POT LEGALIZATION PROPONENTS AREN'T GIVING UP

SACRAMENTO - California voters likely have not seen the last of
efforts to legalize marijuana despite last week's defeat of Prop. 19.

Legalization advocates are weighing a return to the ballot in 2012.

And the author of an unsuccessful Assembly bill to legalize pot
intends to introduce similar legislation early next year.

"We had a debate that was just heard around the world. The
conversation has only begun," Dale Jones, a yes-on-Prop. 19
spokeswoman, said after Tuesday's election.

But the initiative's critics said proponents of legalizing pot should
direct their energies elsewhere, such as by standardizing the
hodgepodge of local rules on medical marijuana, which voters approved in 1996.

"It's a very unregulated, chaotic world right now," said George Mull,
president of the California Cannabis Association, which opposed Prop. 19.

The widely watched measure would have legalized personal use for
people 21 and over. The state or local governments could have chosen
to regulate and tax large-scale marijuana cultivation.

Polls showed Prop. 19 leading in late September, but its support soon
began to sag. Opponents attacked the measure as poorly worded.

Two weeks before the election, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder
warned that federal authorities would "vigorously enforce" laws
against anyone who grows, possesses or sells marijuana for recreational use.

Prop. 19 received 46.3 percent of the vote, passing in only about a
dozen counties. Some of the heaviest opposition came in the Inland
area, with 58.1 percent of Riverside County voters and 58.5 percent
of San Bernardino County voters opposed.

Still, almost 3.5 million people liked the idea, a threshold reached
by few other candidates or initiatives on Tuesday's ballot.

"That speaks volumes to the support that's out there," said Quintin
Mecke, a spokesman for Assemblyman Tom Ammiano. Also, voters in 10
cities approved taxes on sales of medical and recreational pot.

Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced legislation in the last session
to legalize marijuana and tax marijuana at $50 an ounce. One of his
bills passed an Assembly committee in January but stopped there.

Ammiano plans to re-introduce the measure early next year after
talking to Prop. 19 supporters and others, Mecke said.

Mull said lawmakers instead should focus on medical marijuana rules
instead trying to legalize recreational pot.

He advocates the creation of a California Cannabis Commission to
oversee marijuana dispensaries, transportation and other aspects of
the industry.

Legalization supporters say they also might go back to the ballot.
Public sentiment, they say, is on their side.

In September, the Field Poll reported that 50 percent of California
voters support legalizing marijuana. In 1969, just 13 percent of
voters backed the idea.

And a poll commissioned by Prop. 19 supporters suggests that it was
problems with Prop. 19, and not the prospect of legalized pot, which
led to its defeat.

The poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found that 31 percent of "no"
voters support legalization.

"We've legitimized the discussion," said Jim Gray, a former Superior
Court judge in Orange County who supported Prop. 19.

Gray and others blamed last-minute "scare tactics" by opponents for
Tuesday's loss.

Nevertheless, Jones said supporters plan to meet with critics to try
to craft a future ballot measure or legislation.

Prop. 19 supporters heavily outspent opponents. Wayne Johnson, who
managed the No-on-19 campaign, said the outcome shows that many
voters are leery of giving free rein to a drug deemed illegal by the
federal government.

The opposition campaign, he added, found a particularly receptive
audience among non-white voters and those in lower-income areas.
Those communities have first-hand knowledge of the problems caused by
drugs, he said.

"The marijuana vote in California is basically a middle-class,
upper-middle-class, white vote," Johnson said last week.