If marijuana initiative passes, 20 million acres of land in California could 'spring back to life'

When Californians go to the polls on Tuesday to vote for or against legalizing marijuana for recreational use, one professor says it's about a lot more than being free to get high.

Proposition 64 would allow those 21 and over to immediately possess and grow pot, but it would be heavily regulated — non-medical marijuana will only be available at licensed stores and it won't be legal to smoke in public places (unless allowed by local ordinance) or where tobacco smoking is already prohibited. It would also have a huge, positive environmental impact, Char Miller, professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College in Southern California, says.

Ever since former President Richard Nixon started his War on Drugs in the early 1970s, cartels have been setting up shop on state and tribal lands across California, Miller said. These illegal grows, often in rugged terrain and covered by a canopy of trees, affect 20 million acres of national forests in the state, and the U.S. Forest Service said in 2012, nearly 83 percent of the 1,048,768 plants eradicated from national forests were destroyed in California. At the grow sites, pesticides, fertilizer, poisons, and other toxic materials are seeping into the land, and have been shown to poison animals. People are also in danger — hikers and police officers who come across isolated grows have been threatened by armed "farmers," Miller said.

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Prop 64 has the support of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who said it would be a "game changer" and the "beginning of the end of the war on marijuana." If voters follow Newsom's lead and pass the proposition, they'll also "help liberate 20 million acres of national forests in the Golden State, allowing these treasured lands to spring back to life," Miller said.