Photo: Alex M Tracy
Initiative Has Enough Signatures to Appear on November Ballots
By Emily Gray Brosious / Extract Sun-Times / 05/04/2016
Adult Use of Marijuana Act powers forward in California.
The group leading efforts to legalize recreational marijuana for adults in California will announce Wednesday, May 4, that it has collected enough signatures to put its legalization initiative before voters on the November ballot, as reported by the Sacramento Bee.
The Adult Use of Marijuana Act has gathered more than 600,000 signatures, far exceeding the 350,000 needed. It has also received backing from billionaire Facebook co-founder Sean Parker and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, in addition to the support of many other marijuana policy reform groups.
The Act would establish a regulatory system for recreational cannabis, modeled after the state’s medical marijuana regulatory system that passed in 2015.
Under the proposed measure, adults 21 and older would be able to possess, transport, purchase, consume and share up to 1 ounce of cannabis and up to 8 grams of marijuana concentrates in the state of California.
Adults would also be permitted to grow up to six plants at home, so long as the plants are out of public view and and secure from children. Local governments would maintain authority to ban home cultivation, however.
Recent polls indicate 60 percent of likely California voters would support the marijuana legalization initiative.
The proposed measure’s full summary can be found here.
Here is the LA Times article from today (5/4/16)
A measure to legalize marijuana for recreational use in California appears headed for the Nov. 8 ballot. A coalition that includes former Facebook President Sean Parker on Tuesday said it has collected 600,000 signatures, more than enough to qualify the initiative. Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other supporters of the measure plan to kick off a campaign for voter approval of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act on Wednesday in San Francisco. The measure would allow adults ages 21 and older to possess, transport and use up to an ounce of marijuana for recreational purposes and would allow individuals to grow as many as six plants.
Christina Pascucci reports from Santa Monica for the KTLA 5 Morning News on May 4, 2016.
“This November, California voters will finally have the opportunity to pass smart marijuana policy that is built on the best practices of other states, includes the strictest child protections in the nation and pays for itself while raising billions for the state,” Newsom said in a statement.
The coalition, which includes some law enforcement and civil rights leaders, needed to collect 365,880 signatures of registered voters to qualify the initiative, which would also place a 15% tax on retail sales of the drug. The use of marijuana in public and while driving would remain illegal. Parker, a billionaire who also co-founded the file-sharing service Napster, donated more than $1 million to the campaign to collect signatures and qualify the initiative. If elections officials verify that the signatures turned in Wednesday are sufficient and voters approve the initiative, California would join Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon as states that allow recreational use of marijuana.
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Marijuana legalization is way overdue, but this bill needs to closely inspected. This may be a bad law. An ideal legalization bill would be brief: “Marijuana shall be legal to possess, consume, sell, purchase and cultivate within the state of California.” Period.