Marijuana’s Chances On Election Day

[jtuck004]

...
Two states — Oregon and Alaska — and Washington, D.C., are voting Tuesday on ballot measures to legalize marijuana. Florida is voting to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. On the heels of successful legalization efforts in Colorado and Washington state in 2012, activists are hoping to pick up at least one win in a tougher year — there are midterm elections rather than a presidential election.

The voting blocs most sympathetic to marijuana legalization — younger voters and people of color — turn out less for these off-year elections than for presidential fights. Still, Florida and Alaska have high-profile statewide offices up for grabs in tight races — governor and senator, respectively — so it’s possible there may be some turnout advantage.
...
The exit polls bear out the idea that white women are bellwethers on marijuana. Here’s the data from the 2012 Fox News exit polls in Oregon, Washington and Colorado showing support for legalization overall and among white women specifically.

The only state where legalization didn’t win a majority with white women in 2012 was also the state where marijuana legalization failed.
...

Story here.

Seems shortsighted for Democrats to oppose this, as this one in Florida is, and the ones in WA state who oppose medical marijuana. That's a single issue for a growing number of people, could be important in mid-terms, it seems.

Guess we will see how their "strategy" plays out...

[Jackpine Radical]

1. It has always seemed to me that the Dems could use legalization

as a major enhancer of turnout in midterm elections if they got it on the ballot & advertised the hell out of it among the most interested population groups--students & the young, minorities subject to discriminatory enforcement, old hippies, etc.

[jtuck004]

2. Me too. Instead in WA state they appear to be more interested in sucking tax money out of the

pockets of people, many with little money to toss, after the debacle of the past few years.

The guy on the Eastside standing up for patients? The current Representative, a teabagging party guy who put a picture of his female D opponent's home on is website so his nutty followers could find it, went to Montana to stand with the deadbeat running his cattle on public land for free, and displayed a gun to an unarmed man in a traffic confrontation. Iraq veteran, I think.

More than one person has said you are either on his side or an enemy. And that appears to be accurate.

He appeared the other day with an MMJ policy group over here, with voters I am quite sure would, normally, never rub shoulders with him. Now he is their champion.

I'm not that close, just what I read in the papers, but it just seems upside down.

[NightWatcher]

6. This is the only reason that the pukes are against it here this time (FL)

They are afraid that Dems will go to the polls to vote for cannabis and while they're there, vote out pRick Scott.

[SomethingFishy]

3. In Colorado some Christian organization has been running

non stop ads trying to get my city to ban Marijuana Dispensaries..

Even where we have already won the fight isn't over..

[jtuck004]

4. The fight is just beginning. I hope people understand that. The opposition is just

getting ramped up, and they have some big pharma dollars behind them, it appears. This legalization has invigorated them.

Every one of these laws allowing mmj could go away - money talks loudly in the absence of citizen organization. If D's want patients votes, they need to quit beating up on sick people.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. In Oregon Senator Merkley has spoken in favor of Prop 91 and so have other elected Democrats

but it is close. We shall see.

[Blue_In_AK]

7. Marijuana is not the only lefty ballot measure in Alaska this year.

We also have minimum wage, protecting Bristol Bay from big mining interests, and here in Anchorage a ballot measure to overturn a Draconian anti-labor law forced through our assembly last year by Mayor Dan Sullivan (who is running for R lieutenant governor). It's nice to have the ballot bait on our side for a change.

I honestly don't know how the marijuana initiative will do here. Our laws are so lax anyway that a lot of people may not want to get the "tax and regulate" government part involved. We voted for it but only so the med patients will have a legal place to get their weed. On a personal level, I don't care one way or the other as I am a horticulturalist by hobby.

[jtuck004]

8. "It's nice to have the ballot bait on our side for a change. " < There is that <G>

I was reading 538 and a couple of other places, sounds like Alaska is horrible to try to survey. Not only do you have the various communication issues, but the conflicting allegiances of people who want to think they are independent but have to rely on the government for so much.

I am at about the same place when talking about horticulture, but I know a few people whose lives are really helped by a mmj, and, frankly, I am guessing about a third of our population suffers from depression or depression-related illnesses. Jacking the price up for taxes is just going to send them to drs where the state will pay for the meds, and the results will cost us as much as what has happened in the past.

Why in the world people want to hang on to failed policies, or simply can't grasp that their enforcement is impossible, I don't know.