Pro-Pot Poll Should Bum Out Legalizers

Poll Backfires? When you learn that California's legalize-pot initiative got 46% of the vote, you think a) that's close—Better Than Expected, given the tendency of support for ballot initiatives to plummet right before a vote—and b) it won't be long before a better-drafted* measure passes. Then you read the results of a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll—funded by rich legalization supporter Peter Lewis—and you think again. Even this poll, clearly intended to buck up the pro-legalization forces, found that only 50 percent of voters support legalization in theory. Then there's this:

The survey’s most striking find is that if youth voters had turned out last week in the numbers they typically do during a presidential election year, Proposition 19 would have been statistically tied, with 49 percent voting yes to 51 voting no.

In other words, even if the young had turned out in 2008 Obamamania numbers, Prop 19 would still have failed. Far out ... P.S.: Sorry, I meant to say, along with Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, that Prop 19 is "poised to win." Yes, that's it. Poised to win. So are the Dodgers ...

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* The measure seems to have been hurt by a wacky, overreaching provision that would effectively have made stoners a protected class when it comes to hirings and firings. Even the Greenberg poll found a 50-44 majority think employers should be able to fire those who test positive on drug tests even if "they come to work sober and ready to work." I voted against 19 because of this provision (and wouldn't trust an initiative that was written by anyone who'd write that provision, even if it were excised). After all, once a new protected class has been created, is it ever un-created? Stoners would have special legal protections against firing, probably forever (with employers having to prove their pot use "actually impairs job performance"). I might have to become one myself ... 10:34 a.m.

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