Bid to Put Marijuana Initiative on Ballot Gets Go-Ahead

The secretary of state’s office on Wednesday approved a Burbank man’s attempt to put on the ballot an initiative to legalize marijuana in California.

Barton Gilbert, who described himself as a director of the California Marijuana Initiative and veteran of a number of marijuana legalization drives since the early 1970s, said the proposal would repeal anti-marijuana laws. It would declare the plant an intoxicant, like alcoholic drinks, and provide for its regulation by alcoholic beverage control agencies.

The secretary of state’s office set a Jan. 1 deadline for Gilbert to collect the 393,835 voter signatures needed to place the proposal on the 1987 statewide ballot.

Eu’s office said it is the 16th attempt to qualify a marijuana legalization measure. Only in 1972 did backers succeed in putting the proposal before voters, who rejected it by a 2-to-1 ratio.

“The present laws are drastically out of date,” said Gilbert, a counselor for a bipartisan voter registration group. “Marijuana does not belong in the same category with dangerous, addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine.”

Legalization of marijuana would allow police to concentrate enforcement on more dangerous drugs, he said.

Gilbert said he is not discouraged that the initiative campaign has been launched just as public and governmental anti-drug drives are gathering momentum, with President Reagan calling for drug testing of many federal employees and Nancy Reagan making drug abuse her chief public cause.

On the same day the initiative proposal was approved, a San Fernando Valley lawmaker, state Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge) proposed that all 120 members of the state Legislature submit to drug testing “as an example to all in the state.” The idea was endorsed by Republicans but criticized by Democrats as an election-year ploy.

Gilbert called such efforts “misdirected and misinformed,” and predicted, “The pendulum will start to swing back in the next two years, back in the direction of personal freedom.”