Paws to the Polls: The Making of a Campus Voter Initiative

The ravages of social and environmental injustice, pandemics, and racial strife (to name but a few global issues) would lead many of the earth’s inhabitants to agree that change needs to happen. The world will soon pass from the hands of the baby boomers to the millennials and Gen Z, and from the hands of the educators to those we are educating. The protests against the Vietnam War brought us a lowered voting age, from 21 to 18. With help from the slogan “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” the 26th Amendment was passed in 1971.

Washington State's Public Records Act: A Battle in the 2018 Legislature and Beyond

This case study documents the battle over the Washington State Public Records Act, which raged from 2017 through the end of 2019, reaching a crucial point through an extraordinary combination of citizen activism, journalistic pressure, and court action. The act, adopted in 1972 by a voter initiative, covers all “agencies,” but state legislators rejected the classification and refused to honor records requests. Journalists successfully challenged the Legislature in court, and in response lawmakers attempted to update the act to allow for secrecy, but failed. Lessons learned from the scuffle may be applied by legislators and transparency advocates in Washington state and throughout the country.

Interpretation of California's Marijuana Regulations after Proposition 64 and Pharmacy Practice Roles in Medical Marijuana Dispensing against Federal Enforcement Risks

California was the first state in the union to pass medical marijuana legislation with Proposition 215, the voter enacted California Compassionate Use Act (CCUA, 1996), though regulatory oversight for the medical marijuana industry was negligible over the next 20 years. In 2015, California legislators passed the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act (MMRSA), providing a new and comprehensive regulatory framework for medical marijuana, subsequently renaming it the Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MCRSA), with a planned implementation of January 1, 2018. In 2016, California's marijuana landscape dramatically changed with the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), also known as Proposition 64 (“Prop 64”), a voter initiative successful in legalizing recreational marijuana, where many prior similar initiatives had failed. In 2017, California lawmakers merged the two Acts (MCRSA and AUMA) into the Medical and Adult Use of Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act, (MAUCRSA), known as Senate Bill 94 (SB 94), which passed overwhelmingly and created a single comprehensive marijuana regulatory scheme for California by integrating the 2015 recreational marijuana law with the state's longstanding medical marijuana program, also effective in January 2018. Given the current national marijuana landscape and political climate, California's novel unified model for regulating and taxing marijuana will likely influence how other states proceed to regulate and tax the emerging legal marijuana industry, which has an estimated value of $7 billion. Part One of this article provides an overview of the soon to be effective “harmonized” regulatory scheme for California's medicinal and recreational marijuana industries, touching on its potential to influence other states. Part Two surveys the changed national marijuana landscape within which three states have already implemented a role for pharmacists in medical marijuana dispensing, despite that under the federal Controlled Substances Act, as a Schedule I substance, marijuana remains illegal for any purpose. The recent developments have not surprisingly triggered questions about a pharmacist's liability vis a vis marijuana dispensing and federal enforcement risks. Part Two also attempts to answer those questions through an informative discussion of the national marijuana landscape, the current political climate, and their respective influences on federal marijuana policy and enforcement.

Usage of Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA).

44 Background: In 1997, OR enacted a voter initiative allowing terminally ill residents to self-administer physician-prescribed medication to end their lives. Statute requires prescriptions written for lethal medications be reported; the state also collects demographic and intended use data. We wished to to evaluate and report participation trends. Methods: OR's Public Health Division gathers compliance forms from prescribing/consulting physicians, pharmacists, and psychiatrists, prescribing physician follow-up forms, and death certificates. Data from 1998-early 2016 were reviewed, collated, and interpreted. Results: 1,545 prescriptions were written; 991 pts died from legally-prescribed lethal medication. The % of prescription recipients dying from drug use per yr ranged from 48-82, with no significant trend (logistic regression 2-sided p = .90) The prescribing rate increased 12%/yr on average through 2013, with a 28% increase in 2014 and 40% in 2015, not explainable by growth in population. Characteristics of 991 pts dying from drug: Most recipients had cancer (77%); 8% had ALS, 4.5% lung disease, 2.6% heart disease, and 0.9% HIV. 5.3% were sent for psychiatric evaluation. M/F (%) 51.4/48.6; median age (years) 71 (range 25-102); race white/black/asian/hispanic (%) 97/0.1/1.3/1; hospice Y/N (%) 90.5/9/5. 94% died at home. Estimated median time between intake and coma (min): 5 (range 1-38); to death (min): 25 (range 1-6240). 3.3% had known complications. Reasons for DWD (%): ADL not enjoyable 90; loss of autonomy 92, dignity 79, or bodily functions 48; inadequate pain control 25; financial 3. Conclusions: The number of prescriptions written for ORDWDA medications increased annually since enactment. The % of recipients self-administering drugs has varied. Very few pts are referred for psychiatric consultation prior to DWD. Most pts dying from lethal medications have cancer, and the overwhelming majority expire at home. Medications used are effective and rapidly acting. Little evidence exists disadvantaged pts are disproportionally using DWD. Pts use DWD for reasons related to QOL, autonomy, and dignity, and relatively rarely because of inadequate pain palliation. Future studies should evaluate why many pts prescribed lethal drugs choose not to take them.

Political Shirking – Proposition 13 vs. Proposition 8

This paper considers the efficiency of the political market in the California State legislature. I analyzed the property tax limitation voter initiative, Proposition 13. I found that districts which supported Proposition 13 more strongly were more likely to oppose the incumbents regardless of whether the incumbents had the different preferences for property taxes from their districts. I also studied how legislators voted on the bills adopted after the passage of Proposition 13 to finance local governments. I found that legislators tended to follow the constituents’ will after they received the voters’ tax-cutting message expressed by the passage of Proposition 13.

Fiscal Effects of the Voter Initiative Reconsidered: Addressing Endogeneity

Several recent studies have investigated the relationship between direct democracy and public policy outcomes, with mixed findings. These inconsistencies may stem, in part, from researchers' failure to recognize that direct democracy institutions are distributed nonrandomly across the American states. That is, certain factors may lead a state to adopt the initiative process and influence other policy choices. We revisit the question of how the initiative influences state fiscal policy using panel data from 1960–2000 and a full-information maximum likelihood estimator that explicitly accounts for the endogeneity of the initiative. Our findings suggest that failure to endogenize the initiative in empirical analyses leads to substantially biased estimates of its effects. In particular, we find that once factors that predict whether a state has adopted the initiative are controlled, the initiative has a positive effect on state revenue generation and spending.