{"id":57,"date":"2016-09-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calchurches.planetpov.com\/impact\/index.php\/2016\/09\/14\/proposition-64-marijuana-legalization-initiative-statute-yes\/"},"modified":"2016-09-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T00:00:00","slug":"proposition-64-marijuana-legalization-initiative-statute-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/2016\/09\/14\/proposition-64-marijuana-legalization-initiative-statute-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"PROPOSITION 64 Marijuana Legalization. Initiative Statute\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 YES"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

This proposition allows people 21 years old or older to possess, cultivate, or transport small amounts of marijuana for personal use. It permits local governments to regulate and tax commercial production and sale of marijuana to people 21 years old or older. It also maintains current prohibitions against driving while impaired. It protects children, workers cultivating and processing marijuana, small growers against corporate farming, protects the environment from abusive growers.
No one wishes to have a society in which people feel impelled to use harmful or addictive substances for self-soothing.\u00a0 America has a high rate of addictive behavior in their uses of alcohol, tobacco, food, gambling, sex, and other media to ease their psychic pains.\u00a0 Adding another legal though regulated component, marijuana, seems contrary to ending this problem.\u00a0 Addiction exists, legal or not, and it is far more likely that we can reduce addiction by eliminating the underground economy that has a rabid profit motive to sweep users into its clutches.
Marijuana is a fact of life in every community despite its illegality.\u00a0\u00a0 Prohibition has not stopped the use of marijuana, but it has added a culture of criminality identical to what occurred in alcohol prohibition during the 1920s.\u00a0 It has spawned large gangs who make millions in the cultivation and transportation of the drug and is a significant portion of the dreadful drug cartel actions along our state\u2019s border with Mexico.\u00a0 The toll at the border and within our cities, the death and destruction of lives over competition to sell marijuana, must end.\u00a0 Prohibition has inflicted far more harm than the marijuana itself.\u00a0 We, as people of faith, bear the same responsibility doctors do:\u00a0 first do not harm.\u00a0 When the \u201csolution\u201d outweighs the problem in terms of death and violence, we must alleviate that harm.
Marijuana has been called a \u201cgateway drug\u201d leading users into far more dangerous drug uses.\u00a0 But we believe the \u201cgateway\u201d is not the drug itself but the culture of criminality in which users must buy and consume marijuana that leads them to associate with pushers and gangs who profit from first selling marijuana, then in increasing the drug use with more and different substances.\u00a0
Another critical reason for support for decriminalization of marijuana lies in much of the same reasoning that the NAACP brings to their support of this proposition \u2013 penalties for marijuana possession and use have fallen in discriminatory ways on especially people of color. Legalization of marijuana would result in charging minors with simple underage consumption, as we do with alcohol and tobacco.\u00a0 They should not be placed into a criminal drug culture and into prison because they lack adult judgment on these matters.
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One argument for continuing as we are has been that people with addiction problems can receive mandated treatment via the drug diversion policies mandated by Proposition 36 that the state passed some years ago. However, with state budget crises, funding for diversion has been cut to the bone, drug courts have been markedly reduced.\u00a0 Proposition 64 increases drug prevention and treatment funding\u00a0 We supported Proposition 19\u00a0 and support Proposition 64 as a step toward ending the violence and death of the drug wars and cartels and to end discriminatory drug sentencing.\u00a0 It is the rational way to deal with a substance that already infuses our society.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
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This proposition allows people 21 years old or older to possess, cultivate, or transport small amounts of marijuana for personal use. It permits local governments … Read More ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}