Way to go, dude!
An Oregonian (even more, a Salemian!) was first in line when a store selling legal marijuana opened its door yesterday in Vancouver, Washington.
The state on Monday issued its first batch of retail licenses, giving two to establishments in Vancouver. One, New Vansterdam, plans to open Friday. The other, Main Street Marijuana, opened Wednesday in downtown Vancouver.
And standing first in line for a few grams of Washington pot? An Oregonian.
"I know I'm going to be paying way more than I probably should," said Mark Edwards, 42, a tie-dye clad Salem man who arrived at 3:30 a.m. to take his place at the head of the line. "I'm willing to pay more to be part of history."
Understood, Mark. This really was a historic moment.
Back in the 60's, when paranoia about being busted for pot possession was rampant in the San Francisco Bay area where I went to college from 1966-71, none of us stoners could have believed that marijuana would be legal in two states by 2014.
I sure hope -- and expect -- that it will be three states by the end of this year, Oregon having joined Colorado and Washington.
It feels like this will happen.
New Approach Oregon almost certainly has enough signatures to qualify its legalization initiative for the November ballot. The two Paul Stanford-backed marijuana measures have failed to qualify, which is great news: voters would have been confused by competing initiatives trying to do the same thing in different ways.
Washington state has started to reap the financial reward of taxing marijuana sales. Just as with Colorado, citizens here will see that life in our neighbor state to the north hasn't become Reefer Madness with the legalization of an already widely-consumed herb.
It's great to see that New Approach Oregon has found what seems to be the social policy sweet spot between Stanford's excessively liberal legalization approach that was voted down by Oregonians in 2012, and the excessively regulated approach taken in Washington state.
An Oregonian story describes some of the differences between Oregon and Washington when it comes to legal pot.
Marijuana taxes in Oregon would be lower than Washington's and Colorado's, which he said would allow legal business owners to compete with black market sellers — not to mention give a price break for buyers here.
...Unlike in Washington, Oregon's proposal does not include impaired driving restrictions. That's a good thing, Nadelmann said, because chemical tests for THC are not accurate enough to be effective.
People also would be allowed to grow cannabis at home, while Washington's law does not.
New Approach Oregon also has a report on Nadelmann's glowing opinion about our state's marijuana legalization effort.
So far little opposition has surfaced to the New Approach Oregon initiative. I doubt there will be much, aside from the usual suspects -- such as Clatsop County DA Josh Marquis, who is the go-to guy for reporters who need a quote from the "other side."
Opponents argue that Oregon already decriminalized small amounts of marijuana decades ago.
Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is considered a violation that doesn't result in arrest or jail.
"We are talking about Oregon, not Texas, not Georgia and not the federal government," said Clatstop County District Attorney Josh Marquis.
Marquis said New Approach Oregon representatives have misstated Oregon's record on marijuana arrests given that most are violations. The group cited a Oregon State Police report that showed 12,808 marijuana-related arrests in 2012; the vast majority were for violation-level offenses.
Well, New Approach Oregon debunks Marquis here and here.
Myth: Oregon police time and resources aren't spent on marijuana offenses
Most of the statistics of “arrests and citations” are simple citations. They are like speeding or not signaling the right way. They take very little resources.
Reality: More than half of the drug-related arrests made in Oregon are for marijuana. (Source: Oregon State Police, page 4-10). In 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, 21,856 people were arrested for drug crimes, and 12,808 of them were for marijuana.
Marijuana-related policing has a huge cost. Police time is required to make to search, arrest, book, issue a ticket or lock someone up. In addition to the financial cost, every marijuana arrest and citation takes time that a police officer could have used patrolling a neighborhood, preventing an assault or solving a violent crime. Then there’s also the cost to the individuals, who will now have a marijuana crime on their records and may have trouble finding a job.
Treating adult marijuana use as a crime is a drain on our resources.
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Myth: We don't arrest people for marijuana use in Oregon
Reality: Police bust people for marijuana use in Oregon all the time. According to the Oregon State Police, police arrested 12,808 people for marijuana in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. (Source: Oregon State Police, (PDF) page 4-10). That’s like one person every 41 minutes. These arrest numbers have risen by 45 percent in recent years, according to a report by the ACLU on state crime reports.
An analysis by the Oregon ACLU of Oregon State Police data (PDF) also found that 90 percent of the marijuana possession incidents in 2010 involved less than one ounce.
Oregonians are constantly being arrested for marijuana use.
Plus, NORML reports that possession of less than an ounce of marijuana carries with it an automatic six-month Oregon driver's license suspension. That's a big deal. So it really isn't akin to a traffic ticket, as opponents of marijuana legalization sometimes claim. Nobody loses their driver's license for a minor moving violation.
It's time to legalize marijuana. Weed is way safer than alcohol. Fewer people drinking and more people imbibing pot would make for a much healthier and happier Oregon.
I didn't think about this when I lived in Oregon for 13 years because I wasn't interested in marijuana, but I was under the impression Oregon was the first state to "de-criminalize" cannabis back in the 70's, that is, it was no longer a felony to be in possession of an amount below a certain threshold?
It is probably better that weed be legalized but there will be a price to pay for this, possibly in the area of more kids finding ways to access it in the same way they access liquor now...getting into their parent's stash or paying a bum to buy weed for them. Studies show weed is bad for the developing minds of adolescents.
Mainly, with adults, the problems seem to revolve around forgetting to turn off the sprinklers or losing their car keys. I would hope that they do not forget that their dog is in the car on a hot day.
It doesn't make sense to me to devote law enforcement resources and jail space to adult users of cannabis except for when driving a car or piloting an airplane and things like that.
I know someone who had to take hydrocodone regularly to control chronic pain. Now they have switched to cannabis which works for them and there are fewer negative side effects.
Personally, I don't care much for the "high" but certain strains of cannabis in my experience do serve well as muscle relaxers for back or neck muscle spasms, better than prescription drugs like soma or valium, again with fewer undesirable side effects.
The tide is rising in favor of greater acceptance of cannabis for better or worse.
Posted by: tucson | July 13, 2014 at 12:45 PM
[Note, I need to add a comment disclaimer to this comment, which may or may not be an authentic comment from Joshua Marquis, the Clatsop County DA. If it is, Marquis doesn't know how to spell "Politifact."
This person echoes the Oregon Politifact ruling that the marijuana "arrests" reported by the FBI weren't really arrests, but citations. Well, the NY Times has just editorialized in favor of legalizing marijuana nationally. The editorial included a link to the 2012 FBI crime statistics.
Where I read: "The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program counts one arrest for each separate instance in which a person is arrested, cited, or summoned for an offense."
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/persons-arrested/arrestmain.pdf
So it all depends on whether someone is using the FBI definition of "arrest," as New Approach Oregon (the marijuana legalization group) did, or whether someone uses a different definition based on an Oregon-specific definition.
I think New Approach Oregon was justified in using the FBI data and definition of arrest. But here's the comment; you can decide for yourself. -- Blogger Brian]
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Since you say my claims were "debunked" about the fact that 90% of those NEW APPROACH claimed were "arrested" were in fact just cited (like a parking ticket. The OREGONIAN (which seems to have editorially endorsed legalization in the 7/26/14 edition) called NEW APPROACH's claims about arrests "False" when they investigated through Pokitifact
In Oregon, 12,808 people were arrested for marijuana-related crimes in 2012.
New Approach Oregon on Thursday, June 26th, 2014 in a website statement
Were 12,808 people in Oregon arrested for marijuana-related crimes in 2012?
Share this story:
New Approach Oregon, the group campaigning for legal recreational marijuana in the state, has unleashed data aimed at showing how many resources the state uses - or wastes, in its view - to enforce marijuana laws.
The group turned in 145,000 signatures June 26 to get its measure on the November ballot and now is waiting verification from the Secretary of State's Office.
The claim:
In campaign literature and on its website, New Approach Oregon says police "arrested" 12,808 people in 2012 for marijuana-related crimes. The group makes the claim twice in a media packet and two more times in a "Myth vs. Fact" section on its website, newapproachoregon.com.
More than 12,000 in one year? That seemed like a lot, especially since Oregon decriminalized possession of small amounts years ago. We decided to check it out.
The analysis:
As part of its campaign to persuade Oregonians to support legal recreational marijuana, New Approach Oregon has set out to highlight the cost of policing existing marijuana laws.
The group claims that in 2012, the latest statistics available, 12,808 people were arrested in Oregon for marijuana crimes. Here's one of the examples, from a "Myth vs. Fact" section on the group's website:
"Myth: Most of the statistics of marijuana 'arrests and citations' are simple citations. They are like speeding or not signaling the right way. They take very little resources.
"Reality: More than half of the drug-related arrests made in Oregon are for marijuana. (Source: Oregon State Police, page 4-10). In 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, 21,856 people were arrested for drug crimes, and 12,808 of them were for marijuana."
We emailed Lt. Gregg Hastings, the Oregon State Police spokesman, to ask for a breakdown of numbers on marijuana offenses in 2012.
He responded with statistics and a link to the 2012 Oregon Annual Uniform Crime Report, which has comprehensive crime numbers. A table with the heading "Statewide Drug Law Arrests by Type of Drug and Activity - 2012" shows, for marijuana, the number New Approach Oregon cited: 12,808.
But Hastings noted in his email that 10,054 of those people were cited for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana -- "a violation (but) not a criminal offense."
"It is important to note," he continued, "that enforcement action in the case of a 'violation' is handled by the issuance of a citation, similar to a traffic citation for speeding or not wearing a safety belt. Someone cannot be taken into custody and lodged in jail for a violation offense."
In other words, Hastings said, those 10,054 were cited, not arrested. That leaves 2,754 people arrested for marijuana crimes in 2012, not 12,808.
The 10,054 figure is also in the state report, in a row listing those found with less than an ounce of marijuana.
So why is the figure for violations listed under an "arrests" heading? Hastings, after consulting with a state police researcher, said Oregon's report is part of the FBI's national Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which includes information from more than 18,000 agencies nationwide.
Each state must use the FBI's reporting requirements, which have only one field for "arrested, cited, referred, or summoned." Oregon separately tracks whether marijuana offenses involved more or less than an ounce, and includes that in another place in the report.
On July 14, 2014, we called Peter Zuckerman, spokesman for New Approach Oregon and a former news reporter who worked at The Oregonian from 2007 to 2009. He pointed to the Oregon Uniform Crime Report and the "arrests" wording. Told about Hasting's comments, he said he would look into the numbers.
In an email later that day, he stood by the 12,808 figure, saying it was the most accurate available. He said violations can technically be "noncustodial arrests," a term police sometimes use to describe when someone is stopped but not detained.
By then, Hastings had explained to Zuckerman why the 12,808 figure was incorrect. In emails shared by Zuckerman, Hastings wrote on July 7, 2014: "I want to make sure it is clear to you that Possession of less than an Ounce of Marijuana is a violation in Oregon, not a crime. A violation is only handled by issuance of citation (similar to a traffic citation) and someone cannot be taken into custody for a violation. Even though it is listed as an 'arrest' in this report, it is not a 'custodial arrest.'"
On July 8, Hastings sent Zuckerman the legal definition of an arrest in Oregon: "to place a person under actual or constructive restraint or to take a person into custody for the purpose of charging that person with an offense."
Over multiple emails and phone calls to PolitiFact Oregon from July 14-17, 2014, Zuckerman continued to quibble over the definition of "arrest." He sometimes acknowledged that the 12,808 figure is incorrect but other times said "if" it's wrong, it's the fault of Oregon State Police.
He noted that people can be arrested for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana if they're near a school or on parole but did not provide statistics to show what effect, if any, that would have on the 12,808 figure. Hastings said parole violations would be counted elsewhere and that possessing less than an ounce of pot near a school would not necessarily result in an arrest. He also said he doesn't hear of such arrests often.
Ultimately, Zuckerman said New Approach Oregon should not be held responsible for promoting the number because it relied on a credible source - the state police - and followed up when the number seemed inflated.
"If it turns out the state police issued a misleading crime statistics report because of a communications problem they have with the FBI, and then gave me bad information about custodial vs. noncustodial arrest, that's not our fault," Zuckerman wrote. "It's unreasonable to think we would or could have known that."
The claim remained on the organization's website as of Friday afternoon.
The ruling:
New Approach Oregon claims 12,808 people were arrested in 2012 for marijuana-related offenses, citing a "Drug Law Arrests" listing in Oregon's Annual Uniform Crime Report.
State police spokesman Lt. Gregg Hastings told PolitiFact Oregon and New Approach spokesman Peter Zuckerman that the number includes 10,054 people who were cited - but not arrested -- for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana, leaving the actual number of arrests in 2012 at 2,754.
While the way the number is listed in the state report is confusing, officials have clarified the record. Citing it any other way earns it a rating of False.
Thoughts? Questions? Comment on this piece at OregonLive.com.
Posted by: Joshua Marquis | July 26, 2014 at 10:44 AM
I don't know about all the cannabis arrests in Oregon. I'm more concerned about smart-phone use while driving. Someone I know was recently rear-ended by someone fiddling with their damn mobile device. I read that 26% of accidents are now cell-phone related. I'm sure there are other numbers, but this is a problem. Every day I see at least several people screwing up using these things while driving.
How selfish is that?
One woman was straddling two lanes and causing people to swerve to avoid her. I told her she was a menace. She gave me the finger. Typical. Where is the shame and embarrassment for screwing up? People now feel entitled to behave egregiously. Another sign America is sinking.
Posted by: tucson | July 26, 2014 at 10:36 PM