Buyers Remorse? Montana Initiative to ban marijuana cleared for signatures

Montana buyers remorse on MarijuanaIt’s encouraging to see at least one State’s citizens fighting back against the rise of Big Marijuana. Big Sky Country would be much better off.

That those 8% of Americans who choose to regularly expose their brains to THC get to twist drug control history in order to open the markets to this insidious frequently abused, addictive, drug is beyond common sense.

Most Americans stand with Montana and against commercialized pot. The marijuana backlash is coming.

We don’t need unbridled pot marketing adding another addiction for profit scheme to the American public health landscape. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed most Coloradans feel the marijuana industry is bad for their image.  And most young Americans are not high on legalization either.

A roll call of Congressional House Members who voted to defund the Federal Govt’s ability to enforce serious drug law offenses is now available. If their initiative to redirect the DEA away from Federal enforcement of drug crimes succeeds, many citizens in pot states with written-to-deceive marijuana laws would have nowhere to turn even when illegal drug dealers come to town and open shop. States have no dedicated enforcement dollars. The political lobby working Capitol Hill these days wants all drugs legalized.

Even more astonishing — lawmakers are buying into this extreme and doomed-to-fail policy experiment.

This is the largest farce ever perpetrated on the American people. At its peak, alcohol use rose to 60% of Americans. Smoking pot regularly over time results in structural brain changes and an 8 point drop in IQ. That is very basic, peer-reviewed, scientific fact. Do we want 60% of Americans getting high?

A pot repeal in Montana would give us all hope that we can resist a marijuana normalization movement that would only hurt many more people than it could ever possibly help.

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Initiative to ban marijuana cleared for signatures

MAY 29, 2014 12:00 AM • BY CHARLES S. JOHNSON IR STATE BUREAU
Backers of a proposed ballot measure that would make marijuana illegal in Montana can begin gathering signatures.
State officials approved Initiative 174 Thursday for signature-gathering.
Supporters need to obtain at least 24,175 signatures of registered Montana voters by June 20 to qualify I-174 for the ballot, including at least 5 percent of the voters in 34 of the 100 state House districts.
The initiative says that drugs now listed on the Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act or in the future would be illegal under Montana law. A drug on Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act would generally be illegal for all purposes here unless otherwise authorized by law, it says.
Marijuana is on Schedule 1 of the federal Controlled Substances Act so it is illegal federally and would be illegal in Montana if I-174 passes.
If the measure becomes law, it would repeal the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, a voter-passed initiative that in 2004 legalized marijuana for certain medical conditions.
If approved by voters in November, I-174 would take effect immediately.
Steve Zabawa, who owns a car dealership in Billings, submitted the initiative on behalf of a group called SafeMontana. Its website is: www.safemontana.com .
“We’re going to give it our best shot,” Zabawa said. “We’ve got great support around the state.”
Zabawa said he’s optimistic that volunteers can obtain the 25,000 signatures in slightly more than three weeks. He said the group actually is shooting for 100,000 signatures.
“We’re just doing this with concerned parents with families and concerned business owners,” he said.
The initiative would have no impact on the state general fund.
Earlier this spring, Chris Lindsey of Missoula, legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project and spokesman for the Montana chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, spoke against the proposed initiative.
“Marijuana prohibition has been just as ineffective, inefficient and problematic as alcohol prohibition,” he said. “It’s a colossal failure. And Steve wants to be the champion of that failure.”
After Montanans passed the medical marijuana initiative in 2004, the number of people legally using the substance remained fairly low until mid-2009.
A series of “cannabis caravans” around the state signed up thousands of people for so-called green cards authorizing them to get medical marijuana.
The number of people holding medical marijuana cards in Montana skyrocketed from about 3,000 in 2009 to more than 30,000 two years later.
After the 2011 Legislature passed a law that greatly restricted access to medical pot, the number of legal cardholders dropped considerably. As of April 30, 8,533 medical marijuana cardholders had registered with the state.

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