CA Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom releases report on guidelines for marijuana legalization

[kristopher]

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom releases report on guidelines for marijuana legalization

A panel chaired by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom hopes to guide the debate on the legalization of marijuana in California with an emphasis on limiting children’s access to cannabis, reducing illegal activity and tightly regulating the drug's growth and sales.
In a report released Wednesday, the group lays out 58 recommendations and goals for implementing general legalization -- an issue expected to go before voters next year.
The document offers broad principles --“protecting California’s youth” -- as well as nitty-gritty suggestions for collecting data and limiting advertising.
Newsom said in an interview that he hopes the report offers guidance to proponents of a legalization initiative aimed at the November 2016 ballot, as well as to help lawmakers and officials who would have to implement it if it passed.

The report does not explicity endorse or oppose legalization of recreational marijuana...

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-newsom-marijuana-report-20150722-story.html


This is direct link to report PDF. https://www.safeandsmartpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BRCPathwaysReport.pdf

The committee's website has some other worthwhile material: https://www.safeandsmartpolicy.org/reports/

[Politicalboi]

1. WTF is it about the "safety" of children and pot?

They don't care about booze and children and allow booze commercials on TV. Parents can buy as much booze as they want with their children in the shopping cart. Children can drive home with their parents after their parents consumed one glass of wine with meal. Children are more prone to drink what mommy and daddy drink rather than smoke anything. Stop using children to keep Marijuana out of reach for the rest of us. Booze and guns are 100% more dangerous than weed. Pot and TV editing over someone else's children just makes me want to

[kristopher]

2. Boilerplate catering to the irrational, I'd say.

I hope you are realistic enough to understand it isn't going to get done without that kind of kowtowing. The paper offers much more insight than it does the obligatory hand wringing.

The Process of Legalization: Core Strategies
One of the major findings of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s work is that the legalization of marijuana would not be an event that happens in one election. Rather, it would be a process that unfolds over many years requiring sustained attention to implementation.
That process of legalization and regulation will be dynamic. It will require the continued engagement of a range of stakeholders in local communities and at the state level. This report is based on a recommendation that the process the state would embark upon must be based on four macro-level strategies operating concurrently:

1) Promote the public interest by ensuring that all legal and regulatory decisions around legalization are made with a focus on protecting California’s youth and promoting public health and safety.

2) Reduce the size of the illicit market to the greatest extent possible. While it is not possible to eliminate the illicit market entirely, limiting its size will reduce some of the harms associated with the current illegal cultivation and sale of cannabis and is essential to creating a well-functioning regulated market that also generates tax revenue.

3) Offer legal protection to responsible actors in the marijuana industry who strive to work within the law. The new system must reward cooperation and compliance by responsible actors in the industry as an incentive toward responsible behavior. It must move current actors, current supply and current demand from the unregulated to the regulated market. And the new market will need to out-compete the illicit market over time.

4) Capture and invest tax revenue through a fair system of taxation and regulation, and direct that revenue to programs aligned with the goals and needed policy strategies for safe legalization.

We are working on it now in Delaware and this is the kind of document that can have an impact on the path followed by state legislators IMO.

[marble falls]

3. I agree with you. The four points are reasonable and make good sense.

[jomin41]

4. Cannabis was not criminalized

through a "process that unfolds over many years requiring sustained attention to implementation..." It was not criminalized with a "continued engagement of a range of stakeholders in local communities.." It was not criminalized to "promote the public interest". It was criminalized overnight by a hateful, insane Richard Nixon contrary to the recommendations of a "blue-ribbon panel" even more thorough than California's.
Just saying'.

[kristopher]

5. Two things

1) How it was criminalized isn't relevant at all to changing the present laws. The best bet imo is that the prison reform movement provides the impetus to do what nearly everyone recognizes needs to be done - the elimination of Federal prohibition. Then it will be a state by state process that isn't going to be quick.

2) Nixon's Shafer Commission was dealing with the issue of decriminalization because it was already illegal and had been for about 40 years. Nixon didn't accept their advice to decriminalize, but 11 states did.

There are a lot of decriminalization windows opening right now. The state are desperate for revenue, prison populations are at incredible levels, and the pro-Vietnam War generation with their anti-hippie bias is shrinking rapidly. Together, anti-Prohibition efforts have harnessed these forces to successfully pushed public sentiment into a majority for decriminalization or legalization.

But it is still going to take a lot of time before it becomes a nonissue everywhere.

[jomin41]

8. If "nearly everyone recognizes what needs to be done",

Why is federal decrim not even in the works yet, legislatively? And if "public sentiment has been successfully pushed into a majority for decriminalization or legalization", why is it "going to take a lot of time before it becomes a non-issue"? The truth has been obvious for twenty years. I've been fighting this battle for longer than that. The foot-dragging is ridiculous.

[kristopher]

9. Because even though they see the need, they still...

... embrace long held beliefs about the harm drugs do even more. But even the most die hard antidrug warrior can and will no longer deny the obvious harm that must be weighed against the benefits they perceive in maintaining prohibition.

The truth has been obvious for a lot longer than that (about 45 years in my case), but unless it affects people directly it is one of those issues it is easy to go with the herd on.

I agree, the foot dragging is ridiculous when people's lives are being ruined every day.

[SCVDem]

6. Firearm deaths among children?

I have lost count.

Marijuana deaths? Zero!

Lobbying money for guns? Yeah, pick on weed.

[kristopher]

7. +1

Logic and reason have never been part of Prohibition.