The measure drew strong support from voters younger than 25, as the campaign had hoped, but those voters did not turn out in unusually high numbers, according to a state exit poll. The initiative also failed to win over the moderate voters who make up the state's decisive swing vote.

The San Francisco Bay Area was the only region to tilt toward the measure, but it did so just slightly. In Los Angeles County, where a quarter of the state's voters live, the initiative lost.

Despite a potential double-digit loss, marijuana-legalization advocates said the proposition had transformed talk about legal pot from a late-night punch line into a serious policy matter.

"This has been a watershed moment," said Stephen Gutwillig, the California director for the Drug Policy Alliance, which waged an extensive ad campaign for the measure. "Even in defeat, Proposition 19 has moved marijuana legalization into the mainstream of American politics."

Tuesday's vote was just the first round, say legalization advocates, who are aiming measures at the 2012 ballot in Washington, Oregon, Colorado and very likely California. But it's also the second time in two years that California voters have rejected an initiative to soften penalties for drug crimes.

"The cover of the book looked nice, but it didn't read very well," said Roger Salazar, the spokesman for the opposition campaign. "This specific initiative was massively flawed."

Richard Lee, the medical marijuana entrepreneur who spearheaded the initiative and spent $1.5million on the historic campaign, pledged to work with the initiative's critics to draft a new one.

"We won tonight. We won for the last six months, the last year, all the years we've been fighting. We're going to keep fighting," Lee told supporters who gathered inside and outside Oaksterdam University, the Oakland medical marijuana trade school he founded.

California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative, the first in the nation, has led to more liberal attitudes toward pot nationwide as similar programs spread to 13 other states and the nation's capital. On Tuesday, voters in Arizona and South Dakota were deciding whether to approve programs; voters in Oregon were weighing whether to allow storefront dispensaries.

Proposition 19's backers had hoped voters worried about the economy would embrace the measure as a way to raise new taxes. In 10 cities, including San Jose, Sacramento and Long Beach, voters appeared to be overwhelmingly approving taxes on medical and recreational marijuana.

Passage of Proposition 19 would have vaulted the state into unmapped territory, invigorated the movement to legalize marijuana and set up a dramatic confrontation with the federal government.

The initiative would have eliminated all criminal penalties for adults 21 and older who planted marijuana in a plot of up to 25 square feet or possessed up to an ounce for personal use. It also would have allowed city councils and county supervisors to authorize commercial cultivation and retail sales.

But the opposition was broad, according to the poll conducted by Edison Research for the National Voter Pool, a consortium of the major television news networks and the Associated Press. Men and women opposed it. Voters of every race opposed it. The campaign had hoped black and Latino voters would see the measure as a way to end disproportionate arrests of minorities caught with marijuana.

The measure drew intense interest. Foreign leaders weighed in. All the top statewide candidates opposed it. The federal drug czar denounced it. And the U.S. attorney general pledged to "vigorously enforce" federal narcotics laws whatever California did.

Americans tuned in to the Proposition 19 debate. More than four decades after the war on drugs was declared, the country is almost evenly divided on whether to legalize marijuana.

In California, half of the voters consistently tell pollsters they favor legal marijuana and a tenth are unsure. In September, support for the initiative crept above the halfway mark, triggering euphoria among advocates. But voters became skeptical about the details.

Opponents exploited their doubts by mocking it in radio ads and suggesting that it would create an epidemic of dope-addled teenagers, motorists and nurses. Proponents said it would control marijuana as alcohol is controlled, allow police to focus on serious crimes, curtail the black market and raise billions in taxes, but they opened themselves to criticism by overstating those claims.

Lee once hoped to raise $20 million for the campaign, but big-money donors stayed out until the end. Proponents raised about $4.2 million, almost a third in the last two weeks.

Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Author: John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times
Published: November 3, 2010
Copyright: 2010 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
URL: http://drugsense.org/url/f81y2MB1

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But the dispensaries, growers, and dealers, who betrayed the the trust the young have in them to tell the truth, and lied their asses off to the young.

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Of course, I knew they were there and quite likely to get out and vote if they had to hitch and beg rides. No's on 19 won because the fearful, the ignorant, the wanna be cops, narcs, and government workers, the government lovers, the d.a.r.e. groupies, the hateful, the practitioners of schadenfruede, the deeply brainwashed, misled, and propagandized, the spiteful, and the self-righteous aren't a small block of our voting citizenry these days.

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Now, with the dems in charge of the Senate and the repubs in charge of the House, they will have to cooperate. If the two parties cannot find common ground, nothing will get done. This may delay bad laws. And Obama has the veto.

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Thirty percent support from Republicans is huge. What if we see 40% support for a similar initiative among Republicans in California in 2012? I think that would make a lot of Republicans around the country who oppose legalization take a hard look at their own stance. Maybe we won't see a whole new breed of Republicans in power, but we'll see a whole lot less opposition from Republican voters and politicians and maybe even some support from mainstream Republican politicians who come from districts where support for legalization among their constituency is high.

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But you'll, my friends, and fellow freedom fighters, are right. We have actually made great gains, huge gains, in our struggle against injustice and scalding waste.

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I had three older relatives, and now only have two, but I believe they would have all voted yes on 19. All three of them.

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We really need to work more than ever at getting fiscally conservative types on board with legalization so the next time there is a Prop 19 type initiative on the ballot in California we see more closer to 40% of Republicans voting for it rather than 30%. Increased support among Republicans coupled with increased voter turnout from Democrats and young voters would be very good for marijuana initiatives.

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