Legal Pot in Delaware? Don’t Hold Your Breath
State Rep. Helene Keeley’s campaign to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use has taught us many things, but none more basic than this: Delaware will legalize marijuana if and when the State Police say it can.
Keeley formed this task force because she couldn’t get her HB 110 to the floor for a vote, which means she didn’t have the votes, in a heavily Democratic chamber, to pass it. If getting everyone around a table was supposed to bring about consensus, it failed miserably, for a fairly obvious reason — not everyone at the table wanted the same thing. Half those on the panel are against legalization.
AP’s Randall Chase, the dean of General Assembly reporters, points out in his account in WaPo that the bill faces what he calls “staunch opposition” from “law enforcement officials, the state chamber of commerce, health industry workers and AAA Mid-Atlantic.” All had a seat at the table.
The frequently scatterbrained Keeley was no match for that combined firepower. It took her two meetings and some dubious parliamentary proceedings to scrape together enough votes to release the panel’s report, because the final product — expected to be released to the public by the close of business today — was considered substandard by half the committee.
As usual, Keeley had a variety of excuses for the shambolic nature of the proceedings. She told the News Journal’s Scott Goss that she didn’t need a vote to release the report (she appears to be wrong about that) and only held one at the request of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce and AAA Mid-Atlantic – both opponents of recreational marijuana legalization. “Every time we gave them an inch, they came back and asked for a mile,” she said. “They asked for more time. They asked for more meetings … They asked for formal presentations to be added to the minutes.” Also, too, the sun got in her eyes.
Her biggest obstacle was State Rep. Steve Smyk, the point man for Delaware’s Thick Blue Line, who demanded and got assurance that an anti-legalization law enforcement report would be included. About that report, on drug trafficking in states that allow marijuana use, he told Matt Bittle of the Delaware State News: “If I can get this into the heads of legislators, they’re going to see that it’s not working out in the states that have legalized it.” Must be some report, since there’s no trace of it on the Google machine. He also mansplained, “If I was a chair, things would have been different. It would have been much more lengthy, it would have been much more sound and I would have asked for a years’ length of time.”
If, despite the clown show, you want to show support for the soon-to-be-amended HB 110, a citizens’ cannabis lobby day is scheduled for 10 a.m. March 27 at Legislative Hall.
Someone ought to run statewide on the “Stop the Bullshit – Legalize it” platform. I bet they’d get pretty far. The pot smokers I know are all very highly engaged and well informed voters.
It’s true. I strive for very high engagement. Daily.
10 points Rev-Anella, I like to wait until night but it wasn’t always so. As for the mighty state police would you believe in other states the state police don’t meddle in the states politics? Gee, what do they do for fun? Should be noted that if New Jersey Legalizes the clown squad in Dover will be under extra pressure to legalize, especially when the revenue starts rolling in for Jersey. As for Steve Smyk if your going to lie there should be a shred of believability about it, not just a playground bully mentality on full display.
“It would have been much more lengthy”
As opposed to just being longer.
The pigs would rather go after a middle class decent person for smoking pot then go after predators
I mean… they ARE the predators.
Most likely scenario: After New Jersey passes it and has it in place for a few years, Delaware will then follow suit and pass it, but will take a few years from now.
I can live with that. NJ and MD will both legalize before DE.
I will never buy weed in De out of spite. Either grow it or drive 10 minutes to a better state.
Carney needs to keep starving the schools system and he cant do that by creating more revenue.
One of the many things that is sad about the struggle to legalize cannabis is that the anti-cannabis forces propagated huge whoppers about cannabis. All the laws are based on this sheer propaganda. Nixon wanted a club he could use against blacks and anti-war activists. He felt arresting his opponents was over the line with voters, so he concocted this myth about cannabis in order to make it illegal and give him what he needed to arrest his opposition. It has stayed like that since. Only the determination of good people will put this lie on the scrap heap of history, where it belongs. Free the prisoners.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/03/15/labor-based-movement-medicare-all! Trumps budget proposal for opiads calls for execution of drug dealers.
I’m surprised that the rank and file of police officers oppose legalizing pot. When I taught a contemporary morals issues course at Wilmington College, police officers routinely sided with legalizing pot and considered it a nuisance to arrest people for possession of it. The students who tended to oppose legalization were business majors. I found that perplexing. Why should they care? Same with the Chamber of Commerce. Why are they opposing legalization? Seems rather anti business to me.
@DG: I had the same thought about the Chamber. This is but one problem with mixing business and government — business thinks of government as a monopoly and seeks to use its power that way.
It depends on the business, I suppose. If you are a private prison, you want people given 20-life for possession. If you’re a cop group, you want the job of policing to be made easier by providing soft targets like cannabis users. Those are clearly the groups who control the state leadership.
While I understand the sentiment, we don’t have private prisons.
All the objections to legalization have been shot down either by studies of pot users or data from the states that have legalized it. But when did Delaware ever make decisions like this based on the facts?