Republican and Democratic candidates running for California’s highest elected offices are in agreement that the state’s marijuana legalization law is in need of changes.
Fiona Ma, the Democratic Party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, said at a cannabis conference this week that the legal marijuana market is “a complete disaster.”
“California was the number one cannabis-producing state in terms of quality and being trusted by the farmers, similar to our wine industry,” she said at the IgniteIt event in Los Angeles. “And now it’s pretty much—it’s almost dead. The legal business is dead.”
A big part of the problem, she said, is that taxes are “definitely too high” for the legal industry to compete with unlicensed operators.
Ma, who currently serves as California’s treasurer, said she wants to “help spearhead trying to get something back on the ballot to change what is happening” in cannabis.
Rather than collect signatures for a voter initiative, which is an expensive endeavor, she is proposing that “we go through the Legislature, get two-thirds of the votes, get the governor to sign the bill, and then it would go on the ballot.”
“That’s the cheapest way, but I do need cooperation,” she said, adding that she
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