Pubdate: Fri, 03 Jan 2014 Source: Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA) Copyright: 2014 The Press-Enterprise Company Contact: http://www.pe.com/localnews/opinion/letters_form.html Website: http://www.pe.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/830 Author: Richard K. De Atley PATH TO LEGAL POT HERE NOT SO EASY Media attention this week turned to Colorado, where the nation's first recreational pot shops opened for business. Could it happen here? It's possible some day, but complicated. In California, lawful marijuana use is restricted to authorized medical patients, and signatures are being gathered now for the latest effort to ask state voters to consider Colorado-style access to pot. And while medical marijuana is legal, more than 200 local governments across California and in the Inland area have banned medical marijuana dispensaries, based on a law created in Riverside and upheld in May by the California Supreme Court. In Riverside County, only Palm Springs permits medical marijuana dispensaries under rigorous zoning rules that include final city approval -- a process that has allowed only a few shops. Medical marijuana stores are banned in most inland cities, including Riverside and San Bernardino as well as unincorporated areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In Riverside, medical-marijuana supporters are trying to qualify a ballot measure that will allow a limited number of dispensaries in the city. Supporters of the "Riverside medical marijuana restriction and limitation act" have less than 180 days to collect valid voter signatures about 12,000 to put it on the ballot in June 2015 or about 18,000 voters to get a special election called sooner. Medical marijuana in California is further complicated by federal law, which says marijuana is illegal in all circumstances. Federal law has been cited in civil forfeiture warning letters sent to landlords who rent to dispensaries. There also have been criminal prosecutions of some supply-and-sell personnel that federal agents accused of running for-profit, "grow-and-sell" operations that didn't comply with California's medical marijuana laws. In 2010, Californians defeated Prop. 19, the state's most recent ballot effort to legalize and regulate marijuana for general use. But supporters of legalization point to Colorado and Washington state voter approvals in 2012, and changing attitudes overall about marijuana use. For 2014, the California Cannabis Hemp Initiative has been cleared by the state attorney general to circulate petitions. Organizers will need more than 500,000 valid signatures from registered voters by Feb. 24 to qualify for the November 2014 general election ballot. The initiative, which calls for decriminalization of all hemp and cannabis use for those over age 21, is the most advanced among at least four current efforts to get legalization of marijuana on the California ballot again. A Field Poll released in December said that when respondents were read a summary of a proposed initiative, 56 percent said they would support it and 39 percent said they would be opposed. Five percent were undecided. On the larger question of marijuana legalization, the same poll concluded that a majority of voters favored legalization of marijuana, a first for California since the field poll began asking the question in 1969. The poll showed 55 percent now favor legalization, split among 47 percent who want age and other controls similar to alcohol laws and 8 percent who agreed marijuana should be legalized so anyone could purchase it. Just 31 percent supported strict enforcement of current laws or passing tougher ones. An additional 12 percent want to keep the present ban but ease penalties, and 2 percent had no opinion. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom