California Voters to Decide Whether to Legalize Recreational Marijuana

NBC San Diego ^ | 6/28 | Jonathan J. Cooper

[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.

[nickcarraway]

You want to take home 5% of your pay?

[Hugin]

I heard a doctor on the radio years ago state that the carbon particles in pot smoke are much larger than those from cigarettes. The cilia in your lungs can collect those particles into phlegm and you cough it up. The smaller particles in cigs wedge between the cilia and it can’t move them. That’s why you just don’t see lung cancer among pot smokers at the levels you do in cigarette smokers. I don’t know if there are studies to back him up but it makes sense to me.

[elcid1970]

WTF?

[vette6387]

I have always been oppposed to “recreational marijuana.” Recently, my wife has has serious back problems which have resulted in one major surgery (at Stanford Hospital) and will most likely require another later this year. These are not trivial operations. They involve repairing the spine by going THROUGH THE BODY to access the inside of the spine! She is alergic to opiates, so pain control is problematic. Several years ago, she got a medical marijuana permit and tried it for pain relief, and it worked. But she, as a non-smoker could not get the relief she sought because of the diliterious effects of having to smoke it. A week or two ago we attended a Medical Marijuana Presentation put on by The Carmel Foundation. The presenters were NOT POT HEADS, and the meeting was attended entirely by older people who have unresolved issues regarding pain management. No one was discussing smoking a joint or getting high, rather the meeting was held to provide information regarding medicinal uses of several compounds contained in marijuana that can be taken in several forms, none of which involve smoking or getting high. One of the women presenters has used these chemicals to treat MS for the past five years and has found it to be a Godsend. These people also hope that the State of California decriminalizes marijuana because it is still a grey area to use these marijuana-derived componunds.
So with all your derisive comments here reagarding marijuana and California, you might want to remove your heads from your rectums and see this issue from a very different perspective. The government has made marijuana a cash cow for cops, and they have meddled with people's lives with their unwelcome and unnecessary intrusions into all effective pain medications because of the so called criminal uses. $hit, my dog just had to have surgery and she was given Tramadol as a pain med. The vet had to have all sorts of personal information on my wife and I because the dog was to get a Schedule ! drug! It's all just nuts!

[Dirt for sale]

I’m firmly in the don’t make plants outlaws camp. They are people, too, and should not be punished just for being groovy, man.

[Drago]

Similar components in tobacco and MJ smoke...THC may have some protective effects against lung cancer, but in any case there is the inhaled particle effect aka Black Lung.

http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20051017/pot-smoke-less-carcinogenic-than-tobacco

and

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071217110328.htm

[oldbrowser]

Hence the reason for importing all the illegals.

We're going to need someone to feed and water all of the brain dead zombies.

[Drago]

It should be easy for your wife to get a medical marijuana card from her doctor in CA, and there are also 2 forms of an Rx pill of THC named “Marinol” & “Cesamet”...why the need for statewide recreational legalization? We don’t need more “drunks” on the road, and further societal degradation due to chronic overuse.

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/MMP/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.webmd.com/news/20130529/most-docs-ok-with-medical-marijuana-survey

https://www.drugs.com/pro/marinol.html
https://www.drugs.com/search.php?searchterm=cesamet

[a fool in paradise]

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.

what about increased public safety costs from stoned drivers? "buzzed driving is 'drunk driving'", so the ads go.

ANY measurable impairment is grounds for steep court costs and penalties.

The dopers thought it as so great to demonize alcohol and tobacco. 0.08% BAC standard is being pushed down to 0.05% and 0.03% by the CDC and MADD on it's way down to Sewden's 0.01% BAC.

[a fool in paradise]

The “Constitutional right” line will be used when employers enforced their ban on pot use even in a “legalized” America.

Yet tobacco is banned by some employers (even in the off hours because of insurance costs) and I see no major court cases.

[a fool in paradise]

This will bring all the pothead moonbats out to vote for Hillary too while they’re at it.

Yep, it's the motivator to send young and lethargic LIVs to the polls.

[Mr. Blond]

Like it doesn’t stink enough already around here.

[a fool in paradise]

What power does the US Constitution grant the federal government to regulate people's individual behavior? I'll answer that for you - none. The idea that fedgov can tell individual citizens that they can't grow a plant or smoke it is incredibly repugnant to the original intent and to the concept of freedom in general.

So you support the whiskey rebellion?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

[ShivaFan]

This will be a complete disaster, we see thugs here is Califoria already openly smoking the stuff in parking lots where there are children getting out of cars, the pot today is heavily chemicalized and has a lot of mercury in it and much more potent and cancerous than in the 1960’s, we will have clouds of the stuff if legalized gassing little children and even babies who will have panic attacks or even death, the car accidents will be horrific and already occur but will be much worse, these goons will combine both pot and alcohol, the drug pushers will actually have more clients as no way can legal pot beat the cheap price the pushers will have so then the smokers will be using cocaine next and the already existing drug problems, health problems, welfare problems, crime problems will get worse.

I told my wife, that will be the last straw (I am 60 but about to retire but I have a lot of money as a result of investments) and I will have to leave California probably because I know what will happen and cannot live in such a ghetto. But I am not sure where to go. Or who would want me, after all, I wouldn’t trust ANYONE from California if I was living elsewhere - Washington sucks and is also turning into a dangerous ghetto in many areas. Oregon will be lost soon. I cannot live in Texas, even though I support Texas independence at this juncture. I sort of am thinking Nevada or Arizona but not sure. Perhaps someone can help me.

[easternsky]

Yes it is about taxes, our little quite county in the foothills has become a screaming mess. Every piece of land that is available is turning green. Just wait tell the harvest and get a smell in your face, cannot even describe the odor. All because our poor little county was poor and did not want to be any longer. Over the years they have fought every legitimate business that wanted to come in because of anti growth, which I am for to a extent. They found out that every office of the county could make money. Every empty warehouse of any size being bought up for inside growth. It is sickening to see what is happening. With absolutely no regard to the outcome to our way of life and out Children and Grandchildren. Even our Sheriffs dept asked them to please not to do it that crime was going to go rampant. But all the fat cats could see was dollar signs.

[cherry]

just yesterday, 3 people shot to death over a dispute at a weed farm in Oregone....

and here in Washington state, in my area alone in the last few weeks there have been multiple robberies of "dispensaries"....

yep...no crime with the legal weed...everybody is always happy and satisfied...and there are no health problems with weed either...good for the lungs....many children will learn to love it as toddlers...

and God knows we need more impaired drivers out there...

[cherry]

there have been no legit studies about weed and health because so far up until a couple of years ago, it was illegal for most people....

but I really don't care what idiots do with their sickly little bodies but I don't want to pay for all the sickness it brings....

so when the weed smokers have early dementia I just as soon we let them free in downtown LA...

[cherry]

who cares if smoking parsley and oregano helps your health...just do it....but why make your personal choices the law of the land with all its ramifications...??

and you think the govt and the cops have a cash cow with the weed as it is now?....you haven't seen nothing yet....your meds are going to be taxed up the ying yang or the rectum if you prefer....

what was a bit easier before will now become very contrived..and very expensive...

of course like alcohol, I hope the weeders get taxed extremely high to pay for all the medical treatments they will need and the injuries they will cause....somebody's going to pay for this foolishness...

[cherry]

smoking anything can cause asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, etc....destroying your lungs makes you more prone to pneumonia....

but lets move along...nothing to see here.....

[fr_freak]

So you support the whiskey rebellion?

Actually, yeah, although the tax on distilled spirits is not exactly analogous to the drug war stuff. If the fedgov had tried to outlaw alcohol (without a Constitutional amendment as we had during Prohibition) then it would be a better analogy. However, I tend to support every resistance to centralized power, especially when that power is usurped.