Posted on 06/28/2016 6:55:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
California voters will decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana after Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Tuesday that initiative proponents turned in more than enough signatures to place the question on the November ballot.
A successful vote in California would mean one in every six Americans lives in a state with legal marijuana sales, including the entire West Coast.
The initiative is promoted by a well-funded and politically connected coalition spearheaded by former Facebook president Sean Parker.
It asks voters to allow people 21 and older to buy an ounce of marijuana and marijuana-infused products at licensed retail outlets and also grow up to six pot plants for personal recreational use.
Smoking weed would remain off-limits in places where tobacco use already is prohibited, including restaurants, bars and other enclosed public places.
Sales of both recreational pot and medical marijuana initially would be subject to a 15 percent excise tax. Cities and counties would retain the right to prohibit pot-related businesses and to impose their own fees and taxes.
State officials estimate the measure would raise as much as $1 billion per year in revenue and reduce public safety costs -- for police, courts, jails and prisons -- by tens of millions. Provisions of the initiative, which requires a simple majority vote to pass, would direct most proceeds to covering regulatory costs, research on the effects of legalization, environmental mitigation, substance abuse treatment and other purposes.
It has drawn support from the California NAACP, the California Medical Association and the California Democratic Party. Sponsors are promoting it as a civil rights issue, arguing that minority communities suffer a disproportionate share of drug crimes and arrests. They also say the initiative would make it harder for people under 21 to obtain pot and easier for police to crack down on illicit sales than it has been in the two decades since California became the first U.S. state to legalize medical marijuana.
Opponents include the California Republican Party, the Teamsters Union and groups representing police chiefs and hospitals.
California voters rejected pot legalization by 7 percentage points in 2010, two years before western states began liberalizing their approach to pot. Colorado and Washington became the first states to allow recreational sales in 2012, followed two years later by Alaska and Oregon.
Initiatives allowing for casual use have qualified for November ballots in Nevada and Maine.
They must be smoking pot to come up with those approaches.
We all know smoking kills but so does abortion yet one is ok and the other is not!!!Typical lib thinking!!!!
The predictably screwed up voters of CA will pass this easily, probably 60%. They will also pass every anti gun law on the ballot in November, and there are some VERY bad ones.
That is how it starts..... medical use for people with horrible sob stories. Then it is anyone with a horrible slob story. Then it is full on legalization.
every state should allow people to grow their own, plain and simple.
Oh, there’s a whole lot of specialized strains for sale at dispensaries, each with loads of promised applications and benefits. As none of them are subject to FDA regulation as to claims, being that they’re selling an illegal schedule one drug in the first place, they have rolled out the blarney in such a way to make an Irishman blush.
I’m hoping they do. In Colorado, there are flocks of 20 some year old partakers on every corner begging for money. Maybe they’ll move to somewhere else with legal weed and better weather.
So if you burn a tobacco leaf it creates tar but if you burn a hemp leaf, there is no tar?
Over the years, CA has already decriminalized MJ. You can be found with less than an ounce now and not even get cited. This is all about the taxes.
Followed by: I’m hungry. What happened to my potato chips?
GREAT PLEASE don’t send these losers here we have ENOUGH problems as it is!!!!
They should go ahead and legalize heroin while they’re at it.
Dude. No way. Yes way
Good. About time.
A drunk driver will blow right past a stop sign while a stoned driver will sit there & wait for it to turn green.
More whacked out dopers means less job competish for me, so flood the market with cheap weed! Besides, they’re fun to watch! Like wow, man!
Why? Because pot is a gateway drug to socialism?
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