Stores hope last-minute Christmas shoppers revive holiday sales

With three days left until Christmas, last-minute shoppers are surging into malls in a mad dash for gifts as retailers extend store hours and trot out steep discounts in a final holiday-season push.

Merchants are hoping procrastinators will give them a boost this weekend. Many stores saw a worrying drop in sales in recent weeks after a robust start on Black Friday. Several are rolling out promotions as they try to make up for lost steam.

Toys R Us stores nationwide began an 88-hour, all-day-all-night marathon Friday that continues until 10 p.m. Christmas Eve. Macy's is welcoming shoppers for 48 straight hours at most of its stores on this final weekend before Christmas. Target is staying open until midnight Sunday.

At the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles' Fairfax district, shoppers swarmed the stores and cars jammed the parking lots. Christmas carols blasted from speakers. And fake reindeer and a sleigh arced overhead.

"The panic is coming in waves," sighed Angie Hill, 44, of Huntington Beach. "I've barely just started. There's still a lot of people left to buy gifts for."

The marketing director said she normally starts shopping weeks before Christmas, but a new job left her with little free time. She pointed to bags holding a magic kit for her son and exercise clothes for her husband — the very first gifts she had bought for the big day. "My shopping list is getting bigger every minute."

She's not alone. Two-thirds of Americans — 132 million people — haven't yet finished their holiday shopping, according to a survey released this week by Consumer Reports. About 14% have yet to start buying gifts, and 9% — or 17 million people — will still be rushing to cross items off their Christmas lists on Christmas Eve.

"People are very focused. They have their list and it's bam, bam, bam! They are trying to check off what they need, get in and get out," said Kim Freeburn, a district vice president of Macy's stores. "It's an intense customer this weekend."

Both the Grove and the Americana at Brand shopping mall in Glendale have been besieged with shoppers over the last few weeks and expect a similar surge in the last few days before Christmas, said Paul Kurzawa, chief operating officer of Caruso Affiliated, which owns both shopping centers.

"The last few weeks have been phenomenal, and this weekend is a continuation of that as people rush in for last-minute gift buying," he said. "You have the last weekend and you get an extra bite on Monday as well."

So far, the average American has spent $340 on presents, the Consumer Reports survey said. An earlier report from Gallup found that shoppers planned to shell out $770 apiece for the holiday. The National Retail Federation predicted total holiday spending of $586.1 billion this year, up 4.1% from last year. It's a crucial time for merchants, which can make up to 40% of their annual sales during the season.

"Holiday sales have been off for weeks," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group. He blamed a lack of exciting merchandise and a hyped-up Black Friday that may have pulled sales earlier into the season. "The bad news is this year will be based on price more than merchandise, as consumers have been groomed to wait to be rewarded with better discounts."

CeCe Solorzano, 30, says she always waits until the weekend before Christmas to scoop up the best discounts.

"I'm going to shop all day tomorrow and the weekend. Hopefully I'll be done on the 24th of December," said the Santa Clarita marketing specialist, who has to find presents for a dozen friends and family members. "I've really waited until the last possible moment this year, but the longer you wait, the better the deals."

Target just rolled out its "Last Minute Sale" that will run until Christmas Eve and is focused on popular gadgets and toys such as iPod Nanos and Easy-Bake Ovens.

"We see those last-minute panicked guests" but also shoppers buying treats for themselves, spokeswoman Donna Egan said. "We try to accommodate the surge of guests, procrastinators or not."

At the Best Buy store in Westfield Culver City, there will be one cash register on Christmas Eve dedicated just to buying gift cards, general manager Margie Kenney said. "It's a huge day for gift cards," she said. "Everything is out of stock, so you're like, 'Give me a gift card.'"

Unless shoppers this weekend go over the top, it's shaping up to be a modest holiday season, said Kamalesh Rao, director of economic research at MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse.

"That's in keeping with retail sales growth this year," he said. "There is a possibility if you have a strong weekend it could make up a little bit, since the last couple of days is pretty important, especially for sectors like jewelry."

Expect to see Christian Moreno, 43, and his wife, Hilda, out at the malls every day until Dec. 25. Between their two families, the couple have 34 people to shop for every year.

"We're a huge family," said Moreno, who works as a superintendent at the L.A. and Ontario international airports. "It's a lot of presents left to find."

shan.li@latimes.com

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2 children dead in Englewood fire

Firefighters on the scene of a fire in the 6400 block of South Paulina. (Abel Uribe / December 22, 2012)

By Peter Nickeas




Chicago Tribune

5:45 a.m. CST, December 22, 2012

Two young children have died in a fire in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side, fire officials say.

The victims are a girl around 2 and a boy around 3, officials said. Both children were found in a back bedroom, near a space heater which the Fire Department said may have sparked the fire.

The fire started around 3:30 a.m. at the home in the 6400 block of South Paulina Street, officials said.

Check back for details.

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Suicide bombers attack mobile phone firms in Nigeria

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) – Two suicide car bombers attacked the offices of mobile phone operators India’s Airtel and South Africa’s MTN on Saturday in Nigeria’s northern city of Kano, killing themselves but no civilians, police said.

Islamist sect Boko Haram has previously targeted phone firms, blowing up telephone masts and offices, saying the companies help the security forces catch its members.

“The one who hit the Airtel office was shot by military men before the bomb exploded … at the MTN office the car rammed into the fence but no civilians were killed,” Ibrahim Idris, the chief of police in Kano, told Reuters.

Airtel Nigeria’s parent company Bharti Airtel, India’s top cellphone operator, gave no immediate comment.

The national emergency agency confirmed the bombing and said it was not aware of any civilian casualties. The security forces have played down the death toll in previous bombings.

At least 2,800 people have died in fighting in the largely Muslim north since the sect launched an uprising against the government in 2009, watchdog Human Rights Watch says.

The sect wants to impose strict Islamic law on a country of 160 million people split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims.

The group has previously targeted churches on Christmas Day and security has been increased in all the major northern cities, although security experts say given the scale of Christian worship in Nigeria they cannot protect everyone.

Kano, Nigeria‘s second largest city after the southern commercial-hub Lagos, was the site of Boko Haram’s most lethal attack which killed at least 186 people in January in coordinated bombings and shootings.

(Additional reporting by Isaac Abrak in Kaduna; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Janet Lawrence)

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Crafters send mittens with a message to Newtown

“Chester Raccoon stood at the edge of the forest and cried. ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ he told his mother. ‘I want to stay home with you. I want to play with my friends. And play with my toys. And read my books. And swing on my swing. Please may I stay home with you?’” — “The Kissing Hand,” by Audrey Penn.

___

NEW YORK (AP) — Imagining the horror for Sandy Hook Elementary students when they walk into their new school for the first time, a Connecticut mom is relying on Chester of the children’s classic “The Kissing Hand” and the busy fingers of her fellow knitters to ease their way.

Kim Piscatelli of East Hampton, Conn., hit on the idea of sending a copy of the book for each of the kids and a pair of handmade mittens adorned with a heart in one palm, signifying the reassuring kiss left there by the mother of scared, sad Chester in the story written by Audrey Penn.

Piscatelli, a 40-minute drive from Newtown, sent out a call to her friends, who called on their friends. The project she thought up just Sunday spread quickly on Facebook and websites for knitters and crafters, with the first shipment of books and mittens scheduled to land in Newtown the first week of January.

“I thought, how are those families ever going to get back in a routine of sending their children to school? If there ever was a town that needed to know about that book, it was Newtown,” said an overwhelmed Piscatelli, who now has a warehouse stacked with 1,600 copies of the book and plenty of volunteers to sort, pack and ship.

Others are hurriedly making mittens, from California and Canada to Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands, in time for the start of classes in a once-shuttered school in nearby Monroe. A knitters’ group in Georgia pulled an all-night “knitathon” for the cause, Piscatelli said.

The book’s publisher, Tanglewood Press, has donated the books, along with enough copies of a sequel dealing with Chester’s loss of a playmate for teachers to read aloud.

In “The Kissing Hand,” the tearful boy is heading off to school for the first time, but he begs his mother to stay home. She spreads his tiny fingers and kisses him square in the palm and tells him “whenever you feel lonely and need a little loving from home, just press your hand to your cheek and think, ‘Mommy loves you.’”

The story was first published in 1993 by the Child Welfare League of America, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of agencies and organizations helping children at risk. Penn had tried and failed for years to get her story of Chester published, until a league official heard Penn read it and decided to take it on.

“At first, no bookstore, no wholesaler would carry it,” said Peggy Tierney, who worked at the league and took Penn with her after starting Tanglewood. “Then kindergarten teachers discovered it, word spread, people started going into stores trying to find copies, then everyone started carrying it, and by 1999 it was on the New York Times best-seller list.”

One of Piscatelli’s first stops in getting her mitten project off the ground was to contact Penn, who lives in Durham, N.C. She recalled reading the story to her own three kids when they were younger.

Penn, who lost a brother to drowning when she was 13, signed off on the combined book-mitten project as soon as Piscatelli contacted her.

“When I saw the news, my heart was just torn in half. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. Enough is enough is enough,” the writer said.

Penn’s 2009 sequel, called “Chester the Raccoon and the Acorn Full of Memories,” has Chester the boy raccoon working through the death of a friend, Skiddil Squirrel, who has an accident. Chester’s teacher tells his class Skiddil won’t return to school, so Chester and his mother venture to a butterfly pond where the squirrel loved to play to discover some acorns Skiddil left there have sprouted into young trees.

“I’ve been involved with so many parents who have lost children,” Penn said. “They just seem to reach out to me and say we love your book and your book has been a comfort.”

The writer hopes the children of Sandy Hook will “get a sense of some kind of security” from the mitten project. “They’ll have a way of keeping in tangible touch with someone at home, someone they feel very secure with.”

Meantime, Piscatelli and dozens of knitters who have contacted her through the project’s Facebook page are pressing on to get the books and mittens in the students’ hands. About 600 kids attended Sandy Hook when Lanza opened fire, but Piscatelli plans to share mittens and books with all the schoolchildren of Newtown.

“The original request was for hand-knit mittens with a heart knit in, embroidered on or sewn on,” she said. “The reality is we have people sewing polar fleece mittens, mittens made from recycled sweaters, store-bought mittens. Every pair of handmade or store-bought mittens will have a heart sewn on if it isn’t there when we receive them.”

Piscatelli has heard from other crafters who plan related Kissing Hand projects, including a group of schoolchildren in Mississippi making pillows.

“Everybody wants to help,” she said. “Everybody’s looking for some way to reach out.”

When a company called Oceanhouse Media learned of Piscatelli’s idea they released a digital version of “The Kissing Hand” early and free of cost in the iTunes app store. Piscatelli has also heard from the loved ones of grown-up volunteers on the ground in Newtown.

“I got a call from a woman who said my father is with the Red Cross,” Piscatelli said. “He’s a psychologist and is there now and I really think he needs a pair of Kissing Hand mittens.”

___

Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at https://twitter.com/litalie

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated Press

The H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V.

Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to reduce medical costs and stop the spread of the virus, which causes AIDS.

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama ruled in favor of a group of inmates who argued in a class-action lawsuit that they had been stigmatized and denied equal access to educational programs. The judge called the state’s policy “an unnecessary tool for preventing the transmission of H.I.V.” but “an effective one for humiliating and isolating prisoners living with the disease.”

After the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, many states, including New York, quarantined H.I.V.-positive prisoners to prevent the virus from spreading through sexual contact or through blood when inmates tattooed one another. But most states ended the practice voluntarily as powerful antiretroviral drugs reduced the risk of transmission.

In Alabama, inmates are tested for H.I.V. when they enter prison. About 250 of the state’s 26,400 inmates have tested positive. They are housed in special dormitories at two prisons: one for men and one for women. No inmates have developed AIDS, the state says.

H.I.V.-positive inmates are treated differently from those with other viruses like hepatitis B and C, which are far more infectious, according to the World Health Organization. Inmates with H.I.V. are barred from eating in the cafeteria, working around food, enrolling in certain educational programs or transferring to prisons near their families.

Prisoners have been trying to overturn the policy for more than two decades. In 1995, a federal court upheld Alabama’s policy. Inmates filed the latest lawsuit last year.

“Today’s decision is historic,” said Margaret Winter, the associate director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the inmates. “It spells an end to a segregation policy that has inflicted needless misery on Alabama prisoners with H.I.V. and their families.”

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said the state is “not prejudiced against H.I.V.-positive inmates” and has “worked hard over the years to improve their health care, living conditions and their activities.”

“We will continue our review of the court’s opinion and determine our next course of action in a timely manner,” he wrote.

During a monthlong trial in September, lawyers for the department argued that the policy improved the treatment of H.I.V.-positive inmates. Fewer doctors are needed if specialists in H.I.V. focus on 2 of the 29 state’s prisons.

The state spends an average of $22,000 per year on treating individual H.I.V.-positive inmates. The total is more than the cost of medicine for all other inmates, said Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the Corrections Department.

South Carolina has also faced legal scrutiny. In 2010, the Justice Department notified the state that it was investigating the policy and might sue to overturn it.

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Emanuel explores Midway privatization

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration will explore the possibility of privatizing Midway Airport but will take a shorter-term, more tightly controlled approach than was employed by former Mayor Richard Daley's team on the city's first go-round.

Chicago's last try, a 99-year lease that would have brought in $2.5 billion, died in 2009 when the financial markets froze up.

The city's latest intentions are expected to be formally announced Friday, ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline for deciding whether to retain a slot for Midway in the Federal Aviation Administration's airport privatization pilot program. The city put off this decision several times previously.

The move, preliminary as it is, is sure to be politically charged, given the anger over the way Daley's 75-year parking meter privatization deal has played out, with proceeds used to plug operating deficits and meter rates rising sharply.

With that historical backdrop, Emanuel is suggesting a more conservative approach. It includes a shorter-term lease of less than 40 years; a "travelers' bill of rights" aimed at ensuring any changes will benefit passengers; and a continuing stream of revenue for the city, giving it a shot to capture some growth.

And unlike the parking meter and Chicago Skyway lease deals, a new Midway transaction would not allow proceeds to be used to plug operating deficits or to pay for operations in any way, Emanuel said in an interview Thursday.

"I will not let the city use it as a crutch to not make the tough decisions on the budget," he said.

But while a shorter lease and greater city control may play well locally, those sorts of terms may not appeal to investors, experts said in interviews this month.

"The shorter the lease term, the lower the bid prices are going to be — that's just the math," said Steve Steckler, chairman of the Infrastructure Management Group, a Bethesda, Md.-based company that advises infrastructure owners and operators. "I'd be shocked if investors offered more than $2 billion for a 40-year lease," Steckler said.

Emanuel said: "Nobody knows until you talk to people. … I'm the mayor and I'm not agreeing to … 99 years. I'm saying it's either 40 years or less." His office has not offered an estimate of what such a deal could bring in, saying it would be premature.

"No final decisions have been made, but we can't make a decision until we evaluate fully if this could be a win for Chicagoans," Emanuel said.

A private operator would take over management of such revenue-producing activities as food, beverage and car rental concessions and parking lots. The FAA would continue to provide air traffic control, while the Transportation Security Administration would continue to provide security operations. The city would retain ownership.

Few details were provided about how privatization would affect travelers and Midway employees. Emanuel said specifics will emerge over time.

By year's end, the city will send the FAA a preliminary application, a timetable and a draft "request for qualification," a document the city will put out early next year to identify qualified bidders for the project. A review of the potential bidders will be conducted in the spring.

Last year, Emanuel expressed hesitation in pursuing a private lease for Midway unless a careful vetting process was in place, saying taxpayers were correct to be wary, given the city's history.

The evaluation process will be deliberate and open to public view, he said Thursday.

He pledged to create a committee of business, labor and civic leaders that will provide updates to the public on a regular basis and that will select an independent adviser to vet the transaction. The committee will deliver a report to the City Council, and there will be a 30-day review period before any vote.

"I set up a different process and a different set of principles that stand in stark contrast to what was discussed or done in the past," Emanuel said.

The FAA pilot program frees cities from regulations that require airport revenue to be used for airport purposes. It allows money to be withdrawn for other uses.

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Inmate caught 2 days after escape from South Loop lockup

Police entered ahomein Southwest suburban Tinley Park about 11:30 Tuesday morning, searching for two escaped prisoners.

Joseph "Jose" Banks was been caught by FBI agents and Chicago police late Thursday night, according to law enforcement sources.

FBI agents and officers from the FBI Violent Crimes Task Force and Chicago police arrested Banks about 11:30 p.m. Thursday in the 2300 block of North Bosworth Avenue in the Sheffield Neighbors neighborhood, authorities said.

He and his cellmate, Kenneth Conley, both convicted bank robbers, were awaiting sentencing and were last accounted for at 10 p.m. Monday during a routine bed check, authorities said. About 7 a.m. Tuesday, jail employees arriving for work saw the ropes dangling from a hole in an exterior wall near the 15th floor. The duo used sheets to crawl from a window.

The two had put clothing and sheets under blankets in both their beds to throw off guards making nighttime checks, authorities said.

Cameras mounted to the side of the 28-story Metropolitan Correctional Center in the South Loop captured Banks and Conley sliding down the building shortly after 2:30 a.m. Tuesday on a rope constructed from knotted bedsheets, an employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said. The men left view briefly, but it was believed they landed on the roof of a garage below. Moments later, footage from a different camera showed them hopping a black fence marking the perimeter of the property, according to the employee.

The FBI said a surveillance camera a few blocks from the jail showed the men, who wore light-colored clothing, hailing a taxi at Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue. They also appeared to be wearing backpacks, according to the FBI.

The manhunt for the inmates included several high-profile raids Tuesday in the southwest suburbs of Tinley Park and New Lenox, where Conley's family and associates lived. A $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the two fugitives was announced by the FBI this week.

Conley is still unaccounted for as of Friday morning.

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Facebook tests $1 fee for messages to non-friends

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook says it is testing a service that will charge users $ 1 to guarantee that messages they send to people they are not connected to arrive in users’ inboxes, rather than in an often-ignored folder called “other.”

Launched in 2011, the “other” folder is where Facebook routes messages it deems less relevant. Not quite spam, these include messages from people you most likely don’t know, based on Facebook’s reading of your social connections. Many users ignore this folder.

Now, users will be able to pay $ 1 to route their messages to non-friends. Facebook said Thursday that it is testing the service with a small percentage of individuals — not businesses — in the U.S.

“For example, if you want to send a message to someone you heard speak at an event but are not friends with, or if you want to message someone about a job opportunity, you can use this feature to reach their Inbox,” Facebook said in an online post. “For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them.”

The company says charging for messages could help discourage spammers.

In October, Facebook unveiled another feature that lets users pay if they want more people to read their updates. For $ 7, users can promote a post to their friends, just as advertisers do.

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Martha Raddatz, Hot Off Debate Performance, Promoted at ABC News

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Martha Raddatz, widely praised for her moderation of the vice presidential debate in October, has been given an expanded role as ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent. Jonathan Karl, meanwhile, will become the network’s new chief White House correspondent, filling the void left by Jake Tapper‘s exit to CNN.

Raddatz will replace Tapper as the primary substitute for George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” and will contribute regularly to the Sunday morning show’s roundtable. Karl will also serve as a substitute and regularly appear on the roundtable.

Tapper departed ABC in part because he has long been interested in hosting “This Week” full-time, but Stephanopoulos has no plans to give up the hosting job, a person familiar with the situation told TheWrap.

ABC News President Ben Sherwood announced the new assignments for Raddatz and Karl on Thursday, soon after CNN announced Tapper’s hiring.

Karl has investigated wasteful federal spending, covered elections, and served as the network’s senior national security correspondent.

Raddatz has reported from the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and from conflict zones worldwide, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

But she has been perhaps most celebrated for keeping the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan on course after the moderator of the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer, was accused of letting the candidates run amok.

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Stigma Fading, Marijuana Common in California

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

At a San Francisco concert in 2010, marijuana use was general while signatures were collected for a measure to decriminalize it.

LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California.

No matter that its recreational use remains technically against the law. Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.

“It’s shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all know who are recreational marijuana users,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor. “These are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it.”

Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls — what in other places is known as the cocktail hour — often wafting in from three sides. In some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it is offered at the start of a dinner party with the customary ease of a host offering a chilled Bombay Sapphire martini.

Lighting up a cigarette (the tobacco kind) can get you booted from many venues in this rigorously antitobacco state. But no one seemed to mind as marijuana smoke filled the air at an outdoor concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September or even in the much more intimate, enclosed atmosphere of the Troubadour in West Hollywood during a Mountain Goats concert last week.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, ticked off the acceptance of open marijuana smoking in a list of reasons he thought Venice was such a wonderful place for his morning bicycle rides. With so many people smoking in so many places, he said in an interview this year, there was no reason to light up one’s own joint.

“You just inhale, and you live off everyone else,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, who as governor signed a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Some Californians react disdainfully to anyone from out of state who still harbors illicit associations with the drug. Bill Maher, the television host, was speaking about the prevalence of marijuana smoking at dinner parties hosted by Sue Mengers, a retired Hollywood agent famous for her high-powered gatherings of actors and journalists, in an interview after her death last year. “I used to bring her pot,” he said. “And I wasn’t the only one.”

When a reporter sought to ascertain whether this was an on-the-record conversation, Mr. Maher responded tartly: “Where do you think you are? This is California in the year 2011.”

John Burton, the state Democratic chairman, said he recalled an era when the drug was stigmatized under tough antidrug laws. He called the changes in thinking toward marijuana one of the two most striking shifts in public attitude he had seen in 40 years here (the other was gay rights).

“I can remember when your second conviction of having a single marijuana cigarette would get you two to 20 in San Quentin,” he said.

In a Field Poll of California voters conducted in October 2010, 47 percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana at least once, and 50 percent said it should be legalized. The poll was taken shortly before Californians voted down, by a narrow margin, an initiative to decriminalize marijuana.

“In a Republican year, the legalization came within two points,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked on the campaign in favor of the initiative. He said that was evidence of the “fact that the public has evolved on the issue and is ahead of the pols.”

A study by the California Office of Traffic Safety last month found that motorists were more likely to be driving under the influence of marijuana than under the influence of alcohol.

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