MEDICINAL CANNABIS TRIUMPHS IN CALIFORNIA, ARIZONA!

It certainly appeared bleak and hopeless on the election night, the 2-nd of November 2010. A thick blanket of “darkness” seemed to be descending on most of the country, with medicinal cannabis rights appearing ready to be drowned by the rising wave of ignorance and intolerance. In Arizona, Proposition 203 to legalize medicinal cannabis appeared to be narrowly defeated, while in California the current L.A. District Attorney and implacable enemy of Medicinal Cannabis rights, the rabid prohibitionist Steve Cooley, even felt it possible to declare his own victory in his bid for the Office of the State Attorney General and to schedule a morning press conference when he would gleefully announce his “plans of action” in strangling the State medicinal cannabis industry! CA Proposition 19, seeking to Legalize small Cannabis possessions for responsible adults 21 and over appeared to be losing narrowly, but losing nonetheless! All the hard work for months and months preceding this election seemed to be going straight down the drain.

But the forces of reason proved to be much more resilient than that. Kamala Harris, a San Francisco D.A. who is running as a Democrat for the California State Attorney General Office, refused to concede the election following Cooley’s bombastic and certainly premature proclamation of victory, and on the morning of November 3 she was leading by something like 15,000 votes! A very small, very uncertain, very vulnerable lead in the State the size of California, but a lead nevertheless! A small flicker of hope refusing to be put out! To be sure, Kamala Harris pledged to work with the State medicinal cannabis industry within the State Law, and she is also opposed the unconstitutional Proposition 8 that would make Gay inequality permanent. Cooley, on the other hand, gave his full support to Prop. 8 and even pledged to support it in court! At about 2 am Eastern time Kamala Harris appeared to her supporters in a company of her friend, an openly Gay California Senator Marc Leno, the author of Bill 1449 decriminalizing small cannabis possessions in California that was signed into Law on September 30, 2010 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a supporter of Proposition 19.

In Arizona, despite all the efforts by the opposition, despite both gubernatorial candidates’ ranting against the Rights of seriously ill patients, despite even Arizona Cardinals shamefully supporting the drive to defeat Prop. 203, the vote count continued, as it was not final on the Election night, but with any hope of passage as weak as the small candle flame barely flickering in the wind…. Over the ensuing several weeks after the election, the fortunes in the CA Attorney General race changed direction again, when it seemed that Steve Cooley caught up and even overcame Kamala Harris, but then, by the second week of the post-election unprocessed ballot count, Kamala managed to take the lead, a very tentative, very small lead of about 5,000 votes, yet the lead that she was not going to lose again…

And then, on 11-13-10 I opened my email “inbox” and I saw it! Victory in Arizona! It turned out that the final vote count gave the proponents of patients’ rights and the Prop. 203 a very narrow victory of just 4,300 votes! Out of more than 1,67 Million cast. WOW! Now, if this does not prove that every vote counts, I don’t know what ever will! In California, the excruciating counting of every valid ballot continued unabated, with the outcome of the count amounting to a survival, versus non-survival, of medicinal cannabis industry in the State.

Both medicinal cannabis community and the gay community held their collective breath realizing full-well the monumental significance of the outcome for their respective Communities! I should point out that Prop. 19 facebook page was one avenue of exposing Steve Cooley and his overriding hatred of any cannabis freedom, including the Medicinal Cannabis.

Today is the Thanksgiving eve, and medicinal cannabis patients and their supporters have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season. They were able to narrowly win in Arizona and to prevent their avowed enemy from becoming a “top cop” in California. Right now Kamala Harris is ahead in California by almost 54,000 votes, and she is being proclaimed a winner of that race by various media sources as this blog is being written. I must say without any hesitation that I am very impressed with Arizona voters in particular. Arizona is a Republican State, with most of its voters being Conservative voters. Yet, the People of Arizona chose their own interests at the polls and voted for Medicinal Cannabis rights, disregarding the disinformation and distortions they had been bombarded with from the “politicos” interested in preserving the “dogma”.

And so, we are ready to celebrate Thanksgiving 2010. The year is almost over, and the busy Holiday Season is upon us once more. Considering the “happy ending”, people in both California and Arizona have a lot to be thankful for, and so do the rest of us, as the torch of medicinal cannabis still burns brightly in California (and now also in Arizona), illuminating the Nation and giving the science, and reason, and common sense, and compassion a continuing, and ever-expanding, horizon of Hope!