Marijuana advocates may try again

BERKELEY, Calif. – The drive to put another marijuana legalization initiative on the California ballot took a step forward Saturday when activists from across the state squeezed into a crowded conference center here to launch the debate over writing the next ballot measure.

The campaign for Proposition 19, which lost 54 percent to 46 percent in November, wants to start drafting a new initiative in the spring and to complete it by July, turning then to the expensive and time-consuming task of building support and qualifying it for the November 2012 ballot.

Saturday’s conference, sponsored by the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, was aimed at reaching out to marijuana legalization activists, medical marijuana growers and dispensary operators, many of whom opposed the last measure.

“We knew there was a lot of dissatisfaction,” said Dale Gieringer, the organization’s California director who organized the conference, the first in more than a decade. “A lot of people felt excluded because the writing process of Proposition 19 was very closed.”

The initiative was spearheaded and financially backed by Richard Lee, a successful Oakland medical marijuana entrepreneur who made the key decisions on the legal language.