Monday, August 22, 2011
'Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012' Filed
Legalization David Downs — Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 10:29 AM
2012 promises not one but a flurry of legalization initiatives in battleground states Colorado, California and perhaps Washington.
Today, East Bay physician Dr. Frank Lucido, Mendocino activist Pebbles Trippett, as well as attorneys Joe Rogoway, Omar Figueroa, and William Panzer announce a second California pot initiative, following 'Regulate Marijuana Like Wine'.
The Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012 would allow adults to legally possess up to three pounds of pot and grow a ten-by-ten-foot garden. It puts the California Department of Public Health in charge of administering the commercial side. The text of the initiative now heads to the State Attorney General's office for a title and summary.
The groups says some online surveys point to support for change. However, legalization measure Prop 19 lost in 2010 with 46 percent of the vote. Rogoway and Figueroa were involved in a separate 2010 legalization initiative that failed to gather enough signatures to be placed on the ballot. But this year's measure comes with the imprimatur of Panzer, an attorney who co-authored California's landmark medical marijuana initiative, Prop 215, in 1996.
- David Downs
- California adults could lawfully possess up to three pounds under the 'Repeal ... Act'
The folks behind the act have a fundraiser planned for October 1. And a Facebook page.
The full text of the proposed initiative is available after the jump.
Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012This initiative measure is submitted to the People of the State of California in accordance with the provisions of Article II, Section 8 of the Constitution.
This initiative measure adds Chapter 6.7, entitled “Repeal of Cannabis Prohibition,” to Division 10 of the Health and Safety Code.
PROPOSED LAWSECTION 1. Sections 11420, 11421, 11422, 11423, 11424, 11425, 11426, 11427, and 11428 are added to the Health and Safety Code, to read:
11420(a). This Act shall be known and may be cited as the Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012.
(b)(1) The People of the State of California hereby find and declare that the purposes of the Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012 are as follows:
(A) To ensure that adults have the right to obtain and use cannabis.
(B) To ensure that adults who participate in cannabis related activities are not subject to criminal arrest, prosecution, or sanction.
(C) To make cannabis available for scientific, medical, industrial, and research purposes.
(2) Nothing in this section shall be construed to supersede legislation prohibiting persons from driving impaired, nor to condone the diversion of cannabis to minors.
(c) “Cannabis” means “marijuana” as defined in Health and Safety Code Section 11018 and “concentrated cannabis” as defined in Section 11006.5.
11421(a). The following statutes are hereby repealed from the Health and Safety Code: Section 11054(d)(13), Section 11054(d)(20), Section 11357, Section 11358, Section 11359, Section 11360, and Section 11361. Section 23222(b) of the California Vehicle Code is hereby repealed. Cannabis related activities are hereby removed from the prohibitions contained within Health and Safety Code Sections 11364.7, 11365, 11366, 11366.5, 11379.6 and 11570.
(b). The repeal of Health and Safety Code section 11360, as related to sales only, will be effectuated within 180 days of passage of the Act in order to allow the California Department of Public Health the opportunity to enact commercial cannabis regulations.
11422. It shall not be a crime or public offense for an adult to use, possess, share, cultivate, transport, process, distribute, sell or otherwise engage in cannabis related activities.
11423(a). The California Department of Public Health shall oversee the regulatory system for the commercial cultivation, manufacturing, processing, testing, transportation, distribution, and sales of cannabis. This shall include promulgation of regulations to control, license, permit, or otherwise authorize the commercial cultivation, manufacturing, processing, testing, transportation, distribution and sales of cannabis. These regulations shall include appropriate controls on the licensed premises for commercial cultivation, sales and on-premises consumption of cannabis including limits on zoning and land use, locations, size, hours of operation, occupancy, protection of adjoining and nearby properties, and other environmental and public health controls. These regulations may not include bans of the conduct permitted by this Act.
(b) Any regulations created by the California Department of Public Health may not impede on the individual rights set forth in this Act. Any taxes, regulations, fines and fees imposed pursuant to this section shall not be imposed on personal amounts of cannabis below 3 pounds of processed cannabis and 100 sq. ft. of cannabis plant canopy provided that the processed cannabis was not sold or purchased pursuant to subdivision (a).
(c) The California Department of Public Health may regulate the smoking of cannabis in public and where minors are present.
11424. This Act, and all state implementations of this Act, shall preempt enactments of local jurisdictions with the exception that local jurisdictions may enhance the rights and protections of persons involved in cannabis related activities beyond what is delineated by the state or this Act.
11425. This Act shall not adversely affect the individual and group medical rights and protections afforded by California Health and Safety Code §11362.5 through §11362.83.
11426. Cannabis related conduct that contributes to the delinquency of a minor shall remain punishable by Penal Code section 272. Driving while impaired by cannabis shall remain punishable by Vehicle Code Sections 23103, 23152(a) and 23153. Impairment occurs when a person's mental or physical abilities are so impaired that he or she is no longer able to drive a vehicle with the caution of a sober person, using ordinary care, under similar circumstances.
11427. If any provision of this Act or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, that invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications of the Act that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this Act are severable.
11428. The provisions of this Act shall become effective November 7, 2012.
Comments (18)
Showing 1-18 of 18
I suffer in severe pain daily and am totally and permanently disabled. I live in GA and must rely on Opiates (pain pills) in order to partly function but they only cause me more medical problems, such as my digestive system shutting down and my liver being enlarged. I would definately give MMJ a chance if it meant a better life for myself and resulting in me having a more productive life and being a more active mom. PLEASE, SUPPORT LEGALIZING MMJ THROUGHOUT THE USA.
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In support of the Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012, I drafted a roll-up implementation bill in order to get the ball rolling with the legislature. Check it out -- http://www.ca2012.com/legalize.html
40,000 "in-the-crosshairs" civilian victims per last 5 years under mexican army control of gov.mexico.com in the DEA war on [some] drugs + media blackout nos. killed [sic; ordered statistics "suicided"?] by the army "gov.mexico.com is not counting...has ordered [been ordered] mexi-media ink mum on that detail"! or if that no. "score" the cartels what "no." "results" the military's? neighboring near violent anarchy with a blood-bursting boarder is also more reason to end prohibition here and now! peace.
@lavender
even if this does pass & the government is able to tax marijuana, the cost will still be much cheaper. do your homework. I agree that the government might now get as much as they think they will from legalizing it.. because it is that, just a plant. that is why there are grow & possession limits.
the government will put a LARGE tax on marijuana that would probably raise the price of an (top shelf)ounce from 40 to 60 bucks. Now think about how much you pay at a clinic for an ounce of your meds. I am sure they will have options such as organically grown..
be careful when believing what owners of clinics will tell you. The reason they don't want the law to pass is because they wont be making all their money.. & their businesses will likely die out due to their expensive prices.
Clinics are not supposed to be "for profit," but most indeed are..
How do you think some can afford to pay their employees $12/hr plus discounts on meds.. They certainly aren't volunteers.
Many people who are against this are for the reason that marijuana wont make enough money in taxes to help CA like they say it will & recreational drug use will go up. I personally believe it may, for marijuana.. but I am not against that. Hopefully people enjoy it much more than alcohol and try to stray from illegal drugs & tobacco.
I am a patient as well, one who enjoys her medication. There isn't anything wrong with that, in my opinion. I would rather enjoy the effects of my medication than be hooked on some prescription drugs that will only damage my organs in the long run.
This is a movement, not just maybe a law waiting to pass.
If you love marijuana & see/experience the benefits, then why not make it legal for all adults. Maybe those who are wary on willing to try it for the medicinal benefits will give it a try.
Oh yeah, and that "medicinal grade marijuana" that we patients pay for, is also grown by independent growers.
Marijuana is only a "MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR industry" because it is for the most part illegal. Try this: go to the grocery store and find the most expensive labor intensive produce you can find (hydroponic heirloom tomatoes or table grapes are a good start), take note of the price per pound. You can't project expected tax revenue based on black market prices. What can be hoped for by big agri-business is that full legalization will open new markets. It's just a plant, when fully legal it will cost the same as any other herb and be a hell-of-alot cheaper than labor and time intensive wine. The $100/gallon scam fertilizer market won't make much sense either. No one gets rich except the rich. Growers, get ready to pay for your herb like everyone else.
The 3 lb/100sq ft section was an offering specifically to Nor Cal growers. It was designed to keep competition from homegrowing as small as possible. That threshold for permitting and excise taxation should be at about 12 lbs. not 3. There should be NO square footage rule AT ALL. In CA home brewers and winemakers can produce 100 gallons as an individual and 200 as a household without a permit or excise tax. There's no limit on vines or vineyard square footage. Three lbs is not equivalent to 100 gallons. This will create problems for small homegrowers if it passes although not like criminal prosecution can now of course.
OK, campers. It's time to announce the winner in our Best Use of Paragraphs contest. Today's award goes to @malcolmkyle, followed by close runners up @jway and @Bart Wakker.
@ Cameron - cannabis wont save the economy for the mere fact that our govts wont stop overspending- which IS the problem. We have to fix the leak before we start pouring more water in the barrel.
I dont have a problem with recreational cannabis users paying taxes - but I have a huge problem when this entire thing started off MEDICAL and now its becoming a freaking cash cow! I dont feel that real patients need to pay through the nose for their medicine - for some of us this is all we use. Its just really starting to piss me off that people get their mmj cards with out showing any proof of medical issues which minimizes the legitimacy of medical cannabis. Brings down the entire industry and frankly turns people off who might otherwise support medical cannabis. I really wished articles like this would make a stipulation for true medical users being omitted from paying all of the fees one will tack on. You cant argue either that one can grow their own for the mere fact that govt will do what Amsterdam does and make growing it illegal - not even counting that patients might not be well enough or be physically capable of growing their own - for medical grade uses. Its shit like this that is going to spoil it for the real patients. I really wished the stoners wouldnt hide behind medical cannabis and just come out with it already and grow a set! Its time to seperate the two groups because as a patient my mindset is quite different than a recreation user. I dont really have a choice anymore in which medicine to use and I cant really afford the prices on cannabis now. I can cut back my use, and I have, but when someone is really using it for a quality of life issue and not for fun there MUST be a different set of rules applied. Some might not agree with me but I can get a jug of wine for 10 bucks. I cant get any form of cannabis for that price. I am at the mercy of paying 45 an 1/8th or more. That 1/8 of flowers only lasts me about a week or less if I am smoking joints. I prefer concentrates - which are much more costly. Oh.. and then I have to pay a 17% sales tax! This just cant be. If it is legalized we MUST find a way to be able to provide it to the true patients.
Laws are meant to protect the people, not protect the interests of the Government or big corporations. Cannabis needs to be legalized so that the people have the choice to use it as they please. Prohibition causes more harm than good, I mean does anybody remember how the Prohibition of alcohol gave rise to organized crime? The only reason that marijuana is a gateway drug is through the fact that the consumer has access to the black market and the ability to get these harder drugs. If we legalize it, the police won't have to waste their time or money on marijuana related arrests, they can concentrate on real crimes. Marijuana is a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR industry, legalization can save the economy. And the government already knows that hemp has over 30000 uses. I know my future children will be taught the truth. Oh and Amsterdam isn't the only place drugs have been legalized, Portugal has had all drugs decriminalized and the country hasn't changed since. They didn't fall to pieces, crime didn't pollute the streets. Our politicians in both State and Federal need to be informed because I have seen some ignorant things quoted in articles by some of these so called "representatives" and it sickens me. Congress should take a class on the truths.
* A rather large majority of people will always feel the need to use drugs, such as heroin, opium, nicotine, amphetamines, alcohol, sugar, or caffeine.
* Just as it was impossible to prevent alcohol from being produced and used in the U.S. in the 1920s, so too, it is equally impossible to prevent any of the aforementioned drugs from being produced and widely used by those who desire to do so.
* Due to Prohibition (historically proven to be an utter failure at every level), the availability of most of these mood-altering drugs has become so universal and unfettered, that in any city of the civilized world, any one of us would be able to procure practically any drug we wish within an hour.
* The massive majority of people who use drugs do so recreationally - getting high at the weekend then up for work on a Monday morning.
* A small minority of people will always experience drug use as problematic.
* Throughout history, the prohibition of any mind-altering substance has always exploded usage rates, overcrowded jails, fueled organized crime, created rampant corruption of law-enforcement - even whole governments, while inducing an incalculable amount of suffering and death.
* The involvement of the CIA in running Heroin from Vietnam, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan and Cocaine from Central America has been well documented by the 1989 Kerry Committee report, academic researchers Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott, and the late journalist Gary Webb.
* It's not even possible to keep drugs out of prisons, but prohibitionists wish to waste hundreds of billions of our money in an utterly futile attempt to keep them off our streets.
* Prohibition kills more people and ruins more lives than the prohibited drugs have ever done.
* The United States jails a larger percentage of it's own citizens than any other country in the world, including those run by the worst totalitarian regimes.
* The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it.
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American editor, essayist and philologist.
* In The Land Formally Known As Free, all citizens have been stripped of their 4th amendment rights and are now totally subordinate to a corporatized, despotic government with a heavily armed and corrupt, militarized police force whose often deadly intrusions into their homes and lives are condoned by an equally corrupt, spineless and reprobate judiciary.
* In a corrupt and oppressive Police State, there is No Personal Privacy, Scarce Personal Freedom, Hardly Any Personal Justice and An Ever Diminishing Amount Of Personal Wealth.
* 2010 Reported Corporate Revenues:
Johnson & Johnson = $61.90 billion
Pfizer= $50.01 billion
GlaxoSmithKline = $45.83 billion
Novartis = $44.27
Sanofi-Aventis = $41.99 billion
AstraZeneca = $32.81 billion
Merck & Co. = $27.43 billion
Eli Lilly = $21.84 billion
Anheuser-Busch InBev (2007) = $16.70 billion
MillerCoors = $3.03 billion
Pabst = $0.50 billion
* As with torture, prohibition is a grievous crime against humanity. If you support it, or even simply tolerate it by looking the other way while others commit it, you are an accessory to a very serious moral transgression against humanity.
* The United States re-legalized certain drug use in 1933. The drug was alcohol, and the 21st amendment re-legalized its production, distribution and sale. Both alcohol consumption and violent crime dropped immediately as a result, and, very soon after, the American economy climbed out of that same prohibition engendered abyss into which it had previously been pushed.
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.”
- Winston Churchill
Whenever a Drug Lord money-launders in order to hide the profit of marijuana, they have the ability to lower their fees to their clients (think barbers, hair salons, auto mechanics, bars, restaurants, the list goes on and on) while reporting higher sales to the government. This makes the legitimate competitor across the street lose his clients to the money laundering business. BUT, what the drug lord did not think about, is that when the legitimate competitors go out of business, the salaries that the jobless employees lose were made by hard work, while the salaries that the money launderer made were artificially inflated by the demand of the drug. Some of these newly unemployed people were clients of the drug lord's marijuana. The Drug Lord has inadvertently shut down a money producing entity which was buying his product. Therefore, the Drug Lord must now take over other Drug Selling Competitors, and this is where the crime comes into place. Apart from that, the newly unemployed now have to take welfare and that is bad for the tax payer. Before long, the Drug Lord will have to expand to a new city in order to continue their lifestyles... Another words, There is an economic time limit to what Prohibition can accomplish. It is possible that one of the main reasons for the Crash of 1929 was the prohibition of alcohol back in 1920... It is also possible that the horrible economy we face today might be in part because of this money laundering economic disaster.
@jway, I suppose your argument could be applied to any illegal drug. Replace marijuana with cocaine, say.
Bart Wakker, huh? Sounds suspiciously very much like "BART Hacker". Coincidence?
I don't see the need for a second initiative besides the "regulate like wine" one. What's the difference? Just to confuse people?
As to the guy below, if they repeal cannabis prohibition, that means it will be legal, up to 300 grams, and 100 square feet of garden.... in the Nederlands it is neither legal to possess, let alone grow. And the amount of 300 grams is more than you'll likely find in MANY coffeeshops. Heck, reading about the latest INtolerance in the Nederlands towards coffeeshops, it seems like you guys will be flocking to California, rather than Californians going to NL.
Legalize 2012!
I wish the Carlifornians all the best. Luckily no such initiative is needed in the Netherlands, but pressure from abroad (most likely the US behind the scenes) is causing the government to tighten regulations already.
I think that the lobby of vested interests profiting of prohibition (law enforcement, commercial prison system, religious fanatics, drug gangs and criminals, parts of the pharma and chemical industry and of course the alcohol industry) may get an impulse as these groups, for the first time in decades, needs to worry about loosing parts of their business due to legalization. And it may even be a driving force behind the current tightening in the Netherlands.
Politicians will be bribed, vile advertisement campains and 'documentaries' with new 'facts' on the dangers of this plant that has been widely used by mankind since 5000 years. I hope that this time the supporters of legalization work better together and have enough funds to defend against lies and misleadings.
Regardless of which side of the political fence we stand I think we can all agree that our laws should cause more good than harm.
So what good do we get from the federal marijuana prohibition and what harm does it cause? Some would argue that its greatest benefit is in that it "sends the right message" to our children, but it's hard to really see that when marijuana's classification in the same schedule as heroin sends a message to our children that heroin is no more dangerous than pot.
And since we can't stop millions of Americans from using marijuana and since we allow no legal supply of the stuff, how do the harms caused by maintaining zero legal supply amidst massive and unrelenting demand weigh up against the benefits we receive from the prohibition? These harms include 800,000 needless arrests each year, 40,000 brutal murders at the hands of the Mexican drug cartels in just the last five years and drug dealers drawn into our neighborhoods looking to sell marijuana to our children.
If we really do believe that our laws should be beneficial and logical then we must demand an end to the federal marijuana prohibition and insist that our supermarkets be given the right to legally sell marijuana to adults at prices too low for the drug dealers and cartels to match.
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