Optimism Over CA Pot Legalization

With activists coming together behind a single, well-funded proposed 2016 ballot initiative, Californians may soon be able to legally buy and grow weed for recreational use, say industry leaders.

The 62-page proposed initiative, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, or AUMA, is backed by a number of wealthy benefactors, including Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook; Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom; and a handful of drug reform groups.

A number of other proposals, including the one strongly supported by ReformCA, have been withdrawn.

The proposed initiative writes hundreds of detailed restrictions and regulations into state law. It allows adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and cultivate up to six plants. It also regulates and taxes the production and sale of marijuana and rewrites the criminal penalties, reducing the most common felonies to misdemeanors and allowing prior offenders to petition for reduced charges.

A similar proposal to legalize recreational use, Proposition 19, failed in California in 2010, 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent. Since then similar proposals have been approved by voters in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

Currently, California is one of 23 states that approve marijuana for medical use.

At the recent International Cannabis Business Conference in San Francisco, attendees were overwhelmingly optimistic that California voters will approve AUMA this November.

"I'd say it has a 99.9 percent chance" of approval, Debby Goldsberry, the executive director of a large dispensary, Oakland's Magnolia Wellness Center, said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter at the conference, which took place February 13-14 at the Hyatt Regency.

Goldsberry, a longtime activist and founder of the Berkeley Patients Group in 1999, said that industry opposition to the initiative would be the main stumbling block to passage. She noted that growers in Mendocino and Humboldt counties were believed to be responsible for organizing opposition to Prop 19 six years ago.

Goldsberry had been a supporter of ReformCA, which was pushing a competing initiative. But the group withdrew its proposal when it became clear that it didn't have the funds necessary to collect signatures for the ballot.

Goldsberry said she does not endorse AUMA, but plans to support "any responsible" measure on the ballot.

Activist Chris Conrad, who publishes http://www.theleafonline.com, was also optimistic, giving the ballot initiative an 85 percent chance of passing. Conrad told the B.A.R. that opposition could come from law enforcement, those businesses that were "invested in the current landscape," and those who claim to be worried about "protecting children."

Emergency department physician Dr. Larry Bedard, who's a member of the board of directors of the Marin Healthcare District, believes AUMA has a "good chance" to pass. Bedard pointed out that two weeks ago, the California Medical Association endorsed AUMA, the first time organized medicine has taken such a stance.

Bedard said that many physicians would like to prescribe cannabis for hospitalized patients but hospital administrators fear that Medicare would "rescind their provider number" and put them out of business.

As a member of the CMA task force studying cannabis, Bedard said that he could foresee the day when cannabis could be used routinely for its anti-inflammatory properties or its effectiveness in children with seizures.

"There is still a lot of research necessary," he added.

Patient activist David Goldman, a gay man who was staffing the table for the local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws with his husband, Michael Koehn, said the optimism over legalization "is driving this entire conference."

California NORML has issued a four-page report analyzing AUMA but has not taken a position pro or con, Goldman said.

Goldman has some reservations about the proposal, "but I'll probably hold my nose and vote" for it in November, he said. It should be called what it is, he explained: "limited decriminalization," not "legalization."

On Monday, the national NORML backed AUMA, according to a report in the Sacramento Bee. It reported that the California chapter of the group likely wouldn't endorse until the measure has qualified for the ballot.

Goldman urged San Franciscans concerned about marijuana legalization to become familiar and get involved with the implementation of the new state regulations, the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, recently signed by Governor Jerry Brown, which regulates the state's medical marijuana industry.

Those regulations have already led to bans on medical marijuana cultivation and delivery in 200 cities in California, he said.

Cannabis consultant Brent Saupe, who's also the garden coordinator for the Bay Area Safe Alternatives collective dispensary, opposes AUMA.

"I am against any law claiming to be 'legalization' if it still has law enforcement hunting down cannabis consumers, growers, or businesses," he said in an email.

Saupe also predicts "more people will be busted because of the multitude of new rules."

"Whatever passes or doesn't, I will grow and smoke my own cannabis like I have for the last 35 years," he said. "I hope one day we pass a law in California that actually allows people the freedom to do what they choose with this plant, without risk of jail. AUMA doesn't do it."

State legalization - on the ballot in over a dozen other states this year - could help fuel change at the federal level, said Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon). He said that public support for recreational cannabis, as evidenced by approval of state initiatives, could add to the pressure to remove cannabis from the Drug Enforcement Administration's Schedule 1, used for the most dangerous and addictive drugs.

Within five years, Blumenauer predicted, "we could see cannabis delisted" as a Schedule 1 drug.