It remains to this day the most read article about marijuana on this site ever. Today, I am proud to say, for the first time in history, people came together and said "we will no longer enforce these laws against our people."
Before I continue, I want to say that this story is intensely personal to me. Prior to posting that story, I was stopped for a busted taillight in a backwoods town in Louisiana. I asserted my rights when an officer wanted to search my car. I had a vaporizer, a method for smoking marijuana, in my trunk, but no actual marijuana. Still, I did not want them to get me in trouble because paraphernalia is illegal in my state. Sure enough, despite my asserting my rights, my car was searched anyway when they brought a drug dog to sniff my car. They found the vaporizer and I was charged with paraphernalia possession, and marijiuana possession over a single stem that was found. They gave me a pre-trial diversion because I was young, and I escaped getting a criminal record.
That's when I wrote that post that I referenced earlier. A week after writing that post, I was rolled up on by 12 squad cars. They had dogs, guns, and a battering ram, as I opened my door shocked to see them there. They searched my entire house and found a half gram of marijuana inside, and charged both me and my wife with marijuana possession. This did not get diverted, this is now on my permanent record, and I worked 200 hours in a landfill here in Louisiana as my punishment, along with a hefty fine. Had I been black, I would likely have been put in jail.
These resources were spent on me, just someone who smokes marijuana... think of all of that money, and where else it could be spent. The fact of the matter is, there are over a million arrests of marijuana users every year... it costs $30,000 to fill a prison cell with one person, and there are millions of non-violent marijuana users in the prisons here in the united states for multiple instances of possession, distribution, or trafficking of marijuana.
Years ago, Nate Silver tackled this idea and was the first to show that marijuana legalization may be coming:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/...
There is not, of course, a one-to-one correspondence between having used marijuana and supporting its legalization; one can plausibly support its legalization without having ever inhaled, or vice versa. Nevertheless, I would venture that the correlation is fairly strong, and polls have generally found a fairly strong generation gap when it comes to pot legalization. As members of the Silent Generation are replaced in the electorate by younger voters, who are more likely to have either smoked marijuana themselves or been around those that have, support for legalization is likely to continue to gain momentum.
Do you see that wave? As more of the older generation dies off, people will be more and more receptive to legalizing. We have finally crossed this precipice... see the Gallup poll on this issue:
We have crossed this precipice!
http://www.gallup.com/...
Notice something... a large constituency of YOUR party, progressives, democrats, are responsible for pushing this issue forward. Now, Democrats, we helped you, you need to help us.
- Don't make jokes about us, this is a serious issue, people spend years in jail over it.
- Don't laugh us off, we see this as a basic right.
And to those in power...
- DO NOT OVERTURN THIS USING YOUR FEDERAL POWERS.
Colorado is now a swing state. If Democrats act to overthrow the law using the federal government, it WILL swing the other way, possibly washington as well, if one of the states-rights republicans take a stand on this issue and run for candidacy in 2016. On the other hand, if you embrace this change, you will have the Democratic youth vote in these swing states for years to come.
The increase in youth turnout in Colorado may have solely won the state for Obama because of this initiative. Please, don't ignore us anymore. We need your help.
Donate to NORML, the organization that has been so strong in making this day finally happen: