Marijuana Dispensaries Could See Tighter Restrictions, Licensing Under Calif. Ballot Initiative Proposed by Pot Advocates
If you look at the marijuana dispensaries around L.A., you might conclude that the pot-shop game is a far cry from the laws voters approved in order to allow the "seriously ill" to share homegrown, nonprofit weed.
The California initiative process is your bud.
It has become, even by some of marijuana most-staunch advocates, a for-profit game worth millions, maybe billions of dollars.
Marijuana backers, organized and somewhat unified in their failed ballot push for full legalization last year, are taking responsibility. They're even ...
... wondering aloud if California's loose regulation of medical marijuana invited the U.S. Department of Justice to declare that dispensaries here are in violation of federal law and should be shut down.
The Sacramento Bee:
Dale Sky Jones, chancellor of Oakland's Oaksterdam University, the cannabis trade school that became the nerve center for the Proposition 19 campaign, said recent federal enforcement actions underscored a need for an initiative dealing specifically with regulating medical marijuana.A representative for the United Food and Commercial Workers Unions, which is organizing California cannabis workers, and Steve DeAngelo, director of California's largest medical marijuana dispensary, said they are also working on drafting language for the potential 2012 initiative.
The language is still up in the air but backers told the reporters at a San Francisco news conference that they would lean toward regulation of the type seen in Colorado -- with inspections and state licensing.
"Right now, zip is happening," Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a supporter of medical marijuana, is quoted as saying.
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