California on cloud nine, after nod to legalise ‘pot’

Proposition 64 appeared headed for decisive passage as state wide returns in Tuesday’s election showed nearly 56 percent of voters favouring the measure and 44 percent opposed, according to results reported from well over half of all precincts. 

California was by far the largest of five states with ballot measures seeking to legalize the use of marijuana for the sheer pleasure of its intoxicating effects, and approval there would extend legalization to the entire U.S. Pacific Coast. 

Recreational marijuana was first approved in 2012 by Washington state and Colorado, and later by voters in Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia. Victory also was declared on Tuesday by supporters of a similar measure in Massachusetts, giving legalized recreational pot its first toehold in New England. 

The Marijuana Policy Project, the nation’s leading organization supporting liberalization of cannabis laws, likewise projected passage of measures permitting medical use of marijuana in Florida, Arkansas and North Dakota. 

The outcome was less certain for recreational marijuana initiatives in Maine, Arizona and Nevada, and for a medical cannabis measure in Montana. Before Tuesday, 25 states had already legalised cannabis in some way, whether for medical or recreational uses, or both. Approval Tuesday in California alone, home to 39 million people, would put nearly a fifth of all Americans in states where recreational marijuana is legal, according to US Census figures. California was the first U.S. state to legalize medical marijuana, doing so in 1996. The new measure, spearheaded by a coalition of supporters that included Democratic Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and billionaire entrepreneur Sean Parker, allows adults to possess and use up to an ounce of pot for private, recreational use. It also permits personal cultivation of as many as six cannabis plants.