A group of heavy-hitting Bay Area marijuana legalization activists have finally filed a proposed initiative to legalize adult use of marijuana in California.
The Control, Regulate and Tax Cannabis Act of 2016 is anticipated to become a forerunner among a crowded field of draft initiatives jostling to legalize pot’s recreational use and cultivation.
The 26-page measure was drafted by ReformCA, a project of the Oakland-based Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, a team that includes Dale Sky Jones of Oaksterdam, California NAACP president Alice A Huffman and Santa Rosa-based attorney Joe Rogoway.
One of the questions here is whether any of these proposed initiatives will rise to the surface, as they tend to do once the money starts coming in, or if too many people with clipboards on street corners asking if you support legalizing marijuana . . . when all you want to do is maximize your coffee break . . . will confuse registered voters like a spoiler candidate siphoning off votes.
It could take $2 million to $4 million to secure the 365,880 valid signatures required to get onto the November 2016 ballot.
Last time I checked in with ReformCA, they had raised about $500,000 and brought in big-name political consultant and Fox News commentator Joe Trippi (who worked with the likes of presidential candidates Howard Dean and John Edwards).
Also, it’s unclear if voters will support pot legalization. A statewide survey released in June by the Public Policy Institute of California found that only a slim majority of “likely voters” (56 percent) in the state said they favored legalization, with 41 percent opposed.
It’s the title and summary phase, which means the draft initiative is being vetted by the state Attorney General’s Office, but once that’s done sometime in November . . . let the signature gathering begin.
Read the proposed initiative here.
Julie Johnson
Julie Johnson is a staff writer and cannabis reporter with The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa. On Twitter @jjpressdem.
