Arizona Legalization—Apparently a No

This deeply red state’s attempt to legalize recreational marijuana has apparently failed. The secretary of state’s office shows votes against the measure outpace votes for it, 52 percent to 48 percent with almost all the vote counted.

It lost after various late-in-the-race donations in the six and even seven figures help to flood the state’s airwaves with misleading ads against legalization.

The measure would have decriminalizes possession and use of marijuana immediately, and aimed to create a Colorado-style retail marijuana market for cannabis by September of 2018.

Polling on the issue had been tight throughout the campaign.

The opposition campaign’s advertising became the topic of tangles between the the two campaigns, with supporters of marijuana legalization saying their facts and figures had been cherry picked and misleading.

The opposition campaign also raised large sums of money. Las Vegas Billionaire Sheldon Adelson threw in a half-million, and the founder of Discount Tire, Bruce Halle, a full $1 million, prompting a HIGH TIMES editorial calling for a Discount Tire boycott. Opiod producers chipped in, too.