After decades of being at the forefront of the marijuana legalization movement, California has been left in the dust by other states. Infighting between activists may turn 2016 another losing year. Over the past few years, as Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., have all successfully legalized recreational weed, the Golden State has been left awkwardly behind. The first state to legalize pot for medical use since the federal government outlawed the drug in 1951, California now seems a murky backwater, where your local dispensary may very well be selling moldy, pesticide-drenched bud, operating illegally under municipal law, and overpaying off-duty cops as security to keep from getting shut down. For the past two decades, despite intermittent federal raids and ever-shifting local rules and rulings, a semi-legal, multibillion-dollar marijuana industry has thrived on the West Coast, growing more sophisticated and less likely each year to make a smooth and orderly transition into a fully licensed, inspected, and aboveground economy. A recent report found 49 of the vote, partially because older voters strongly disagreed with legalization, but also because many smokers and more liberal voters saw opposition ads and editorials from growers, activists, and dispensary owners who did not support the measure. Although Prop 19 did not detail exactly how the state would regulate weed cultivators, just the possibility of restrictions and taxes spooked growers into opposing the initiative.
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Jeff Jones, executive director and co-founder of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative in 1998. Ben Margot / AP Photo
In the wake of that loss, with a commitment to unifying the base, Jones helped found the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform (CCPR), which at least nominally brings together unions, industry representatives, judges, former law enforcement officers and activists. Annoyed at how much money and time had been wasted in the 2010 attempt, the DPA and the MPP decided to hold off on dealing with the argumentative eccentrics in California until the next presidential election in 2016, focusing their 2012 efforts instead on Colorado and Washington. Again, the California activists refused to fall in line and cooperate with the long-term plans of the national organizations. Although it costs nearly $2 million to gather the signatures necessary to get an initiative on the California ballot, plus several million more to run a successful campaign,
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five competing and cash-poor groups of California activists sought to put their own initiatives on the ballot for 2012. None was able to garner the hundreds of thousands of signatures necessary. "I kind of mind-blocked 2012, because it was pretty ugly," Jones said, referring to the acrimonious jostling among legalization proponents for donations, signatures, and support. Everyone returned to their respective corners, licking their wounds and planning to go all out for 2016.
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San Francisco residents protest outside the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002, where Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Asa Hutchinson was delivering a speech about U.S. drug policy and how it impacts California. Justin Sullivan / AP Photo
In 2013, another seemingly quixotic dispensary owner, Los Angeles native Daniel Sosa, decided he didn't want to wait. In spite of his good intentions and commitment to civil rights, Sosa is just the kind of activist that the national organizations want to keep away from television cameras, as he tends to wear pajama pants to work. In a city of 500 or 600 dispensaries, his popular La Brea Collective, which opened in 2007, is lucky enough to be one of only 135 deemed officially legal. Still, Sosa was tired of standing helplessly by as his friends got arrested, his product seized and his patients of color harassed. He reached out to all of the state and national groups, eager to get everyone unified behind a single ballot initiative for 2014. Some of the more liberal California activists were happy to jump on board, and Sosa hoped he could build a bridge between them and the national organizations. But the DPA and its legal advisors reiterated that unless they had hard data showing that the older, more conservative voters who comprise the majority of voters in midterm elections would support legalization, there was no reason to fund a California campaign for 2014. So in the early fall of 2013, Sosa paid for a poll himself, shelling out over $40,000. As he expected, public opinion among even conservative voters had significantly changed, and the numbers were there. If an initiative made it to the ballot in 2014, California could legalize pot. At the end of October, the DPA's leadership came together at the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Denver. Energized by Sosa's polling numbers, which they had tested again with two slightly different polls of their own, and by the buzz around the upcoming opening of the recreational market in Colorado, they decided to make a bid for legalization in California in 2014. Alone. Without consulting Sosa or any of the activists he had been working with, the DPA filed paperwork with the secretary of state and set a campaign in motion. But Sosa's most cherished
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principle - a clause that made sure no one would go to jail for marijuana, even if they didn't have a license - was now off the table. For years, California activists had been struggling to get the DPA to throw their finances behind a serious bid for legalization. But in November 2013, they came to see what a DPA-led campaign would truly look like: Local groups consulted in the early phases and then kicked out of the conversation once the real decision-making began.
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Lynne Lyman, the DPA's California state director Photograph by Chris Tuite for BuzzFeed News
"It was a matter of sharp political analysis," the DPA's Lyman said. "And the process was so compressed." Normally, she said, the DPA would prefer to spend a year or two gearing up for a statewide campaign. In 2013, they had only a few months. "We reached out to folks in the other camps, but it was pretty clear to me that their vision was different," said Graham Boyd, who was then serving as policy adviser to one of the DPA's main backers, billionaire Peter Lewis. "We were miles apart and there wasn't any interest on anyone's part of compromising." Sosa was dejected. Jones and many of her colleagues were furious. "What they did for 2014 offended a lot of people," she said. "I know that Daniel felt very burned, I felt very burned, a lot of people felt very burned." It seemed, for a few weeks, as though legalization might pass in 2014 after all - but not the type of legalization that state-level activists had been looking for. A few other activists hastily filed their own initiatives, but clearly none had the funding to collect enough signatures. Then, unexpectedly, billionaire Peter Lewis died on Nov. 23, 2013. Over his lifetime, Lewis had devoted an estimated $40 t0 $60 million of his fortune to drug policy reform. With much of the funding for the DPA's proposed California campaign now in question, the organization was left scrambling for cash. "We just couldn't raise $10 million in three months," the DPA's Lyman said. Calling it a "dress
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rehearsal," they let the deadline for getting on the ballot come and go, without funding a fullfledged signature drive. Now, gearing up for 2016, the DPA and the MPP plan to consult with as many stakeholders as possible and then unilaterally draft an initiative, which will likely be released this summer. "We assume that many people will be disappointed," Lyman said. "The law enforcement community won't be completely happy. The activist community won't be completely happy." This commitment to compromise - on issues such as allowing individual cities and counties the ability to opt out of a recreational marijuana market or capping the total number of licenses available - infuriates many California activists. " can't just be poll-driven. You have to also provide good policy," Jones said. After all, just as conservative voters will want the strictest possible regulations, the darkest corners of the black market in California will need to feel the rules are reasonable enough for them to willingly participate in a fully legal system. Jones' group has 135,000 supporter email addresses and at least 20,000 committed volunteers, and she plans to use these resources as leverage to convince the DPA to include them at the drafting table. Her group has even hired powerhouse Democratic consultant Joe Trippi's firm to help with strategy. Still, Jones' detractors compare her to Ralph Nader and whisper that she only wants to lead the legalization movement to promote herself. Jones expressed frustration that the DPA will smile and nod when listening to the concerns of activists like herself but refuses to commit to specific language for the initiative. Jones said that if they're frozen out of the process, she and other local activists are not afraid to file a separate, competing ballot initiative, which could split the vote and destroy the chances for legalization. "I don't need your billionaire. I'm going to get a million people to give me $5," she said. This combative attitude has left the more experienced activists, including Zimmerman, exasperated. "People who go into this and say, 'Fuck the polling results and screw all the suits' - there's no point in working with people like that," Zimmerman said.
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Dale Sky Jones at Oaksterdam University in Oakland Photograph by Chris Tuite for BuzzFeed News
correction Washington, D.C., did vote to legalize recreational marijuana use in 2014, but the law remains in limbo because of Congress, which retains authority over laws passed in the city. A previous version of this piece stated that D.C. had successfully legalized marijuana. BF_STATIC.timequeue.push(function () { document.getElementById("update_article_correction_time_4827500").innerHTML = UI.dateFormat.get_formatted_date('2015-02-02 15:54:42 -0500', 'update'); });
Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/amandachicagolewis/why-hasnt-california-legalizedmarijuana-yet Why Hasn't California Legalized Marijuana Yet?
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