The Parker-backed initiative also has lined up support from the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy Project, two leading marijuana reform advocacy groups that led the earlier campaigns to pass pot legalization measures in Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.
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Backers also claim the measure would potentially generate $500 million in tax revenue for the state.
“California has always been at the forefront of economic innovation and legal reform”, said Nate Bradley, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Assn. California campaigns are such huge endeavors that it is absolutely necessary that the cannabis law reform community unites to end prohibition in the largest state in the union. Here’s what’s inside the initiative, which was filed by noted environmentalist Michael Sutton and a rare, cannabis-educated Physician Dr. Donald Lyman.
California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced this week that the organizers of the California Cannabis Hemp Initiative (CCHI) 2016 can begin collecting signatures to qualify the initiative for the November 8, 2016 California state election.
The most prominent of the other efforts is fronted by a group called Reform California.
Supporters estimate legalization could bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes a year. Local governments may ban outdoor home cultivation, and employers will be able to bar the use of nonmedical weed by their workers.
The land and water protections in the measure received specific praise in joint and individual letters from The Nature Conservancy, Audubon California, California Council of Land Trusts, California Native Plant Society, California State Parks Foundation, California Trout, California Urban Stream Partnership, Defenders of Wildlife, Endangered Habitats League, Pacific Forest Trust, Trout Unlimited and Trust for Public Land. Its campaign team includes Joe Trippi – who has been a top adviser to such figures as Gov. Jerry Brown, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former President Bill Clinton – as well as AFL-CIO pollster Celinda Lake and many veteran California marijuana advocates, including Dale Sky Jones, the executive chancellor of Oaksterdam University, a cannabis industry training school in Oakland.
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Last week, Newsom said that he was concerned that too many initiatives would make it confusing for voters to decide which marijuana proposal to support at the polls. “The involvement of heavy-hitting technology and investment leaders like Sean Parker is vital to gaining the momentum necessary for a real and robust regulatory regime critical to the continued growth of California’s world-class cannabis industry”, says GreenRush CEO Paul Warsaw in an email to the Fishing Report. “We believe this effort has the support and resources to mount a successful campaign for responsible adult-use”. However, medical marijuana patients won’t have to pay regular sales taxes.
