Two Ballot Initiatives in AZ? Jason Medar of AZFMR Explains
By Alisha Hagler On March 15, 2016
Jason Medar is the outspoken point man for Arizonans for Mindful Regulation, the organization that is offering the alternative to the MPP’s current legalization initiative in Arizona. Though he used to work with the MPP, he is no longer a fan. We find out why.
Jason Medar has a passion for marijuana that oozes from his vocal chords, with a seasoned grit that implies experience. This is a man whose presence commands attention. And if you are fortunate enough to get a moment of his time during this chaotic campaign season—pay attention—and prepare yourself to be schooled on what you thought you knew about the political landscape that molds the cannabis industry. Jason Medar is the Director, Founding Member and Campaign Manager for the group, Arizonans for Mindful Regulation. Though he may appear to be just another humble almond-eyed, tye-dye wearin,’ munchies eating, doobie rolling, typical grandma’s basement stoner, he is an exception to the surface stereotype. Jason Medar is a son, father, graphic designer, and former California dispensary owner turned activist. With an arrest in Arizona for marijuana cultivation under his belt as an MMJ patient in 2012, Medar is all too familiar with having his freedom and livelihood jeopardized by the injustices of a broken system.
As an activist, he fights to give power back to the people who have supported the counter culture and the movement throughout its transformation, long before big marijuana got their paws on the plant and its profit potential. Green—the color of life, nature, energy, and growth in its paradox is also synonymous for money and greed –and this is the juncture in the cannabis industry where the dichotomy battles it out.
The two contenders for recreational legalization in Arizona are Arizonans for Mindful Regulation and the Marijuana Policy Project. They have set the stage for an epic showdown on the ballots in November with AZFMR’s Campaign to Legalize and Regulate Marijuana vs. MPP’s Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.
While most voters would assume that advocates for marijuana are stitched from the same cloth, AZFMR is concerned, even afraid, that such is not the case. Their fear is that unlike their initiative, MPP’s initiative to legalize marijuana (like alcohol) has left loose ends that could potentially create problems for the consumer.
Sprout News recently connected with Medar to get his thoughts on the current initiatives. Below are his words, unfiltered. His level of passion being what it is, it doesn’t take long for his misgivings on the MPP to come out in colorful detail. Keep in mind that his opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publication. On a grand scale, Sprout News has always been firmly behind the actions of the MPP. However, no one is without fault and the questioning of motives and execution should always be encouraged. We don’t take sides in disagreements within the movement or industry, but rather act as a platform for these issues to be discussed. We are reaching out to the MPP to get their response. Stay tuned.
AH: To give our readers a little bit of background information, how did you become involved in the counter culture?
JM: I started back in 2004. I got involved because my dad was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and Cirrhosis of the liver. Essentially what that meant was that he was in constant pain, but, because of the liver problems he couldn’t take pain pills. So what’s a man to do, right? We started growing medical marijuana for him and I started learning how to make hash because that was the best way for him to take it. I learned by experience and then in 2006 I became involved with activism and started trying to attend NORML meetings. I was involved with marijuana the entire time. It pushed me to try and bring everybody together. I just looked around one day and said, “geez I’m dealing with like 40 different people here that all smoke marijuana. If I could bring all these people under one roof, we could really have some power here to get some things done.” The Tree Smoker Cannabis Club was formed out of necessity.
AH: I read in a Phoenix New Times article where it mentioned that you had been arrested for marijuana cultivation. Did that experience influence your decision to become an activist?
JM: No, I was already an activist. My arrest was in Arizona in 2012. By then I was already eight years deep into this. I was a medical patient and was authorized to grow plants in Arizona. For the first four years of our medical program being active, patients, legal patients, who possessed any form of marijuana concentrates, were still being arrested and prosecuted, charging them with a Class 4 felony for possessing narcotics. If anything it just showed me was that law enforcement is more than willing to circumvent our Medical Marijuana Act in order to keep the war on marijuana users alive. It demonstrated that law enforcement is not willing to give up. Marijuana crimes are very easy to convict; they’re a real money-maker.
AH: How did Arizonans for Mindful Regulation come to be?
JM: Our group, The Arizonans for Mindful Regulation or AZFMR was formed in 2014. We started working with The Marijuana Policy Project in Arizona to ensure that the 2016 initiative MPP was writing included the most important consumer protections. For example: decriminalization, real grow rights, protecting the medical program, opening up the business licenses, DUI protection, parental protection—the list goes on and on. When we saw MPP’s initiative, we had to sit and ask ourselves, “Do we just want to launch a VOTE NO campaign, or do we want to offer a solution?”
We tried to negotiate with the Marijuana Policy Project when they were writing their initiative, but, we also had a list of what we called “non-negotiable provisions.” Number one on that list was decriminalization. MPP’s initiative did not include decriminalization.
We have to compare MPP’s initiative to the current landscape on the ground and also to the current medical program. There are other states where you could enact straight legalization and law enforcement will respect the voters. In California and even Colorado, a lot of cities have enacted “lowest law enforcement priorities ordinances.” What that says is that marijuana is not a priority. If you happen to find somebody in violation, write them a ticket but do not arrest them— send them on their way. A lot of states are like this, but Arizona is not.
Arizonans for Mindful Regulation asked them when we were still trying to negotiate, “Well, why not? Why not have decriminalization?” And they said “Well, we don’t think voters will support that.” We told them that was bass-ackwards. We showed them polls from numerous different states, all showing that voters overwhelmingly support decriminalization. Not necessarily legalization, but they overwhelmingly support decriminalization. There are very few people that are the other way around. Where they’re like, “Nah man, they belong in prison if they possess 5.1 grams of marijuana concentrates instead of 5.”
Arizona will be the very first state to even try and legalize marijuana without first having it decriminalized. Arizona is the only state that is going to try and legalize marijuana, but still have felony criminal penalties in place if you break the law in any way.
We went back and forth with MPP. Essentially what convinced us to write this initiative and go forward and plead for our own campaign, was that we saw just how many people were standing behind us. It wasn’t one person—it was thousands of marijuana consumers who understand what MPP’s initiative does. Anybody with two eyes and a brain is going to realize that if you consume marijuana, MPP’s initiative isn’t in your best interest, and if the average marijuana consumer won’t support their initiative, it’s not likely to get passed. Consumers are who really support us. If we didn’t have 100,000 people to support our campaign, and we didn’t have more than two hundred volunteers on the ground collecting signatures, we wouldn’t be able to do this. We’re strictly a volunteer effort. All the people who are collecting signatures are working for free. I, myself, am working for free, our attorney is working for free, our treasurer is working for free—I mean you get the point, right?
Arizonans for Mindful Regulation think that the truth is on our side. We’re not being paid to write our initiative and have no financial interest. We’re pushing so that people who want licenses can get them. Our motivations are much different. Ultimately, what we found was that the Marijuana Policy Project, in our opinion, were [doing the work of] of the highest bidder.
AH: And who are you naming as the highest bidder?
JM: The highest bidder in Arizona was a group of 30 wealthy medical marijuana dispensary owners. They are funding MPP’s initiative and got to write the initiative because they were paying the bill. MPP used to be funded by Peter Lewis and George Soros. They, in their own bizarre way, worked as self-appointed filters. They would filter out initiatives that weren’t good for consumers. But MPP no longer receives their money from Lewis and Soros. So the marijuana industry is now working as the filter. They’re writing initiatives that serve their own financial interests . . . We have 90 dispensaries in Arizona. But, of those dispensaries, for example, one of the dispensary owners that is paying for the initiative owns five dispensaries. So a lot of these owners own multiple locations. They actually make up a larger percentage of the dispensaries than you might think. This will create an oligopoly on the marijuana market. Marijuana Policy Project wrote it in their initiative to say that once we legalize, only these existing 90 medical marijuana dispensaries will get any of the recreational business licenses.
AH: Do you think the Marijuana Policy Project would be able to go toe-to-toe with facts that would make advocates of legalization/decriminalization support their initiative as opposed to AZFMR’s?
JM: If you wanted to have Marijuana Policy Project do a debate against our Arizonans for Mindful Regulation group— I don’t think they’d ever do it.
MPP has tried to go with the argument that AZFMR is just a bunch of stoners that don’t know anything. But the problem with that argument, is that if you talk to anyone involved in the leadership of our campaign, you learn that we’re not stoners at all—we’re just regular people who are tired of being thrown in prison for using marijuana.
AH: If their initiative passes, do you think they could keep up with the consumer demands of medical and recreational legalization?
JM: No. It’s been predicted that there are going to be 500,000 people over 21 who will buy marijuana in Arizona. How are 90 dispensaries going to serve 500,000 people? It’s not going to happen. The black market will blow up overnight. In Arizona, the Department of Health keeps track of all the statistics for our medical program and it shows that only 30% of our 90,000 patients buy their marijuana from dispensaries. So where are the other 60,000 people getting their marijuana, and what does MPP’s initiative do to protect them?
AH: What is the verbiage in MPP’s Campaign to Legalize Marijuana Like Alcohol initiative that will legalize marijuana, but keep it a prosecutable offense?
JM: There is a statue in Arizona 13-3405 that makes marijuana illegal and states the penalties for possessing, cultivating, etc. MPP’s initiative leaves that in place. Essentially, they write legalization on page one and leave prohibition in place on page two. They didn’t include decriminalization in their initiative at all, and a lot of those marijuana crimes that are currently on the books have what they call “mandatory minimum prison sentences.” So essentially, the Judge has no discretion whatsoever to give you less than the mitigated sentence, even if they have mitigating factors.
MPP says that you can possess 1 ounce of marijuana, 5 grams of marijuana concentrates, and grow 6 plants. But, if you possess more than one ounce, more than 5 grams, or grow more than 6 plants–you’re getting a felony because it reverts back to the existing marijuana statutes. AZFMR’s initiative completely repeals the old 1334-05 marijuana statutes. We’ve removed it completely from the books and replaced it with an entirely new set of criminal penalties that are comprised mostly of misdemeanors. The worst penalty in our initiative is only a Class 5 felony, whereas, currently the worst penalty you can get for marijuana is a Class 2 felony, which comes with a presumptive prison sentence of about six and a half years. Another big difference is that we included post-conviction release. So if you have a marijuana felony prior to our initiative passing, you can actually apply for re-sentencing to have your felony reduced to a misdemeanor.
Also, in our initiative we didn’t include any mandatory prison sentences. The only reason we included felonies at all in our initiative is because we are understanding of the fact that the state still wants to be able to prosecute the cartel activity. This is Arizona, we have to consider that option as well.
AH: Do you think the taxation of marijuana would yield more profit than prosecuting individuals for marijuana violations?
JM: That’s a good question. Absolutely. Definitely. It’s another reason why we need to decriminalize. The idea is that we need to remove the financial incentives from law enforcement for them not to continue to prosecute marijuana offenders.
Under our initiative possessing marijuana for sale is a Class 2 misdemeanor which holds a maximum fine of $500. The cost to have the SWAT team come out to your home is about $2500.
AH: Earlier you mentioned that MPP used confusing language in their initiative. What sort of language might the average smoking Joe be confused by?
The Grow Rights provision is one of the big issues. In MPP’s initiative they say “you can grow these six plants.” Then they say that a city or county can ban marijuana growing if they consider it to be a nuisance, but leave nuisance specifically and purposefully undefined. The problem is that the people who will be making the decision of what will be considered a nuisance will not be a court of law, it’s going to be a city council. It’s going be a group of five or six people that make that decision for the city or county. And because the city council isn’t a court of law, there’s no burden of proof required for them to pass an ordinance. They don’t need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt or even by a preponderance of the evidence that there is a nuisance. The concern is that they’re going to lie and say, “We think it’s a nuisance and here’s our list of reasons why—so we’re passing this ordinance that says marijuana growing is banned from the City of Phoenix.” Medical grow operations would not be included in that. But about 98% of us, as medical patients, cannot grow because of the 25 Mile rule, which says that any of us that live within 25 miles of a dispensary are not allowed to grow. And the state put dispensaries everywhere— even in cities that have a couple thousand people for population. So, essentially, nobody can grow throughout the state.
AH: Why did AZFMR appropriate a percentage of money from the taxation of marijuana to alcohol and marijuana awareness?
JM: It was just something to appease voters. Offering the 20% to the Department of Health for education programs would combat any of MATforce’s arguments that we’re simply just trying to legalize, but not educate. Both of the initiatives are the exact same on that aspect, in that they both give 40% to all day Kindergarten- 40%- K12, 20% The Department of Health. [sic]
Unfortunately, and it really is unfortunate, this is not an Arizona-specific problem. MPP’s federal policy director, Dan Riffle recently quit MPP because he says that big marijuana is taking over the Marijuana Policy Project and the marijuana legalization movement, as a whole. All over the country we have what are called “investor-driven initiatives,” that are going up against the marijuana consumer industry. It’s big marijuana against marijuana consumers–and it’s a real war.
What it comes down to in the very in end is that there are two kind of people who support our campaign; the marijuana consumers, and the smoke shops. Our initiative protects them. The MPP’s initiative does nothing for them. If we didn’t have 100,000 people to support our campaign and have 200+ volunteers on the ground collecting signatures, we wouldn’t be able to do this. We’re strictly a volunteer effort. All the people who are collecting signatures are working for free. I, myself, am working for free—our attorney is working for free—our treasurer is working for free. You get the point, right?
The other group that supports us are smoke shops.
AH: How will both initiatives affect retail smoke shops?
JM: MPP’s initiative says that the new Department of Marijuana Licenses and Control can enact regulations for businesses that sell marijuana accessories. So the concern with smoke shops, is that under MPP’s initiative, the Marijuana Department could say that you need a retail dispensary license in order to sell marijuana accessories. Which would allow the medical marijuana dispensary owners to not only have the oligopoly on the marijuana market, but also on the marijuana accessories’ market.
Our initiative did the exact opposite. In fact, we stated in two separate portions of our initiative, explicitly, that you do not need any type of marijuana establishment license to sell marijuana accessories in Arizona.
AH: How do you go about educating smoke shops?
JM: We face-to-face with them and actually talk to them. We also have a letter prepared along with a legal opinion from marijuana attorney Tom Dean that outlines why MPP’s initiative will guarantee that only the existing dispensaries will get any of the marijuana business licenses.
Because that’s a smoke shop’s first question, “Well, can’t I just get a marijuana business license?” That’s when you have to explain that unfortunately no, at least not under MPP’s initiative you can’t.
AH: Will testing be required in both initiatives for any recreational retail sales?
JM: Yes, absolutely. But, in our initiative and only our initiative, we also say that the Marijuana Department is required to contract with a licensed testing facility to randomly test marijuana and marijuana plants to ensure that the marijuana being produced does not contain any harmful contaminants. We even take it a step further and say that if a licensed cultivator or a licensed retail dispensary is found to be guilty of growing or selling marijuana with harmful contaminants, the first offense is a $5,000 fine. The second, and any subsequent offenses, are $25,000 fines. We built in, what we hope, is a good enough financial incentive for growers and dispensers to grow and sell clean medicine, less they be punished financially. MPP’s initiative does none of this. Their initiative only requires that retail dispensaries get their marijuana tested. It doesn’t specifically outline how to do it. I assume the regulations would be what outline how that would be done. That would be decided if either initiative passed, by the Department of Marijuana. But in their initiative the Department of Marijuana is essentially going to be run, in part, by the medical marijuana dispensary owners. There will be seven people on that board in MPP’s initiative— three of the seven would be medical marijuana dispensary owners, so they would only need to get one additional vote to take any action.
AH: Do you feel that would be a conflict of interest to anyone other than the dispensary owners?
JM: It sure would, especially since they get the Medical Marijuana program. Our initiative leaves the Medical Marijuana Program with the Department of Health and leaves program-to-program 100% intact. MPP’s initiative takes the Medical Marijuana program from the Department of Health and gives it to the new Marijuana Department, which is run by the medical marijuana dispensary owners. So it’s a serious conflict of interest to let the people who make the money also make the rules. It’s bad for patients. When we talk about talking about having a recreational and medical program side by side, we can’t throw the patients to the wayside just to be able to use marijuana recreationally. That’d be irresponsible.
AH: Where can voters go to keep up to date with the latest information on Arizonans for Mindful Regulation and the Campaign to Legalize and Regulate Marijuana?
JM: Legalizemarijuanainarizona.org
The website shows all of our events. We’ve got the latest news, our initiative, a section for people to donate, and a map of all the different locations where people can go to sign the petition.
AH: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, and good luck on the campaign trail!
JM: You’re welcome! I don’t think this is the end. This is just the beginning of the big marijuana movement trying to take over. Please understand, if it’s happening four times in 2016, it’s liable to happen again in 2018 or 2020, in different states. This is not the first or last time you will hear about the “big marijuana against the marijuana consumer” war. You may see it in a state near you. We know they’re not going to end the war on marijuana users willingly. We have to end it for them.