Homeless in Arizona

While I think that marijuana in addition to all drugs should be legalized I am against Prop 205. And that's mainly because Prop 205 doesn't really legalize marijuana.

Prop 205 is mostly about making billionaires out of the owners of the current 85 or so medical marijuana dispensaries by giving them a second monopoly on growing and selling recreational marijuana.

Prop 205 continues to allow the government to lock people in prison for victim-less marijuana crimes.

Prop 205 actually creates a "marijuana police force" which will be used to arrest people for victimless marijuana crimes.

And under Prop 205 numerators victimless marijuana crimes will remain FELONIES in Arizona. Possession of over 2.5 ounces of marijuana will be a felony. Possession of over 5 grams of concentrated marijuana will be a felony. Growing over 6 marijuana plants for a single person will be a felony, and growing over 12 marijuana plants for a household of 2 or more will be a felony.

Now Colorado's phony baloney marijuana legalization law is very much like Arizona's Prop 205 in that it doesn't really legalize marijuana. Colorado's law was also designed to make the owners of the medical marijuana dispensaries into billionaires by giving them a second monopoly on growing and selling recreational marijuana.

I believe that Colorado's law was also written by MPP or the Marijuana Policy Project, just like Arizona's law.

If Colorado legalized marijuana 100%, like the RAD or Safer Arizona 2018 initiatives, none of these problems would exist.

Source

My Turn: An SOS from Colorado to Arizona on recreational pot

Wellington Webb, AZ I See It 3:39 p.m. MST November 3, 2016

Former mayor: Don't follow Colorado's vote to legalize marijuana. Because once you do, you can't take it back.

I love Denver. I served as its mayor for 12 years, so it saddens me to see what has happened to my city since recreational marijuana became legal.

The shock for most of us has been the unintended consequences of legalization.

Consider some staggering facts: Denver now has more pot dispensaries than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. Marijuana-related traffic deaths have risen 32 percent. Denver schools have seen none of the money they were promised.

And that vow from marijuana’s backers that “the cartels would be driven out of business” — well, sadly, the exact opposite happened.

The pro-side has said legalizing marijuana will bring an end to the illegal market, but that's not borne out by the experience of Colorado.

It’s so bad that law-enforcement officials are asking the Denver City Council for more than $125,000 to keep up with the massive amounts of illegal pot being seized.

In 2013, the year before Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, the Denver Police Department seized a little more than 500 pounds. Next year, law enforcement anticipates seizing more than 11,200 pounds of illegal marijuana — an increase of more than 22 times in just four years. Much of that is coming from black-market warehouses.

So much for the promise that legalizing marijuana would allow police to focus on more serious crimes. They were doing that before legalization in 2013; now their attention is being diverted to, you guessed it, marijuana.

Our city’s district attorney, Mitchell Morrissey, points out that crime increased after marijuana was legalized. The number of homicides hit a nine-year high in 2015, and homicides related to pot doubled. Hash oil operations exploded 44 times.

Many factors feed a crime rate, but it’s hard to ignore that the increase in crime paralleled the legalization of marijuana. Perhaps that’s because legal marijuana fuels the black market, something we discovered after legalization.

Unlike Pueblo, you can't take this vote back

Colorado experimented by legalizing marijuana, and the results should give Arizona second thoughts about following us. All the promises being made to you were made in Colorado, and they haven’t come true.

That’s why Pueblo, in southern Colorado, is voting next month to roll back its approval to grow and sell marijuana. Citizens petitioned county commissioners, who unanimously put the issue on the ballot. Much like Denver's, Pueblo’s residents have seen rising crime, and they are tired of pot stores and growing operations near schools. They don’t like hearing about a sharp rise in pot-related admissions at hospitals.

I salute them for their courage in saying the experiment is a failure. The trickle of new tax revenue from marijuana does not outweigh the unintended consequences.

Pueblo should be the SOS call for Arizona, considering the fact that if Proposition 205 passes, you will have your hands tied. Under Arizona’s Constitution, you can’t fix anything that goes wrong. This isn’t an experiment for you.

Rather than having a chance to address the concerns of residents like those active in Pueblo, for Arizonans, Prop. 205 doesn’t allow for local control. It won’t even let cities that already have a medical-marijuana dispensary ban recreational marijuana, as Colorado cities are able to do. The marijuana industry paid attention to Colorado’s experiment, and it wrote Prop. 205 to protects its interests, not yours.

Before you vote, consider all that has happened in Denver and Pueblo. Consider the increase in crime, the increase in traffic deaths, the increase in hospitalizations and the lack of new money for schools.

Don’t follow us. Because once you vote, you can’t take it back.

Wellington E. Webb served as Denver’s mayor from 1991 until 2003. Share your thoughts at info@ardp.org.