Medical marijuana advocates, decrying a federal government crackdown on dispensaries and a failure of state lawmakers to act, said Tuesday that they are drafting a 2012 ballot initiative to impose statewide oversight of California's burgeoning medicinal cannabis trade.
The ballot push, announced at a San Francisco news conference, is being readied by groups that include the architects of 2010's unsuccessful Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana for recreational use.
Dale Sky Jones, chancellor of Oakland's Oaksterdam University, the cannabis trade school that became the nerve center for the Proposition 19 campaign, said recent federal enforcement actions underscored a need for an initiative dealing specifically with regulating medical marijuana.
A representative for the United Food and Commercial Workers Unions, which is organizing California cannabis workers, and Steve DeAngelo, director of California's largest medical marijuana dispensary, said they are also working on drafting language for the potential 2012 initiative.
