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Background on AB 390: California Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act
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Assemblymember Tom Ammiano had only been in office for a few weeks when he introduced AB 390, the Assembly bill that would legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana in California. Considering the legislation’s scope and complexity, it was apparent that someone had been working on the bill’s language for a long time. I asked Quintin Mecke, Communications Director for Assemblymember Ammiano, how the bill’s language came to be and was not surprised to learn the primary author was the former California legislator and philanthropist, John Vasconcellos.
| Photo Credit: Joaquin Brand |
“John and [Ammiano] had long conversations about this exact legislation. We took the general format of Vasconcellos’ legislation which was drafted but never formally introduced, Mecke told me. “The member decided to introduce [it] with a couple of tweeks.”
Vasconcellos has played a crucial and primary role in California’s medical marijuana saga. When I started following the story in the 1990s, he had drafted careful legislation that would allow sick people to grow and possess reasonable amounts of cannabis for personal use, but then-Governor Pete Wilson vetoed it. Because of that veto, a less carefully crafted measure, Proposition 215, was placed on the California ballot “to end run the Governor and establish [patients'] freedom rights” as Vasconcellos phrased it at the time. To many people’s surprise (and the federal government’s great dismay) Prop 215 passed, and California had on its books a law that was less restrictive than the one Wilson vetoed.
A few years and many federal raids of cannabis clubs later, Vasconcellos, at that point a senator, drafted a new piece of medical marijuana legislation, coauthored by then-assemblymember Mark Leno, that expanded patients’ rights and clarified certain hazy aspects of the law. The number assigned to this bill in 2003 was a stroke of comedic genius. Whether it was Vasconcellos himself, a legislative aide, or just fate—no-one has claimed title as far as I know—Senate Bill 420 gave patients the right to grow more cannabis and possess concentrated forms of the substance like hashish that had previously constituted felonies.
What did Mecke think of that bill’s being called SB 420?
“There’s a lot of humor in politics. A little tongue-in-cheek goes a long way with some of these issues,” he said laughing. I asked him how many legislators understood the connotations of 420, and he suggested that it might make a good survey to take among legislative members—to get a sense of how "up to speed" they are on current culture.
I also asked Assemblymember Ammiano how many members he thought were aware of 420’s meaning.
“Well apparently, from the hallway conversations, a lot of them because they were talking to me about this [bill] and ‘when they were kids’ and saying ‘they love it, but they’re not sure they can support it’ and all,” he said. “So more than you think. They’re hip.”
Ammiano suggested that he might have adopted 420 as the number for his pending legislation had it been available. He stressed, however, that he doesn’t want comedy to cloud the issue. “We really do want to tell people that we are very serious about this—that this is a public policy issue. So the 420 wasn’t available,” said the former stand-up comedian. “But I admire John for his chutzpah. I thought that was great.”
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