Oregon may become the third state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. (Didi/Flickr)

This coming election day, citizens in Oregon will find the governor, one national senator, all five national representatives and a myriad propositions populating their ballots.

One of those propositions is Measure 91: a 35-page ballot initiative that moves to legalize the recreational use of cannabis in the beaver state.

Oregonians aren’t the only people who will be voting on pot legislation when they head to the polls on Nov. 4. Alaska and the District of Columbia also have legalization proposals on their ballots. The state of Washington and Colorado both legalized marijuana in 2012.

But the election in Oregon has special significance for certain groups advocating more relaxed cannabis laws across the country. One of those groups, the Marijuana Policy Project, recently filed paperwork with the California secretary of state's office to register a campaign committee. That means the group will be able to start accepting and spending contributions for a pot legalization initiative which might appear on California’s ballots in 2016. 

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California first legalized medical marijuana in 1996, and was the first state in the union to enact such legislation. In the years, 18 states have some form of medical marijuana legislation; four other states have passed laws decriminalizing forms of marijuana possession. Oregon legalized the use of medical marijuana in 1998.

Allen St. Pierre, executive director for National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), is another person who is closely watching the election in Oregon.

“We have to wait and see what happens in Oregon,” he said referencing the legalization efforts in California.  “Support has been mixed; it may still go either way.”

A poll conducted for Portland-television station KATU in September showed that Oregon voters favored legalization by a narrow, four-point margin. Legalization failed to pass by five percentage points when it was on the Oregon ballot in 2012.

Despite the uncertainty, St. Pierre remains optimistic for the legalization effort in Oregon and the United States as a whole.

“We’re all working together as a unified coalition,” he said, referring to the effort being mounted by his organization and others, which include the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, Americans for Safe Access and the California Cannabis Industry Association.

Marijuana’s public image has changed considerably since it began to be legalized in the late 1990s, but public policy experts still have many concerns about its legalization for recreational purposes.

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Professor Steven Yale Sussman researches drug abuse prevention and cessation at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. His biggest concern with general pot legalization is a health one. In an email interview, he shared a fact sheet that delineates the negative health consequences of smoking pot.

According to his information, smoking one joint exposes the smoker to the levels of carbon monoxide of five cigarettes and the levels of tar present in four cigarettes. In addition, smoking one joint a day creates a higher probability of lung damage to the smoker than if he or she smoked a regular cigarette.

Still, despite those concerns, St. Pierre is optimistic about legalization efforts in California moving forward.

“California already the strongest and largest medical marijuana markets in the country,” he said. “About 5 percent of Californians use or have used marijuana for medicinal purposes. The total number of users in the state, however, is probably closer to 10 percent.”

That isn’t likely to change, regardless of what happens on election night in Oregon. What the election will affect is the calculus that organizations like St. Pierre’s use when they begin campaigning in the coming months. Still, when asked what he thought the chances were of California legalizing recreational marijuana in the near future, he chuckled and said they were “very, very good.”

Reach Staff Reporter Gabriel Cortes here.