600K sign Calif. petition for pot

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

Backers of a marijuana legalization initiative said Wednesday they have collected enough signatures for the measure to qualify for the November ballot in California.

The coalition that includes former Facebook president Sean Parker and is backed by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and marijuana advocacy groups said it has collected 600,000 signatures from registered voters – far more than the 365,000 needed – ahead of the July 5 deadline.

Stressing what promises to be a dominant message of their campaign, Newsom and other supporters said the initiative will make it harder for people under 21 to obtain pot.

“You do not need to be pro-marijuana to be pro-legalization,” Newson said. “We are not promoting something that is not already ubiquitous in the state of California.”

The Adult Use of Marijuana Act was one of more than a dozen recreational marijuana measures that initially competed for the November ballot. The groups with the most political capital and money eventually lined up behind the Parker-spearheaded initiative after a behind-the-scenes skirmish over issues such as whether growers would be allowed to sell directly to retail outlets and how medical marijuana would be taxed.

The initiative has been endorsed by the California NAACP, California Medical Association and California Democratic Party. The California Republican Party voted to oppose it at its convention last month.

The campaign’s fundraising committee had raised $2.5 million as of the end of March, the bulk of it from Parker, a political action committee funded by the late founder of Progressive Insurance, and a California venture capitalist who founded an online medical marijuana platform called WeedMaps.