Pubdate: Fri, 03 Jan 2014
Source: Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA)
Copyright: 2014 The Press-Enterprise Company
Contact: http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/letters_form.html
Website: http://www.pe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/830
Author: Richard K. De Atley

PATH TO LEGAL POT HERE NOT SO EASY

Media attention this week turned to Colorado, where the nation's 
first recreational pot shops opened for business.

Could it happen here? It's possible some day, but complicated.

In California, lawful marijuana use is restricted to authorized 
medical patients, and signatures are being gathered now for the 
latest effort to ask state voters to consider Colorado-style access to pot.

And while medical marijuana is legal, more than 200 local governments 
across California and in the Inland area have banned medical 
marijuana dispensaries, based on a law created in Riverside and 
upheld in May by the California Supreme Court.

In Riverside County, only Palm Springs permits medical marijuana 
dispensaries under rigorous zoning rules that include final city 
approval -- a process that has allowed only a few shops.

Medical marijuana stores are banned in most inland cities, including 
Riverside and San Bernardino as well as unincorporated areas of 
Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In Riverside, 
medical-marijuana supporters are trying to qualify a ballot measure 
that will allow a limited number of dispensaries in the city.

Supporters of the "Riverside medical marijuana restriction and 
limitation act" have less than 180 days to collect valid voter 
signatures  about 12,000 to put it on the ballot in June 2015 or 
about 18,000 voters to get a special election called sooner.

Medical marijuana in California is further complicated by federal 
law, which says marijuana is illegal in all circumstances.

Federal law has been cited in civil forfeiture warning letters sent 
to landlords who rent to dispensaries. There also have been criminal 
prosecutions of some supply-and-sell personnel that federal agents 
accused of running for-profit, "grow-and-sell" operations that didn't 
comply with California's medical marijuana laws.

In 2010, Californians defeated Prop. 19, the state's most recent 
ballot effort to legalize and regulate marijuana for general use. But 
supporters of legalization point to Colorado and Washington state 
voter approvals in 2012, and changing attitudes overall about marijuana use.

For 2014, the California Cannabis Hemp Initiative has been cleared by 
the state attorney general to circulate petitions. Organizers will 
need more than 500,000 valid signatures from registered voters by 
Feb. 24 to qualify for the November 2014 general election ballot.

The initiative, which calls for decriminalization of all hemp and 
cannabis use for those over age 21, is the most advanced among at 
least four current efforts to get legalization of marijuana on the 
California ballot again.

A Field Poll released in December said that when respondents were 
read a summary of a proposed initiative, 56 percent said they would 
support it and 39 percent said they would be opposed. Five percent 
were undecided.

On the larger question of marijuana legalization, the same poll 
concluded that a majority of voters favored legalization of 
marijuana, a first for California since the field poll began asking 
the question in 1969.

The poll showed 55 percent now favor legalization, split among 47 
percent who want age and other controls similar to alcohol laws and 8 
percent who agreed marijuana should be legalized so anyone could purchase it.

Just 31 percent supported strict enforcement of current laws or 
passing tougher ones. An additional 12 percent want to keep the 
present ban but ease penalties, and 2 percent had no opinion.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom