

The campaign behind a failed initiative to legalize marijuana in California announced Friday it had formed a new committee to put another measure on the ballot.

The Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform 2012 aims to build on the unusual support that coalesced around Proposition 19, which would have allowed adults to grow and possess marijuana and authorized cities and counties to legalize and tax sales.

That campaign drew backing from the California NAACP and the Latino Voters League, which saw it as a way to end disproportionate arrests of African Americans and Latinos for marijuana crimes. Labor leaders in the Bay Area also got behind it, bringing endorsements from some major unions, which saw a legal pot industry as a potential source of union jobs.

The committee announced Friday included Alice Huffman, who heads the California NAACP; Antonio Gonzalez, who formed the Latino Voters League; and Dan Rush, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union official who worked during the campaign to build labor support. It also includes several key players behind Proposition 19, including Dale Sky Jones, who was the campaign's spokeswoman and will be the chairwoman of the new coalition.

"The purpose of our organization is to learn from our experiences in 2010 and take the lead toward victory in 2012," Jones wrote to supporters in an e-mail sent Friday. "We will expand our coalition, raise the necessary funds to move toward a possible 2012 campaign, and conduct polling and other opinion research that will guide the drafting of a new initiative."