Kathy Inman, executive director of MomForce AZ (or MomFarce as we call it) tells us a few lies about the phoney baloney MPP initiative to legalize marijuana:
"Regulating marijuana takes marijuana off the streets, puts it in a regulated market where it should be."1) As long as the MPP stores sell recreational marijuana at rip off price of $300 an ounce illegal marijuana sales will continue to exist on the street. The only difference is the street dealers and cartels will raise their prices from the current $50 to $100 an ounce of illegal marijuana to the $300 an ounce price the medical marijuana stores sell their marijuana for.
2) Marijuana is already in a heavily "regulated market" where it is 100% illegal. But despite being heavily regulated, any 14 year old can buy a bag of weed in the high school bath room. The MPP initiative won't change that because the black market will continue to exist as long as the 85 stores with a monopoly on marijuana sell it at rip off $300 an ounce prices.
The ONLY way to end the black market is with a RAD or Relegalize All Drugs type of initiative:
http://relegalize.100webspace.net/legalize_marijuana.php
Marijuana initiative likely to make Arizona ballot
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, The Republic | azcentral.com 1:58 p.m. MST June 30, 2016
Marijuana-legalization campaign submits signatures
The campaign to legalize marijuana for recreational use submitted 258,582 signatures to secretary of state officials Thursday in an effort to qualify for Arizona's statewide November ballot.
The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol needs 150,642 valid signatures from registered voters to qualify, and they have likely submitted enough signatures to account for any that may be thrown out. The measure almost certainly will make the ballot, and the proposal is pitting powerful business and social interests against legalization supporters including medical marijuana dispensaries and marijuana users.
The pro-campaign staged a news conference Thursday, with about 100 boxes of the petitions serving as a backdrop. Supporters said regulation of marijuana sales by the state would be safer than the "underground" market supplied by drug cartels. It wouldn't lead to increased drug use by children and adults, they argued, or increased impaired driving. Legalization opponents disagree with both points.
"For me the issue is really safety," said Kathy Inman, executive director of MomForce AZ, which advocates for marijuana legalization. "Regulating marijuana is going to make Arizona a safer place for my daughters and my grandchildren. ... Regulating marijuana takes marijuana off the streets, puts it in a regulated market where it should be."
The Secretary of State's Office has 20 business days to process the petitions and transmit a 5 percent random sample of the signatures to county election officials for review. County recorders then have 15 days to verify the validity of signatures and send their findings to state election officials. The secretary of state will then have 72 hours to determine the number of valid signatures and determine whether the initiative will appear on the ballot.
Arizonans might be able to legally carry and grow marijuana if a planned 2016 ballot initiative makes it on the ballot and passes the muster of Arizona voters. Supporters will file language of the Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act with the secretary of State on Friday. Here’s a cheatsheet on what the initiative would do, and its supporters and expected opponents.
5 things to know about Arizona's pot initiative The proposition would ask Arizona voters to legalize marijuana for recreational use and establish a network of licensed cannabis shops that would tax sales of the drug, similar to the model established in Colorado.
Under the proposed Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act, adults 21 and older could possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana and grow up to six plants in their homes without obtaining licenses, as long as the plants were in a secure area. It would also create a distribution system where licensed businesses produce and sell marijuana.
The initiative would prohibit driving while impaired by marijuana, but state law provides no standards for what constitutes impairment by marijuana.
In a written statement ripping the measure, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery warned that legalization could lead to increased impaired driving.
"The Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act represents the very worst of special interests funding initiatives to promote their own goals," Montgomery said. "The people who will pay for their greed are the families who will lose loved ones to marijuana impaired drivers, teens who will suffer from the effects of high potency marijuana, and businesses who won’t be able to maintain a quality workforce or discipline those who show up high on the job."
The initiative also would create a Department of Marijuana Licenses and Control to regulate the "cultivation, manufacturing, testing, transportation, and sale of marijuana" and would give local governments the authority to regulate and ban marijuana stores. [And Kathy Inman callss this "legalization"???] It also would establish a 15 percent tax on retail sales, with proceeds going to fund education, including full-day kindergarten, and public health.
By 2020, according to a new analysis by the Joint Budget Legislative Committee, $27.8 million in tax revenues would go to K-12 public schools for operating costs and another $27.8 million would go to schools to help pay for full-day kindergarten.
In a statement, Cathi Herrod of the Center for Arizona Policy, a non-profit conservative lobbying group, wrote that legalization could lead to more traffic and workplace accidents, crime, substance-abuse rehabilitation and increased accidental overdoses. [Cathi Herrod is a religion nut job and her CAP or Center for Arizona Policy want to turn Arizona into a Christian theocracy.]
"The best way to keep Arizona’s youth safe is to keep marijuana illegal," Herrod's statement said.
Follow the reporter on Twitter @yvonnewingett and Facebook. Reach her at yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4712.
