Yesterday, while editing our fabulous* podcast, I saw the news that Oklahoma had voted, on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, to keep the recreational use of marijuana illegal in their state. The vote was not close—”YES, pot should be legal” lost in every county in the state, with the final statewide margin ending up at about 62% against legalization and 38% in favor, based on a turnout of more than half a million voters, or about 25% of the electorate—not exactly a thorough accounting of the will of the people, beyond ascertaining that three-quarters of them couldn’t be bothered.
I went looking for the reason why Oklahoma voted on a single ballot measure in early March without anything else on the ballot, and found, predictably enough, that the process for putting ballot initiatives before voters in Oklahoma is fairly complicated. Here is my favorite bit from the Ballotpedia, just in terms of convoluted nonsense that it’s difficult to wrap one’s head around without a real-world example handy to make it concrete:
Oklahoma law provides that in the event that two conflicting measures are approved, the measure with the most affirmative votes supersedes the other on all points of conflict. The other measure is not wholly superseded.
Oklahoma law is unique in providing a second chance when two conflicting measures are both defeated. In Oklahoma, if two conflicting measures are both defeated, then the one with the most affirmative votes, provided it received approval from at least one-third of the total voters for or against both measures, is resubmitted to voters at the next election.
In situations where two similar measures conflict, voters in favor of the shared provisions of the measures might be divided over the measures' differences. Thus, an elector might vote "yes" on one measure and "no" on the competing measure, even though his position is a matter of preference, rather than approval and disapproval. This can cause both measures to fail even if both sides would prefer either measure to no measure. Oklahoma's law allowing a second chance in the case of conflicting measures was designed to prevent this.
But back to why the people of Oklahoma were voting in early March on the question of weed legalization and nothing else. Supporters of State Question 820 hoped to get it before voters in the general election held last November, but failed to convince the Oklahoma Supreme Court to force the State Election Board to include it on that ballot. Some accused the governor and others who were against the measure’s passage of purposefully slow-rolling the process—an accusation the governor’s office denied. Ultimately, back in October, the governor chose this past Tuesday as the date of the special election, as he is allowed to do under state law. The alternative would have meant waiting until the next general election, in 2024.
In Oklahoma, proponents may circulate a petition for a period of 90 days. For initiatives, the 90-day period for circulation begins on a day set by the secretary of state between 15 and 30 days after all challenges to the initiative petition are finalized. For referendums, signatures are due 90 days after the adjournment of the legislative session in which the targeted law was passed. Measures are generally placed on the next general election ballot, but the governor may call a special election or place the measure on the primary ballot.
Did the low turnout contribute to the failure of the initiative? Probably! But it’s already pretty easy to get a medical marijuana card in Oklahoma, which ten percent of the population has done since 2018.
Knowing what qualifies for a medical card in Oklahoma is essential if you want to use marijuana as a treatment. Unlike most states, Oklahoma does not have a list of qualifying conditions.
Instead, a cannabis doctor must determine whether medical marijuana could improve your health.
“Hey, Mr. Weed Doctor, could weed improve my health?”
Anyway, the point is, the default Oklahoman likely to turn up and vote in any given election is likely more conservative than not, and given that the motivation to fully legalize the drug is mitigated by already easy legal “medicinal” access, the results here are not terribly surprising. Governor Kevin Stitt’s position, which he outlined in a news conference in February, goes like this:
"It’s illegal federally. There shouldn't be a patchwork of states doing different things. We need to let the feds tell us if it's legal or illegal. We shouldn't let the states tell us that."
That Oklahoma’s medicinal framework already exists as one patch in this patchwork in contradiction of federal law is, I guess, besides the point to Stitt, probably because medicinal marijuana is extremely popular in his state. He also references the fact that young people shouldn’t smoke weed because of unspecified side effects—a question the law would conveniently answer by not permitting children to buy weed—and the idea that businesses are always telling him about the challenges of marijuana for “truck drivers, et cetera, et cetera.” It is not clear what any of this actually means, but presumably he’s talking about truck drivers getting blazed and being a hazard on the road, which, again, would still be illegal in Oklahoma. But putting that aside, it is curious to see a Republican governor reject the idea that states should be permitted to figure this sort of thing out for themselves. I wonder if he’s ever said anything about “laboratories of democracy” in some other context.
When it’s a question of whether or not a person should take marijuana, we need the feds to tell us stupid Oklahomans what to do. When it’s abortion, the states must maintain their sovereignty and be laboratories of democracy. Got it.
In completely unrelated news, Reason magazine reports that “Studies Link Marijuana Legalization to All Sorts of Positive Public Health Outcomes.” According to the study they link to:
Among the outcomes considered are: youth marijuana use, alcohol consumption, the abuse of prescription opioids, traffic fatalities, and crime. For some of these outcomes, there is a near consensus in the literature regarding the effects of medical marijuana laws (MMLs). As an example, leveraging geographic and temporal variation in MMLs, researchers have produced little credible evidence to suggest that legalization promotes marijuana use among teenagers. Likewise, there is convincing evidence that young adults consume less alcohol when medical marijuana is legalized.
In the genre of “we can make this old thing popular with the YOUTHS by making it more like TikTok,” today we have a blessedly anonymous member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences suggesting that the Oscars telecast should be remade as a series of funny, high-energy, mobile-friendly clips. Instead of the usual staid Oscars telecast, this Youth Knower wants to meet the kids on their level.
“The younger generation likes to participate or be entertained,” says one longtime academy member. “To sit and watch rich and mostly white people get awards is not their thing. What is their thing is TikTok. Make the show like a series of funny, entertaining, quick-paced and high-energy TikTok videos. Why are they reluctant to embrace a new format?”
…as opposed to the older generation, which despises both participation and entertainment.
I dare you, or this idiot, or anyone else, to describe what this would actually look like. I have spent five minutes just now trying to imagine what it would look like, and I cannot do it. Does Jimmy Kimmel come out and just do a selfie-video monologue while the opening musical performance plays on a screen behind him? Do the celebrity presenters do their normal thing while we the audience are fed a scrolling feed of insulting captions? Will there be pets doing stupid and/or cute things? What does TikTok on stage at the Oscars and then broadcast on television actually look like, in this guy’s imagination?
Larry Hogan: I’m Not Seeking the Republican Nomination for President
Not running for president does not warrant getting to write an op-ed in the New York Times about the fact that you’re not running for president unless you are actually or have previously been the president.
I truly appreciate all those around the nation who have for many years encouraged me to run for president.
Curiously light on the sourcing here, Larry!
This poll is making the rounds after being written up by Susan Page in USA Today. The takeaway for some is that despite everything the goober Republicans have done to wage their “war on woke,” a majority of Americans actually find the word itself to have a positive attribute. From Page:
Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on "woke," but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices." That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats but also more than a third of Republicans.
Overall, 39% say instead that the word reflects what has become the GOP political definition, "to be overly politically correct and police others' words." That's the view of 56% of Republicans.
I think this fundamentally misunderstands how plenty of people probably actually felt when responding to the question. Acknowledging that the definition of the term is “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices” is not, in fact, the same thing as believing that “being woke is good,” or that they view that the “social injustices” are actual injustices worthy of attention. Page is bringing a non-neutral understanding of awareness to this conversation. Someone can easily accept this as the definition of the word and still roll their eyes at any of the actual issues at hand, which I think is how you get the seeming contradiction in the other half of the result, in which a plurality of respondents see “woke” as an insult, rather than a compliment.
Arguably, of course, my above interpretation could run in precisely the opposite direction—some good bit of the people who acknowledge that “woke” is used as an insult could certainly believe that it is wrong that other people use it that way, just as some respondents no doubt believe that lots of people use “woke” as a compliment even though they personally find the term ridiculous or objectionable.
What I’m saying is, taking the results of this poll to mean absolutely anything at all about anything at all would be fucking absurd! This poll, like almost any poll of a nebulous, semantic, politically fraught subject cannot possibly tell you anything about the world except that the world was dumb enough to think that asking such a question would result in a more clear understanding of the world. The only thing this poll can do is reinforce whatever it is you previously thought—which is precisely what it did for me, when it resulted in me finding the world a dumb and absurd place full of dumb and absurd people whose opinions in polls tell us nothing about the world itself. So, good poll!
*Podcasts are not fabulous as a rule, and Cast Iron Brains is no exception.
