Issue 4 to legalize recreational marijuana polls closer than anything else on the statewide general election ballot. Naturally, it stirs the most vigorous debate.
These are the main sets of opinion:
1. There are people who favor Issue 4 simply on the premise that it is past time to legalize, regulate and reap tax revenue from the widely accepted marijuana use in our culture. That may be close to 50 percent.
2. There are those who oppose the proposal simply on the basis that marijuana is a damaging crutch, a threat to our young people and a scourge on responsible, productive society. That's probably around 40 percent.
3. There are people who favor legalization, regulation and taxation but are troubled by this proposal specifically. The existing medical marijuana industry is effectively presuming to write itself a recreational marijuana monopoly in the state Constitution. In another failing, the proposal provides little to no social-justice aid to those laden with criminal records for simple possession on a racially disparate basis, or wanting to grow their own marijuana, or hoping to avoid criminal liability for simple possession above a low limit.
4. There are people with the same concerns as No. 3, believing the proposal badly flawed, but politically calculating in fearing that--if defeating this amendment on these specific failings and watching Issue 2 get passed to require a 60-percent threshold to amend the state Constitution in the future--they would effectively vote themselves out of any legalization in their lifetimes.
I would put myself, and I suspect others, in an amalgamated category finding No. 1 compelling in the abstract, No. 2 a personal moral judgment we don't share, No. 3 appropriately hesitant and well-reasoned in terms of the specifics of this flawed proposal and No. 4 politically pragmatic, not making the perfect the enemy of the good--well, not the good, but at least the only available shot before us to get recreational marijuana legalized.
So, I voted Monday morning, there being no time like the first day of early voting. I voted "no" on Issue 4 because of the Comma Rule, which holds, "When in doubt, leave it out." Or, "When in doubt leave it out."
All that earlier text offers too many complications for the clarity one needs before voting to amend his constitution for legalized pot.
The same principle--leave it out when in doubt--applies to the state Constitution, though it's been laden over the years with plenty of commas that ought to have been left out. We have in our state Constitution, which should be principles not details, specific property tax rates, a specific highway sales tax and a specific location of casinos.
Writing into Issue 4 that the current growers and dispensers of medical marijuana get automatic authority for the new recreational marijuana is even worse than those. It uses constitutional law to bestow specific and lucrative commercial advantage on specific private entities.
Beyond that, the amendment offers no reform to aggrieved persons, but only advantage to smug companies. Issue 4 does not expunge any simple-possession criminal records or permit anyone to grow their own of what would otherwise be a legal product.
It's like legalizing crappie for commercial sale but only at Walmart and denying citizens the right to crappie-fish for themselves.
But Issue 4 does set firm percentages for where the tax proceeds would go, and the police lead the designated recipients. That is less about policy than politics.
Smoke pot and fight crime while the weed-rich get weed-richer--that's the essence of Issue 4.
The appropriate way to vote on legalizing recreational marijuana is legislatively. But that has no chance. So, a simple, fair, broadly principled legalization in constitutional form that authorizes a competitive process for launching the industry and requires a regulatory process--that's a better way to go.
It would reduce the question to its simplest form, up or down on legalizing recreational marijuana.
To assume Issue 4 is our last chance of a lifetime falls somewhere between alarmism and realism.
If the voters pass Issue 2, which is a referral by the Legislature to require not a simple majority but 60 percent to pass public referenda in the future, then that's simply a matter of getting what we deserve.
Voters who would choose to limit their direct power and enhance that of the Arkansas Legislature wouldn't deserve a constitutional right to mellow out.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.