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Anti-Pot Group Says It Will Spend Millions Fighting Marijuana Legalization

Anti-Pot Group Says It Will Spend Millions Fighting Marijuana Legalization

Politics

Anti-Pot Group Says It Will Spend Millions Fighting Marijuana Legalization

Smart Approaches to Marijuana

Long Story Short

The debate over marijuana legalization in the U.S. is about to get hotter than ever. That’s because voters in several states will be voting on some big time cannabis bills later this year. As the campaigning ramps up for these bills, so are the fundraising efforts. And one of the nation’s leading anti-pot groups, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), says it will pour millions of dollars into fighting legalization bills.

The Details

There are currently ballot initiatives to legal cannabis in California, Arizona, Nevada, Massachusetts, and Maine. In each of those states, the fundraising battle between pro-pot groups and anti-weed organizations is taking off.

So far,  SAM has emerged as one of the biggest leaders in the crusade against cannabis. The group came under fire earlier this summer when a leader from the Oregon chapter tweeted controversial statements comparing marijuana legalization to the Orlando nightclub shooting. The man who made the statements ended up resigning a short time later.

Despite the controversy, however, the group recently told sources that it’d raised more than $2 million. It said that money would be used to fight marijuana legalization in California and other states.

“The ballot initiatives in California, Arizona, Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine usher in the massive commercialization of kid-friendly marijuana products,” SAM co-founder Kevin Sabet said. “They go way beyond just legalization for adults’ personal use.”

In another statement, SAM said that its current efforts represent the biggest sum of money ever raised to fight marijuana legalization.

But Is It Enough?

While $2 million is a lot of money, there’s still some good news in all this for the pro-cannabis community. Supporters of marijuana legalization have so far raised way more money than SAM or any other anti-pot groups.

In fact, reports show that people for California’s marijuana legalization bill have already raised almost $9.3 million. And that number is expected to climb as high as $12 million before everything’s finished.

Popular Support For Marijuana Legalization

Beyond that, there is growing popular support for marijuana legalization across the U.S. At least that’s what the results of a survey that were published in June said. According to that survey, 54% of all Americans support recreational marijuana. And when it comes to medical cannabis it’s even higher. A full 89% of all survey respondents said they support legalizing marijuana for medical uses.

 

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