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Published:Oakland
Tribune June 2, 2004
Angela Hill, Staff Writer
Petitions in
for pot legalization measure
Cannabis
proponents say they collected 12,000 more
than the 20,000 signatures required for a
city vote
OAKLAND -- It may be awhile before you can pick
up some party pot at the store when you
stop for cigarettes, tomatoes and milk in
the city of Oakland.
But that's the
ultimate vision held by advocates for the
legalization of marijuana -- for
recreational use, not just medical. And
they're hoping Oakland voters will nudge
it closer to reality.
On Monday,
members of the Oakland Civil Liberties
Alliance turned in more than 32,000
signatures to city election officials to
get the Oakland Cannabis Initiative on the
November ballot.
With at least
12,000 more than the required 20,000
signatures for ballot initiatives,
Alliance members are feeling pretty
confident of the measure's success.
Officials at the City Clerk's Office
confirmed the signatures were turned in
Monday but said the names must still be
certified in the next 14 business days
before the item can proceed to the voters.
"It makes us feel
really good and confident that we're
headed to the ballot in November," said
Alliance member Joe DeVries.
The measure would
not decriminalize pot in Oakland until
cannabis is legalized by state officials,
but it would prepare the city for the
possibility, outlining ways to tax and
regulate sales when the time comes. <
Until that
happens, the measure, if passed, would
merely direct the Oakland Police
Department to treat the private adult use
of marijuana as its lowest priority.
"The measure
would ultimately have the city tax and
regulate the private adult use of cannabis
in Oakland for people 21 and over,"
DeVries said. "It would help us keep
cannabis under control, keep the city from
wasting law-enforcement resources on it
and keep cannabis out of the hands of
children."
DeVries said the
Alliance is perfectly aware that the city
can't legalize marijuana on its own.
"We know this.
That's why, in the text of the initiative,
we're giving the city an out," DeVries
said. "It says the city needs to do this
as soon as it is possible under state law.
And we believe in the next couple of years
there will be state legislation allowing
local jurisdictions to legalize and
regulate cannabis sales.
"And that would
get rid of the street dealing of
marijuana," he said. "If you put it behind
the counter, put it in a store -- it's
basically a substance up there with
caffeine, tobacco and over-the-counter
medicines -- then you basically take it
off the black market, take away the profit
for the dealers and get it off the street
corners," he said.
Police, however,
dispute the assertion that being able to
buy pot legally in the store would get
dealers off the street.
"It's not going
to solve all the problems they say it's
going to solve," said Oakland police
narcotics Lt. Rick Hart. "How much would
it cost in stores? How difficult will it
be to get it? There's still going to be a
black market if it's too expensive in the
store and you can get it for less on the
street.
"Also, you'll
still have the under-21 folks interested
in purchasing it, and where are they going
to get it?" Hart said. "Because stores
would presumably be carding, young people
couldn't get it there and would still buy
it on the street. So you won't have less
dealers. As long as it's a lucrative
business on the street, it's gonna be out
there."
And Hart said
personal adult use of marijuana is already
a pretty low priority in Oakland.
"Currently, if we stop someone and they
have less than an ounce, if they have one
joint in the car, they only get a citation
anyway," he said. "Even now, we're not
handcuffing people and taking them to jail
for that. So the only thing that would
change would be the amount they could
have."
Aside from
law-enforcement issues, advocates of the
measure say money generated by taxing
marijuana sales would help fund vital city
services. "The revenue it could generate
for the city is phenomenal," DeVries said.
While proponents
of the measure say it is completely
separate from the medical marijuana issue,
some people in the medical marijuana
movement are concerned it might discredit
medical users, DeVries said.
"They're afraid
people will say, 'See, we told you that's
what they were all after in the first
place. They weren't really using it for
medical.' But that's not going to happen.
That's why we don't want to associate this
with medical use. This is an economic
issue, a law-enforcement issue. It's
entirely separate."
Richard Lee of
the Bulldog Cafe on Broadway, one of
Oakland's medical marijuana dispensaries,
said he didn't know of anyone on the
medical side who is opposed to the
measure.
"If anything, it
should help get the prices down for
medical users and raise availability, and
we could increase hours," Lee said. "Plus,
you wouldn't have cops saying, 'You don't
look sick to me.'
"Exactly how this
is going to play out has yet to be seen,
but I do think there's a lot to be learned
from how medical marijuana laws have
developed, which could apply to laws for
private recreational use," Lee said. "The
city of Oakland is already permitting
clubs, while the federal government still
considers them illegal. That says a lot."
Indeed, the
Oakland City Council recently voted to
issue permits to medical marijuana
dispensaries -- but only four permits,
forcing a handful of others to close and
bringing both praise and objections from
the medical community.
"Medical
marijuana started with a local movement,
with San Francisco's Proposition P in
1991, five years before the statewide
Prop. 215," Lee said. "Personal-use laws
could happen like that too, if we get
another few cities in the next few years
to pass similar ballot measures as this
one, and get more and more support for it
-- we'll see what happens."
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