Can a Strong Coalition of Pot Activists Define Medical Marijuana Regulation -- And Avoid the Feds?

 A broad coalition of California advocates has filed a statewide medical marijuana regulation initiative aimed at ending the years-long confusion over what is and what is not allowed under state law by explicitly allowing sales and legalizing dispensaries statewide absent affirmative local popular votes to ban them. Pending approval of the measure's title and summary by state officials, the campaign is planning to roll out a signature-gathering and fundraising campaign early next month in a bid to put it before the voters in November.

The Medical Marijuana Regulation, Control, and Taxation Act (MMRCTA) would create a state agency, the Bureau of Medical Marijuana Enforcement (BMME), to regulate medical marijuana cultivation and distribution. The bureau's 21-person governing body would include a mix of patients, patient advocates, industry representatives, union representatives, law enforcement, and other stakeholders appointed by the governor or lieutenant governor.

The BMME would be funded by a 2.5% tax on the sale of medical marijuana. Surplus tax revenues would fund emergency medical services, low-income assistance and health services, scientific and educational grant programs, and research into environmentally-sound cultivation practices.

The initiative would require state registration after July 1, 2013 for anyone cultivating, processing, manufacturing, transporting, distributing, or selling medical marijuana for use by others. Patients and caregivers who are growing at home for themselves would be exempt.

The MMRCTA would make it more difficult -- but not impossible -- for cities and counties to ban dispensaries by declaring that "each city and county shall permit" medical marijuana facilities sufficient to meet local needs, which the initiative defines as at least one dispensary for each 50,000 residents in a county or town of 50,000.

Already existing bans and moratoria, of which there are nearly 200 statewide and growing weekly, would be allowed to continue to exist, but only for a specified period of time. Then they and new proposed local bans could only be enacted through a direct vote via local initiative. Cities would be allowed to maintain reasonable local control over zoning and other regulation of medical marijuana businesses.

The initiative would also outlaw the issuance or use of fraudulent physicians' recommendations. That means it would become an offense to issue a recommendation if the issuer is not a physician.

The measure has some of the biggest players in Golden State medical marijuana politics behind it. Its official proponents are Don Duncan, state director for Americans for Safe Access, the country's leading medical marijuana advocacy group, and Ron Lind, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, which represents unionized dispensary workers around the state.

Also backing the initiative campaign, called Californians to Regulate Medical Marijuana, are California NORML, theCoalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, the Sacramento-based California Cannabis Association, and the Emerald Triangle Trade Association. The effort is also endorsed by the national reform groups the Drug Policy Alliance and theMarijuana Policy Project.

But time is tight. The campaign has only until April 20 to gather the more than 500,000 valid signatures it needs to qualify for the ballot, and says it is trying to raise one million dollars by February 9. That will be just the beginning if the initiative is to have a chance to make the ballot.

"To come up with 500,000 valid signatures by April 20 is probably a $2 million proposition," said long-time California NORML head Dale Gieringer, who is also an MMRCTA campaign committee member. "We're a little bit late out of the gate, and we still have to wait for the title and summary to come back, but we have some startup pledges already on hand, so we'll be ready to start circulating petitions early in February."