Hemp Legalization Drive Falls Short

The initiative to legalize marijuana in California will fall 185,000 signatures short of the number needed by today to place the measure on the November ballot, organizers at the Sherman Oaks campaign headquarters said Wednesday.

Ballot co-sponsor Jack Herer said his volunteers were too shaken by the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake and constant police harassment to muster the required 385,000 signatures, but will try again in 1996.

“We went from 60 volunteers on Jan. 16 in the San Fernando Valley to zero for six weeks,” said Herer, 54, who helped launch the California Hemp Initiative petition drive on Jan. 4.

The initiative sought to decriminalize growing hemp, or the marijuana plant, “for industrial, medicinal, nutritional and personal uses, including manufacture of paper, clothing, fuel, food and smoking,” Herer said. Currently, growing hemp of any kind is illegal in the United States.

Although volunteers were able to place the initiative on the ballot in 1972 (it lost), Herer said 1994’s volunteers were not as motivated after the temblor. Of the 1,000 volunteers who helped statewide to gather signatures, Herer said only about 150 delivered on the promise to collect 300 signatures.

Herer, who financed $80,000 of the campaign through the sale of his book, “Hemp & the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” promised to pay petitioners next time around.

Herer also blamed campus and mall security guards, and police, for scaring away volunteers. He cited the Jan. 17 arrest of two petitioners at the Antelope Valley Mall, who later had trespassing charges dropped after intervention by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I had 30 people petitioning in Palmdale before that incident,” Herer said. “Only one came back. They were scared.”