The biggest impediment to pot legalization (and, especially, normalization) is stoner culture itself. This can be confirmed by taking a quick stroll through Hempfest.

@1: Yep. Myths and factless emotional appeals are endemic to stoner culture. It's like they decided to take the wrong opposition to drug-FUD and ape the establishment's lies and insincere exaggerations.

@1 - Yeah, I'm all in favor of legalizing marijuana, but it's hard to argue its medical importance when you're pointing out the value of Mellow Malibu Rainbow versus Ultra Purple Thai or whatever. All I know is what I saw in those dispensary ads that were in the sidebar.

he's so cute

Like most debates, I don't care much about this one. I'll side with McPeak, because I have a benign affection for the name Vivian. Vivian Vance RiP.

The anti-I502 crowd made Hempfest incredibly uncomfortable to go to last year. I'll be skipping this year. And the next, and the next, and the next...

What's the point of arguing? Legalization is a fait accompli.

Why is anyone still debating I-502. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it passed 9 months ago. Pot has been decriminalized. It's done.

What? Does McPeak want to re-criminalize it? WTF? If she doesn't like it, she is free to start a new initiative to her liking. But there seems little point in this bickering over an initiative almost a year after it passed.

So which one wants to make recess longer, and which one wants to make school lunches tastier? I always get those two campaign platforms confused in contests like this.

Stoner fight!

@3, to be fair, the different strains are a pretty interesting subject, even if most Hempfesters themselves are the opposite of interesting.

And not all of them have wacky names; the recent Sanjay Gupta special "Weed", in which he recants his previous skepticism of medical benefits (with some caveats), has the powerful story of a young girl who since birth had been having near-constant epileptic seizures, unamenable to any of the hundreds of drugs the parents tried (including heavyweights like phenobarbitol), but stopped instantly after she was given some stuff called, I think, "R74", an unpopular strain with almost no THC but a ton of another cannabinoid, CBD. Boom, they stopped. If you can watch the footage of her seizing and not feel your heart in your throat at the horror of it, five years worth, and then not get angry when you see the medicine that made her instantly better still subject to insane laws and hundreds of thousands of people in jail, you're not human. Imagine if that family lived in Mississippi, or Washington just a couple of years ago. Watch it; it's a fascinating look. The strain is now called "Charlotte's Web" after the girl, which isn't wacky at all but deeply affecting.

As for the I-502 fight, I'm afraid I find the antis to be almost entirely stupid hippies, babbling on about sanctified herb and Bob Marley earth mother nonsense. And yes, recriminalization is what they want.

@8...,., Stereotype much??? She?????

@8 "Why is anyone still debating I-502."

Because I-502 threatens the business model and cash flow of certain people, both who sell marijuana, and those who imprison those who sell and use marijuana. Someone should ask McPeak directly if I-502 will cause him to lose any money.

@12, Oops. Excuse me for thinking "Vivian" was a woman's name. Yes. I'm totally stereotyping. My bad.

13, exactly. Stoners will be mellow, but money can make monsters of us all.

This is my favorite debate.

Does anyone remember in 2011 when I-502/ A New Approach SPONSORED Hempfest Mainstage?

Does anyone remember in 2011 when A New Approach WA/Rick Steves/I-502 SPONSORED Hempfest Mainstage?

@13, won't hempfest itself become irrelevant in a world of legal and socially acceptable weed? There will be little point in hanging out in the park defiantly smoking up and trying to convince people of all the "legitimate" uses. That seems like kind of a big downside to McPeak.

Dude I could care less if some med patient gets a DUI. How many less people (mostly minorities) are going to be arrested now for simple pot possession vs how many people (who have to be driving poorly to be pulled over in the first place) are arrested for a pot related DUI.

If weed makes you drive shitty, don't drive or risk a DUI. It's such a simple law, and fair too. People who are intoxicated on medically legal pain medications can be arrested just the same, and those patients doctors aren't "crying fowl."

Everyone knows the medical marijuana industry is a farce (not medical marijuana, the INDUSTRY). Even med patients will have more access to tinctures and oils that were regulated and they know were made with 02 and C02 and not butane which is unnecessary in the production of hash oil (ask anyone with a vaporizer, its the same concept as distillation).

I say, stop giving voice to this discussion because it is pointless. Legalizing marijuana is not for the financial benefit of the medical pot business, it is 100% progress on the persecution of those that do not fall under the privilege that comes with being white. To say that this legislation is anything but progress is a complete fallacy.

Nuff' Sed.

11 nailed it without even writing 1/4 of what I said...

I'll be steadfastly anti-stoner, and nothing you can say will change my mind. Until they move Hempfest out of Myrtle Edwards Park to literally any other venue imaginable. I'm not asking much.