By Taniya Harwell |Staff Writer|
Marijuana legalization supporters met in San Francisco earlier this week to discuss the future of pot in California.
The International Cannabis Business Conference held last Sunday and Monday was expected to draw about 1,000 investors, entrepreneurs and activists from California and elsewhere for an overview of the legalization landscape.
Legalization support groups are now drafting a 2016 ballot in hopes to move California into legalizing along with Colorado and Washington.
Nearly two-thirds of Californians support legalizing, regulating and taxing recreational marijuana in the state, according to Huffington Post.
This task seems like an easy one but conference organizer Alex Rogers warns Californians that the existing medical marijuana industry and other regulations will be a hard obstacle to overcome in persuading key investors that legalization is a good move.
“Sometimes these big institutional events can give people this ‘kumbaya’ feeling even if it’s momentary,” said Rogers.
Californians previously defeated an effort to legalize recreational use marijuana in 2010.
Concerns that still need resolving include whether recreational pot users would be allowed to grow their own plants and whether the hundreds of store-front dispensaries and delivery services that sell medical marijuana will get to stay in business, according to ABC 7 news.
Supporters of legalization have until August to submit a proposed initiative to the secretary of state and until April 2016 to gather enough signatures to qualify a measure for the November ballot according to thestate.com.
It remains to be seen if California will be going up in smoke in the near future.
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