Garagiola, Who Quit, Warns About Chewing Tobacco

Joe Garagiola has been to too many funerals. Some of them were for friends who chewed tobacco, the way Garagiola used to do.Now Garagiola has been given the gift of time. He intends to use it to speak out against the habit of chewing tobacco.

“I tell these guys, ‘You may not like what I say, but with lung cancer you die of lung cancer,’ ” Garagiola said the other day, with the zeal of a convert. “With oral cancer, you die one piece at a time. They operate on your neck, they operate on your jaw, they operate on your throat.”Garagiola is one of America’s gifted talkers — starting in bullpens and dugouts, moving on to broadcasting games, then doing game shows, the “Today” show.

He is still talking. Last month he traveled to a Congressional hearing to speak against smokeless tobacco. The trip itself was a gesture of courage, because he was recovering from brain surgery for what he calls a nonmalignant ailment, which he said was not linked to the tobacco habit he beat 50 years ago. Garagiola received great news. After a CAT scan six months after surgery, doctors told him he was clear. He took a deep breath and celebrated by doing what he does best.

Speaking about the lobbyists for new smokeless products, he said: “They tell you it’s a safe alternative, but my answer is, Hey, don’t jump out the 50th floor, jump out the 25th floor. You got 25 floors on your side. The results are going to be the same.”

At 84, he still sounds like the exuberant kid catcher who batted .316 in the 1946 World Series. He doesn’t like to admit he could play — it’s bad for his bench-warmer image.

While Garagiola was with the Cardinals in the late ’40s, he picked up the habit of chewing from teammates, many of them rural and Southern. (Young white males are the highest users today — 15 percent.)

Garagiola remembers the day he stopped chewing, in the late ’50s, after his baseball career ended. His youngest child, Gina, came home from grade school and asked if he was going to die from cancer because of tobacco.

“I said, ‘That’s it,’ and I put it aside,” he said. “It was difficult, but I quit.”

He became an activist, going around to training camps with Bill Tuttle, a former outfielder whose jaw was being chipped away by operations for cancer. Tuttle, who had learned to chew from older players, died in 1998 at age 69.

There were successes. When Curt Schilling was with the Phillies, Garagiola walked him to the free clubhouse exam by telling endless Yogi Berra stories. Garagiola describes the stricken look on Schilling, who soon had a precancerous lesion removed and has given credit to Garagiola for helping to save his life.

In mid-April, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing, led by its chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California.

Terry Pechacek of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said smokeless tobacco could cause oral cancer and pancreatic cancer and had been linked to fatal heart attacks. He also said the product was highly addictive.

Baseball officials agree that smokeless tobacco is dangerous, but they cannot address the issue until collective bargaining for the next contract, after the 2011 season. Some players assert they have the right to chew.

“We’d like to discourage players from using smokeless tobacco,” Michael Weiner, the new head of the union, said in a recent interview, adding he had “no doubt of the effects to habitual users.”

Rob Manfred, an executive vice president of Major League Baseball, noted that baseball provides oral exams and literature about the danger of smokeless tobacco.

Baseball does not permit smokeless tobacco in the minor leagues, but Garagiola, who has been around clubhouses since he was 15, knows all the tricks.

“Kids, they’re smart, they put sunflower seeds in front, dip in the back or whatever, and they’ll spit so the tobacco cop doesn’t get you,” he said. “And when they come to the big leagues, the first thing they do is put a dip in their mouth.”

Garagiola talked about a star pitcher he saw on television recently, coming out of a game: “They’re praising him for being a gamer and he sits on the bench and what’s the first thing he does? He takes out some tobacco.”

At least baseball could stop players from sticking that familiar circular tin in their hip pocket, Garagiola said. He said he told a baseball official: “Arnold Palmer always walked on the green and flipped a cigarette. Why wouldn’t you let a guy walk up to home plate and flip a cigarette when he got to the batter’s box? You don’t allow that.”

Garagiola told about the funeral in 1998 for a high school coach, Bob Leslie, who died of oral cancer at 31. As he delivered the eulogy, Garagiola noticed his friend’s widow “holding this baby and I’m thinking, He’s not going to see her go to school, he’s not going to see her get married.”

His voice quavered, momentarily. Then he resumed. Joe Garagiola still has something to say.

Ban smoking in cars to save children, say doctors

Smoking should be banned in all cars to save children from the health dangers caused by passive inhalation, says a report from the Royal College of Physicians. Doctors are calling for urgent action after figures revealed passive smoking triggers 22,000 cases of asthma and wheezing in children every year.

Around 9,500 hospital admissions among children are linked to the effects of secondhand smoke inside and outside the family home, says the report, which analysed existing research.Forty babies die from sudden infant death syndrome every year caused by passive smoking – one in five of all such deaths.

At least two million children are exposed to secondhand smoke in the home along with ‘avoidable’ health risks, says the report.Professor John Britton, chairman of the Royal College’s tobacco advisory group, said legislation to ban smoking in the home would be unenforceable.

But society’s views about the ‘ acceptability’ of smoking must be changed and the easiest way to do this is a blanket ban in cars and vans, he said.

This would be simpler to police than the current situation which expects enforcement officers to differentiate between business vehicles, where smoking is banned, and those owned privately.
Professor Britton said: ‘We would recommend a ban on smoking in all vehicles.’
pugh.In addition the ban on smoking in enclosed spaces should be extended to parks, playgrounds and other areas where children congregate, he went on.

Richard Ashcroft, a professor of bioethics at Queen Mary, University of London – who contributed to the report – said even parked drivers who never have child passengers should get out of their cars before lighting up.

This would not be a ’significant reduction’ in their liberties, he argued. However, Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said: ‘We wouldn’t encourage people to smoke around children but adults should be allowed to use their common sense.

‘These proposals go way beyond what is acceptable in a free society.’Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said it had already demanded a ban on smoking in cars with children travelling in them.

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘By increasing the level of awareness of the harmfulness of secondhand smoke, we will encourage people to voluntarily make their homes and cars smoke free.’

Why do people smoke?

Smoke addiction has been working like an epidemic across the world and has been increasing for the last one decade. Efforts have been and are still being put in to control it but all in vain. From celebrities to common mass, everybody has been "seeking refuge" in the act of smoking.

It seems it gives your mind and body strength enough to fight with sleep, hunger and also psychological barriers. There are several people and organizations who have been the trying to spread awareness regarding the baselessness of these notions but the number of smokers are rising steadily in spite of knowing that smoke causes lung cancer and various other heart and lung diseases. There are different reasons that have given a strong base to these false notions and we would find out why people smoke to overcome problems whose root and solutions both lie elsewhere and smoking cannot resolve them even one iota.

Why do people smoke for the first time?

* There are very few people who start smoking after they cross their teen age, so it is evident that it starts off as one of those activities which teenagers do either to explore something new and experimental or under peer pressure. They start it so that they can gain conformity in the group of fiends and are not cast away on the periphery. Teenagers also start it since they look at it as s sign of growing up or a part of adult behavior as they might have observed their parents doing it and find it normal. So imitation of adult behavior can also be one of the reasons of people smoking.

* Once these people start smoking it becomes an addiction and then quitting it becomes a major problem. The flashy ad that the cigarette manufacturers flaunt all over the media does not attract most of these smokers. In fact it is not even the taste that matters for them it is the psychological satisfaction that they get out of smoking that prevents them from quitting this habit. Let us have a look at the different ways it influences people psychologically.

o Some people say that smoking provides them a way to take a break from work therefore they perceive it as an excuse to be free and take a break.

o Some people say that they feel care free and not burdened by responsibilities when they are smoking which relieves them from most of the anxieties. What actually happens is when an individual; smokes the effect of nicotine remains for approximately ten to fifteen minutes after which they start feeling tired and stressed because of the nicotine, so they again feel like smoking and this continues. So it comes clear that perceptions associated with smoking are mostly conditioned and none of them actually have a strong ground.

o Smoking can also be a result of oral fixation which starts right form the time when we are born. Infants start it with suckling and then when they are weaned they start thumb sucking and if you remember most of our friends or in fact some of us in school had the habit of chewing our pencils and pens and as we grow up we get fixated to cigarettes.

o Modern psychology says that if we promise a reward for a person or ourselves, the efficiency and productivity increases. So people who smoke promise themselves a smoke, which is quick as well as rewarding for them.

o Most people who smoke also say that they feel accompanied when they have cigarette in their hands, which can again be explained psychologically. Say suppose you have taken a break but there isn’t a friend who can keep you company, what happens is you have time and energy but nothing to do so a smoke makes you feel occupied and accompanied.

So what we are fighting against is not cigarettes but our own minds which makes us believe that it is impossible for us to quit smoking but if you can be a little strong and stern, you can quit it. You can conquer your own mind, can’t you?

Should the FDA Regulate Tobacco? Health Freedom Advocate Says Criminalizing Cigarettes is a Mistake

The U.S. Congress has just voted to categorize tobacco as a drug, handing the FDA regulatory authority to control the advertising, marketing and sales of cigarettes. This hilarious move, if approved by the Senate and signed by the President, would put the FDA in the position of approving the sale of a "drug" that the entire medical community openly admits kills millions of people. According to the CDC, tobacco kills 438,000 people each year in the United States alone (1). Now, thanks to the U.S. Congress, the FDA could soon be the government office responsible for allowing these 438,000 deaths each year!

Think about it: Right now, FDA-approved drugs kill around 100,000 Americans a year, and that's if you believe the conservative figures from the American Medical Association (the real numbers are at least double that). Add tobacco deaths to that list, and you come to the startling realization that if tobacco is considered an FDA-approved "drug," then FDA-approved drugs will kill well over half a million Americans each year! (538,000 fatalities a year due to FDA-approved drugs, using government statistics.)

Graphic warning on cigarette packs ordered

THE DEPARTMENT of Health (DoH) on Monday gave tobacco companies 90 days to comply with an administrative order requiring the printing of graphic warning on cigarette packs to show the ills of smoking.In a press conference in Taguig City, Health Secretary Esperanza I. Cabral said Administrative Order 13, issued last May 12, is effective immediately with administrative sanctions facing violators to include seizure and product recall.

She said the department has drawn up eight designs of picture warnings which are being reproduced for distribution to tobacco companies. The pictures that would be printed on the side of the government warning against smoking show acquired ailments such as cancer.

Ms. Cabral said tobacco companies have the option to either bear the labeling cost or reflect it through higher retail prices.

“We’d love for these companies to pass on the costs of labeling to consumers. It would serve as an additional deterrent to stop them from buying these goods,” she added.

She noted that taxes from tobacco products reach P30 billion a year, but this pales in comparison to health expenses for smoking-related diseases and ailments worth at least P200 billion.

"Smoking is a right of a person. But so is the right to information to know what are the hazards of this vice,” the Health secretary said.

Senate Passes Pathetic Tobacco Control Bill

There's no other word to describe it: The U.S. Senate's tobacco control bill is pathetic. It bans candy cigarettes and fruit-flavored cigarettes, but doesn't even require cigarette companies to disclose the cigarette ingredients they use until nearly a year-and-a-half later. The bill bans the use of the word "light" from cigarette packages, but even the tobacco companies admit this will make virtually no difference, as smokers have grown accustomed to buying cigarettes labeled with color codes that indicate a "light" designation.

And perhaps most importantly, this bill now puts the FDA in the position of approving the marketing and consumption of a product that directly promotes heart disease, strokes and cancer. The FDA, in other words, will now lend its stamp of approval to a product that openly kills people.

Tobacco as an FDA-approved drug?
If the FDA has any ethics whatsoever, it must ban tobacco products outright. For how can theFood and Drug Administration approve the marketing and selling of a deadly carcinogenic product when, at the same time, it bans cherry growers from describing the everyday health benefits of cherries?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for approving the marketing and distribution of both foods and drugs. Cigarettes are obviously not foods or dietary supplements, and since tobacco is inhaled for its pharmacological effects, that clearly putscigarettes in the drugs category. So if this bill becomes law, it will force the FDA to declare tobacco to be a drug.

So if tobacco is a drug, then where are the safety tests required for drug approval? The FDA assaults fruit and herb companies on a daily basis, threatening them with being shut down for selling "unapproved drugs," and yet now the FDA is about to be put in the position of approving an admittedly deadly product that has no health benefits whatsoever while contributing to serious degenerative disease!

Interestingly, this position is not at all unusual for the FDA. The agency has already granted approval to thousands of toxic chemicals that openly harm human health -- pharmaceuticals. FDA-approved drugs, after all, kill over 100,000 Americans each year. If the FDA's portfolio of drugs includes tobacco, that number will rise to well over half a million Americans killed each year by FDA-approved drugs!

Furthermore, it would make laughable any claim by the FDA that it is working to "protect the public." As the agency approving the marketing, sale and consumption of a product that inarguably kills over 400,000 people a year, the FDA would cement its position as a peddler of poison.

What's in a Cigarette? FDA to Study Ingredients

The Food and Drug Administration is working to lift the smokescreen clouding the ingredients used in cigarettes and other tobacco products.

In June, tobacco companies must tell the FDA their formulas for the first time, just as drugmakers have for decades. Manufacturers also will have to turn over any studies they've done on the effects of the ingredients.

It's an early step for an agency just starting to flex muscles granted by a new law that took effect last June that gives it broad power to regulate tobacco far beyond the warnings now on packs, short of banning it outright.

Companies have long acknowledged using cocoa, coffee, menthol and other additives to make tobacco taste better. The new information will help the FDA determine which ingredients might also make tobacco more harmful or addictive. It will also use the data to develop standards for tobacco products and could ban some ingredients or combinations.

"Tobacco products today are really the only human-consumed product that we don't know what's in them," Lawrence R. Deyton, the director of the Food and Drug Administration's new Center for Tobacco Products and a physician, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

While the FDA must keep much of the data confidential under trade-secret laws, it will publish a list of harmful and potentially harmful ingredients by June 2011. Under the law, it must be listed by quantity in each brand.

Some tobacco companies have voluntarily listed product ingredients online in recent years but never with the specificity they must give the FDA, said Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

For example, Altria Group Inc., based in Richmond and the parent company of the nation's largest tobacco maker, Philip Morris USA, has posted general ingredients on its Web site since at least 1999.

Cigarette makers say their products include contain tobacco, water, sugar and flavorings, along with chemicals like diammonium phosphate, a chemical used to improve burn rate and taste, and ammonium hydroxide, used to improve the taste.

Concord Store Robbed Twice In 1 Month

Concord has been robbed twice in the past month.Police said the West Street Market in Concord was robbed on March 8 and again over the weekend.Just before 8 p.m. Saturday, a robber entered the market and pointed a handgun at the clerk, police said. The robber demanded money and Marlboro cigarettes, police said.

Investigators said they believe the same man robbed the store both times.Store co-owner Sandy Mayurikaben said she was on the phone talking to her husband when the robber entered and demanded she hang up the phone.

"He said, 'I know you have some money under the counter,' and he said, 'I know you have some money here,' then I gave him that," Mayurikaben said.The man also demanded a carton of Marlboro cigarettes, and once he had those, he ran out of the store and is believed to have fled on foot.

Monday morning, Mayurikaben was back behind the counter but still a little nervous.
"I'm a little shaken, but I'm OK," she said.Concord police released surveillance video of the robbery."This is the second robbery at this store in less than a month," said Sgt. John Thomas. "We had a previous one on March 8 occurring under similar circumstances, possibly the same individual."

Mayurikaben has no doubts that it was the same man, and she said she hopes that police will be able to catch the man before he comes back again.The robber was described as a white man in his 20s, approximately 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 150 to 160 pounds. He was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his head and what appeared to be dark, women's sunglasses.

Poland is frontline in EU battle with tobacco smugglers

The chocolate-brown labrador plunges into the car, scratching wildly, before a customs officer sets to work with a screwdriver and torch.

Minutes later, the officer wrenches apart an underfloor cache, pulls out a carton wrapped in black plastic and cuts it open to reveal 10 packets of cigarettes.

Bezledy is a Polish border crossing with Russia's Baltic territory of Kaliningrad.

It is also on the front line in a battle against contraband cigarettes, which experts say now account for around 13 percent of sales in the European Union.

"We stop around five or a maximum 10 percent of vehicles," said watch commander Mariusz Kuzia.

"Above all it's based on risk analysis. For example, a person's travel history. We have systems that log licence plates. We're good psychologists, spotting nervous behaviour. And we also look out for changes to a vehicle's construction," Kuzia explained.

"But it's also a matter of the officer's gut instinct -- or the dog's," he added.

Otherwise law-abiding smokers may see buying illicit cigarettes as a "victimless crime" amid ever-increasing taxes, or even fair game against mighty tobacco firms.

But experts estimate the underground trade cost European Union governments around 8.0 billion euros (10.5 billion dollars) in lost taxes last year.

The smugglers' wiles seem boundless.

Searching cars and trucks, officers at Bezledy and other posts have found cigarettes stashed under false floors, in coffee jars, boxes of biscuits, footballs, loaves of bread and even a consignment of tripe.

At the end of 2008, in a drive to stifle peddling by border dwellers, the number of cigarettes an individual can import into Poland was slashed from 200 to 40.

The smuggler at Bezledy, who said his name was Dariusz, claimed he was trying to get by in an area where unemployment is around 40 percent.

"I don't have any option. I've got a wife and two kids. I had an accident 10 years ago, so my hand's disabled. If this didn't pay off, I wouldn't be doing it," he said.

Dariusz, 34, acknowledged dozens of smuggling runs. He faced a 200-zloty (50-euro, 64-dollar) fine for his latest botched attempt.

Penalties are based on quantity, reaching 2,600 zloty for 630 packs. Larger-scale traffickers risk three years in prison for fraud.

Dariusz's load was just 40 packets, or 800 cigarettes.

But that is a minute tip of a gigantic iceberg.

Experts estimate that 75 billion cigarettes are now smuggled into the EU each year, mostly via Russia and Ukraine, with all but three percent slipping under customs' radar.

For smugglers, the trade makes business sense.

Costing the equivalent of around 50 euro cents a packet in Kaliningrad, contraband branded cigarettes sell for at least 1.50 euros in Poland and almost four in Germany. Over-the-counter prices are around 2.50 euros in Poland and five in Germany.

Overall, a gang's return on investment is 375 percent, according to tobacco industry estimates.

"Small-scale smugglers used to do this here for food and rent money, but now it's controlled by organised criminal gangs," said Ryszard Chudy, deputy customs director for northern Poland.

"The cigarettes smuggled in are gathered together and then shifted around the country and the rest of the EU by the crime syndicates," he said.

In 2009 officers at Bezledy seized almost 24 million cigarettes, which have either been destroyed or remain stacked in a high-security warehouse as evidence in pending court cases.

Nationwide, the haul was around 800 million cigarettes -- out of a total 15-20 billion estimated have been smuggled in.

"We're in a race against the traffickers," said Chudy.

Tobacco firms have in the past faced criticism for allegedly failing to take contraband seriously.

"Tobacco transnationals have benefited from -- and even been complicit in -- illicit trade in tobacco," said Gigi Kellett of the US-based watchdog group Corporate Accountability International.

"Illicit trade can open up new markets for brands ... and addict new customers with lower-priced tobacco products that have evaded taxes," she added.

Leading firms, however, are feeling the pinch, losing an estimated 700 million euros last year in Europe from illicit trading, and have created intelligence arms to tackle the threat.

"We consider it a serious crime. It hurts government revenues. But it also hurts our business. It's not a level playing field," said a senior British American Tobacco investigator, speaking anonymously due to the confidential nature of his work.

Little consensus on initiative to legalize pot

Talk about murky.

The economic impact, the potential social and legal landscape, even the split between the pro and con sides in the squabble over the initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot to legalize marijuana for recreational use in California - they're all about as clear as smoke from a bong.

Most medicinal-marijuana advocates think it would be just fine if good-time tokers joined their legal crowd. Others worry it might ruin the purity of using pot as medicine.

Some associated with law enforcement think it's time to treat weed like liquor and give up trying to tamp down the trade. More think this approach will just lead to a dangerous explosion of potheads on the roads and at work.

There are illegal-weed growers who are afraid they'll lose their livelihood, and others who think business will boom. A few politicians, including Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, who is floating his own legalization bill in the Legislature, are backing the measure. Many, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the major candidates to replace him, oppose it.

And then there is the money issue - the biggest elephant in a smoky room of elephants.

Proponents of the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 say taxing pot could inject $1.4 billion a year in taxes and fees into a state general fund that badly needs the money. The annual California pot output, according to the state Board of Equalization, is estimated to be worth $14 billion, making it the state's biggest cash crop - and if marijuana is legalized, the figure could billow much higher, advocates say.

Opponents counter that the figure is a pipe dream, because even if the measure passes, pot use will still be illegal under U.S. law - so anyone reporting income will be vulnerable to federal prosecution.

About the only thing both sides can agree on is that if the measure passes, nobody knows exactly how it will play out.

It would be the most sweeping decriminalization of the use and sale of marijuana in America.
Attitudes changed

"It's hard to imagine how the discussion of legalizing marijuana would have even gotten off the ground if not for the state budget crisis," said Robert MacCoun, a UC Berkeley law professor who specializes in drug policy.

He noted that opposition to legalization in California polled at around 80 percent until voters authorized pot in 1996 for medical use. By the early 2000s, those in favor of legalization were polling above 40 percent. Last year, with the state deep in budgetary crisis, a Field Poll cracked the halfway mark and put support in California at 56 percent.

Clearly, the desire to aim a new fire hose of cash at the state's $20 billion deficit is making the taxation of pot more attractive than ever, MacCoun said. But just as significant, most of the momentum to legalize pot comes from younger people.

A KPIX-TV poll by Survey USA, released April 21, found that three-fourths of respondents 18 to 34 years old supported legalization. Part of that is probably attributable to a more relaxed attitude toward pot after its legalization for medical use, MacCoun said, but equally important is that the younger generation is more accustomed than even their Baby Boomer parents to being around people who use marijuana - and to using it themselves.

UC Davis law Professor Vikram Amar, another expert on marijuana policy, summed up the explanation for legalization being taken seriously in succinct, nonbudgetary terms:

"A lot of people like pot now," he said. "And a lot of other people don't care about pot."
Money issue

Amar believes that because cannabis will still be illegal under federal law, "the state can't possibly make as much money in taxes as some people estimate. It can't raise the money unless people report the income, and if you do that you are serving yourself up to the feds, and you could go to jail for a long time."

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in October that the federal government would not pursue medical marijuana operations and users if they are following state law, but he has not said how his office would react to passage of the California initiative.

Skeptics of legal marijuana's economic benefits for California such as Amar have some unlikely allies - people involved in the illegal trade. Some of them say the crop is worth a fortune now, but if it is legalized, pot will be easier to get and prices might plummet, along with tax revenue.

Still, the more common sentiment among those in the cultivation trade, both legal and illegal - particularly growers in boutique-heavy Mendocino County - is that they are itching for legalization so they can turn their weed vistas into a dope-tourism draw akin to Napa Valley.
Medical pot backers weary

Most purveyors of medicinal herb have cautiously backed the initiative, but many are concerned that that health-conscious medical approach they've been emphasizing will be diffused.

"I do support the measure, but I am still afraid this could lead to an explosion of cannabis shops and different levels of regulation everywhere, with some counties being taken by surprise," said Steve DeAngelo, director of the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the nation's biggest medical marijuana dispensary, with 46,000 clients. "I believe adults should be able to use something as safe as cannabis - but it should done responsibly."
Expansion in growth seen

The basics of the proposition are that it would legalize the possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana for personal, recreational use by anybody 21 or older. Each person could also grow weed for personal use as long as it was confined to a 5-by-5-foot space.

But the application of the six-page law could lead to significant pot growth and sales from one end of the state to the other.

Local jurisdictions would be allowed to set their own regulations under the proposed law, and that could mean anything from cities or counties keeping the recreational ban in place to the spread of large farms and the sales of dope, packaged like cigarettes in sprightly boxes, in corner stores on every block.

"My personal favorite is selling in coffee shops," said initiative creator Richard Lee, 47, who founded Oaksterdam University, the pot-trade school in Oakland. "But if a city or county wants to put it in a liquor store or a grocery store, that's their choice.

"I'm a believer in the free market," he said. "If you have a good product, it will sell."

The groundwork for such sales has already been set in cities such as San Francisco and Oakland, where medical-marijuana dispensaries had rocky, sloppily run starts but have generally settled in as part of the landscape.

The picture is less rosy in Los Angeles, whose 500 dispensaries are the most numerous of any city in the country. Continual police raids and wrangling over nuisance ordinances and complaints suggest that a further proliferation of sellers might prove challenging.

Another fear among some growers and users at a recent forum on the initiative in Ukiah (Mendocino) was that big companies might come in and supplant the little growers with plantations. But noted cannabis-advocacy attorney Omar Figueroa of Sebastopol said that was unlikely because they would be vulnerable to federal prosecution.

Bill Phelps, spokesman for Philip Morris - the nation's No. 1 cigarette-maker - said the company was not taking a position on the initiative, but cautioned against anyone taking seriously rumors of big corporations going for the pot trade.
Most police oppose measure

Most in law enforcement are predictably unimpressed with legalization.

John Lovell, lobbyist for the California Peace Officers' Association and several other law enforcement groups that oppose the initiative, said the measure could bring an escalation of addicts and be "a job killer."

"Under this initiative, you will be able to come to work high on marijuana, and in fact you might even be able to sell it at work if you have a local permit," Lovell said. "You will see many California businesses move out of state if they can, because they will face increased costs and insurance from this. It could be devastating, costing the state money instead of bringing money in."

Some in law enforcement, such as retired Orange County Judge James Gray and former San Jose police narcotics Detective Russ Jones, are pushing for the initiative, likening the current situation to Prohibition.

Gray said he is conservative and has never smoked pot. But he has written for years that marijuana could more effectively be controlled through regulation and treatment programs, rather than police and jails.

"It is really clear that what we're doing with marijuana in our state and country simply is not working," he said.

But backers like Gray are anomalies, Lovell maintained.

"I think most people know that if this law passes, this state will have gone to pot," he said. "They will vote accordingly."
Changed political climate

Poppycock with overblown fears, said Aaron Smith, California policy director of the Marijuana Policy Project.

Under the proposed law, driving and working regulations will be enforced the same way they are for drunkenness, he said. He downplays any notion of the state teeming with potheads, and said he doubts the weed trade will be dampened by fear of the feds, noting that the medical pot trade already generates $100 million annually in local and state tax revenue.

The last time an initiative to legalize pot outright was put before California voters, in 1972, it was trounced. But since then has come the 1996 initiative that legalized medicinal marijuana, and with it the rise of medical pot dispensaries and businesses all over the state.

With 13 other states having followed California's lead in legalizing medicinal marijuana, Smith said, this state is finally primed and positioned to lead the way in ending pot prohibition.

"It's clear to me we have the support," he said. "Victory is just a matter of getting those supporters out to vote in November.

"Some adjustments will have to be made after it passes, but it will all work out."