The Regulate,
Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 was certified for November’s
ballot this week after backers turned in signatures from hundreds of
thousands of California voters, but the three top candidates for governor on that same ballot oppose legalization, reports the Sacramento Bee.
Who knew the straights would be on the same page as Humboldt County pot growers?
If California legalizes marijuana, crop prices will drop and the livelihoods of outlaw growers will be damaged, as will the entire economy along the state’s rugged northern coast, say the growers in this report carried by the Associated Press.
“The legalization of marijuana will be the single most devastating economic event in the long boom-and-bust history of Northern California,” adds 62-year-old Anna Hamilton, a Humboldt County radio host and musician who said that her involvement with marijuana has mostly been limited to smoking it for the past 40 years.
Even if the measure passes, intense attempts will be made to repeal it, according to Robert MacCoun, a UC Berkeley law professor and drug
policy expert.
“The pressure on the Obama
administration to try to block this or resist it is going to be
enormous,” MacCoun tells the San Jose Mercury News. “It’s very hard for a single state to pass a law like
this and implement it.”
There are also fears that the
referendum could trigger a backlash against Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act.
But the Merc also chatted up advocates who do not fear legalization.
“The federal government is going to
allow the state of California to move forward with this,” said Salwa
Ibrahim, spokeswoman for the pro-legalization campaign. “We’re not worried about it.”
“We do have the right to
legalize,” remarked Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), who has sponsored a separate
decriminalization bill, “even with the
federal law as it is.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.