LEGISLATIVE LANDSCAPE

California has struggled to get its medical cannabis house in order ever since passage of the landmark Compassionate Use Act in 1996. In that time, lawmakers have repeatedly failed to come up with a statewide regulatory regime. The stakes for success are higher this year, given that there’s little chance the state would enact a full-on legalization regime until it squares up the medical regulations. (See related story in Debriefer, “Local Grower Hoedown,” at Bohemian.com.)

With that in mind, here’s the medical lay of the land over in Sacramento: Last December, Oakland assemblyman Rob Bonta offered AB 34. The Emerald Growers Association hailed the grower-friendly bill as “the first cannabis regulatory bill that takes a multi-agency approach.” The leading growers’ lobby supported the bill for its protection of old-timey shadow-growers. “This basic recognition is tremendously important.”

That bill sat around for a while and was only assigned to committee after Bonta emerged as a co-author of AB 266, which effectively superseded his first bill. AB 34 got a 13–0 vote when last heard in the appropriations committee, then it was “held under submission” in that same committee.

While AB 34 languished, AB 266 picked up on last year’s failed bills written by the conservative California League of Cities and the California Police Chiefs Association. AB 266 includes grower-friendly language, and it’s over in the Senate after passing out of the Assembly.

That bill will now be treated to the legislative version of a sativa-indica hybrid. Lawmakers will consider it alongside
SB 643, which sailed out of the Senate on June 4 and is now before the Assembly. SB 643 creates an omnibus regulatory scheme designed to corral the medical cannabis industry, and also comes with an environmentally savvy emphasis on thwarting illegal water diversions and irresponsible outlaw grows. Local shout-out to Sen. Mike McGuire for this bill.

A couple other cannabis bills were offered this session to put some legislative meat on the 1996 medical cannabis law.
AB 243 strengthens existing water regulations for cultivators. The bill requires “best practices related to land conversion, grading, electricity usage, water usage, water quality, woodland and riparian habitat protection, agricultural discharges, and similar matters”—or else: the law will find you. It passed, and is under consideration in the Senate.

Then there was the omnibus reform bill AB 26, which pushed for more laws “in furtherance of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which provides for the Legislature to ‘implement a plan for the safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to all patients in medical need of marijuana.'”

The bill went by the wayside as AB 266 emerged as the cannabis du jour bill in the Assembly.

—Tom Gogola

SONOMA CANNABIS GROWERS HOEDOWN

It was smoke-free Sunday at the Sebastopol Grange for the first meeting of the new Sonoma County Growers Association (SCGA) this past weekend. The only thing that got fired up was the imagination of nearly 200 participants as speakers explored the bold new world of legal cannabis.

“There’s been a revolution in the way we talk about cannabis policy in California in the last nine months,” Healdsburg assemblyman Jim Wood told the crowd. Earlier this month the Assembly approved an omnibus bill that protects fragile watersheds—and mom-and-pop cannabis growers. “This was the first time that cannabis has ever been acknowledged as agriculture,” Wood told an approving crowd.

The bill now rests in the Senate, to be merged or otherwise mashed-up with Sen. Mike McGuire’s Medical Marijuana Public Safety and Environmental Protection Act. McGuire pushed for new laws to fulfill a “promise that was made to Californians 20 years ago . . . to put in rules and regulations to protect our community and our environment and help this multibillion dollar industry grow in the years to come.”

The SCGA was created to influence new policies that will affect the livelihood of thousands of small Northern California growers, especially after 2016. “To protect their interests, small family cultivators need to become more active participants in their community,” the group advises. “By organizing and educating themselves, cultivators become involved in the solution.”

Given the continued illegality of cannabis—and Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch’s decision to aggressively pursue cannabis crimes—none of the attendees was ready to step out of the shadows and identify themselves as cultivators.

One attendee, Laura, said the mere fact of a full house was good enough news for the day. “It’s good people are getting out in the open, and not being afraid anymore.”

There’s other aspects of the legalization push that put the fear to local cannabis growers: the emergence of large-scale cannabis agribusiness that will push prices down so low that small operators will be driven out of business.

This has led cannabis advocacy organizers and dispensary leaders to mobilize around industry groups like the new SCGA and the Emerald Growers Association.

A “Grow Local” future, panelists suggested, would feature a regulatory environment that encouraged mom and pop growers and that emulates the craft-beer industry.

“If you go down the beer aisle at Safeway, about 75 percent of it is taken up by craft microbreweries,” noted panelist Jamie Kerr, a founder of the 530 Collective dispensary. “We could follow the [California] Craft Brewers Association model where you have regulatory requirements that allow for a micro-farmer to still stay viable and compete. You do that through tiered markets and tax breaks”

This could mean access to local farmers markets, the ability to control appellations (think “Dry Creek Valley”), and local regulations that limit large grows. Wood explained that AB 266 places a 30,000-square-foot limit on all cannabis farms—too small to whet a large investor’s appetite.

If voters legalize marijuana, cities or counties eager to attract larger growers might also allow larger farms. Wood is optimistic that, as with fine wine, the expertise of small growers will convince buyers to shop local.

“Hopefully, in the end it’s going to be a recognition for people who use these products that there is a difference in the quality,” he told the approving crowd.

—Jonathan Greenberg

A state cannabis commission headed by
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom will issue its final report July 7, a key date along the road to an expected referendum on the legalization of recreational marijuana on the 2016 California ballot.

July 7 also marks the soft filing deadline set by state Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office to give the state enough time to vet qualifying signatures for voter initiatives.

The double sevens were not good news for ReformCA, a legalization advocacy coalition whose member groups range from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to the NAACP. The group hasn’t filed its initiative yet because it wants to absorb the commission’s report to make sure it’s in sync with the commission’s findings. Now the group says it will have to spend more money to get its signatures verified.

The timing hints at the delicate dynamics at play as the state rolls toward 2016: the Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy (BRC), and Newsom, can’t favor, or appear to favor, one of several legalization initiatives over another—especially when the commission isn’t itself pro-legalization, even if Newsom is.

Nor can the commission create an appearance that it is coordinating its effort with ReformCA, even if ReformCA tried to coordinate its effort with the BRC’s report.

But the commission has a timetable of its own.

ReformCA was waiting on the commission report to get input from legalization opponents such as the California Police Chiefs Association.

Also high on the list: What do to about cannabis users on probation or in jail, and those Emerald Triangle mom-and-pop growers anxiously awaiting their fate.

Newsom met Humboldt County growers last month to hear their concerns.

“We’d be foolhardy to not understand perspectives of other communities that we may not have had access to, who came out of the woodwork on behalf of the lieutenant governor,” says Dale Sky Jones, who chairs ReformCA and teaches at the Oaksterdam University in Oakland, a cannabis cultivation school.

“This is why we are waiting for the [commission],” she says.

In anticipation of the 7/7 deadline, ReformCA had set “an ideal drop-dead date” of July 6 to file its initiative, says Jones.

The cannabis activist says she understands the commission’s delicate position, given that Californians “don’t want to feel that [legalization] is being pushed down their throats.”

The 7/7 filing deadline is tied to verification measures used to certify signatures needed to petition for a proposition. The “full check” system goes beyond random sampling and requires that California’s secretary of state direct county elections officials to verify every signature on the petition.

Harris’ office could not comment on any of the pending initiatives. Press secretary Kristin Ford told the Bohemian via email that “the AG looks forward to reviewing the findings of the commission.”

Harris is a candidate for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat in 2016 and has to walk a fine line here, too. Harris’ spokesperson reiterated a previously reported position that she’s not “morally opposed to the legalization of marijuana. But as the state’s top law enforcement officer, it is important to address issues that impact public safety in a thoughtful manner.”

Harris’ work extends to other states that have gone legal.

“Our dialogue with Washington and Colorado has yielded some important avenues to explore and understand further, like edibles and packaging,” wrote Ford.

The unfolding politics of ending prohibition in California seem to go as follows: There are very real concerns over a 2016 presidential election gone bad—Bush III backlash, anyone? Boxer’s seat is up for grabs. There’s an ambitious lieutenant governor running for governor who says he would support an initiative, “provided it is the ‘right one,'” as California NORML has pointed out.

Meanwhile, several legalization initiatives have already been filed with the attorney general—including one from Sebastopol cannabis lawyer Omar Figueroa—but ReformCA has been tuned in to the commission’s work this spring as it sought to establish itself as the most serious coalition.

How serious? ReformCA put Howard Dean campaign guru Joe Trippi on its payroll two years ago and is treating the legalization referendum as a “national issue,” says Jones.

Jones says she started to push Newsom “once [the BRC] was announced,” and at every opportunity, “I asked him to turn it the hell up!”

“I’m probably driving the lieutenant governor insane,” she says with a laugh, “if not amused. Every time I see him, I tell him, ‘Hurry up—you’re going too slow.'”

The commission’s general outlook on legalization? Not so fast.

The forthcoming white paper follows a trio of public forums held this spring that emphasized public safety, youth issues and the tangled web of banking and taxation, says Abdi Soltani, a member of the BRC steering committee.

Soltani, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, says the report, 18 months in the making, will distill the findings and highlight challenges and options California faces as it moves toward the expected 2016 vote. It’s not a referendum on the referendum, he says, which is to say that the commission isn’t endorsing a pro-legalization regime.

“We wanted to gather people who would be thoughtful about what is it that has to be thought through if the state goes forward,” he says. “But there is nothing inevitable about anything. In the end, the voters will make the decision.”

Pressed for details on what the report might offer, Soltani stressed fairness and transparency. “After 7/7, we’ll be in a position to get on an equal-opportunity basis” with all interested parties, he says, “and we’ll share this with the public.”

Given the size of California, the order of magnitude is much greater here than in states that have legalized recreational cannabis, such as Colorado or Washington. “The biggest factor that presents the biggest challenge is that we would still be dealing with the federal prohibition,” says Soltani. “I don’t think we’ll come out of this process claiming to know everything. It’s a long road. How do you transition from a system that’s prohibition to a system that’s legal? There will be course corrections and new regulations along the way, and we have to take a long view.”

Jones says she’ll press on with the work of gathering signatures and raising money.

“The fact that they are coming in on July 7 when the ideal drop date is 7/6 is going to make it more expensive,” she says.

Jones says a referendum will cost between $4 million and $6 million: that’s for getting all the required signatures, and getting the vote out in November 2016. But she says “the [fundraising] goal we are shooting for is $10 [million] to
$20 million.”

To qualify for the ballot, the group must gather 585,000 signatures—
8 percent of the electorate in the 2014 gubernatorial election.

Jones says the main big-ticket expenditure would be for media buys—which are contingent on two unknowns at the present: “Who is going to be president, and how much opposition to legalization is going to be mustered in the state.”

Jones says she is treating cannabis not as an issue but as a national candidate in 2016. It’s a full-on hearts-and-minds campaign.

“Cannabis—you know her. You’ve had experiences, and you feel like you know Mary Jane already.”