Homeless in Arizona

I'm guessing the New Times gets a least $10,000 in revenue each week from those ads.

Our initiative will turn marijuana into a generic commodity like potatoes or tomatoes and there will no longer be huge sums of money to be made off of marijuana.

Currently legal medical marijuana sells for $300+ an ounce at dispensaries. Black market Mexican brick weed sells for $50 to $100 an ounce on the street.

I suspect those prices will drop substantially to prices caused by the law of supply and demand in a free market if the Safer Arizona initiative is passed.

Source

What Were They Smoking? Safer Arizona Leaders Admit 2018 Pot Initiative Flawed

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2017 AT 2:55 P.M. BY RAY STERN

What Were They Smoking? Safer Arizona Leaders Admit 2018 Pot Initiative Flawed

Organizers of a campaign to legalize marijuana in 2018 acknowledged on Friday that the initiative they filed with the state this week has key flaws that need changing.

Worse, the foul-up helps show how tough it will be for the volunteers and die-hard cannabis lovers behind the effort to actually put something on the ballot.

"Our initiative makes [Prop] 205 look like straight-up fascism." — David Wisniewski

The actions of Safer Arizona are already being viewed skeptically by other cannabis-legalization supporters in Arizona. [Translation - the people who run the medical marijuana stores doesn't like Safer Arizona because it will yank their lucrative monopolies from them and allow ANYBODY to grow or sell marijuana. Same for the doctors and chiropractors that write medical marijuana prescriptions or recommendations. Any one will be able to legally possess marijuana with out paying the $100+ to get a reccommendation]

The campaign's leader, David Wisniewski, and other top Safer Arizona members worked previously with Arizonans for Mindful Regulation, the grassroots group that launched its own 2016 initiative before helping to shoot down Prop 205 in November.

Whether Safer Arizona's latest plan will succeed is anyone's guess. But the odds are stacked against it. [I suspect Ray Stern and the folks at the New Times are hoping it will fail, because in my estimate it will cause them to lose $10,000 or more a week in revenue from medical marijuana ads]

The Safer Arizona Cannabis Legalization Act (see below) is far more permissive than the failed Prop 205, which voters rejected 52 percent to 48 percent.

To say the least.

"Our initiative makes 205 look like straight-up fascism," Wisniewski said Friday.

The basics include: full repeal of current marijuana laws, unlimited possession, decriminalized black-market sales, nearly unlimited cultivation by people and businesses, and nearly unregulated commercial sales and cultivation.

The group needs to collect more than 150,000 valid signatures of state voters by July 2018 to make the ballot.

Wisniewski drew a flood of media attention on Thursday when he filed his initiative at the headquarters of the Arizona Secretary of State's Office in Phoenix.

On Friday, he admitted the initiative actually goes too far, despite it having gone through several reviews by Safer Arizona's leaders.

For instance, the initiative allows sales and cultivation of marijuana to occur next to schools, but federal authorities demand a 1,000-foot buffer.

Wisniewski said he learned recently that federal authorities would likely raid operations next to schools.

A technical change that also needs to be made, he said, will put the part about adults being able to grow 48 plants at home in another section of the initiative.

But after New Times raised questions on Friday about the initiative's penalties for cannabis sales to minors, Tom Dean, an Arizona attorney and Safer Arizona's legal director, said that more changes may be necessary.

Under the initiative, adults who knowingly sell cannabis to children of any age would be guilty of nothing more than a civil violation, with a maximum $2,500 fine. Children who sell to other children would only get a $500 fine.

Dean said that part of the initiative may also be changed when the group refiles its updated initiative, something Wisniewski said should happen on Monday.

Dean asked New Times to let him know about anything else in the filing that he should address.

Although the initiative caps the number of plants that individuals can grow at 48, commercial operations — which could be run out of a person's home — have no plant limit. Commercial sales under the initiative would require no permits or licenses other than obtaining the same state retail tax license required by any retail business. [Yea, so you can pay $9 or something like that to get a tax payer ID number and grow as many marijuana plants as you want]

No violation is ever subject to more than a civil penalty and $500 fine.

Talk about a free-for-all.

Then there's the lack of environmental regulation: The initiative generally prohibits any government inspection of commercial cultivation operations.

Further, it allows people to run cannabis food-manufacturing operations out of their homes. And whether at a home or commercial property, entrepreneurs "shall never under any pretext be denied or restricted the right to sell and dispose of their products" beyond the initiative's very limited restrictions. [Actually Ray Stern is wrong on this. The initiative requires businesses to conform with all zoning laws. So you can only operate a marijuana business out of your home, if the zoning laws would allow you to operate that business out of your home. The only catch is the government can't make any zoning laws specific to marijuana. We know if we allowed that the government would write zoning laws that would make it impossible for marijuana businesses to operate anywhere. But in this case if you can operate a business that prepares normal food out of your home, you can also operate a business that prepares marijuana food in your home]

Under Prop 205, adults 21 and older would have been allowed to possess up to an ounce of buds and five grams of concentrates, or grow up to six plants, with no penalty.

"Viability with voters is going to be the big issue with this initiative," said Demitri Downing, founder and executive director of the Marijuana Industry Trade Association, which represents local medical-marijuana dispensaries. [Demitri Downing's family owns something like 6 medical marijuana dispensaries and he doesn't like our initiative because it will allow ANYONE with a sales tax license to create with those six lucrative monopolies. Demitri Downing showed up at several of our meetings and asked us to give medical marijuana dispensaries protection from competition. Which we refused]

Downing said he has met with members of Safer Arizona and found them to be uncompromising. By that, he means both in terms of pleasing voters, and the association's well-entrenched businesses, which in theory could be driven under by the initiative.

"They are pretty hard-headed," he said of Safer Arizona's leaders. "I gave up trying to convince them to incorporate mainstream ideas and industry acknowledgment. You cannot just destroy an industry. That ain't cool." [Demitri Downing doesn't want the Safer Arizona initiative to destroy his family's six or so medical marijuana monopolies. Currently the state law only allows 120 medical marijuana stores in Arizona. His family owns 6 of those stores. Under the Safer Arizona initiative ANYBODY in Arizona can sell marijuana, and that would cause his lucrative medical marijuana monopoly to lose lots of value. Safer Arizona is not against Demitri Downing, Safer Arizona is against marijuana monopolies]

It's far from certain that voters will ever have a chance to give the plan a thumbs-up.

The grassroots effort stands in marked contrast to the campaign conducted by the people and groups behind Prop 205. [According to the Phoenix Business Journal Demitri Downing WROTE Prop 205]

Though ultimately unsuccessful, Prop 205 was put on the ballot by Arizona medical-marijuana dispensaries and the national Marijuana Policy Project, the organization behind most of the state laws in recent years legalizing medical or recreational cannabis. [Again, according to the Phoenix Business Journal Demitri Downing WROTE Prop 205]

The campaign raised more than $5 million for advertising and to pay signature gatherers, campaign consultants and workers, lawyers, and marketing experts.

Wisniewski said he expects to do it all with volunteers.

More than 300 people have expressed interest in volunteering, he said. But he readily admits the group has little money: "We have 3,500 bucks in the bank, but that's not enough."

Wisniewski also admits he's never managed anything nearly this big before. Asked what he has managed, he said he led soldiers as a sergeant in the Army. But he realizes that leading civilians is more difficult.

Also, his Army experience isn't his resume's brightest spot, though he did face "indirect" fire as a heating and air-conditioning worker in Iraq, he said.

He admits he had to resign because of alcohol abuse.

"They told me, 'You're too drunk for the Army — go home,'" he states candidly.

Wisniewski told other media he has post-traumatic stress disorder that he treats with cannabis.

Wisniewski has a team of volunteers helping with the effort, like Dean and Mickey Jones, the author of two 2016 drug-law-reform initiatives that gained relatively few signatures. [Demitri Downing's Prop 205 wasn't about legalizing marijuana. Prop 205 was mostly about giving the existing 120 medical marijuana dispensaries a 2nd monopoly on selling recreational marijuana. It only allowed something like 150 or 160 recreational marijuana stores, which is only 30 or 40 more stores then the legally allowed 120 medical marijuana stores]

They and others at Safer Arizona helped divide the cannabis community's support of Prop 205, and are one reason that voters rejected the proposition in November.

For example, in an opinion article still up on Safer Arizona's website, Wisniewski argues that the MPP "is lying to Arizona" and that its initiative would be "worse than our current prohibition."

Mikel Weisser, director of the state chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, was one of the leaders of Safer Arizona in 2014. That year, Safer Arizona ran its own legalization initiative, but it failed to collect enough signatures.

Weisser had a falling-out with Safer Arizona when Wisniewski led the group into an alliance with Arizonans for Mindful Regulation (AZFMR), which tried to put its own initiative on the ballot in 2016 and opposed Prop 205.

He quit Safer Arizona, (or was fired, depending on who you believe), preferring to work with the plan formulated by the MPP and dispensaries. [My understanding is that Mikel Weisser was fired or resigned from Safer Arizona because he supported MPP.]

Weisser said he hopes to "bury the hatchet" with Safer Arizona, but he stops short of endorsing it. He doesn't believe the group understands how difficult it will be to make the ballot.

"There were people working everywhere on 205," Weisser said. "Until Safer can get to that level of public support, they're not going anywhere."

AZFMR's initiative campaign collapsed without collecting anywhere near enough signatures to make the 2016 ballot, and the group kept its promise to oppose Prop 205.

Wisniewski said he "might not be opposed" to another legalization initiative in 2018.

Kathy Inman, leader of the pro-cannabis group MomForce, is another cannabis-rights activist who has sparred with Wisniewski and Safer Arizona. [For the record Kathy Inman is the mother in law of Andrew Myers who wrote Prop 203 or Arizona's Medical Marijuana Act. And Prop 203 wasn't about legalizing medical marijuana, but about making millionaires out of the businesses that got medical marijuana license.]

She's still steamed about the group's opposition to the failed initiative, noting that if it had passed, the cannabis plants she would have grown for herself would now be about two months old.

She called the group's initiative "outlandish," adding that "this is not something I will be collecting signatures for." [A lot of people think Kathy Inman and her husband Dave Inman are only in it for the money, and want to have one of the 150 or 160 stores that Prop 205 would have given a monopoly on selling recreational marijuana. Kathy Inman is hated by a many members of the Arizona marijuana community because of that.]

She doesn't think the group will raise any money, either.

"The donors are broke from 205," she said.

Yet if by some miracle Safer Arizona's plan makes the ballot, Inman said she'd vote for it.

Ray has worked as a newspaper reporter in Arizona for more than two decades. He's won many awards for his reporting, including the Arizona Press Club's Don Bolles Award for Investigative Journalism