The Pot Law That Could Be ‘Deal-Breaker for the Drug War’

Last week California‘s pot legalization initiative, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, qualified for the ballot in November, setting the stage for a vote that will have ramifications far beyond California’s borders.

There are several reasons why if the AUMA passes, it will make California the heaviest domino to fall in the nationwide effort to legalize marijuana, the most obvious being the state’s size and the sheer number of people who would have access to legal weed. One in 10 Americans lives in California, while the Los Angeles basin alone is home to more people than Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Alaska — the four states that have so far legalized adult use marijuana — combined. California also has the sixth largest economy in the world, allowing the rest of the country to draw solid conclusions about the financial impact of legalization.

The Golden State is also known as a trendsetter with the power to break down stereotypes. Having pioneered medical marijuana in 1996, California is a leading exporter of cannabis policy and culture. If California legalizes, the way it goes about doing so will set a standard going forward for other local and national governments to follow.

“It really is the state that wags the tail of the nation, so if California’s 55 senators and representatives in Congress were to be in favor of legalization, then it would be a total dynamic change,” says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. Other states like Colorado and Washington give us models of how legalization can look, he continues, “but none of them has enough national sway so as to be the template for the rest of the country where possible.”

California influences other states, as well the federal government. “We see California as a tipping point to end federal prohibition,” says Lynne Lyman, California state director for the Drug Policy Alliance. If legalization passes, overnight a plurality of the United States population will reside within cannabis-legal states, and the federal government will be forced to reckon with the “marijuana question,” she says. Moreover, California can make the biggest difference in regard to international drug cartels, especially in Mexico. “Colorado has begun to undermine the marijuana cartels, but I think [legalization] in California might cut their legs out from under them,” Lyman adds.

California will become the new “gold standard” for legalization, she says. Other states can look to California for guidance on cannabis revenue allocation, community assessment, environmental protection, anti-monopoly provisions, drug education for juvenile possession of cannabis, expunging marijuana convictions and banning regulators from denying licenses to those with prior drug felonies.

First and foremost, the AUMA would legalize cannabis for adults 21 and older. In doing so, it would also herald a new economic program to offset the effects of prohibition and the Drug War. If passed, the measure would impose a 15 percent retail tax on cannabis, projected to generate up to $1 billion in revenue, as well as $100 million annual savings, to fund public university research on legalization ($10 million), DUI protocols ($3 million), medical cannabis research ($2 million) and support for communities most devastated by the Drug War ($50 million over five years). Everything left over would go to environmental cleanup from illegal grows (20 percent), law enforcement (20 percent) and youth drug prevention, treatment and education (60 percent).

The initiative would set up 19 different kinds of licenses for various sized growing operations, retailers and small-scale micro-businesses, such as “bud-and-breakfasts” with an on-site grow operations. Licenses for the largest scale cultivators would be banned for the initial five years of the program to offset immediate monopoly interests.