{"id":175455,"date":"2010-01-13T10:46:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T15:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:criminaljustice.change.org:\/\/a01cbd795562ef9f0c69bd5d478f0637"},"modified":"2010-01-13T10:46:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T15:46:00","slug":"a-big-week-for-marijuana-legalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/175455","title":{"rendered":"A Big Week for Marijuana Legalization"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The California Assembly’s public safety committee voted 4-3 yesterday in favor of a bill that would legalize marijuana<\/a> and regulate it like alcohol. Although the bill likely won’t go anywhere (it will miss a deadline<\/a> to reach the full floor for a vote), this is the first time a statewide committee has approved such a measure and it’s a sure sign that attitudes are\u00a0 changing in California and across the country.<\/p>\n

The news came a day after New Jersey became the 14th state to approve marijuana for medicinal use<\/a>. Gov. Jon Corzine says he’ll sign the bill into law before he leaves office this week.<\/p>\n

The momentum toward marijuana legalization continues to grow. On Monday, activists filed a petition in Washington state that will put full legalization on the ballot before voters in November<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A poll this week in California found 84 percent of the state in favor of legalizing marijuana, and a study conducted by the legislature found that taxing marijuana $50 an ounce would raise about $1 billion for the state.<\/p>\n

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who has sponsored legislation like this for several years, said this key committee vote shows that there is progress in his state.<\/p>\n

“I think the conversation is definitely gaining traction,” Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, said after the bill passed the committee he chairs<\/a>. “There was a time when the ‘M’ word was never mentioned in Sacramento.”<\/p>\n

Our longterm prohibition of marijuana has been a destructive and unproductive venture. We have thousands of people in prison for non-violent drug crimes and we arrest 800,000 people a year<\/a> for marijuana offenses. I wrote recently about the impact of our underground drug markets on violence in places like Mexico that provide a great deal of our supply<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director wrote this morning on change.org:<\/a><\/p>\n

Our struggle to end the dominant role of the criminal justice system in drug control is a multi-generational effort \u2013 but we should never underestimate the possibility of making sudden and unprecedented leaps forward.<\/p>\n

Let’s work together for a sudden, unprecedented leap forward on marijuana policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The California Assembly’s public safety committee voted 4-3 yesterday in favor of a bill that would legalize marijuana and regulate it like alcohol. Although the bill likely won’t go anywhere (it will miss a deadline to reach the full floor for a vote), this is the first time a statewide committee has approved such a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}