California's State Propositions for busy people, a nonpartisan guide

Summary

This legalizes, for people 21 and over, recreational marijuana sale and use, with taxation and regulation. There's plenty of details on what's legal and illegal, so we'll break it down for you and then get into the debate of it.

Growing

It's legal to grow up to 6 plants in a private home. Illegal if it is unlocked or visible from a public place.
If being sold, the cultivation is taxed at $9.25/oz of dried flowers, or $2.75/oz of dried leaves.

Selling & purchasing

Businesses and delivery services (yes, delivery services) would need to be state-licensed, including existing medical marijuana collectives.
Businesses that sell weed wouldn't be able to sell tobacco or alcohol, and can't be located near children-y places like schools or day-care centers.
Edibles may not be in the form of a food that could be easily confused with another or appealing to children, like gummy bears and maybe brownies (TBD!).
Businesses could have on-site weed consumption, but cannot do it in public sight.
At point of sale, customer is taxed 15% on any non-medical marijuana products.
Counties and cities could impose their own taxes and restrictions (except ban it), like their own licenses or where businesses could open up.
Several different regulatory agencies would now regulate distribution, water usage, testing, pesticide use, envrionmental impact, labelling, packaging, and advertising, to name a few.

Using

Smoking is a-okay in a private home or at a business licensed for on-site consumption.
Smoking is illegal while driving, in any public place, or anywhere where smoking tobacco is already prohibited (e.g. restaurants, bars, planes, etc).

Criminalization

Currently selling weed can lead to up to 4 years in state prison. Prop 64 would make it six months in county jail for selling without a license.
Those serving weed-related sentences would be eligible for resentencing.

An informed conversation

I feel morally conflicted.

What's wrong?

I'm voting for prop 56, the cigarette tax, but I want to vote for weed legalization.

Because you're stopping tobacco, but allowing marijuana? They're very different drugs.

I want to tell myself that, but Prop 64 is all about the business of marijuana. We're making another sin industry.

It's not as addictive as nicotine, and there's other ways to consume it.

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Forget about adults for a second. I wouldn't want my kids smoking or eating weed until they're well past Stanford, just like I wouldn't want them smoking cigarettes.

There's a lot of studies that say that until the brain matures at 25, pot could affect brain development, structurally and functionally.

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That's already a problem though. Kids in Marin can get pot easier than they can get alcohol. Prop 64 would regulate it. Colorado has not seen an increase in youth use.

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But that might be because access is already so easy.

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If we educate them right, though. It's estimated to bring in $1 billion dollars a year eventually. A portion of that will go to education.

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Also, think about all the other negatives we'll be eliminating.

Drug crimes often disproportionately affect black and Latino men, and lower socioeconomic people.

That's great. But Prop 47 from a while ago already reduced the prison population for non-violent, non-serious drug offenses. Less than 0.3% of the prison population is in because of pot offenses, and that's probably pot + something else.

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Also, in Colorado, arrests have declined, but racial disparities has not been solved.

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It's only been two years. Look at all these other decreases in bad things: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/reports/marijuana_impacts_2015.pdf

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What about driving though? Have you ever driven high?

Yea, I'm a pro. With traffic the way it is right now, you can't go over 30mph on the highway anyways.

In Washington, car crash fatalities have increased after legalization. This includes THC + alcohol, and THC only.

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No FDA-approved breathalyzer yet either, and everybody knows it. The taboo for high driving isn't as strong as drunk driving.

Legalizing it will speed up breathalyzer development and educate people about driving high. Like Colorado, we already have a high usage and access. Legalization will cut the black-market, and impose the laws we want to see.

Until we do that, we can't do anything about current usage.

I still don't think we're ready for it. UCSF says this will just lead to Big Weed, not unlike Big Tobacco.

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