Posted by CN Staff on October 02, 2010 at 08:38:31 PT
By Jesse McKinley
Source: New York Times
San Francisco, CA -- A month before California voters decide the fate of a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that essentially puts those caught possessing small amoun

ts of the drug on the same level as those caught speeding on the freeway.The governor — who has come out against the ballot measure, Proposition 19 — cast the new law’s effect as largely administrative,

changing the crime of possession from a misdemeanor to an infraction, the lowest level of offense under state law. And like everything else in a state struggling with a $19 billion deficit, money mattered, too.