9 FOR 9 WE WIN EVERYWHERE!

This newsletter is available online at:

http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/1998/ds98.n72.html

This is a Special Election Edition of the DrugSense Weekly.

The issue contains a national perspective and an analysis from California, which has been dealing with the implementation of Proposition 215 for two years.  In the next issue of the DrugSense Weekly we will analyze the coverage of the elections.

Table of Contents

* Breaking News (12/21/24)

TWO FEATURE ARTICLES

Nine for Nine A Clean Sweep for Reform
by Kevin B.  Zeese

The Significance of Election '98 in California (700 words)
By Tom O'Connell

TWO FEATURE ARTICLES

Nine for Nine - A Clean Sweep for Reform
by Kevin B.  Zeese

The 1998 election was a watershed event for the reform movement a clean sweep of electoral victories for medical marijuana and broader drug policy reform.  (See the results of the votes below.) Along with the initiative victories Dan Lungren the arch enemy of Proposition 215 lost in a landslide, garnering only 38 percent of the vote, in the California gubernatorial race.

The election highlights show the voters are ahead of the politicians when it comes to recognizing that the drug war has become too extreme. As a result of this election it is fair to say that medical marijuana is more of a mainstream political issue, then extreme drug war policies.  Perhaps the best examples of how politicians are out of step with the public come from the votes in Oregon and Arizona.

In Oregon, last year the two-thirds of the legislature voted to recriminalize marijuana possession.  This week, two-thirds of the voters rejected that and kept marijuana decriminalization a policy that has existed since 1973 in place.  In Arizona, the state legislature passed legislation undercutting Proposition 200, which passed in 1996.  This year the voters restored both the medical prescription of all drugs and reforming criminal laws so that incarceration is no longer an option in drug possession cases.

The Arizona vote on prescription availability of all drugs is noteworthy in particular.  When voters went to the voting both the ballot said that a "no" vote will result in "allowing doctors to prescribe Schedule I drugs, including heroin, LSD, marijuana and analogs of PCP, to seriously and terminally ill patients without the authorization of the Federal Food and Drug Administration or the United States Congress." Over 57 percent of Arizonans voted for the measure.

Not only are drug war politicians out of step with the voters - they know it.

Drug warriors fear public votes on reform issues.  In Washington, D.C. representatives of Congress went so far as to threaten members of the Board of Elections with criminal contempt of Congress if they reported the results of the election.  In Colorado, even though the proponents of the initiative demonstrated they had collected enough signatures the courts, without comment, upheld the state s decision to keep the vote from counting.  Drug warriors are so zealous that they are willing to undermine democracy in an effort to prevent the seriously ill from using medical marijuana.

This election should be a wake up call to appointed drug war bureaucrats as well as elected officials.  General Mccaffrey, despite his billion dollar advertising budget, his grant program for grass roots drug war advocates and the ease with which public officials get their message out, failed to have any impact on these elections.  No doubt, the conservative wing of the Congress will take him to task for this failure.  Since he has already angered the progressive wing of Congress, particularly the Black Caucus which has sought his resignation, because of his opposition to needle exchange he will be on very weak ground on Capitol Hill.

Elected officials should heed the example of Dan Lungren.  A career politician with a long record of successful elections, first to Congress then to Attorney General, was defeated in a potentially career ending, electoral landslide.  He had upset a lot of groups, but the way he handled medical marijuana surely showed he was too mean to govern California.  He was ready to put the health of seriously ill Californians at risk and undermine a democratic vote by not implementing Proposition 215.  The character flaws he showed are showing with other drug war politicians and they may pay a similar price as Lungren.  The days of shouting "Drug War" and getting elected may be coming to an end.

Other politicians who recognize that the drug war has failed, but have been afraid to say so publicly, should take heart from these elections. The public is saying you can be in favor of drug policy reform and get elected.

The message to reformers is that we can win.  The message is not that we have won we have a long, long way to go before we can claim that even when it comes to medial marijuana.  But hard work, professional campaigning and getting our message out works.  The elections are a sign of hope that America s nearly-century old drug war, which has caused so much harm to so many, can be ended.

Election Returns

ALASKA

Proposition 8.  Allows the medical use of marijuana (Yes is the reform position)

YES 111,166     57.75% REFORM WINNER
NO   81,319     42.25%

ARIZONA

Proposition 300 Allows medical use of all Schedule I drugs (No is the reform position)

YES  385,014     42.6%
NO   517,876     57.4% REFORM WINNER

Proposition 301 Prevents incarceration in drug possession cases (No is the reform position)

YES  427,348     48.3%
NO   456,631     51.7% REFORM WINNER

COLORADO

Initiative 19 Allows the medical use of marijuana (This vote was counted, but will not count unless ordered by a Federal court) (Yes is the reform position)

YES  118,352       57%  REFORM WINNER
NO    89,614       43%

NEVADA

Question 9 Allows the medical use of marijuana (Yes is the reform position)

YES  241,463       59% REFORM WINNER
NO   170,234       41%

OREGON

Measure 57 Recriminalization of possession of marijuana (No is the reform position)

Yes  161,651       33%
No   325,915       67% REFORM WINNER

Measure 67 Allows the medical use of marijuana (Yes is the reform position)

Yes  270,787       55% REFORM WINNER
No   220,944       45%

WASHINGTON

Initiative 692 Allows medical Use of marijuana (Yes is the reform position)

Yes 826,689     58.70% REFORM WINNER
No  581,743     41.30%

WASHINGTON D.C.

Initiative 59 Allows the medical use of marijuana (Yes is the reform position.

NOTE - Congressional action has prevented results from being published. An independent exit poll conducted for Americans for Medical Rights found:

Yes                69%  REFORM WINNER
No                 19% (assumed)
No Vote            12%

The poll's margin of error is 3.6 percentage points.

The Significance of Election '98 in California (700 words) By Tom O'Connell

California has led American social and political change since the middle of this century.  This was reconfirmed Tuesday when voters in six other states and the District of Colombia upheld California's 1996 challenge to doctrinaire federal drug prohibition via Proposition 215: marijuana is indeed medicine.

People outside the state might have assumed that patients have had free access to legal marijuana ever since January 1997, but such isn't the case.  Attorney General Dan Lungren,intent on succeeding Governor Pete Wilson, had gone out of his way to harass the 215 campaign.  Undaunted by the fact that the proposition received 56% of the popular vote, he continued to implacably oppose the measure after it became law.  Under his leadership, and following collapse of the federal threats against physicians in early 1997, a series of lawsuits was brought by his office against buyers' clubs to exploit deficiencies in the loose wording of the proposition.  In the absence of any legislative help for the initiative, and abetted by a craven judiciary, he succeeded in attaining the most restrictive possible rulings: patients unable to "grow their own" basically risked arrest whenever they bought or possessed cannabis.

This was, of course, subject to the attitudes of local law enforcement; in hostile venues, such as Lake County, San Jose and Orange County, sting operations led to felony prosecutions against distributors and patients.  Some clubs such as Santa Cruz, simply closed. Others (San Mateo), hung up by timid local politicians, never opened.  A particularly egregious prosecution in Orange County sent former deputy sheriff David Herrick to State Prison for 4 years.  By judicial order, his obvious status as a worker for a duly constituted club couldn't even be mentioned, nor could the protection of 215 be invoked.

On the heels of Lungren's success, the US Attorney launched an attack in federal court, targeting those venues where friendly local governments had kept clubs open, notably San Francisco and Oakland.  The net result was that by the '98 elections, only a few small distribution operations were still functional in California and a number of distributors face trial on felony charges and are in danger of following David Herrick into state prison.

The smashing success of medical marijuana initiatives in other states signal a momentous change, not only nationally, but in California.  The endorsement of the other initiatives, coupled with the defeat of Lungren for governor and Stirling for attorney general, open the way for 215 to finally protect patients as originally intended.

The thing politicians do best is count votes.  Reefer madness had been a winner for so long that people like Lungren couldn't believe times were changing.  It's likely that both he and some friends of reform had dismissed the '96 MMj votes as aberrations.  It's also probably understandable that in California, our friends stood by impotently and watched as Lungren and Stirling didn't just turn their backs on 215, but attempted to destroy it- in clear violation of their oath to uphold all the laws of California.

Now that Pete Wilson is about to fade into political oblivion and Lungren and his deputy are also political history- undone by hubris and thwarted in their bids for state office- we should immediately remind their successors that the politics of medical marijuana have changed.

The new AG and governor should be contacted immediately for their thoughts on approaching 215 as the expressed will of the people of California, a will echoed nationally in every venue where the issue has ever been put to a vote.

We should demand that legislative leaders enact the enabling legislation necessary to translate the will of the voters, expressed in 215, into functional reality.

We should also request of Attorney General Lockyer that Dan Lungren's enforcement policies be disavowed.  To the extent possible, the state's DA's, who take direction from his office, should be instructed to drop pending prosecutions.  In the case of at least one man, David Herrick, amnesty or pardon should be considered.

November 3rd confirmed that Proposition 215 was no fluke, it's an issue that resonates with voters throughout America.  Politicians ignore that message at their peril.  Just ask Dan Lungren.

ONGOING COVERAGE

Current articles related to the medicinal marijuana initiatives are available at: http://www.mapinc.org/props.htm

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