Wait, so what happened?
California legalized marijuana. Proposition 64 passed by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent.
Youre shitting me.
Nope. The sixth-largest economy in the world just legalized cannabis.
And it was called Proposition 64?
It was on the ballot in California along with the presidential election. The state passed medical marijuana in 1996. Six years ago, there was a valiant attempt to make it all legal. That initiative lost narrowly. Activists went back to the drawing board and put together what was intended to be a model of the form, the mother of all marijuana legalization initiatives. It was a tough fight, but attitudes toward marijuana are shifting so fast that, with the benefit of hindsight, it was clear the opposition never had a chance.
So I can grow and smoke weed legally now.
In California, personal marijuana possession and cultivation by adults is fine, within the limits of the law.
Oh, so theres a catch. That figures
No, wait. You just have to be 21 andnot holding more than an ouncewhen youre out in public. (Im including that link there so you can check out the relevant section of the law as we go along.)
So, like, I dont have to get a license or a permit or pass an exam or get paperwork signed or
No, none of that. You just need to be an adult.
Wow, thats great! No more tickets for weed or having to pay for a doctors note every year.
Thats right. Concentrates are legal too, up to eight grams. Used to be a misdemeanor.
Huh? I thought less than an ounce of dabs was just a ticket, like flower.
You thought wrong. Regular old-fashioned marijuana, which we call flower these days, was decriminalized. Concentrates extracts, dabs, oil, whatever you call it were still banned and possession of them was a misdemeanor that could get you a year in jail.
Whoa! OK, what about edibles? Can I only have an ounce of edibles?
Thats a bit harder to determine. The new law says edibles can only contain up toten milligrams of THC per serving.
So, like, how many milligrams are in an ounce?
28,349.5. But never mind that, lets keep this simple. If California does like Colorado, and limits an edible like a brownie, chocolate bar, or soda to 100-milligrams total, then you could have up to 283 of those edibles.
All right, that seems reasonablenow what about growing cannabis?
Thats legal, too, so long as you keep it tosix plants or fewerin a locked, enclosed space that cant be seen by the public.
Yes! Me and my three roommates can grow two dozen plants!
No, you can only havesix plants total in a house.
Nobody can work a garden with just one mother plant and then five other plants as seedlings, immature, and flowering plants.
Well, some people can. Regardless, Prop 64 also lowered growing more than six plantsto a misdemeanorfrom a felony, so long as it isnt a third strike or an aggravated offense.
Aggravated? Like, I grew pissed-off plants?
No, like you involved minors, used hazardous materials, harmed the environment,stuff like that.
OK, but its not going to matter, because my countys just going to ban home grows anyway.
They cant. They can ban outdoor growing and set reasonable restrictions on growing, but they cannot make any regulations that effectively banyour right to grow six plants indoorsin your own home.
Still, thats not very many plants. I couldnt make that work.
How do you know? Are you growing more than six plants now?
Im not telling you that, narc!
Lighten up, Francis. Now that Prop 64 has passed, marijuanas not contraband. Not only must copsretire their current drug dogs, but they also cant use dumpster dives for the seeds, stems, or trim in your garbage, suspiciously-high electric bills, thermal imaging of your grow room, or any of those old tricks they used to get search warrants. In short, if you are, hypothetically, growing more than six plants, its going to be a whole lot more difficult for cops to catch you doing it.
Why do they have to retire drug dogs? Its still illegal to have too much weed, right?
Yes, its thesame misdemeanorits always been, but a dog cant smell the difference between a legal ounce and an illegal pound.
Yeah, but dont those dogs also sniff coke, meth, and heroin?
Sure, but most of them sniff weed as well. It looks like in the end police will have to retrain the animals, because an alert to a now-legal substance cant be used to trigger probable cause to a search. Cops who ignore this new reality do so at their peril, risking lawsuits and evidence suppression. If a vehicle search turns up half an ounce of potanda kilo of heroin, there will be no way to tell which triggered the dogs alert, and the defense will argue that the heroin cannot be admitted as evidence because it was found illegally. The defense would have an even stronger argument if the search discovered stolen property or a murder weapon along with a small amount of marijuana.
What about buying and selling weed, is that legal?
Yes, if you get theright licensesand follow the regulations.
I could start a legal pot farm? Or become a legal extractor of cannabis oil? Or open a legal pot shop?
Certainly, withincertain restrictionsand guidelines. You canget all the licensesfor growing, processing, and retailing if you want to, except that if you want to go into the testing businesschecking the products of other companies for THC levels and the likeyou have to stay out of the growing business, and vice versa.
The whole shebang gonna get taken over by big business.
Well, not for a while. The law keep big companies outbanning large commercial growsover 22,000 sq. ft (indoors) or an acre (outdoors) until 2023. Thats designed to let entrepreneurs get their footing. Theres also an innovating thingcalled amicrobusiness license, which is designed to let the weed equivalent of craft beer makers carve out some space in the market for themselves.
Theyll never be able to compete with the Walmarts of Weed, though.
Dont count on it. The beer industry is dominated by huge corporations that sell Budweiser, Miller, and Coors, but nobodys forcing you to drink it. Meanwhile, craft breweries increased by 15 percent in 2015, sold 13 percent more craft beer than the year before, and now account for almost one out of every eight beers sold. Theres no reason weed shouldnt work the same way.
Wait, back to selling. Can I sell some of the buds off my own plants to my neighbor?
Nope. Without a license, it is still illegal to sell marijuana; however, the penalty for illegal sales as been reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor. You can share up to an ounce with your adult neighbor for free, though. That used to be a misdemeanor with a $100 ticket, but now it is perfectly legal.
What about taxes? Theyre going to add a lot of taxes, arent they?
Yeah, afraid so. There will be a15 percent excise taxadded to marijuana products at the store, as well as a $9.25 per ounce cultivation tax on flower and $2.75 per ounce on trim. Plus, localities can add on their own taxes, as some are already planning. But thats just on the commercial weed; yourhome grow is never taxed.
Uh-huh, I knew it. Say hello to $500 ounces.
I seriously doubt it. The prices for marijuana in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado have all dropped dramatically since legalization. Washington taxes the most, about 45 percent between state and local sales taxes and excise taxes, and their average retail prices arearound $9 per gram. Ive seen ounces selling for $159 on a regular basis and some specials that have gotten down to $79.
Oh, come on now. The cost of living is much higher in California!
True, but California weed prices are way higher than the cost-of-living difference. Legalization means vastly increased production, far more consumers, and the elimination of legal risk. The prices cant go anywhere but down.
Ill believe that when I see it.
Youll see it, because these companies are going to have to compete with adults who are now allowed to grow their own cannabis plants at home. Not to mention the other states around California that have legalized.
I mean, you make it sound like this legalization thing is cool. But if there are still laws against weed, how legal is it, really?
There are laws that tell you where you can drink beer legally and prevent you from drinking as much of it as you want in public or brewing too much of it in private. But that doesnt mean beer isnt legalized. Id like more marijuana liberty, too, and well get there. Remember, when beer was first re-legalized in the Prohibition Era, it waslimited to 3.2 percent alcoholand there were still states with total booze bansuntil 1966.
Yeah, and Prohibition ended in 1933. So, youre telling me stoners are still going to go to jail for weed for decades.
Who knows how long, but yes, for a while there will still be ways to go to jail for weed, and definitely in states that still criminalize it. The thinking is that, with California leading the way, there will be a lot of pressure on the states that lag. But in California, at least, for now, most of those remaining crimes are harder to catch, like we talked about with the drug dogs, and most are reduced from felonies and misdemeanors to lower crimes for people 18 and older, or made legal for people 21 and older. Minors under age 18cant be sent to jail or juvenile detentionover weed at all. And best of all, those changes apply retroactively.
Retroactively? And that means?
It means if your grandpa was busted for growing a six-plant garden fifty years ago when he was 21, what he did back then wasisnow legal. He canapply to get his record expungedof the felony conviction hes been burdened with for half a century.
How did you know my grandpa has a grow felony?
Lucky guess. But with expungement, your grandpa can buy a gun, travel outside the United States, get security clearances, and not face thediscrimination convicted felons facein employment, housing, and other essentials of life.
What about my buddy? He got popped for felony possession with intent to sell because he just harvested two pounds off his plants. Now hes sitting in Solano on a two-year sentence until spring of 2018. Is he not a felon anymore, too?
Yup. Whether or not he intended to sell it, possessing more than an ounce isonly a misdemeanornow with a maximum six-month sentence. He could get credit for his time served since spring, get out of prison now, and get that felony off his record. Or, if his possession happened in his home where he grew his six legal plants, thats not a crime anymore at all. All your buddy has to do is fill out the paperwork and go through the process that confirms his eligibility for early release.
Youre telling me keeping two pounds of weed under my rock is now legal?
The law makes it legal topossess all the marijuana you harvestedfrom your six legal plants, so long as youkeep it in your private residencewhere the public cant see it, in a locked container.
What if I grow six eighteen-foot-tall monster trees and harvested ten pounds off each? Could I still possess sixty pounds?
The way I see it, theres no theoretical limit to how much weed you could store at home. This might be a loophole in the law. Your right to cultivate at home doesnt require you to grow the plant from seed to harvest. If you had, say, 50 pounds of marijuana at home, and for some reason were arrested, in theory you could say you brought in six trees from a friend one week, harvested five pounds off of them, and then returned them and got six different plants in to harvest the next week, and so on.
Well that seems reasonable!
Now, I wouldnt advise you to try that and become the first test case. But if you did and failed, remember, possession over an ounce, even with the intent to sell that prosecutors throw onto big possession cases, isnow just a misdemeanor.
Youre making this legalization thing sound too good to be true. Surely, something got worse with the passage of Prop 64.
Yes, I cannot lie
I knew it!
the fine for smoking pot in a no-smoking zonewent up from $100 to $250.
And?
No, I mean, and what other punishments got worse with legalization?
Nothing. Everything else that was a marijuana crime before has either stayed the same, been reduced, or become legal.
What about medical marijuana? I heard that the ...
