(AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels)
The Office of the California Attorney General released the official title and summary of the Jack Herer California Cannabis Hemp Initiative Wednesday. The proponent has until 19 Apr 10 to gather 433,971 valid signatures to qualify for the November 2010 ballot.
Three other initiatives are currently gathering signatures and the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 has announced they have at least 500,000 signatures and are confident they will have enough to qualify.
The official title is "Changes California Law to Legalize Marijuana and Release Non-Violent Marijuana Offenders from Jail." Thus, it will be easy to differentiate from the other three as it is the only one that does not contain the word "tax" as well as the only one to contain the word "jail".
The official summary is as follows:
Repeals state laws that make it a crime to possess, cultivate, transport, distribute, or use marijuana or hemp. Provides persons convicted or serving time for non-violent marijuana offenses be immediately released from prison, jail, parole, or probation, and have their convictions erased. Authorizes Legislature to adopt laws to license and tax commercial marijuana sales. Allows doctors to prescribe or recommend marijuana to patients, regardless of age. Prohibits testing for marijuana for employment or insurance purposes. Bars state from aiding enforcement of federal marijuana laws. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Savings in the several tens of millions of dollars annually to state and local governments on the costs of incarcerating and supervising certain marijuana offenders. Unknown but potentially major tax and fee revenues to state and local government related to the production and sale of marijuana products. (09-0044.)
Ballot Measure Update - California Secretary of State
The Jack Herer Initiative to legalize marijuana has been filed - Examiner.com | 8 Oct 09
Peron announces opposition to Oakland's marijuana initiative - Examiner.com | 30 Sep 09
The Jack Herer Initiative - Examiner.com | 21 Sep 09
Oakland's marijuana legalization initiative is still a Trojan Horse - Examiner.com | 16 Aug 09
California has three initiatives filed to legalize marijuana - Examiner.com | 10 Aug 09
Comments
The decriminalization of marijuana is an idea that needs to become the law of the land. But biggest downside I see is some corporate entity marketing weed and doing to pot what RJR did for tobacco. I think the best solution is for personal use, medical use, cultivation and transfer between two individuals to be allowed but retail sales to be prohibited. Keep it low key and out of the mass marketing arena. The taxes lost because of no retail sales is money we don't need in the government coffers.
This is great news. I hope California citizens participate enough to get the required amount of signatures. Legalize use and release non-violent marijuana offenders and erase their records (which helps to ruin lives) makes much more sense. If people want to go the commercial route then yes it should be tax like alcohol corporations. But if a person wants to brew their own beer, or grow their own for that matter, well that should be possible as well.The Regulate, Control, and Tax initiave limits use to one ounce and 25 sq ft. This makes no sense. No one puts a limits on how much wine you can have in your cellar. Cannabis should be legalized no questions asked. too many good people (and law abiding, except for ridiculous cannabis laws) are being prosecuted for a victimless crime. It is time for a change.
Decriminalization will be no different. How can you say its ok to smoke but not sell. Sort of contradicts itself doesn't it? You will have the same black market as we do now. Just legalize period. The government needs less power and not to tell people what they can do with there own body. If you don't want drug money in the government coffers then we should exclude alcohol and tobacco. Those two cause hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. Pot ZERO.
Even if CA passes this, and I hope they do, the feds will be here to arrest anyone that has plants. They don't want anyone finding out about hemp and its many uses. China may have problems exporting all its crap to our country. Our government won't allow China to be unhappy.
Yeah, I agree that would be bad if we ended up with "reconstituted sheet cannabis" in cigarette form haha.. but I think the problem with any kind of prohibition is that it serves no purpose other than take a product out of the normal economy and put it in a black market. I think we should grow weed as much as possible so that we don't have to buy we can just pick it like flowers haha... WAIT A SECOND IT IS FLOWER BUDS -_-.. see my point. I don't think we need any laws involving pot. And screw taxing weed we don't need to give the government any more money. No matter how much we tax it will only pay a fraction of what we PRINT at the FED. I don't wanna pay taxes on my pot, but I guess even with taxing it a little bit we'd still eventually end up with better prices than 20 a G! It should be like a dollar a gram with the productive capacities of a legal industry.
All this LEFT-RIGHT argument and advocating taxation to somehow "pay off the debt" (GOOD LUCK WITH THAT HAHA) is SLAVE THINKING. If we want legal weed to become a reality, we have to get passed the manipulative false arguments and propaganda and get to the heart of the issue. Cannabis prohibition is a sick, tyrannical absurdity, and an utterly despicable hoax. The lack of cannabis use in the treatment of common ailments is probably the one of the major reasons for the success of the pharmaceutical industry, which is quite possibly the greatest manifestation of evil that has ever emerged from the expansion of the cosmos. lol I mean that though, we are stupid for letting them do this to us. Imagine how much healthier we would be if we were calm, reasoned, and ate right, and were more thoughtful, and every other effect of weed hahaha.. I'm pretty sure things would be much better.
I can't believe how removed we are from a natural mind state that we are debating cannabis prohibition from a "Risk Assessment" point-of-view.. This is exactly the type of thinking that is spread by the corporate empire ("NWO", if you will lol). Remember this when they try to implement "Codex Alimentarius" to this New Roman Empire's food industry and then you'll see what the intentions are behind this type of manpulative argument and perception control.
It is because of you, J. Craig Canada, that the Title of the initiative is the "Jack Herer California Cannabis Hemp Initiative". You wrote "It should be called "The Jack Herer Initiative". (see above for link) I spoke to Chuck Jacobs about this and told him that I thought it was a good idea to have Jack's name on it, no matter what else was in the title! Chuck said that he thought that it was a great idea, also! I used your timelines, and other info. in your article to assist Chuck in filing the Initiative. I also found a good friend of Jack's to donate the $200 for the filing fee and another good friend of Jack's to provide Chuck transportation. As you said in your first article, the initiative was previously titled by Jack as "The California Cannabis Hemp and Health Initiative". Chuck, I believe, is the one who finally came up with the official name, leaving out "The" and "Health" and adding the "Jack Herer" part. Thank-you, so much, for being a part of history! You rock!
I am so sad that Jack's initiative did not gather signatures, as Chuck Jacobs told us he was spearheading. That would have been a great honor to Jack. Now, they are waiting for 2010. What happened?
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