MPP’s Dan Riffle Debates Kevin Sabet on Marijuana Policy

Leading up to November’s election, marijuana policy is an increasingly hot topic in Maine.

Voters in the city of Portland will soon decide whether or not possessing marijuana should be legal for adults over 21. The citywide legalization would not create a regulatory system for sales or growing, but cannabis consumers would no longer face arrest and a damaging criminal record just for using the world’s safest recreational drug.

The campaign to legalize marijuana in Portland is being led by Marijuana Policy Project, one of the main backers of Colorado’s Amendment 64. MPP’s director of federal policies Dan Riffle debates Kevin Sabet of Project SAM on the legalization of marijuana in Portland, and the bigger implications it could have for statewide legalization in 2016.

Highlights from the video, MPP’s Dan Riffle Debates Kevin Sabet On Marijuana Policy

• “We’re betting that voters in Portland, just like voters in Colorado and Washington and elsewhere across this country, are tired of the public policy disaster that is marijuana prohibition.” -Dan Riffle [0:54 mark]
• “There’s this multi-million dollar special interest lobby, that’s trying to essentially create a new tobacco industry” -Kevin Sabet [1:31 mark]
• “This decision by the US Department of Justice, in our view, will open the floodgates for those who want to legalize marijuana throughout the country.” -Chief Craig Steckler, Int’l Assoc. of Police Chiefs [2:55 mark]
• “Voters in Washington and Colorado, chose to take marijuana out of the hands of criminals” -Dan Riffle [3:24 mark]