December 11, 2017

Legal Pot Is Coming to California in January. What Do You Want To Know?

We’ll get the answers.

Nug in a bubble

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You may have heard: Legal weed is coming to the Golden State.

In November 2016, California passed Prop 64, or the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, making it legal for any adult over the magical age of 21 to possess or grow pot under certain amounts. Hippies cheered. And on January 1, pot shops in California are set to open their doors…sort of. Turns out, it’s complicated. Prop 64 allows cities and counties to set their own laws regarding weed, and many are passing legislation prohibiting dispensaries and outdoor grows.

Meanwhile, Silicon Valley venture capitalists are throwing their money at cannabis; the federal government says pot is still illegal; and licensed, small-scale pot cultivators across California are freaking out about the state’s newest set of cannabis regulations, which will allow Big Ag to jump into the market in January. 

So, as you can see, a lot is happening in a relatively short amount of time, and you probably have questions about what legal pot will mean for California and the rest of the country. (After all, California currently ships 80 percent of its weed out of state via the black market.)

For some ideas, here are questions our own staff has: Where will I be able to buy legal pot? Will a black market for weed still exist? As far as regulation goes, what side are Republicans on? And will there be cannabis ice cream?

What do you want to know? Fill out this form. We’ll get the answers.








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Photo credit: UrosPoteko/Getty

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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