On September 21, 2010 the Associated Press reported that a coalition of medical marijuana advocates, the California Cannabis Association, is opposing Proposition 19 because it would allow local governments to ban the purchase and sale of marijuana in local jurisdictions, which would harm patients. Nannette Mirando of KABC in Sacramento reported on the news, quoting a spokesperson for Crusaders for Patient Rights. Spokesman for the Yes On Prop 19 campaign Jeff Jones said "We are not circumventing, repealing or amending the rights of Californians with respect to medical cannabis." A spokesperson for the California District Attorneys Association, Jan Scully, said enforcement from a public safety standpoint will be virtually impossible since it will be impossible to prove where marijuana originated from when people are moving back and forth between counties. LAPD Deputy Chief Stephen Downing said going after marijuana-related crimes is a waste of law enforcement resources. A fantastic blog has said that medical growers will be limited to 25 square feet if Prop 19 passes because the word "cultivate" is missing in a certain section. It also says that medical growers who live in California but don't live in cities will be affected by Prop 19.
On September 21, ABC News reported that almost 40 workers at Marjyn Investments LLC, a medical marijuana patient contractor, signed up with Teamsters Local 70 Union in Oakland, CA. Lou Marchetti is the Teamsters organizer that signed them up and negotiated a 2 year contract for them. The AP reported it's America's 1st group of unionized marijuana growers. The workers work as gardeners, trimmers and cloners and their new contract gives them health insurance, paid vacation, a pension, and within 15 months their wages will increase from $18/hr to $25.75/hr. Marjyn is one of 260 parties who applied for one of Oakland's four large-scale grow op permits. The Oakland City Council authorized industrial cannabis cultivation in July. In May, approximately 100 Oakland medical dispensary workers joined the United Food and Commercial Workers.
On September 19, Debra J Saunders wrote an article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled "Prop. 19 - End marijuana prohibition, vote yes." Two days later she wrote a blog post with answers to some reader questions.
On September 22, the Lodi News-Sentinel published an article by Ryan Campbell entitled "Lodi police grapple with fuzzy marijuana regulations". Neighboring businesses complained about the smell of marijuana coming from a 1,500 square foot commercial warehouse on Auto Center Drive in Lodi rented by Darren Dean. Officers unsuccessfully tried to contact the renter and monitored the building for several days; the building was using 6x the electricity as similar-sized tenants. On September 14, about 40 Lodi police and firefighters raided the warehouse and found 30 marijuana planted worth approximately $4,200. The Lodi Fire Department spent $1,600 for 18 hours of overtime for fire responders. But Darren Dean and his mother both had medical marijuana cards. Dean was given 2 weeks to harvest his crops before being evicted by the property owner. The Lodi News-Sentinel also mentioned that in August 2010 an indoor homegrow with jerry-rigged lighting sparked a fire which damaged an apartment in Boulder Creek near Santa Cruz. It also mentioned that San Joaquin County allows people to have 12 immature plants or 6 mature plants and up to 8 oz of harvested marijuana. And that Sonoma County allows people to have up to 30 plants and possess up to 3 pounds of marijuana.
I guess you can add The Sacramento Bee to the list of California newspapers against Prop 19. On September 19, an article appeared in the The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento's biggest newspaper, the 5th largest in CA, and the 25th largest in the US) saying that "Prop 19 deserves to go up in smoke." The article says the initiative is poorly drafted and "full of worrisome loopholes and ambiguities that would create a chaotic nightmare for law enforcement, local governments and businesses." It says "Supporters say it would control and tax marijuana. It would do neither." The Sacramento Bee said that nowhere in the initiative is a specific tax proposal, so there are no guarantees about marijuana taxes or if they would be fair, since local governments get to choose. It mentions that Prop 19 supporters like to argue that it would free the criminal justice system, but California already decriminalized possession under an ounce 34 years ago. Over 400,000 Californians use marijuana daily. The paper said a mishmash of rules will inevitably result because the initiative gives too much leeway to local governments. It says that Prop 19 has no definition of what constitutes driving under the influence of marijuana, unlike the standard for drunk driving. It says that Prop 19 will not put drug cartels out of business or end marijuana trafficking. If marijuana is taxed at $50 a ounce, there will still be a black market for cheaper marijuana. Plus, there will still be the illicit trade to feed the teen market. It says that marijuana laws should be uniform statewide and that voters will get another chance to voice their opinion in 2012. The Sacramento Bee concluded "It would be shortsighted to support Proposition 19 – a deeply flawed measure that would create many more problems than it could hope to solve – just because it's the first one to make the ballot."
On September 16, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article by Alice Huffman, the president of the California NAACP, entitled "Marijuana law reform is a civil rights issue." She said that the war on drugs "is the latest tool for imposing Jim Crow justice on poor African Americans." She wrote that "in every one of the 25 largest counties in California, blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at higher rates than whites, typically at double, triple, or even quadruple the rate." Regarding the NAACP and arrests for marijuana offenses this blog says that possession of under one ounce is already not an arrestable offense and Prop 19 won't change that.
And this great blog by Jennifer Soares asks how many arrests Prop 19 will stop. Notice how the Department of Justice defines "arrests." Also notice how many felony arrests Prop 19 could possibly affect.
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