Global Ganja Report

East Bay physician Dr. Frank Lucido, Mendocino activist Pebbles Trippet and attorney William Panzer have announced a new California initiative to legalize the state's biggest cash crop. The Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012 would allow adults to legally possess up to three pounds and grow a ten-by-ten-foot garden, with the California Department of Public Health to oversee the commercial side. The text of the initiative has been submitted to the state Attorney General's office for review.

Last year's Prop 19 lost with 46% of the vote. But the new measure comes with the imprimatur of Panzer, an attorney who co-authored California's landmark medical marijuana initiative, Prop 215, in 1996. Pebbles Trippet was also the defendant in a landmark 1997 decision in People v. Trippet, when California's 1st District Court of Appeal upheld her right to possess "reasonable" quantities of cannabis under 215.

Earlier this summer, the proposed Regulate Marijuana Like Wine act was filed for approval as a ballot initiative by activist Steve Kubby and former Orange County Superior Court Judge Jim Gray. It remains to be seen if the two groups will join forces, or if there will be competing initiatives on the November 2012 ballot. (Legalization Nation, Drug War Chronicle, Aug. 22)