Prop. 64: Bay Area voters back California pot measure by big margin

The initiative, Proposition 64, won 56 percent of the state vote. Some of its greatest support came from Bay Area counties.

Lisa M. Krieger

Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, a key leader behind Proposition 64, celebrated the victory of the measure at an election night party at San Francisco’s Verso Club.

By Lisa M. Krieger

PUBLISHED: November 9, 2016 at 7:47 am | UPDATED: November 9, 2016 at 4:03 pm

Strong backing from the Bay Area — in money and votes — helped propel the measure to legalize recreational marijuana to victory in California, ending the ban on a long-illicit drug in a state with the world’s sixth largest economy.

Proposition 64 won 56 percent of the state vote, and more than two-thirds support in most Bay Area counties. The measure carried more than 73 percent of the vote in San Francisco; 70 percent in Santa Cruz County; more than 69 percent in Marin; 66 percent in Alameda; 60 percent in Contra Costa; and nearly 58 percent in Santa Clara County.

Funding for the effort came, in large part, from a Silicon Valley tech billionaire: former Facebook president and Napster co-founder Sean Parker contributed more than one-third of the pro-Proposition 64 budget. He gave more than $8.6 million of the $22.1 million raised by supporters; in contrast, opponents donated only $2.1 million.


In one day, California ended a century of prohibition. Cannabis was legal in the state until 1915, when an amendment to The Poison Act forbade the sale and possession of “loco weed.”

Still, Wednesday’s celebrations were muted in a state where weed is already widespread — and where the shock of Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race hung over the Bay Area.

The Oakland-based “herb shop” Magnolia Wellness planned an afternoon party.  Also on Wednesday, cannabis-related businesses like Santa Ana’s Kush Bottles Inc., which produces the mandatory child-proof packaging, said it would move forward on buying more tools, boosting overseas manufacturing and upgrading space in warehouses.

The measure’s victory was part of a sweeping win for cannabis across the nation, where eight of nine states approved either recreational or medical use. In addition to California, the states of Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine voted to legalize its recreational use.

About 20 percent of all Americans now live in a state that has legal marijuana, said Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center in Santa Monica.

“Yesterday, the population covered by the four states that legalized and District of Columbia was roughly 20 million. California, alone, has put on another 40 million,” he said. With passage in other states, “we’ve gone from 20 million to 65 million,” in a nation with a population of 318 million.

Doorman “Big Mike,” of Oakland, right, and Lauren Phillips, of San Francisco, celebrate during a Proposition 64 election night party at The New Parish nightclub in Oakland on Tuesday.  (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group) 

The map of where pot is legal now includes the entire West Coast, raising a stronger challenge to the federal government’s ban.

Starting Wednesday morning, an ounce of marijuana in your purse or backpack is perfectly legal. So is eight grams of “concentrate.” You can grow up to six plants inside your home, keeping what you harvest.


But it is not yet legal to buy or sell the drug, because the state has until January 2018 to establish licenses for commercial operations; you can only obtain it as a gift. Smoking pot in public is against the law.

It remains illegal under federal law. While Trump seems to support medical marijuana,  a “wait and see” approach will continue on recreational marijuana, according to attorney Aaron Herzberg, a partner at CalCann Holdings, Inc., a California medical marijuana real estate company.

Recently, Trump supported state’s rights to choose how to legislate medical marijuana, but has not expressly called for legalization, said Herzberg.

Along with legalizing weed for adults, Proposition 64 also changes the status of cannabis in California in other ways, said RAND researcher Kilmer. They are:

• Criminal justice system. Adults can possess up to one ounce and grow up to 6 plants at home. For those under age 18, it eliminates criminal penalties for possession and selling. It also allows those convicted of marijuana offenses to potentially be re-sentenced.
• New state revenue. The proposition levies a 15 percent excise tax at the retail level and a $9.25 an ounce tax at the wholesale level.
• Commercialization. There will be more advertising, and local jurisdictions will be allowed to license “marijuana bars,” where it is served.
• Large-scale production. Currently, growers are restricted to one acre outdoors and a half acre indoors; within five years, those caps are removed.