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Marijuana Initiative Enters Circulation

Marijuana Legalization. Initiative Statute.

SACRAMENTO - Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced that the proponents of a new initiative may begin collecting petition signatures for their measure.

The Attorney General prepares the legal title and summary that is required to appear on initiative petitions. When the official language is complete, the Attorney General forwards it to the proponents and to the Secretary of State, and the initiative may be circulated for signatures. The Secretary of State then provides calendar deadlines to the proponents and to county elections officials. The Attorney General’s official title and summary for the measure is as follows:

MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Legalizes under state law marijuana use, growth, cultivation, possession, transportation, storage, or sale. Creates commission to regulate, and provide business licenses for, marijuana cultivation, sales, processing, transportation, and distribution. Applies retail sales taxes to marijuana, unless exemptions for medical or dietary uses apply. Allocates revenues equally among education, healthcare, law enforcement/fire, drug abuse education/treatment, commission expenses. Prohibits discrimination against marijuana users or businesses. Requires voter approval to zone beyond set limits. Bars state/local aid to enforce federal or state marijuana laws. Exempts existing medical marijuana collectives from licensing, regulatory, and local zoning requirements. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Reduced costs in the low hundreds of millions of dollars annually to state and local governments related to enforcing certain marijuana-related offenses, handling the related criminal cases in the court system, and incarcerating and supervising certain marijuana offenders. Potential net additional tax revenues in the low hundreds of millions of dollars annually related to the production and sale of marijuana, a portion of which is required to be spent on education, health care, public safety, drug abuse education and treatment, and the regulation of commercial marijuana activities. (13-0025.)

The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1617 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 13-0025.

The proponents for the measure, John W. Lee, Bob Bowerman, Degé Coutee and Dave Hodges, must collect signatures of 504,760 registered voters – the number equal to five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election – in order to qualify it for the ballot. The proponents have 150 days to circulate petitions for the measure, meaning the signatures must be collected by May 23, 2014.

The initiative proponents can be reached at john@afpr.us. No phone number was provided.

To sign up for regular ballot measure updates via email, RSS feed, or Twitter, go to www.sos.ca.gov/multimedia.

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