Very sad... I think they had a good bill in the one that would have put it into the State store system. While I rather dislike the State store system, it would regulate legal pot far better than any other system.

    There is still an initiative that will undoubtedly gain the signatures need to make the November elections, it really has no regulation set in place and fails to address the the societal costs via taxes on it. It would just flat legalize it... Sure it would maintain existing laws on use and possession by minors and driving under the influence. But even as a pot smoker I would rather it be controlled as alcohol is, as opposed to flat legalized without some sort of state regulation and tax income.

      And if you really are honest, pot is a lot less harmful to our society  than alcohol is  , even with it being illegal. Drunken domestic disputes take up a lot of law enforcement time and money, but I've yet to hear about the guy who was high on pot and beat or killed his wife cause dinner wasn't on time.The guy on pot is likely sitting on his sofa going "Ok honey, whatever you say" . I personally know people in law enforcement that would far rather deal with a stoned subject than a drunk one.

     I'm not saying that pot use and addiction does not cause problems in families. It can cause the same  family devastation as any other substance abuse problem, but that is related to an abuse problem, which is the same regardless of what substance is being abused.

      There really is not anything I have ever read about pot use and the problems it causes in our society that compares to the problems alcohol causes.

    Regulate it, tax it...

   Under current laws we are spending huge amounts of money to enforce  unenforceable laws. Anyone who wants  to smoke pot can get it relatively easily these days.  I honestly believe between the savings generated by money not spent on enforcement, incarceration and coupled with regulation and taxation, we could not only pay for treatment and education, but actually make the state a bit of money as well. As we already do with alcohol and tobacco....

    We already are dealing with medical and social problems relating to illegal  drugs, if we legalized and placed the appropriate taxes on them we could pay for treatment and real education. Right now we really have no dedicated source for that money, as we do for alcohol. A huge amount of the tax paid on every bottle of booze goes directly to fund treatment and safe use education.  We are paying for this already, just because it's against the law does not mean we aren't already having to deal with the consequences and addiction problems.

    What is lacking is a dedicated means of paying for treatment of those who do abuse drugs. At least with our legal drugs of choice, alcohol and tobacco,  we tax them to pay for it.
 
      As a nice counterpoint to this bad news, the city of Seattle's new city attorney announced that the city of Seattle would no longer prosecute simple pot possession.

Why do we have these laws if we are not even willing to enforce them anymore...

My 2cp....