Jockeying for position on legalizing marijuana

Here is the strongest evidence yet that Arizona voters will legalize recreational marijuana in 2020.

The Arizona Legislature may beat them to it.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich wants the GOP-controlled Legislature to bow to the inevitable and legalize weed next year, according to a report by the Arizona Capitol Times’ Howard Fischer.

No, Brnovich hasn’t been hitting the special brownies.

He’s just afraid of the fallout from the coming 2020 ballot initiative.

“Generally speaking, as a matter of public policy, the public policy makers, i.e. the Legislature, should step up and address issues so voters don’t have to do it via the initiative process,” Brnovich told Fischer.

Gov. Doug Ducey, who led the 2016 fight against legalization and remains personally opposed to it, isn’t yet taking a position on Brnovich’s idea. He wants to see what the marijuana industry proposes.

He has, however, expressed concern about the fact that laws passed by voters cannot be changed if unanticipated circumstances arise.

“Gov. Ducey was a strong opponent of the 2016 measure,” his chief of staff, Daniel Scarpinato, told me. “He (has) reiterated his opposition to recreational marijuana, and said he wants to see the specific language of any new measure before commenting on it.”

Brnovich is trying to get ahead of the pot-fueled freight train coming our way given changing public sentiment about marijuana legalization. He knows that if voters approve the coming initiative, legislators probably will be unable to fix any problems that arise as a result.

“I think in any law there are unintended consequences,” he told Fischer. “Voter protection doesn’t contemplate that. And yes, that does concern me.”

You can blame that one on a previous Legislature and a previous governor.

In 1996, voters approved a medical marijuana law only to watch the following year as the Legislature gutted that law to stop it from taking effect.

In response, voters got even. In 1998, voters passed the Voter Protection Act, requiring a three-fourths vote of the Legislature to alter anything approved at the ballot box – and even then it must “further the purpose” of what voters approved.

It is not nice, our leaders discovered, to thwart the will of the people.

No one has yet seen the marijuana industry’s 2020 proposal for full-scale legalization but it’s a safe bet big money will be there to pass it.

There is just too much profit to be made from the stoning of America.

It’s also a good bet that the marijuana industry also will try to address

some of the concerns brought up by opponents in 2016, questions about whether employers can drug test and how to regulate recreational marijuana. The question is, can they address every possible consequence of legalizing marijuana for the masses?

Consequences that likely would be impossible for the Legislature to address once voters pass an initiative.

Given that, it just makes sense for the Legislature to get ahead of this and pass a law instead, or at least to put a proposal of its own making on the ballot for voters to consider if the industry proposal is lacking.

Legislators ought to be able to regulate the potency of recreational marijuana, as The Republic’s Robert J. Robb recently suggested.

They ought to have the flexibility to determine where pot can be sold before head shops pop up on every street corner and where it can be smoked, if that isn’t adequately addressed in the industry initiative.

And they absolutely must be able to pass laws to keep the roads safe.

An estimated 14.8 million Americans admitted to driving while high at least once in the past month, according to a recent study by AAA. Nearly seven in 10 say they had no worries about getting caught.

Nor should they worry since scientists haven’t yet figured out a way to measure marijuana impairment. But they will and when they do, it would be nice if Arizona’s elected leaders could pass whatever law is needed to keep stoned drivers off the streets.

Don’t look for all — or even most — Republicans to embrace marijuana legalization. Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk led the successful 2016 fight to oppose legalization. She remains a fierce opponent.

“Once a state starts down the path of legalization, there is no turning back,” she told Fischer. “Good public policy should discourage, not encourage, drug use.”

I agree with her. But we already started down that path with medical marijuana and given that 48.7% of voters supported legalization in 2016, it seems inevitable that Arizona will take the next step next year and become the 12th state to legalize recreational marijuana.

Unless, that is, the Republicans who control the state take it first.