SF Weekly: Steve Kubby, Prop 215 Author, Drafts New initiative to Decriminalize Marijuana
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011Chris Roberts at SF weekly:
Steve Kubby has earned his stripes: Before he was a Libertarian Party candidate for governor of California and President of the United States (and South Lake Tahoe City Council), Kubby was a model activist and poster child for the medical cannabis movement. The latter because he has lived with a rare form of adrenal cancer for over 40 years, thanks to medical marijuana, and the former for co-authoring Proposition 215.
Now, Kubby, 64, is circulating a proposed ballot initiative for 2012 that, he told SF Weekly on Monday, can not only succeed where Proposition 19 failed last November, but could lead toward a changed federal policy on marijuana.
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Exactly how this will play with the Prop. 19 folks and the money-makers who bankrolled them is unclear. A message for Steve Gutwillig, chair of the state Drug Policy Alliance (which funneled millions to the Prop. 19 effort, from the likes of George Soros and others), was not immediately returned. A spokeswoman for the Prop. 19 campaign did not immediately return an e-mail, either.
But Kubby says he’s willing to play ball. “I’m not married to our initiative,” he said. “If [other efforts] cover the same ground we cover, and poll at 60 percent or above, I will get on board.”
Kubby says he’s currently fundraising to pay for polls, with plans to have a finalized initiative in the hands of paid signature gatherers by the fall. The initiative would require 504,760 validated signatures by February 2012 to qualify for the November 2012 ballot.
IPR note: See our previous story, Steve Kubby: Liberty, Leadership and Libertarianism and facebook for more about this effort.
