Another marijuana legalization initiative OK’d to collect signatures

A proposed state initiative to decriminalize the use of marijuana in California has been given the green light to try to get on the ballot.
It’s at least the fourth marijuana-related measure this year to begin the arduous signature gathering process.

This latest proposal would decriminalize marijuana use, possession, cultivation, transportation, distribution, or sale for adults aged 19 and older.

It would create a “California Cannabis Commission” to regulate commercial cultivation, processing, testing, transport, distribution, sale, facilities for on-premises consumption, and smoking in public, but authorizes local governments to permit conduct otherwise prohibited by state law and regulations.

It would exempt from regulation or taxation up to three pounds of marijuana for personal use.

The measure would continue existing prohibitions against marijuana-related conduct that contributes to the delinquency of a minor and driving while impaired by marijuana.

According to estimates from the Legislative Analyst and the governor’s Director of Finance, the fiscal effects of the measure, if it were to get on the ballot and be approved by voters, are subject to considerable uncertainty depending on the extent to which the federal government continues to enforce federal marijuana laws and depending upon how, and to what extent, the state chooses to regulate the commercial production and sale of marijuana.

The analysis says, however, there could be savings potentially in the low hundreds of millions of dollars annually to state and local governments on the costs of enforcing certain marijuana-related offenses, handling the related criminal cases in the court system, and incarcerating and supervising certain marijuana offenders.

Costs potentially could add up to the low tens of millions of dollars annually to the state to regulate the commercial production and sale of marijuana.

But, says the analysis, there is the potential of hundreds of millions of dollars in net additional tax revenues related to the production and sale of marijuana products.

The measure’s supporters, identified by the Secretary of State’s Office as Joe Rogoway, Frank Lucido, Pebbles Trippet, William Panzer and Omar Figueroa, must collect signatures of 504,760 registered voters – the number equal to 5 percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election – in order to qualify it for the ballot. They’ll have until April 19, 2012.

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