Time to Send in Your Signatures

UPDATE 7/3: The State deadline for signatures is Friday, July 8th. Please allow sufficient time for your petitions to arrive at our headquarters for processing. Given the July 4th holiday, anything being mailed at this point needs to be sent via overnight delivery.

If you’re holding completed or partially completed I-1149 petitions, it’s time to get them back to Sensible Washington headquarters. No amount of signatures is too small. By all means, keep collecting signatures for the next two weeks, but it’s critically important to submit those signatures already collected.

To make things easy, there are several ways to get them back to the mothership:

Contact your local coordinator (Map)
Email petitionreturn@sensiblewashington.org
Mail your petitions in to the address found at the bottom of the petition:

Sensible Washington
PO Box 1184
Seattle, WA 98111-1184

Call our campaign number at 206-707-5502 and arrange pickup.
In the Seattle area? Drop off your petitions in the lobby of The Joint Cooperative in the U-District (Monday-Friday 11-7).

Don’t wait until July. Send those petitions back to us. And thank you for your continued hard work in the fight for freedom.

About I-1149

Help us make cannabis legal in Washington in 2011.

Many people don’t know this, but there are now dispensary-like businesses and cooperatives in Washington where you can obtain tested medical marijuana safely over the counter with a credit card.

Unfortunately, medical marijuana is only available in these kinds of safe environments for those who know the right people and can afford or find a doctor who will make the recommendation.

Sensible Washington intends to fix that. We are organizing a team of 10,000+ activists statewide to gather signatures and place Initiative 1149 on the November 2011 ballot. The initiative is simple: it removes all criminal penalties for possession, use, manufacture or delivery of cannabis among adults and directs the Legislature to create taxation and regulatory system as appropriate.

It makes medicine safely available to patients without having to go to the black market.

Legal strategy: learn from the repeal of prohibition

Why take this simple approach to the initiative?

History shows that the best way to end prohibition is to simply repeal prohibition language. In 1932 Washington was one of the states that repealed prohibition on alcohol through a statewide initiative. The initiative removed all state laws criminalizing alcohol, leaving the Legislature the task of creating regulations, which it did. Their initiative language gave nothing for the Federal Government to attack since it simply removed state prohibition laws and nothing new was being added that would conflict with Federal law.

This is still the best strategy. When trying to legalize a federally controlled substance, there is always the problem of conflict with the supreme law of the land. If we pass code that includes regulation for something that is not allowed federally, the government has the power to trump the law leaving us back at square one, but with our funders and our volunteers demoralized. It could happen immediately or years down the road when a hostile Federal administration takes power.

Polling and political strategy

Polling this year affirms that we can win in Washington as soon as legalization is put to the popular vote. Washington is one of the best polling states in the country for legalizing cannabis, with 52% of the public in favor of legalizing marijuana and only 35% opposed statewide.

Looking at the bigger picture, it makes sense nationally as well as locally to repeal prohibition in Washington in 2011. National legalization organizations are gearing up for a big push in 2012. Their resources could be used in tougher states if Washington were to legalize in 2011 and no resources were then needed here in 2012. Sensible Washington can get on the ballot with minimal funding because of the breadth of our volunteer base. Plus, if Washington State does not have an initiative running in 2011, the issue will be quiet for a year at a time when we need to make it louder. An early victory in Washington would be a powerful precedent in the 2012 elections for other states.

But there is another reason to proceed in 2011. This issue is just too urgent to wait until it’s a sure thing. We all know the terrible toll of marijuana prohibition– 15,000 arrests in Washington every year, $100 million-plus of tax dollars wasted, dying medical patients being prosecuted for medical use, organ transplants denied to legitimate medical cannabis patients, people losing their children. . . We lawyers see the dark side of prohibition in our work.

We can’t allow this to go on. Many of us have been fighting to protect people in the courts, and some of us have even made our livings defending marijuana cases, but the time is right to fix the problem. We can’t wait any longer to repeal prohibition knowing that every year, 15,000 people will be harmed and that the public supports us now.

Sensible Washington is already on the ground recruiting and mobilizing thousands of grass-roots activists, developing our cutting edge online networking technology, keeping the issue alive in the press, and filling positions in our vast campaign infrastructure.

During the 2010 effort, our I-1068 initiative got 2/3 of the required signatures with a base of 1,500 activists and little money. Next year, we’ll be starting with 10,000 people or more. We have the early endorsement of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and many others. We anticipate beginning signature gathering in January or February of 2011.

Give back some of the money you’ve made from pot prohibition.

If you believe in this cause, now is the time to support it. You know firsthand just how dysfunctional prohibition is. Dig Deep. This year your dollars will actually make a difference.

Click here to give online or to mail a check or credit card contribution in the address listed there.

Thank you and we look forward to your response!

Jeffrey Steinborn – Initiative Co-sponsor

Douglas Hiatt – Initiative Co-author

In days, we could finally see the beginning of the end of the ‘war on drugs’. This expensive war has completely failed to curb the plague of drug addiction, while costing countless lives, devastating communities, and funneling trillions of dollars into violent organized crime networks.

Experts all agree that the most sensible policy is to regulate, but politicians are afraid to touch the issue. In days, a global commission including former heads of state and foreign policy chiefs of the UN, EU, US, Brazil, Mexico and more will break the taboo and publicly call for new approaches including decriminalization and regulation of drugs.

This could be a once-in-a-generation tipping-point moment — if enough of us call for an end to this madness. Politicians say they understand that the war on drugs has failed, but claim the public isn’t ready for an alternative. Let’s show them we not only accept a sane and humane policy — we demand it. Click below to sign the petition and share with everyone –if we reach 1 million voices, it will be personally delivered to world leaders by the global commission:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_on_drugs/?cl=1081433951&v=9209

For 50 years current drug policies have failed everyone, everywhere but public debate is stuck in the mud of fear and misinformation. Everyone, even the UN Office on Drugs and Crime which is responsible for enforcing this approach agrees — deploying militaries and police to burn drug farms, hunting down traffickers, and imprisoning dealers and addicts – is an expensive mistake. And with massive human cost — from Afghanistan, to Mexico, to the USA the illegal drug trade is destroying countries around the world, while addiction, overdose deaths, and HIV/AIDS infections continue to rise.

Meanwhile, countries with less-harsh enforcement — like Switzerland, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Australia — have not seen the explosion in drug use that proponents of the drug war have darkly predicted. Instead, they have seen significant reductions in drug-related crime, addiction and deaths, and are able to focus squarely on dismantling criminal empires.

Powerful lobbies still stand in the way of change, including military, law enforcement, and prison departments whose budgets are at stake. And politicians fear that voters will throw them out of office if they support alternative approaches, as they will appear weak on law and order. But many former drugs Ministers and Heads of State have come out in favour of reform since leaving office, and polls show that citizens across the world know the current approach is a catastrophe. Momentum is gathering towards new improved policies, particularly in regions that are ravaged by the drug trade.

If we can create a worldwide outcry in the next few days to support the bold calls of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, we can overpower the stale excuses for the status quo. Our voices hold the key to change — Sign the petition and spread the word http://www.avaaz.org/en/end_the_war_on_drugs/?cl=1081433951&v=9209

We have a chance to enter the closing chapter of this brutal ‘war’ that has destroyed millions of lives. Global public opinion will determine if this catastrophic policy is stopped or if politicians shy away from reform. Let’s rally urgently to push our hesitating leaders from doubt and fear, over the edge, and into reason.

With hope and determination,

Alice, Laura, Ricken, Maria Paz, Shibayan and the whole Avaaz team