Proposition 215, also known as the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, was a California ballot proposition on the November 5, 1996 ballot regarding medical use of marijuana. It passed with 5,382,915 (55.6%) votes in favor and 4,301,960 (44.4%) against.
The proposition was a state-wide voter initiative authored by Dennis Peron, Anna Boyce [RN], Valerie Corral (http://wamm.org), Dale Gieringer, William Panzer, Scott Imler, [1], and psychiatrist Tod H. Mikuriya, and approved by California voters. It allows patients with a valid doctor's recommendation, and the patient's designated Primary Caregivers, to possess and cultivate marijuana for personal medical use, and has since been expanded to protect a growing system of collective and cooperative distribution. The Act added Section 11362.5 to the California Health and Safety Code. This law has caused much conflict in the United States between states' rights advocates and those who support a stronger federal presence.
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Proposition 215 was conceived by San Francisco marijuana activist Dennis Peron in memory of his lover, Adam West, who had used marijuana for AIDS. In 1991, Peron organized Proposition P, the San Francisco medical marijuana initiative, which passed with 79% of the vote. Prop P did not have force of law, but was simply a resolution declaring the city's support for medical marijuana. Santa Cruz and other cities followed suit with similar measures endorsing medical use of marijuana. The California legislature went on to approve medical marijuana bills by State Senator Milton Marks and Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, but they were vetoed by Governor Pete Wilson.
Frustrated by the Governor's veto and by the Clinton administration's ongoing refusal to allow medical marijuana, Peron decided to turn to the voters. In 1995, Peron, Gieringer and Imler organized Californians for Compassionate Use, a PAC dedicated to putting medical marijuana on the ballot. Californians for Compassionate Use began a grassroots, volunteer-based petition drive to collect the more than 400,000 signatures required to qualify for the ballot. As the deadline approached and it was becoming clear the unpaid signature gatherers were not on pace to qualify, a group of philanthropists, including George Soros, Peter Lewis, and George Zimmer, stepped in to pay for professional petition circulators through the Santa Monica, CA based political consulting firm of Zimmerman & Markman.[1][2]
The opposition campaign to Proposition 215 included a wide variety of law enforcement, drug prevention groups, and elected officials, including three former Presidents and California Attorney General Dan Lungren. Ballot arguments against the proposition were signed by prominent prosecutors and law enforcement officials who claimed that, while appearing well intentioned, it was an overly vague, bad law that, "allows unlimited quantities of marijuana to be grown anywhere … in backyards or near schoolyards without any regulation or restrictions," and that it effectively legalized marijuana.
Ballot arguments in support were signed by prominent oncologists, a cancer survivor, a nurse, and two politicians, Assemblyman John Vasconcellos and San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, who wrote that he supported Prop 215 because he didn't "want to send cancer patients to jail for using marijuana."[3]
The lead-up to the election saw a series of media-based attacks attempting to make the Yes on 215 Campaign a referendum on the controversial headquarters for the initiative, Dennis Peron's San Francisco Cannabis Buyer's Club. The very first of what would become more than 400 in the state, the SFCBC was a three-story full service medical marijuana club where qualified patients could in fact obtain marijuana for medical purposes (in various forms and qualities) in a retail setting. Far more than just a safe place for patients to consume, the club was a cultural center for many purposes.
Dennis Peron would describe 1996 as a year when "the stars aligned for medical marijuana." It was a presidential election year with a Democrat incumbent in a heavily Democratic state. The AIDS epidemic in the late 80s and early 90s as well as recent studies regarding relief for chemotherapy patients were opening people's minds to medical marijuana. On top of that, 60-year-old Nurse "Brownie" Mary Rathburn's arrest for bringing a dozen marijuana brownies to the International AIDS conference made headlines garnering sympathy for medical marijuana.
Proposition 215 passed with 55.6% support, setting off a chain reaction across North America of medical marijuana legislation. Canada now has federal medical marijuana legislation, and the issue has been to the floor of the US Congress in the form of the Hinchey-Rohrbacher Amendment, the Truth in Trials Act, and the States Right to Medical Marijuana Act. None of this legislation succeeded in the U.S. Congress, at that time controlled by the Republican Party. [4]
| Proposition 215 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Yes or no | Votes | Percentage |
 Yes |
5,382,915 | 55.58% |
| No | 4,301,960 | 44.42% |
| Valid votes | 9,684,875 | 94.36% |
| Invalid or blank votes | 578,615 | 5.64% |
| Total votes | 10,263,490 | 100.00% |
| Voter turnout | 65.53% | |
| Electorate | 15,662,075 | |
Proposition 215 added Section 11362.5 to the California Health and Safety Code, which:
Implementation across the State varied widely. Urban areas in Northern California were the center of California's fledgling marijuana market, while rural areas like Mendocino County, Santa Cruz, and Humboldt saw county-sanctioned gardens and patient registration programs. However, conservative areas such as San Bernardino and Riverside counties saw little change when local officials declared the law null and void due to conflicts with federal Law, and continued to arrest, prosecute, and in some cases convict legal patients.
Though medical marijuana was legalized and accepted by the majority of California voters, Prop 215 does not cover federal laws. Marijuana is still illegal under federal law which causes quite a conflict between the state and the U.S. Government.
In 2009, Oakland became the first U.S city to put a tax on marijuana. Approved by voters by a margin of 80%, the measure puts an $18 tax on every $1,000 in gross marijuana sales. The tax is estimated to bring in $300,000 to $1,000,000 dollars annually to help the cash-strapped city. [5]
Since the passage of Proposition 215, federal officials have tried various approaches - from criminal raids and prosecutions to Civil injunctions to threatening to seize any property leased for medical cannabis uses - to thwart or slow the progress of medical cannabis in California. It was not until March of 2009 that federal officials announced that they would no longer try to thwart medical marijuana distribution/use in California.
During his campaign, President Barack Obama signaled that he would cease the DEA's raids in California as President.[6] On March 18, 2009, President Obama made good on this promise when Attorney General Eric Holder announced "a shift in the enforcement of federal drug laws, saying the administration would effectively end the Bush administration’s frequent raids on distributors of medical marijuana."[7]
Previously, under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the United States Department of Justice had taken drastically different approaches to medical cannabis in California. The DOJ under Clinton limited its enforcement to civil measures, such as seeking to revoke the federal prescription licenses of doctors who recommended cannabis or filing for civil injunctions against the major providers under Proposition 215.
Author, activist, and grower "Ask Ed" Rosenthal (of High Times fame) was raided and charged by federal agents the same day DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson made a speech to the Commonwealth Club. With local permission, Rosenthal was cultivating marijuana "clones" (or cuttings) to be distributed to Bay Area medical marijuana clubs. The presiding judge, Charles Breyer, did not allow any testimony that would have substantiated what Rosenthal was doing was legal under state law, or that he was doing it with the sanction and knowledge of local officials. The only exception to this was when Judge Breyer allowed the defense to call then Oakland City Council member Nate Miley as a witness to testify that he had been to and inspected the warehouse where Rosenthal was cultivating.
Such incidents (and the fact that Rosenthal was taking the case to trial while making no clear attempt to prove that he wasn't growing the marijuana) led the jury to suspect they didn't have all the facts. Nonetheless, the jury convicted Rosenthal on all counts. Once released from sequestering, nine of the twelve jurors held a press conference publicly recanting their verdict and asking for leniency in sentencing. The jurors even attended the sentencing hearing, sitting with the defendant they had just convicted. Judge Breyer departed from the 10 Year Mandatory Minimum Sentence and shocked prosecutors by sentencing Rosenthal to 1 day in prison, with credit for time served. Rosenthal would eventually win an appeal only to be retried and re-convicted. He is planning another appeal.
During the Bush Administration, federal officials stepped up the crack down on medical marijuana in California. There are currently more than 100 people facing federal charges in medical cannabis cases, and the DEA conducted more than 50 raids in 2007 alone. The DEA has also begun threatening landlords who lease to marijuana clubs with Asset Forfeiture, a technique where real property can be seized by the federal government if used in the commission of a drug crime. While DEA agents claim they are merely upholding federal law and only going after "major traffickers," advocates claim the DEA targets the most prominent political activists with their raids. Media reports have called federal enforcement in California "notably erratic."[8][9]
On June 12, 2009, a federal court handed down a sentence to Charles Lynch for a raid that occurred at his Central California medical marijuana dispensary in 2007. The federal judge sentenced Lynch to a year and a day in prison.[10]
The U.S. Supreme Court has twice upheld the ability of federal officials to enforce federal law despite the protections afforded to patients under state law. The case of Gonzales v. Raich challenged the federal position by claiming that simple cultivation of plant was outside the federal regulatory scheme of interstate commerce. While initially successful in the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down this argument. However, in his opinion, Justice Stevens expressed, while he denied them support at this time, he hoped "the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress." Justice O'Connor wrote in her dissenting opinion stated "This case exemplifies the role of states as laboratories."
The Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative claimed "medical necessity" as their legal justification for violating Federal Law. The U.S. Supreme Court also struck down this argument, claiming there could be no claim of medical necessity if Congress didn't first recognize medical value in the substance.
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   | Text of Proposition 215 - CA Secretary of State - Vote96 - Text of Proposition 215 |
| | Text of Senate Bill 420 - Cannabis Headquarters - CA- Prop 215 & SB 420 and MMJ recommendation info |
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