By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services via Arizona Capitol Times
A Phoenix resident is seeking a public vote on a proposal to make Arizona the first state in the nation to effectively repeal all drug laws.
And that even includes the ones that make it a crime to sell heroin to children.
Travis VandenBrul contends that all the current drug laws do is make criminals out of people who are simply exercising their personal rights. And he said prior legalization efforts have faltered at the ballot because they didn’t go far enough.
But even VandenBrul acknowledged that knocking down the barriers to the possession, sale and use of all currently illegal drugs may be too much for Arizona voters. So he has an alternate proposal: Eliminate only the laws on marijuana and hashish.
The measures have an uphill fight at best.
A 2016 proposal to regulate and tax marijuana for recreational use drew just 48.7 percent of the vote.
Two years later organizers were back with a more liberal proposal, this one without some of the restrictions on who could sell the drug. But that plan failed to even get enough signatures to make it to the 2018 ballot.
