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DB12:045
March 20, 2012

Contact: Shannan Velayas
(916) 653-6575

Marijuana Initiative Enters Circulation

Medical Marijuana. Patient Associations. Initiative Statute.

SACRAMENTO - Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced that the proponent of a new initiative may begin collecting petition signatures for his measure.

The Attorney General prepares the legal title and summary that is required to appear on initiative petitions. When the official language is complete, the Attorney General forwards it to the proponent and to the Secretary of State, and the initiative may be circulated for signatures. The Secretary of State then provides calendar deadlines to the proponent and to county elections officials. The Attorney General's official title and summary for the measure is as follows:

MEDICAL MARIJUANA. PATIENT ASSOCIATIONS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Provides that patients qualified to use marijuana for medical purposes shall have the right to form an association for purposes of cultivating, processing and distributing medical marijuana within their association, and to recover reasonable costs incurred. Provides that neither the state nor any local government may prohibit operation of a medical marijuana patient association, including a storefront, unless a court finds it is an actual nuisance. Provides that medical marijuana patients have a property right to own and possess medical marijuana. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Additional state and local tax revenues potentially in the low tens of millions of dollars annually from an increase in taxable sales of medical marijuana.(12-0005)

The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1579 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 12-0005.

The proponent for this measure, Philip W. Ganong, must collect signatures of 504,760 registered voters – the number equal to five percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election – in order to qualify it for the ballot. The proponent has 150 days to circulate petitions for this measure, meaning the signatures must be collected by August 16, 2012.

The initiative proponent can be reached at (877) 529-3655.

To sign up for regular ballot measure updates via email, RSS feed, or Twitter, go to www.sos.ca.gov/multimedia.

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