[420 Girl]

CA. - Sponsors of an initiative that would ask voters to legalize marijuana possession for those 21 and over in California are turning in today more than 700,000 signatures to elections officials — a number that in all likelihood will be sufficient to place the issue on the November ballot.

Signatures were to be submitted today to elections officials in all 58 California counties, who will then begin the process of validating that those who signed are registered voters. Only about 433,000 valid signatures are needed.

“This initiative will appear on the November ballot,” said Dan Newman, spokesman for the Tax Cannabis campaign.

The measure would allow people over 21 to possess up to one ounce of marijuana for personal use. It would give each city the ability to decide whether to allow for retail sales in the community, and to levy taxes on such sales.

Richard Lee, whose Oaksterdam University in Oakland put up more than $1 million to fund the signature-gathering effort, called the initiative “a historic first step toward ending cannabis prohibition.”

Lee said the campaign has set a fund-raising target of $10 million to promote the initiative this fall. It has retained the services of Blue State Digital, a firm that helped Barack Obama raise tens of millions of dollars over the Internet in 2008, and hopes to tap into online fundraising by reaching out to a network of contacts that already exceeds 1 million people on Facebook and other networking sites.

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