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JUDGE GRAY FILES NEW INITIATIVE TO REGULATE MARIJUANA LIKE WINE WITH ATTORNEY GENERAL
Retired Superior Court judge wants marijuana strictly regulated and kept away from minors. Filed voter initiative Wednesday with Attorney General to regulate marijuana like wine.

Sacramento, Calif., May 18, 2011 — He was once a determined drug warrior, but now former Assistant US Attorney and Superior Court Judge James P. Gray believes the time has come to take marijuana out of the black market and regulate it instead. After years of witnessing the harm caused by outlawing marijuana, Judge Gray filed a voter initiative on Wednesday, May 18, with the California Attorney General’s office that will regulate marijuana like wine.

From a press conference held in front of the Attorney General’s office at 1300 I Street, Judge Gray stated, “Instead of my categorizing the initiative, I think it would be better for any people interested to review it themselves. It can be downloaded at www.RegulateMarijuanaLikeWine.com. When people review it, they will see that it allows anyone who is 21 years of age or older to raise up to 25 plants per year or possess up to 12 pounds of dried marijuana without being licensed, regulated or taxed, except for income or sales taxes, where applicable (which is basically the same as the home brewing provisions for wine and beer); it prohibits any government entities from taxing marijuana to a greater extent than they do wine; and it expressly does not change the provisions of Prop. 215 and its progeny, which would include, of course, the provisions for those under 21 years of age to be able to use their medicine as long as they are in compliance with those laws. It also expressly prohibits the public advertising of the sales or use of marijuana, except for medical marijuana under Prop. 215 and products made from hemp. And finally, it would not only prohibit the arrest or seizure of property, etc., of anyone 21 years of age or older who is in compliance with the initiative, it would also prohibit anyone employed by or under contract with the State of California from cooperating with federal agents in enforcing federal law.

In short, I think this is a good initiative that will repeal the failed policy of Marijuana Prohibition in California for adults, and basically be of benefit to California and everyone in it, except the Prison Guards’ Union. That is our intent, and I actually think we have been pretty successful in accomplishing it.”

“Our policy of marijuana prohibition has failed from every standpoint imaginable: unnecessary prison growth, increased taxes, increased crime and corruption here and abroad, loss of civil liberties, decreased health, and diversion of resources that are needed to address other problems in society,” Gray said.

Gray added that he is especially concerned about the disastrous effects of outlawing marijuana on families and kids, effects he has witnessed for himself as a judge and federal prosecutor. “Far from protecting our children, our present policy is actually recruiting them to a lifestyle of drug usage and drug selling,” charged Gray.

When challenged over the wisdom of allowing for sales to adults 21 and older, Gray has no doubts that it is time to regulate marijuana and take it out of the black market. “Many things in our society are dangerous, but making them illegal is not the answer. Does anyone really believe that making tobacco illegal would reduce the harm it causes? What about glue, gasoline, chain saws and high cholesterol foods? Further, if you think about it, we have at least some controls with regard to the sales and use of alcohol and tobacco, because they are regulated by the government. We have no controls at all with marijuana, because it is currently controlled by the mob,” Gray emphasized.

A copy of Judge Gray’s voter initiative and one minute video can be viewed at the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine website: http://www.regulatemarijuanalikewine.com

Sponsored by the Committee to Regulate Marijuana Like Wine 2012, campaign ID #1336887.

Photos: William McPike, Judge James P. Gray and Bishop Ron Allen look on as Steve Kubby signs off on an official request to the California Attorney General for a Title and Summary. The initiative, called the Regulate Marijuana Like Wine Act, would allow cannabis to be grown, sold, taxed and consumed like wine. Adults who grow 12 pounds or less would be exempt from any regulations or taxes. Photo by Jennina Chiavetta, May 18, 2012.

Independent Political Report

Judge Jim Gray and Steve Kubby have been hard at work for a new initiative for 2012.

Independent Political Report

Chris 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.

[..]

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.

Independent Political Report

In Montana, where voters overwhelmingly approved a measure legalizing medical marijuana back in 2004, the winds of change are blowing.

A few days ago the Montana House took a trip into local politics, voting by a 3-1 margin to pass a bill out of committee that would repeal a Missoula initiative instructing local law enforcement to make marijuana laws its lowest priority.

The Montana House has already voted by a wide margin to overturn the state’s medical marijuana laws.

The Senate will take the matter up soon, but in the Senate there are competing bills, with some legislators favoring additional regulation instead of outright appeal.

Some Democrats in the Legislature say it wouldn’t be right to outlaw the medicine outright legislatively, considering it was passed by voters. Republicans, though, tend to take the stance that the voters were duped and that people are using medical marijuana recreationally.

In Missoula, recent debate has centered on the economic impact of repeal, which could be large, putting people out of work and causing commercial real estate to take a nose dive.

From a University of Montana newspaper:

Dave Stephens, owner of Better Life Montana, said that if the repeal is passed, he predicts the loss of thousands of jobs, lost city revenue from business taxes and many more people relying on food stamps.

“It’s a bad idea all the way around,” Stephens said.

Stephens owns and runs Better Life on his own and said he had hoped to hire employees in the next year. However, if House Bill 161 is passed, Stephens said, “We’d be out of business.”

He is hopeful that the bill will not be approved by the state Legislature and isn’t actively anticipating having to close down his business.

“I feel like the governor will veto it if it comes down to it,” he said.

The governor, Brian Schweitzer, is a Democrat.

In Colorado, where the right to medical marijuana is guaranteed by the constitution, the Legislature cannot ban the medicine outright, but can only craft laws by which to regulate that right.

That hardly seems to make the matter less contentious, however, as evidenced by a recent fracas in the Capitol that pitted medical marijuana advocates against a legislator who was trying to take their side in the debate.

Colorado Independent

The Colorado Board of Health Wednesday denied the Cannabis Therapy Institute’s Petition for Emergency Rules to Protect Patient Privacy on the grounds that the issue did not constitute an emergency as defined in the state Administrative Procedure Act.

The Board of Health did agree to hold an informational meeting on the topic at the next Board of Health meeting on Feb. 16.

CTI’s proposed emergency rules would have prohibited the CDPHE from sharing the CDPHE Confidential Registry with any outside agencies. The rules also contain procedures to ensure confidentiality and generate “incident reports” if the Registry is breached. CTI’s petition came as a result of plans by the CDPHE to allow the Colorado Department of Revenue to replace the current CDPHE Confidential Registry with a database and surveillance system that some medical marijuana advocates believe would make confidentiality easier to breach.

Colorado Independent

A Denver resident got a surprise yesterday when he took his recycling out: He found a binder full of information about people who have applied for or have received medical marijuana licenses.

From a story at the 9news website:

“I picked the book up and I opened it and right away. I noticed the top of each page; medical marijuana registry forms. The next thing I noticed is there is all these people’s personal information on each one of those sheets,” Morton said.

The forms were inside plastic sleeves and contained social security numbers and dates of birth, along with patient names, addresses and telephone numbers. The binder contained the personal and medical information of dozens of patients.

The forms were on letterhead identified as Apothecary of Colorado, a dispensary in Denver.

Adam Stapen, an attorney for Apothecary of Colorado, says their patient records are “kept under lock and key to protect privacy of patients.”

He says the current owners purchased the dispensary on July 1 and it is possible the patient records are from before that.

Medical marijuana advocates today decried what they say is a medical marijuana registry lacking the safeguards needed to keep records confidential.

Colorado Independent

That smoke wafting down from the mountains west of Boulder may not all be from forest fires. According to a New York Times article today, mountain communities long known for their tolerance of the illegal weed are now becoming known as havens for legal smokers as well.

The Times reports that statewide about 1 in 60 residents has a medical marijuana license, but that in some mountain communities the ratio is closer to 1 in 20.

In Nederland, a town of 1,400, for instance, there are seven legal medical marijuana dispensaries. Town coffers are flush as a result.

In June alone, while many communities around the nation were still sputtering through economic doldrums, sales taxes collected in Nederland came in a robust 54 percent above those of June 2009. Without the tax collected on marijuana, the increase would have been 22 percent.

“It’s been here, probably in an illegal capacity, for a long time, but now there’s an opportunity for industry,” said Nederland’s mayor, Sumaya Abu-Haidar. “There’s an opportunity for free enterprise, an opportunity for people to make a living in a way that wasn’t available before.”

Philip Dyer, 45, a local musician, put it another way. The government, he said, “has finally gotten smart enough to regulate it and get their piece.”

Supporters of medical marijuana say the pattern — medical use most predominant in places of historically high recreational use — is simply a reflection of better knowledge about the drug and its properties. People in communities where marijuana has been accepted, they say, know more about its medical benefits than those in other parts of the state where medical marijuana patients are rare.

Eagle County and the town of Minturn, near the ski resort of Vail, both passed medical marijuana ballot questions allowing dispensaries and grow operations, and the Colorado Independent reported Friday that pro-legalization groups are already beginning to plan for 2012, when they think the state may finally be ready to pass a measure that would make pot legal in Colorado with or without a medical pretext.

Colorado Independent