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Medical Marijuana Reform Popular

KION 2/18 (KION News, News in Cali, “People Push To Legalize Pot In California”, Thursday,

February 18, 2010 9:48 PM EST, http://www.kionrightnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=12009588)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Some lawmakers say legalizing marijuana could help solve many of the state's

economic problems.Some people in California call marijuana a cash crop

. The state hopes it can

 become a cash cow. And feed our struggling economy. "California's economy as everyone painfully knows

is floundering without any hope of immediate resolve and looking at the legislation as a possibility, there is

an estimated 14 billion dollar a year cash crop," said Assemblyman Tom Ammiano. Assemblyman Tom

Ammiano is sponsoring the measure to legalize marijuana in California. He thinks it could be themedicine to fix California's 20 billion dollar deficit. California's board of equalization said taxing

marijuana could bring in about one and a half billion dollars a year. Ammiano said that money would trickle

down to local cities. "The way the initiative is, the local governments can either opt in or out of this. If theinitiative passes which I think will, if they opt it in, then they can opt it in their general funds," said

Ammiano. But some local cities don't like the idea. Gilroy Mayor Al Pinheiro said legalizing pot puts you at

risk. "If it's something that is detriment to our young people, if it's something that has other issues, just because it produces money doesn't mean that it's a good thing. I'm more into looking at what the reasons are

 behind it and not just the revenue source for the city," Gilroy Mayor Al Pinheiro. Ammiano said legalizing

 pot would take money away from drug cartels, cutting down on crime. The chaos that exists now is withmarijuana being illegal and that 14 billion dollars that's being made every year by the cartels, we would start

to get some control over that situation," said Ammiano For years, the national organization for thereform of marijuana laws pushed to legalize pot. Tyler Rapley's with the chapter at CSU Monterey

Bay—and said Ammiano's right. "It is a tremendous cost in our society, fighting a war against a substance

that is arguably more popular than alcohol or cigarettes in this country and it is simply just a completely backwards way of looking at it that we've been going at this problem and it's time for a new solution. But not

everyone agrees and you might be surprised to find out what Batzi Kuburovich thinks. He runs Medileaf, a

medical marijuana dispensary in Gilroy. "We provide medicine to patients and we look at cannabis as

medicine and we don't believe medicine should be legalized across the board," said Batzi Kuburovich.