… contains a column by Tom Jackman, “The State of NoVa,” describing a legislator’s proposal for a formal study of the prospective revenue from cannabis taxation, and speculating that Virginia could raise $500 million in new revenue annually. That number sounds slightly low to me, but what’s significant is that this column is being read today throughout the D.C. area, and will surely spark further discussion. The page of history is turning!

Plus, an AP story, dateline Melbourne, Australia, reporting that “The Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports — which represents cricket, soccer, Australian Rules football, rugby league, rugby union and tennis — said on Tuesday it believes marijuana should not be grouped with performance-enhancers such as Human Growth Hormone and anabolic steroids which carry two-year bans.”

“Coalition chief Malcolm Speed,” the story reports, “will meet the World Anti-Doping Agency on Wednesday as part of regular discussions and will ask that ‘where a substance is on the banned list but isn’t a performance-enhancing substance, it should be removed.’”

A refreshing breath of sanity from Down Under.

Today it was my privilege to speak at Extravaganja, the annual pot rally put on by the Cannabis Reform Coalition at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. It was a beautiful day and the  town common was blanketed with young people, all attentive, well behaved, and mostly stoned. Here’s what I told them, the gist of which is that the tectonic plates of public attitudes are shifting before our eyes. Now it can confidently be said that a majority of Massachusetts voters support marijuana law reform, and significantly the vast majority of them are non-smokers of marijuana. They’re what I call them: pot-tolerant, or Tols: they don’t smoke marijuana, but they’re perfectly cool with people who do, and they get it that prohibition is a fraud.  Legalization, in other words, isn’t for stoners anymore

Today word has it that the Colorado Democratic Party has officially endorsed Amendment 64, the constitutional amendment on this November’s ballot that would “regulate marijuana like alcohol.”  Money quote:

This is a mainstream issue. Polls show that more than 60 percent of Democrats and a solid majority of Independents believe marijuana should be treated like alcohol. A broad coalition is forming in support of Amendment 64 and I am proud to say that it now includes the Colorado Democratic Party.

So said Cindy Lowery-Graber, chair of the Denver County Democratic Party, during this weekend’s state party convention in Pueblo.

In other words, the emperor has no clothes. She didn’t tell politicians what they didn’t know; rather she merely said what politicians are afraid to say.

Brava to her, and to Colorado!

… in the evolution from prohibition to legalization is the press lead-up to the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, this weekend, reporting that a number of Latin American heads of state will be pressing President Obama for a frank discussion about the wisdom and efficacy of the drug war.  While the L word (legalization) is being mentioned, the P word (prohibition) has not yet emerged to describe the status quo, but it’s likely to make an appearance, providing a significant rhetorical advance for our cause. The fact that the taboo against even discussing the subject has been broken is huge. History is coming our way.

The Washington (state) Office of Financial Management has conducted a study to determine how much new revenue can be expected if I-502, the marijuana legalization initiative, is approved by the voters this November.

The number: “at least $560 million a year.”  “Business and sales taxes would raise an estimated $130 million more,” according to an article in the Seattle Times.

That news should bring a lot of smiles, especially to revenue collectors.

For a fuller glimpse of what happened at the Judiciary Committee hearing on March 6, here is my report to the Massachusetts activists who came out in support, and who were responsible for the bill having even been introduced in the first place, and here is what I told the committee.

In a word, it was a good day.

Representative Ellen Story, the bill’s  sponsor,  spoke solidly in support of the bill, pointing out that she filed  it in response to the 2010 Public Policy Question in her district instructing her to do so; indeed she complied 100% with those instructions from her constituents.  And she went even further by reading and understanding the bill and doing her independent research on the issue, and speaking intelligently with the media. And, she sportingly endured the teasing from her legislative colleagues, more than a few murmuring that she was right but their constituents just “aren’t there yet.”  (That is followership masquerading as leadership.)

Her testimony before the committee represented the first occasion ever, to the best of my knowledge, that a Massachusetts legislator has ever so endorsed the repeal of marijuana prohibition in favor of a system of regulation and taxation.  That’s measurable progress.

Another sign of measurable progress was the lack of opposition to our bill. When it first came up in 1981, the hearing room was packed with anti-drug crusaders. We few supporters were given the formal respect granted the lunatic fringe, and were glad to escape safely.  This time, 31 years later, only a handful of speakers opposed the bill, and all they could do is re-hash lame and ancient canards like sending wrong messages to children.  They also appeared to be employees of taxpayer-funded anti-drug agencies, hence are expected to spout the usual pious platitudes lest they get in trouble at work.

We will hear nothing more from Beacon Hill on H1371, but they will hear from us.  As politicians were the last to embrace repeal in the late 1920s, so too they will be last to embrace repeal of marijuana prohibition.  Hence leadership has fallen to the voters, and they will be exercising that leadership this November. In Massachusetts, they will have the opportunity to legalize medical marijuana.  In Washington and Colorado, they will have the opportunity to enact statewide tax/reg plans, not unlike H1371.

Here’s a recent piece about legislative abdication, though I didn’t call it that.

Now all eyes turn to Washington and Colorado. Success in either state will trigger a long-awaited confrontation with the feds, and when the feds blink, the state revenue collectors will smile.

Tomorrow is hearing day for the Massachusetts reg/tax bill, H1371. The MetroWest Daily News kindly published my piece attempting to put it in some historical context. More later.

H1371,  An Act to Regulate and Tax the Cannabis Industry, is scheduled for hearing before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary of the Massachusetts legislature. The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, March 6, 2012, at 1:00 PM in Room A-2 of the Statehouse in Boston. Here is a FAQ Sheet, and here is the notice to Massachusetts activists that went out on February 8, 2012.

Recent stirrings in Michigan and Montana recall important milestones toward the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment three generations ago.

For most of Prohibition, 1920 to 1933, alcohol was illegal under both state and federal law (except in Maryland, which never enacted state prohibition laws, and New York, where in 1923 a Republican legislature, trying to destroy Gov. Al Smith’s chances for the Presidency, repealed state prohibition; Smith called their bluff and signed the bill, but the Republicans may have been successful in the end as Smith never reached the White House). In 1930, the citizens of Massachusetts voted by a large margin to repeal the state’s prohibition law, and for the remaining three years of Prohibition, booze was illegal only under the federal Volstead Act as authorized by the 18^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1933, eleven more states did the same thing, and one of them, California, went one step better: voters not only repealed the alcohol prohibition laws, but also enacted an amendment to the state constitution which provided that IF federal law were to change allowing the states to tax and regulate the production and distribution of alcoholic beverages, then the state government—as opposed to counties and municipalities—shall have the exclusive right to so tax and regulate, thus assuring a uniform statewide regulatory system and a lock on the new revenue by Sacramento.

What’s important is that these reforms in alcohol laws were not made by lawmakers, but rather the voters themselves, as politicians then ducked and weaved when it came to taking a stand on alcohol. The two sides of the public debate were the Wets and the Drys, but politicians were consistently Damp, afraid to declare themselves on either side of history.

In Michigan and Montana, driven by mendacious public officials who have blocked implementation of medical marijuana programs approved by the voters, activists are collecting signatures to put a constitutional amendment on November’s ballots that would establish the right to have and use (non-medical) cannabis responsibly. If they succeed, they will have done more than repeal cannabis prohibition: they will have prohibited marijuana prohibition, a stunningly remarkable achievement, and a courageous and inspiring effort even if they don’t make it.

To their great credit, the organizers of I-502 in Washington, have submitted the necessary signatures to the Secretary of State to assure its place on November’s ballot. The measure operates by folding cannabis taxation and regulation into the familiar scheme now used for the regulation and taxation of commerce in alcoholic beverages.

Producers may be licensed to grow and sell wholesale lots of marijuana only to licensed processors, who may sell it only to retailers regulated by the liquor control board. Growing, having and distributing marijuana, heretofore crimes, are declared by the measure not to be a criminal or civil offense under Washington state law if done so in accordance with the license. Producers and processors may not be retailers. A tax of 25% is due upon transfer of product from one licensee to another.

What’s most significant about the measure is not its particulars. Rather, it is that approval by the voters will force a long-overdue showdown with the feds, forcing the federal government to defend prohibition. The contenders will not be the DEA vs. dispensaries. The contenders will be the White House (by default of Congress) vs. the State of Washington. I-502 is a referendum on prohibition. For the first time ever, Washington voters will have an opportunity to step into the privacy of a voting booth and declare what they really think about the marijuana laws.

The demise of prohibition is in plainer view.