Search Results: hiatt (31)

The Seattle Times

Washington’s I-502 ‘Legalization’: Don’t Fall For This Narrow Proposal

By Douglas Hiatt
Sensible Washington
Washington voters are being told a big lie. New Approach Washington, the campaign behind Initiative 502, is advertising that it will “legalize” marijuana. It would not.
It creates a very narrow exception that defines the possession of one ounce by adults over 21, and the state’s rules for production, as “not a violation” of the law.

Seattle filmmaker Josef Wilke is doing a documentary on Washington state Initiative 502, Local Voices: I-502, a voter initiative regulating the sale of marijuana which will be on November’s general election ballot.

“We are attempting to show the entire story of I-502,” Wilke told Toke of the Town in an exclusive interview. “We want to balance the media coverage which has ignored the DUI legislation and other concerns, specifically medical marijuana patients’ concerns.”

“Our documentary is not going to make a difference in the November 6 election,” Wilke said. “In fact, it is going to be more about what happens after the election.”

“I-502 seems to be marching to a victory,” Wilke said. “We intend to release our film in April of 2013. We want to document the promises that are being made b y the campaign to address legitimate concerns and hold them to account as we gauge the reactions and of actions by both our state and federal governments.”

Wilke is working through local Seattle video production company Confluent VideoMedia, owned by Tim Sheehan. Tim is producer for the film.

Toke of the Town got a chance to ask Wilke and Sheehan a few questions about the 502 documentary.

 

Northwest Leaf

No On I-502 says that New Approach Washington is using a McCarthy-style campaign, employing their considerable financial resources, complicit members of the media and influential local political connections to misinform the public regarding the specific issues surrounding the group’s opposition to I-502, a marijuana “legalization” initiative on the November general election ballot.

The “No On I-502” Committee has announced a Wednesday press conference “to clarify, once and for all, our opposition to I-502 and to debunk the propaganda from NAW, and some in the press, that we represent some mysterious, greedy group of marijuana business interests that they’ve failed to specifically identify.”

Speakers at the press conference will include top marijuana attorneys Jeffrey Steinborn, Aaron Pelley and Douglas Hiatt, who will address the facts surrounding both legalization issues and the “per se” DUID provisions of I-502, including the dramatic impact this law will have on tens of thousands of voters in Washington state.

MyNorthwest.com
Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes: Did he pull the trigger on Thursday’s DEA letters? Our source says yes.

Were medical marijuana dispensaries targeted for opposing I-502, which is sponsored by Seattle’s city attorney?

The Drug Enforcement Administration letters sent out to 23 Seattle-area medical marijuana access points on Thursday are already stinking to high heaven, just over 24 hours later, as allegations of improper influence cloud the air.

According to Toke of the Town‘s well-placed source in the Washington cannabis community, Seattle Attorney Pete Holmes saw, at Hempfest, the strong opposition to Washington state Initiative 502, the “legalization” measure with a strict and unscientific DUI provision that has torn the community asunder. And, according to this version of events, Pete decided he really didn’t like the medical marijuana industry very much.
Our source tells us that when Holmes got home from Hempfest, still smarting from public relations drubbing the No On 502 folks handed the Yes team at the protestival, he allegedly influenced his good friend U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan to send the letters which went out to dispensaries on Thursday.

Jon Miller
Sensible Washington organizer and attorney Douglas Hiatt, right, fires up activists before a marijuana march in downtown Bremerton, Washington, earlier this month

Sensible Washington Announces Paid Signature Gatherers in Bremerton, Washington 
Sensible Washington on Monday announced that several “gracious and anonymous donors” have agreed to pay signature gatherers $1 per valid signature, “to assure we get our Bremerton initiative on this November’s ballot.”
This initiative would make cannabis the lowest enforcement priority within the city, as well as ban the city from cooperating with the federal government in the implementation of federal cannabis policies (federal non-cooperation).

Steve Hunter/Kent Reporter
A woman opposes the Kent City Council’s proposed ban on medical marijuana dispensaries and collective gardens prior to a May 14 Council committee meeting. The full council votes June 5 on the ban, which is expected to pass.


By Anthony Martinelli
Sensible Washington

“We’re getting dozens and dozens of phone calls and emails and most are from medical marijuana patients…. The number in favor [of the ban]I can count on one finger.”
This is a quote from Kent City Council President Dennis Higgins, in an interview with the Kent Reporter,  in regards to the council’s plan to ban all medical cannabis safe access points within the city. 
The vote is scheduled for Tuesday, June 5, and the ban is seen as a sure thing: The vote is planned to fall at 4-3, according to Higgins in the same interview. 

Images
Could this have been what I-502 proponent Roger Roffman was thinking about when he said “It is injurious to young people and their families. There are people who are victims of marijuana”?

By Philip Dawdy
Cannabis Activist
A debate on the merits of I-502 was held on May 8th at a theatre in Monroe in Snohomish County. About 100 people attended and they were treated to one of the initiatives main sponsors, Roger Roffman who is a social work professor at the University of Washington, calling cannabis “injurious.” So why is he a sponsor of an initiative that would make it legal for adults 21 and older to buy, possess and consume one ounce of cannabis?
Roffman explained that he thinks we can do better as a society in addressing the “harms” of cannabis by bringing it into a public health model of control and working to educate and discourage people from using it. Yes, one of the main proponents of the initiative said this.

Patients Against I-502

The Unraveling of Dominic Holden
By Lee Rosenberg
The New Approach Washington campaign turned in its signatures this week for Initiative 502. This initiative would legalize personal possession of up to one ounce of marijuana and regulate the distribution and sale of the drug to anyone over 21 [in Washington state]. It also introduces a per se DUI limit for “active” THC – in layman’s terms, the amount of “unprocessed” THC in your body.
Over at Slog, Dominic Holden continues to lash out at the folks in the medical marijuana community who oppose it – primarily due to the DUI provisions. I’ve been trying to stay out of this fight for my own sanity, but Holden’s anger is so misdirected (and misinformed), I have to speak up.

The Weed Blog

​Marijuana advocates in Washington state have had a long, hard battle to get as far as they’ve come in the 13 years since voters legalized cannabis for medicinal uses back in 1998. But I-502, a new tax-and-regulate initiative — which appears to have enough signatures to be on the November 2012 ballot — is apparently not a banner under which all legalization proponents are willing to unite.

The widening schism in the Evergreen State’s pot community was on display recently when activists dressed in prison stripes were tossed out of Cataldo Hall at Gonzaga University in Spokane, reports Kevin Graman at The Spokesman-Review.
Travel writer and TV host Rick Steves was there to deliver a speech, and members of the November Coalition, a foundation opposing the Drug War, showed up to express opposition to Steves’ support for I-502.

Profile Kiss

​Washington state medical marijuana patients and advocates find themselves in an odd position this year. New Approach Washington’s I-502, a legalization initiative, is doing quite well gathering voter signatures, and just received a major cash infusion. But every rose has its thorn: The happiness activists would otherwise feel about expanded access to cannabis is tempered by concern at the harsh DUI provisions contained in the measure, as well as the prohibitions on home cultivation and on possession of more than one ounce at the time.

The ACLU-backed initiative is getting $100,000 this week from philanthropist Harriet Bullitt, and it expects to have $200,000 more from Progressive Insurance Chairman Peter Lewis, who has already given $50,000 to NAW, reports Gene Johnson at The Associated Press.
I-502 would remove criminal penalties for possession of up to an ounce for people 21 and older. Marijuana would be sold in state-licensed stores under the auspices of the Washington Liquor Control Board, and taxed at 25 percent.

NAW has two months left in which to collect enough signatures to qualify for the November 2012 ballot, but seems to be sitting pretty in that regard. With more than 180,000 signatures already gathered, principally by paid workers from California, I-502 needs 241,000 valid voter sigs to qualify, reports Curtis Cartier at Seattle Weekly
1 2 3 4