Legalazation : Auma 2016 and MMRSA

wow lots of back and forth links...

I'm glad I am a personal grower so I get to avoid most of the noise.

I still don't quite get what's what.

Commercial growing: there's limitations on all kinds of industrial production/manufacture, the best you can hope for are regulations similar to those of idk... tobacco growers? This includes permits and licensing and all sort of crap, and pretty stringent tracking of everything that's produced.

Medical patients: there's regulations on most other kinds of medications, requiring a lot of medical proof for rx. I would also love a real number of ACTUAL medical patients vs recreational users.

Rec users: any move towards recreational legalization is a good one... of course there's going to be limitations... didn't California just bump the age for cigs to 21? There's plenty of dry counties all over the country (places where you cannot buy alcohol). By the way as a tobacco smoker I am not allowed to smoke pretty much anywhere in public legally... so yeah, not sure what's wrong here...

So trying to make pot not conform to some of these guidelines seems ridiculous.

Locally we have restrictions on commercial grows mainly due to impact... and on personal grows due to building codes (which aren't going to change any time soon) and fair use rights... there's definitely areas that could use improvement (in my area you are limited to 1200 watts of lights TOTAL... regardless if your grow space is broken up into different areas, and NO outdoor... because the smell bothers a lot of people. But i find the others harder to deal with than those (you have to connect all equipment directly to the wall/outlet... no extension chords... I don't have enough outlets in one area to plug in my fan, heater, lights and exhaust... and I use timers or temp controllers on everything). I get 50sqFt of grow space, and the 1200 watts of light... currently I am growing more than enough for myself in a 3x4 closet using only 150-400 watts...

I am more concerned with the actual state of the growing industry right now. Pot shops are charging $200 an oz where I live, which is simply ridiculous. They are also still using shitty growers. I mean the bud is great... but I still find pet hairs or whatever. Black market growers are charging slightly less, with more problems: a lot of hassle to meet up etc... and quality varies wildly. In that climate... fuck the commercial growers... just give me decent personal grow rights.

btw: when it comes to the numbers I am working off of traditional production values: 100% mark up when products change hands. SO working backwards... At $200/oz retail that's $100 wholesale, so $50 to produce... anyone spending $50 bucks to grow just 1 OZ?

Here is what my friend Chris Conrad says about AUMA, and I could not say it any better:


"The CCPR team were not involved in writing Prop 64.

You are right, of course, that politics is a tug of war — not only among unions and commercial interests but between cops and the voters. This initiative is conservatively written to help parents understand that marijuana is not going to end up in the hands of their children. Remember that the growers and patients are not the only people afraid out there, so the initiative has to take all interested voting blocks into account. It also regulates the business side in ways that favor small growers and encourage people in the current illicit market to come on-board, even though that is not always recognized or appreciated.

Normally, a ballot measure only gives you two choices — accept or reject; but Prop 64 includes a “third vote” option for people. First choice, Vote Yes on Prop 64 because it’s perfect and you want to keep it exactly as written forever. Second choice, vote no to keep the drug war going as is and hope for growers to do something they have not been willing to do since maybe the 1970s, fund an initiative, and hope the legislature will do something it has not done since 1976 and rewrite the drug laws (and hope they do a good job this time, but I would look at MMRSA / MCRSA before signing onto that hope. Nope, I don’t see it, they made things worse for patients and doctors and banned collectives). That 40-year lag time is too long for me because I have been working on this for almost 30 years and I hate the drug war and want to strike a blow against it now, not sign up to maybe do it in another 40 or 50 years and let 13,000 felony marijuana arrests go on each year while waiting for something magic to happen. If you vote no, you are voting to keep all current penalties in place, there is no other interpretation, that is what you would be doing.

So the third choice: Vote Yes on 64 and work to refine and improve it over time. These current penalties were enacted in 1976 and only the most minimal “decrim” of possession to an infraction has been enacted by the legislature, that being timed by Schwarzenegger to undermine the Prop 19 effort. It took 20 years after Prop 215 for them to pass a regulated medical marijuana market and that was mainly to eliminate the SB420 collective defense and replace it with felonies for patients who sell to one another, which is what they just passed. It doesn’t seem realistic, IMHO, to expect those legislators to see a defeat of adult use by the voters as an endorsement to take action that legalizes things beyond what the voters reject is just a cruel hoax and a false hope. We have something tangible, Prop 64 and it deserves our support and calls on us to continue our efforts not as criminals but as Californians in a much better position (legal rights and status).

I think the no-on-auma folks are an example of the cannabis community deliberately shooting itself in the foot when we are about to step into a legal future. I say pass Prop 64 and build on the momentum for even greater freedom through the legislature and local jurisdictions. Having the legalization movement stall, lose at the ballot box and fall apart would weaken all of us.

My message to patients and voters is the same. Empower yourself, Vote Yes on Prop 64. "

— Chris Conrad, [email protected]

Expert witness, author of The Newbie’s Guide to Cannabis and the Industry


Nuff said!

rollitup said:

I've lost track of all of your pea-brained delusions.

Luckily, most people will not entertain your claims, and will support the initiative. No matter what you two say, AUMA will be better for everyone.

The main thing is stopping the pigs from breaking in our doors, and pave the way for the federal government to finally act on this in a positive way for the entire country.

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From what I saw, both initiatives fund the police way to much. Why are we giving back close to 20% of the taxes earned in CA to law enforcement? So they can "check up" on us some more, no thank you. They want to give the majority of the rest of the taxes to infrastructure and education, yet the systems in play now are both bullshit and in horrible debt. Roads all of CA are falling apart and the education system isn't what it used to be. The cannabis movement is stronger than ever, even globally. I don't like when our government puts up something half ass and then says we can fix it with time. That still leaves gray area for abuse and negligence.

Activists have been complacent for decades (with all due respect, we are still not legal), I don't like when those who should be pioneering these movements only end up bickering and feuding with each other (often stemming from $$$, ego, and greed) to put into a position allowing something like AUMA to get on the ballot.

The grey area for negligence has been on the part of the cannabis industry for the past 20 years, with all due respect. We should have had outright legalization many years ago, but many are happy with the status quo of collecting $ from patients while the "rec/non-med" continue to dance around the laws.

Vote yes on AUMA and shake the world

California's economy cannot be denied, if AUMA goes down the ripples will shake across the country and the world and the narrative the prohibitionists will push will read something like:

"California has learned marijuana is not the great thing MMJ sells us, this is not what Californians want, they voted no on rec, now do the right thing and repeal MMJ"

CannaBruh said:

Activists have been complacent for decades (with all due respect, we are still not legal), I don't like when those who should be pioneering these movements only end up bickering and feuding with each other (often stemming from $$$, ego, and greed) to put into a position allowing something like AUMA to get on the ballot.

The grey area for negligence has been on the part of the cannabis industry for the past 20 years, with all due respect. We should have had outright legalization many years ago, but many are happy with the status quo of collecting $ from patients while the "rec/non-med" continue to dance around the laws.

Vote yes on AUMA and shake the world

California's economy cannot be denied, if AUMA goes down the ripples will shake across the country and the world and the narrative the prohibitionists will push will read something like:

"California has learned marijuana is not the great thing MMJ sells us, this is not what Californians want, they voted no on rec, now do the right thing and repeal MMJ"

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I don't believe AUMA will shake the world. We already have states that are recreational, yet we didn't pass it last year. No world shaked! Why? Because the language was bullshit and didn't gain enough momentum. Most everyone agrees that legalization should happen, but once it happens it's going to be hard to change things. I'm not one to say hey things have been bad so lets take anything that could change the direction, then when that ball is rolling in a direction, we can fix it later. That's a bullshit excuse. All I keep seeing is that the initiatives were made with the police in mind, and to me that's a scary thought. Right now, the feds (twice) have up held that going after growers/clinics within state compliance is a no no, yet they still do it. So now i'm gonna give the CA police 20% of possibly hundreds of millions of dollars, fuck that. Legalization means legalization, not regulations on top of regulations so that every bureaucracy gets it's cut.

Actually it has shaken the world.... we had other states ask the Feds to intervene and encroach upon the states which passed ballot measures, and they were denied by the Feds. So it was a win for the rec states. They shook the world of prohibitionist states. That happened....

AUMA passing furthers that progress.... AUMA failing is only viewed as "they don't want it, so why should we...."

I'm also not in the camp of "it's not eutopia, so throw em to the wolves of law enforcement"

That's complacent negligence on part of those protected by mmj or otherwise would stand in the way of someone who would seek legal protections to medicate with a plant, legally without the guise of some mmj card"

I bet you pay wheel tax, and for your drivers license but it's legal to drive, however regulated.... same same

We are not going to get a world where we can grow and consume and trade in cannabis and everyone turns their heads... not gonna see daylight. Play the game or live in the decades long tired game of "medical" defense protections.

CannaBruh said:

I bet you pay wheel tax, and for your drivers license but it's legal to drive, however regulated.... same same

We are not going to get a world where we can grow and consume and trade in cannabis and everyone turns their heads... not gonna see daylight. Play the game or live in the decades long tired game of "medical" defense protections.

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Unfortunetely, I agree with this. All I honestly care about is not feeding the police any further. If a piece of legislature came forward with that I would be all in. I own a delivery service and grow, the cops have some of my drivers license plates down to the point they are getting pulled over every week just to see if they can catch them medicated or what not. I have had to take it as far as getting my attorney to file a harassment suit. Obviously this isn't going to hold water, but I'm fed up with the police being in the industry. If we legalized it, we wouldn't need state police involved. There is already the DEA, IRS and other bureaucracies to take the lead if any regulations were disobeyed.

Yes, your drivers are being harassed, and after AUMA passes that will stop. Everyone who is pulled over will not have to worry about cops saying they smell pot, because that will no longer be justification for cops to search or do anything else.

Yes, the law enforcement lobby has a lot to say about anything that gets passed, and their 2 cents is included. If you understand how things actually get done, you would not have a problem with this.

The money going to the CHP is for only 5 years, and the police will get some money to make up for all of the money that they will not be able to steal from us. It's just something to appease everyone.

xmatox said:

Unfortunetely, I agree with this. All I honestly care about is not feeding the police any further. If a piece of legislature came forward with that I would be all in. I own a delivery service and grow, the cops have some of my drivers license plates down to the point they are getting pulled over every week just to see if they can catch them medicated or what not. I have had to take it as far as getting my attorney to file a harassment suit. Obviously this isn't going to hold water, but I'm fed up with the police being in the industry. If we legalized it, we wouldn't need state police involved. There is already the DEA, IRS and other bureaucracies to take the lead if any regulations were disobeyed.

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^ 100% on board with this, mis-allocation of state/fed resources in futile attempt to regulate that which does not need regulated (to the extent at which they come with their overzealousness) They care not of the children subjected to alcohol or tobacco, or the psychiatrists in the schools that know if they are on medicaid to afford the pills they'd have them shoved down the gullet..... but I digress. We're on the same side.

CannaBruh said:

^ 100% on board with this, mis-allocation of state/fed resources in futile attempt to regulate that which does not need regulated (to the extent at which they come with their overzealousness) They care not of the children subjected to alcohol or tobacco, or the psychiatrists in the schools that know if they are on medicaid to afford the pills they'd have them shoved down the gullet..... but I digress. We're on the same side.

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Very well said! Are you looking to vote for AUMA or MMRSA?

MMRSA is a set of 3 laws that have been passed by the State Legislature. It has already been amended, and the title has changed to MCRSA. It will continue to be changed for the better.

AUMA is Prop 64 that we will vote on in November.

How do you guys feel about taxing medical growers?

I think all of the taxes suck out loud. However, like Ben Franklin said, we should pay the least amount of taxes that we can. So I will search for ways to avoid paying them.

The premise of this country was founded on the idea that if you are being taxed, you should also be represented, where is that representation out of CA going to come from should medical be taxed (if it's not already)?

xmatox said:

How do you guys feel about taxing medical growers?

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why should we tax the sick?...

doublejj said:

why should we tax the sick?...

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We tax the incomes of those who use their moneys to buy medicine, so although indirect, we already tax the sick many times over.

doublejj said:

why should we tax the sick?...

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Completely agree.

CannaBruh said:

We tax the incomes of those who use their moneys to buy medicine, so although indirect, we already tax the sick many times over.

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Plus, there is already a tax on the medical side if you are selling it from a store front or delivery. Too many taxes...

Wow i'm still alive holy crap I just barley got in time my state water permit inspection.
ALIVE AND KICKING!