Baby steps

Is the Adult Use of Marijuana Act gonna be on the ballot or what?

—Reggie Stird-Votairs

Probably. Last week, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and a bunch of other movers, shakers and moneymakers stood on a stage and announced that they had gathered more than enough signatures to place AUMA on the 2016 ballot. (They have 600,000 and they only need 385,000, so even if 36 percent of the signatures are thrown out, they still have enough.) Let the yelling and name-calling begin.

If AUMA passes, adults older than 21 will be allowed to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and grow six plants. That’s the cool part. The rest is kinda the same old, same old: The state will create a regulatory agency; counties and cities can still ban grows and collectives; people can still be fired for testing positive for marijuana without proof of impairment; yada yada. According to AUMA, the medical marijuana laws would remain unchanged, although AUMA’s public consumption rules (no public consumption) clash with the rules of Prop 215 (qualified patients may smoke wherever cigarette smoking is allowed, but not in moving motor vehicles). There are a bunch of different things in the AUMA—it’s 62 pages long, for crying out loud! Dale Gieringer from California NORML has a pretty good breakdown of the new rules here: http://tinyurl.com/AUMAbreakdown. If AUMA passes, the Legislature and the courts will have to do a ton of work to create a harmonious recreational-medical balance.

Listen, AUMA has money and connections. The pro-AUMA coalition is broad, diverse and well-connected. Anytime you can get Reagan Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Alice A. Huffman, president of the California NAACP, to support an initiative, you are doing something right. Many hardcore activists don’t like AUMA, but have come to a sort of grudging acceptance that money and power always win the day in politics. Omar Figueroa (he helped to write the California Craft Cannabis Initiative) sent me this text: “AUMA is to legalization as military music is to music.” However, he also sent me: “In the final analysis, AUMA is the lesser evil compared to current prohibition, and baby steps are better than no progress.”

However people feel, I’m not sure this initiative will pass. All the growers I know hate this measure. Hate. (By the way, I didn’t see one grower or cannabis activist onstage at the press conference. Maybe they were hiding in the back.) This initiative has many of the same problems that Proposition 19 had: It does nothing to help the folks that need it most. I may be overstating a bit, but you get my point. There is no reason for a grower in Fresno or Calaveras or any city that has cannabis cultivation in place to support this measure. Without the support of the growers and the hardcore activists, AUMA proponents will have to appeal to the squares, and there is no guarantee that the squares, er, people who don’t use cannabis, will support a legalization initiative. People forget how conservative most of California really is.

Whatever happens, this will be an interesting election season. Everyone stay calm and do your best to be civil. Smoke a bowl before you post that Facebook flame-screed. Don’t take anything personally. Get involved. Have fun.