Yesterday, we reported that I-1068, the initiative campaign to legalize marijuana, sent out a press release trashing the Service Employees International Union and the ACLU for not getting behind the initiative.
We published the I-1068 press release and talked to SEIU spokesman Adam Glickman to get the union’s response.
We weren’t, however, able to reach the ACLU—which the I-1068 campaign specifically called out as “armchair liberals.”
Today, ACLU spokesman Doug Honig pointed us to a statement the ACLU released explaining the group’s reservations about I-1068.
As we noted yesterday, the pot initiative doesn’t include a framework for regulating marijuana. Honig says the ACLU would have preferred an initiative that legalized pot and taxed it, along the lines of the legislation state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36, Seattle) proposed this year.
Here’s the group’s statement:
The ACLU is committed to the goal of ending marijuana prohibition. Achieving this goal requires carefully crafted strategies – ones that can overcome decades of public misinformation fostered by the War on Drugs, and that will be effective when implemented.
The ACLU-WA does not believe I-1068 meets those standards and has decided not to use our resources to support a well-meaning but fundamentally flawed effort. Here’s our thinking.
I-1068 legalizes, under state law, not only the personal growing and use of marijuana, but also its commercial production and distribution. The initiative does not, however, address how the commercial market will be regulated. From a strategic viewpoint, this is a big problem because it requires the public to vote for completely unregulated commerce in marijuana – unlike alcohol or tobacco.
We believe that most voters who would support marijuana reform want clear regulation of the substance and want only licensed, legitimate businesses to engage in commercial production and distribution. Most voters would also agree that if marijuana sales are going to be permitted, they should be taxed like other commercial transactions. By eliminating state penalties for trafficking in marijuana without creating a system for taxing and regulating commercial activity, the initiative will be very difficult for moderate voters in Washington to support. …
If legalizing the commercial trade is a goal of I-1068, a far better approach would have been to include robust regulations and force the federal government to challenge the law, amend federal law, or let Washington proceed without interference. This is the strategy pursued by Washington Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson in introducing HB 2401 (regulating marijuana through the Liquor Control Board).
It’s a strategy that has worked. New Mexico and Rhode Island passed medical marijuana laws establishing regulated dispensaries. Subsequently, the Obama Administration announced that it would not dedicate resources to investigating and prosecuting individuals in “clear compliance” with such state laws, even if they were in clear violation of federal law. Since then, two more states, Maine and New
Jersey, have passed similar laws.
Philip Dawdy, spokesman for the legalization campaign says “the ACLU’s claim that our initiative is flawed without a regulatory scheme is disingenuous and legally ignorant.”
Dawdy says the state’s “single-subject rule” limits what I-1068 can do. “Ending the prohibition on adult use of marijuana is one thing,” Dawdy says, but “civil regulation would be a second, and instituting a tax plan would be a third. We would have been challenged in court [for violating the single-subject rule].”
Dawdy says that once the initiative passed, the legislature would have taken on the task of establishing regulations and a taxation plan.
