By Alex Dobuzinskis
Jan 5 (Reuters) – Retired Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is holding aim during what he sees as knee-jerk support for pot legalization among his associate liberals, in a devise that carries special definition for a self-confessed former Oxycontin addict.
Kennedy, 45, a Democrat and younger son of a late “Lion of a Senate” Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, is heading a organisation called Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) that opposes legalization and seeks to arise above America’s enlightenment quarrel over pot with a images of long-haired hippies battling law-and-order conservatives.
Project proposals embody increasing appropriation for mental health courts and diagnosis of drug dependency, so those held regulating pot competence equivocate incarceration, get assistance and potentially have their rapist annals cleared.
Kennedy wants cancer patients and others with critical illnesses to be means to obtain drugs with cannabinoids, though in a some-more regulated proceed that could engage a U.S. Food and Drug Administration personification a incomparable role.
The eight-term former congressman from Rhode Island and a organisation he chairs will put onward their devise on Wednesday with a media coming in Denver.
Their efforts follow a Nov choosing that saw electorate in Washington state and Colorado turn a initial in a republic to approve measures to taxation and umpire pot sales for recreational use. Kennedy’s organisation is seeking to change a discuss and retrieve transformation for a anti-legalization movement, in partial by proposing new solutions with interest to liberals, such as holding a open health proceed to quarrel pot use.
Legalization backers have argued that a supposed War on Drugs launched in 1971 by former President Richard Nixon has unsuccessful to branch pot use, and has instead saddled differently law-abiding pot smokers with rapist annals that competence retard their avenues to alighting a successful job.
Kennedy faults a U.S. supervision for allocating too many of a $25 billion drug control bill to law coercion rather than to diagnosis and prevention.
“Yes, a drug quarrel has been a failure, though let’s demeanour during a scholarship and let’s demeanour during what works. And let’s not only chuck out a baby with a bathwater,” Kennedy, who served in a U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2011, pronounced in a write interview.
The U.S. Department of Justice is still building a process in courtesy to a new state legalization measures.
President Barack Obama pronounced in an talk with ABC News final month that it did not make clarity for a sovereign supervision to “focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already pronounced that, underneath state law, that’s legal.”
BIPARTISAN APPROACH
Conservative domestic commentator David Frum, a debate author for former President George W. Bush, is also a house member on Project SAM, that lends it a bipartisan flavor.
For his part, Kennedy is aiming many of his arguments toward liberals like himself. Polls uncover Democrats mostly bearing legalizing marijuana, and among a 18 states that concede medical marijuana, several are in a West and Northeast and are heavily Democratic.
“The fact is people are fearful on a (political) left to demeanour like they’re not for an choice to bonds and criminalization, and they’re fearful they’re not going to demeanour sensitive to a cancer patient” who competence use marijuana, Kennedy said. As a result, he pronounced a legalization position incorrectly comes to be seen as “glamorous.”
Kennedy admits to carrying smoked pot though also pronounced that, as an asthma sufferer, he “found other ways to get high.”
In 2006, he crashed his automobile into a confidence separator in Washington, D.C., and shortly after sought diagnosis for drug dependency. He pronounced he was dependant to a pain reliever Oxycontin during that time and suffered from alcoholism. He combined that he has been invariably solemn for scarcely dual years.
Kennedy, who was married for a initial time in 2011, pronounced he worries his 8-month-old son competence be compliant to drug abuse – due to a kind of genetic “trigger” – and that is partial of his quarrel opposite legalization.
He also pronounced he wants to “reduce a environmental factors that lift that trigger,” such as pot use being ordinarily accepted.
Meanwhile, another distinguished figure from Rhode Island, a newly crowned Miss Universe Olivia Culpo, is creation waves by also objecting to legalization. She told Fox News this week there are “too many bad habits that go with a drug.”
In Washington state, Alison Holcomb was debate executive for a legalization measure, that billed itself as carrying a open health component to assistance people contingent on marijuana.
The measure, that is not set to go into full outcome until after state regulators spend many of 2013 environment guidelines, would concede adults 21 and comparison to buy pot during special stores.
Holcomb argued that drug dependency courts are some-more geared toward users of hardcore drugs, and that a proceed her organisation put brazen is a essential one.
“I don’t know what a open health proceed but legalization looks like, if you’re still impediment people,” she said.
Taxes on pot sales would generate, during a high finish of estimates, over $500 million a year with $67 million of that going to a state group that provides drug treatment, pronounced Mark Cooke, process confidant for a American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state, that upheld a campaign.
Also enclosed in a taxation income would be $44 million for preparation and open health campaigns – including a phone line for people wanting to quit regulating marijuana, Cooke said. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Gunna Dickson)
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Arizona
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California
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Colorado
Also ratified possession by non-medical users.
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Connecticut
District Of Columbia
a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigberto/2770838680/” target=”_hplink”Flickr: ~MVI~ (off to coron)/a
Delaware
Flickr: a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/dougtone/7749689644/”Doug Kerr/a
Hawaii
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Maine
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Massachusetts
Passed list beginning in 2012.
Michigan
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Montana
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Nevada
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New Jersey
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New Mexico
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Oregon
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Rhode Island
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Vermont
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Washington
Also ratified possession by non-medical users.
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