by Chris Jones

A bunch of reefer addicts in Oakland filed a ballot initiative with the California Secretary of State yesterday to legalize the marijuana for fun time recreational purposes. The fine folks at Oaksterdam University, those guys who advertise on the back page of the weeklies alongside bankruptcy attorneys and certified massage therapists offering dubious treatments like "prostate drainage", are spearheading the effort to collect the 434,000 signatures necessary to get this thing on the ballot. Now that Oakland is taxing medicinal marijuana out of budgetary desperation, pot activists figure flat out legalization is mere steps away. Sure it is, hippies.

If passed, the measure would allow adults 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of pot and especially ambitious urban gardener types to cultivate veritable fields of "hoobastank" on plots of 25 square feet in size. That's a big plot. Now imagine that plot covered entirely in festive sticky, smelly, green plants. Wow, man. One wonders if this kind of cultivation will be allowed in all the new community gardens Gavin Newsom has promised to bestow upon San Franciscans as part of one of his greener than thou political gestures. The mind reels...

Bad news cancer fighters, arthritic sufferers, and those of you who worked so hard at getting your medical marijuana ID card under false pretenses: employees who partake in the kind medical bud at home can be fired for testing positive for the drug at work. Which? Wow.

In a 5 to 2 decision today, the court claims that Proposition 215, "the 1996 state initiative that allowed Californians to use marijuana for medical purposes with a doctor's recommendation," no longer protects workers from getting fired for violating federal drug laws before, during, or after work hours.

What's more, an employer who knowingly hire a medical marijuana user is "'arguably being complicit in an activity that's illegal under federal law.'" This chink in the cannabis armor comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's continuing approval of the federal government's strong-arming local medical mary jane offices and suppliers for "violating federal laws that ban the possession, cultivation and distribution of marijuana and recognize no legitimate use for the drug." (An aside: Aleve does wonders for pain, folks, especially when mixed with two Benadryl. Just saying.)