Pro-marijuana campaign looks ahead after 2012 victories

1 of 3. A marijuana starter plant is for sale at Canna Pi medical marijuana dispensary in Seattle, Washington in this November 20, 2012 file photograph. The passage of the ballot measures in Colorado and Washington state in November 2012 allowed personal possession of the drug for people 21 and older. That same age group will be allowed to buy the drug at special marijuana stores under rules set to be finalized next year in 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Anthony Bolante/Files

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES | Sun Dec 30, 2012 5:14pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After a decades-long campaign to legalize marijuana hit a high mark in 2012 with victories in Washington state and Colorado, its energized and deep-pocketed backers are mapping out a strategy for the next round of ballot-box battles.

They have their sights set on ballot measures in 2014 or 2016 in states such as California and Oregon, which were among the first in the country to allow marijuana for medical use. Although those states more recently rejected broader legalization, drug-law reform groups remain undeterred.

"Legalization is more or less repeating the history of medical marijuana," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "If you want to know which states are most likely to legalize marijuana, then look at the states that were the first to legalize medical marijuana."

The passage of the ballot measures in Colorado and Washington state in November allowed personal possession of the drug for people 21 and older. That same age group will be allowed to buy the drug at special marijuana stores under rules set to be finalized next year.

No other states have legalized marijuana, America's most widely used illicit drug, for recreational use. The drug remains illegal under federal law. Connecticut and Massachusetts also approved medical marijuana in 2012.

The efforts in Washington and Colorado demonstrated significant funding might.

The Drug Policy Alliance spent more than $1.6 million as one of the main funders of the Washington state campaign. Peter Lewis, chairman of insurance company Progressive Corp, gave $2.5 million to the Washington campaign, and travel guide author Rick Steves chipped in another $350,000, according to records.

Ahead of the Colorado vote, the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, which has been active in campaigns around the country, gave about $1 million to the effort, state records show.

A big question mark hangs over whether the pro-legalization momentum could be slowed if the federal government takes an aggressive stance against the new laws.

The U.S. Department of Justice has been mostly silent on the issue. President Barack Obama said in a TV interview this month it did not make sense for the federal government to "focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that, under state law, that's legal."

CHANGING TIDE?

In 1996, California became the first state to allow medical marijuana by a popular vote, and Oregon and Washington state were part of a second wave in 1998. But Oregon rejected a marijuana legalization ballot measure in November, while California voters did the same in 1972 and 2010.

The 2010 ballot measure in California failed to sway voters because it would have left regulation to a hodgepodge of local governments, instead of a uniform set of state rules, said Dale Gieringer, director of the California branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

This month, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom became one of America's top state officials to call for reform of marijuana laws when he told the New York Times that laws against the drug "just don't make sense anymore."

Activists say they see demographic changes as giving them an advantage.

"We know that the younger generation is more supportive and the opposition really comes from the older generation. And as time goes on there's more of the younger generation and less of the older generation," Gieringer said.

"The second factor is we have these results in Colorado and Washington under our belt, so that sort of fertilizes the ground," he added.

One key point marijuana advocates are thrashing out is whether to pursue any ballot initiative in 2014, or wait until the presidential election of 2016, when the turnout of their reliable base of youth voters will likely be higher.

Regardless of when a ballot initiative might come to California, the nation's most populous state, groups opposing legalization vow to defeat it.

One of those is the California Police Chiefs Association.

"I have yet to hear a legalization proponent talk about how society will be enhanced, how the real social problems facing our country will be improved by legalizing yet another substance that compromises people's five senses," said John Lovell, government relations manager for the group.

A number of addiction specialists say that where marijuana is legalized, teenagers will come to believe the drug is harmless and more will use it.

Medical marijuana is already big business in California. The state Board of Equalization in its most recent analysis from 2009 estimated medical cannabis dispensaries ring up sales of $1.3 billion a year and pay sales taxes of $105 million.

(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Edith Honan, David Brunnstrom and Steve Orlofsky)

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New York newspaper to list more gun permit holders after uproar

A small portion of guns that were turned in by their owners are stacked inside a truck at a gun buyback held by the Los Angeles Police Department in Los Angeles, California, December 26, 2012

Credit: Reuters/David McNew

By Noreen O'Donnell

NEW YORK | Sat Dec 29, 2012 7:05am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A suburban New York newspaper that sparked an uproar among gun enthusiasts by publishing names and addresses of residents holding pistol permits is now planning to publish even more identities of permit-toting locals.

Further names and addresses will be added as they become available to a map originally published on December 24 in the White Plains, New York-based Journal News, the newspaper said.

The original map listed thousands of pistol permit holders in suburban Westchester and Rockland counties just north of New York City.

Along with an article entitled "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," the map was compiled in response to the December 14 shooting deaths of 26 children and adults in Newtown, Connecticut, editors of the Gannett Corp.-owned newspaper said.

The next batch of names will be permit holders in suburban Putnam County, New York, where the county clerk told the newspaper it is still compiling information.

Some 44,000 people are licensed to own pistols in the three counties, the newspaper said. Owners of rifles and shotguns do not need permits, the newspaper said.

The publication prompted outrage, particularly on social media sites, among gun owners.

"Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves?" Rob Seubert of Silver Spring, Maryland, posted on the newspaper's web site. "What a bunch of liberal boobs you all are."

Republican state Senator Greg Ball of Patterson, New York, said he planned to introduce legislation to keep permit information private except to prosecutors and police.

A similar bill that he introduced earlier as an Assemblyman failed in the state Assembly.

"The asinine editors at the Journal News have once again gone out of their way to place a virtual scarlet letter on law abiding firearm owners throughout the region," Ball wrote on his Senate web site.

The newspaper's editor and vice president of news, CynDee Royle, earlier in the week defended the decision to list the permit holders.

"We knew publication of the database would be controversial, but we felt sharing as much information as we could about gun ownership in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings," she said.

Some critics retaliated by posting reporters' and editors' addresses and other personal information online.

Howard Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, called the critics' response childish and petulant.

"It doesn't move the issue of gun control to the level of intelligent public discussion," he said. "Instead, it transforms what should be a rational public debate on a contentious issue into ugly gutter fighting."

Good said the information about permit holders was public and, if presented in context, served a legitimate interest.

But media critic Al Tompkins of the Florida-based Poynter Institute wrote online this week that the newspaper's reporting had not gone far enough to justify the permit holders' loss of privacy.

"If journalists could show flaws in the gun permitting system, that would be newsworthy," he said. "Or, for example, if gun owners were exempted from permits because of political connections, then journalists could better justify the privacy invasion."

Tompkins said he feared the dispute might prompt lawmakers to play to privacy fears.

"The net effect of the abuse of public records from all sides may well be a public distaste for opening records, which would be the biggest mistake of all," he said.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by David Gregorio)

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Winter storm bears down on Midwest after dumping snow on Rockies

By Mary Wisniewski

CHICAGO | Wed Dec 19, 2012 8:53pm EST

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A major U.S. winter storm, which started Tuesday in the Rocky Mountains, could dump more than a foot of snow in some areas of the central Plains late Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.

"It has evolved into a full-fledged blizzard around the Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas border area," said Alex Sosnowski, meteorologist for Accuweather.com. "It's a pretty nasty storm."

The storm marks a major change from the mild December so far in most of the nation. Many parts of the country could see a White Christmas. More storms are expected in the middle of next week.

Winds as high as 66 miles per hour (106 km per hour) were blowing dust and sand in western Texas, causing a string of traffic accidents along Interstate 27 north of Lubbock on Wednesday afternoon. More than 20 cars were involved in accidents that killed one person and injured 17 others along a 5-mile (8-km) stretch of road.

Corporal John Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the fatality involved a semi-trailer crashing with a sports utility vehicle, killing the person in the SUV.

The injuries to the other 17 people were minor to moderate, he said.

"You could hear them in the dirt" crashing, Gonzalez said. "But you couldn't see them. You couldn't see nothing out there. Couldn't see the front hood of your vehicle."

In western Nebraska, the State Patrol closed a 146-mile portion of Interstate 80 between Kearney and Ogallala Wednesday evening because blowing snow reduced visibility and caused treacherous driving conditions.

The patrol said extremely dangerous weather conditions were forecast through the overnight hours across a good portion of the state, and travel was not recommended.

WHITE CHRISTMAS?

In Colorado, Interstate 70 was closed east of Denver to the Kansas state line due to high winds blowing snow into drifts and reducing visibility, said Mindy Crane, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Several other roads in eastern Colorado were closed because of the blizzard conditions, she said.

Crane said a stretch of Interstate 70 in the mountains near the ski resort of Vail was closed temporarily on Wednesday so crews could do work to prevent avalanches.

Blizzard warnings have been issued Wednesday in parts of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, meteorologists said.

The heaviest snow is falling at a rate of up to an inch per hour in parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado. The worst of the blizzard is expected to hit communities from Omaha, Nebraska, to Green Bay, Wisconsin, Wednesday night into late Thursday, according to Accuweather.com.

In Chicago, the storm is expected to begin as rain and later change to snow Thursday, Sosnowski said.

Heavy snow and high winds were expected anywhere from the central plains into the Midwest/Great Lakes regions through much of the day Thursday, the National Weather Service said. Hazardous travel conditions were expected through Thursday and into early Friday.

Moisture off the Gulf of Mexico is expected to cause rain in the lower Mississippi River Valley Thursday, pushing east into the southeastern states Friday.

In the West, a system along the Pacific coast will bring scattered snow and rain showers into the northwestern states, according to the weather service. Over a foot of snow is expected in the higher elevations of the Washington Cascades and upper Rockies.

(Additional reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver and Matthew Waller in San Angelo, Texas; Reporting By Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Greg McCune, Bob Burgdorfer and Lisa Shumaker)

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Biden to head gun policy push after Newtown shootings

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden waves as he arrives at the Benito Juarez International airport in Mexico City, November 30, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Eduardo Verdugo/Pool

By Mark Felsenthal

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 19, 2012 6:08am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will announce on Wednesday that Vice President Joe Biden will lead an effort to come up with policies to address gun violence amid calls for action following the massacre of 26 people including 20 children in a Connecticut elementary school last week.

The president is not expected to announce policy decisions but rather lay out the process by which his administration will move forward, White House aides said.

Obama has turned to Biden in the past to take a role in high-profile policy initiatives, such as efforts to seek a deficit-reduction compromise with congressional Republicans in 2011.

Biden's mission - to coordinate a process among government agencies to formulate policies in the wake of the Newtown shootings - comes just days after an event that appears to have generated a national outcry for greater efforts to stem gun violence.

The Connecticut massacre was the fourth shooting rampage to claim multiple lives in the United States this year.

The president issued a call to action at a memorial service in Newtown on Sunday, demanding changes to the way the United States deals with gun violence. Obama said that in coming weeks he would "use whatever power this office" holds to start efforts to preventing further such tragedies.

However, gun control has been a low priority for most U.S. politicians due to the widespread popularity of guns in America and the clout of the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun industry lobby.

The constitutional right to bear arms is seen by many Americans as set in stone, and even after mass shootings, politicians have tiptoed around specific steps to limit access to lethal weapons.

Even so, the horror of the Newtown killings, in which a 20-year-old man killed 6- and 7-year-old children and their teachers in their classrooms before taking his own life, has provoked an apparent change of heart in some politicians who have previously opposed gun control.

One such lawmaker is Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The gun rights advocate said he would now be open to more regulation of military-style rifles like the one used in Newtown. Obama spoke with him on Tuesday, the White House said.

The White House spelled out some gun control measures on Tuesday that Obama would support.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would back U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's effort to reinstate an assault weapons ban. The president also would favor any law to close a loophole related to gun-show sales, he said.

Efforts to limit high-capacity gun ammunition clips would be another area of interest, Carney said.

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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After Newtown, California pushes for tighter gun controls

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES | Tue Dec 18, 2012 8:33pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California lawmakers, seizing on new calls for gun controls following the massacre of 26 people at a Connecticut elementary school, rolled out proposals on Tuesday to close loopholes in the state's assault weapons ban and restrict ammunition sales.

The moves quickly put California at the forefront of what was expected to be a new wave of proposed firearm restrictions at the state and federal levels in the wake of the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

State Senator Leland Yee introduced a bill that would prohibit gun owners from fitting semi-automatic weapons with devices, known as "bullet buttons" or "mag magnets," that allow them to be easily reloaded with multiple rounds of ammunition.

The San Francisco Democrat's measure would also prohibit add-on kits that allow high-capacity magazines. He said he was drafting legislation that would require yearly background checks for gun ownership and toughen safety requirements.

His action came as state Senator Kevin De Leon, a Democrat from Los Angeles, said he would introduce a bill this week requiring ammunition buyers in the nation's most populous state to obtain a permit issued by the U.S. Department of Justice.

"For too long, too much ground has been ceded in the debate about reasonable gun and ammunition control," De Leon said in a statement. "In honor of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims and thousands who have preceded them, we must not capitulate any longer."

A gunman carrying a semi-automatic rifle and two handguns opened fire on Friday at the Connecticut school, killing 20 young students and six adults in a crime that stunned Americans and renewed calls for stricter gun controls.

De Leon said the one-year, $50 permit, which would require a background check by the Justice Department, aimed to combat the easy accessibility of ammunition.

California gun laws are already among the toughest in the nation, topping a list compiled by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The state has banned most assault weapons, requires sales be made by a licensed dealer, including at gun shows, and imposes a 10-day waiting period, among other regulations.

DEMOCRATS SEE AN OPENING

But Yee told Reuters in an interview that he and other Democrats believe more can be done.

"We're looking at yearly registration, background checks of individuals who own guns. We're looking at saying to gun owners, ‘You've got to keep these guns locked up when you are not using them or not cleaning them, and that you need to put trigger locks on all of these weapons,'" he said.

Democrats won a two-thirds majority in both houses of California's legislature in November, giving them even greater clout in a body that they have long dominated. Governor Jerry Brown is also a Democrat.

Yee acknowledged that some Democrats in the state legislature were "sensitive" to the National Rifle Association but said that with a Democratic supermajority, chances for more gun control legislation have improved.

The NRA said on Tuesday it wanted to contribute meaningfully to prevent another massacre like the Connecticut shootings, suggesting a sharp change in tone for the largest U.S. gun-rights group.

Meanwhile, California Treasurer Bill Lockyer on Monday asked CalPERS and CalSTRS, the state's public pension funds, to account for their investments in gun manufacturers. Lockyer, a Democrat, proposed they divest interests in companies that make guns that are illegal under a state assault weapons ban.

Lockyer also left open the possibility of extending the move to gun sellers, as well as gun makers.

"We are not precluding the possibility of extending a divestment move to the retail sector, but right now we are focused on the source, which is the manufacturers," Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar said.

CalSTRS, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, said it was reviewing its investment with Cerberus Capital Management LP, following the massacre in Newtown. Cerberus owns Bushmaster Firearms International, maker of the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle used in the Newtown shooting.

And in Washington, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said she would introduce federal legislation this week to outlaw the high-capacity magazines and military-style assault rifles that have been used in many shooting rampages, including the one in Newtown.

Police say 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy, at her home on Friday before shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and opening fire on students and adults. He shot himself to death following the rampage, authorities say.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Peter Henderson in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Beech)

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