JEFFERSON CITY � Missouri marijuana users would be able to keep and transport a pound of pot, a pound of hashish and more than a half-gallon of highly potent hashish oil without a license or tax under a bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Kelly.

Kelly, D-Columbia, filed his marijuana legalization bill last week. It would impose a 25 percent tax on pot, set up a system for licensing growers and retailers and create exemptions to both for people who grow their own.

The proposal, lifted from an initiative petition filed by Show-Me Cannabis, needs work, but it is a starting point for discussion, Kelly said. One provision he intends to add would submit the proposal to voters, he said.

Kelly said he became convinced pot should be legal while serving four years as an associate circuit judge. "There is no good evidence to show marijuana is any more dangerous than alcohol or other substances," Kelly said. "We waste too much money and too many lives because of" marijuana prohibition.

Show-Me Cannabis has submitted 16 proposals, with minor variations, for possible circulation as initiative petitions. If polls now being conducted show 60 percent of voters support legalization, the group will push the proposal this year, Chairman Dan Viets said.

"I think we have the momentum with us," Viets said. "Certainly, I think the support for taxing and regulating marijuana is surging forward."

Under current Missouri law, all cases of possession of as much as 35 grams of marijuana is a misdemeanor punishable by as long as a year in the county jail.�

Voters in two states, Washington and Colorado, legalized recreational use of marijuana in 2012. Colorado began allowing commercial sales on Jan. 1, after setting up the regulatory structure. Colorado imposes a 10 percent tax on wholesalers and a 15 percent tax on retail sales.

Kelly's bill would set up a licensing system for retailers, allowing each county to have one retailer for every 2,500 people. In Boone County, that would allow as many as 65 retail outlets. The tax would be imposed on the first commercial sale of pot, which would generally be a wholesale transaction by the grower.

A "household exception" would allow individuals to grow eight plants without tax or a license. The exception also would allow possession of as much as 16 ounces of usable marijuana, 16 ounces of "solid" marijuana, better known as hashish, and 72 ounces of marijuana in liquid form.

Legalization is not intended to encourage marijuana use or promote it as safe, Viets said. The state can legalize and minimize use through the same means used to control cigarettes, he said.

"This would save a great deal of money and create a new income stream the state has not had previously," he said.

Columbia voters passed an ordinance in 2004 saying people found in possession of fewer than 35 grams of marijuana should be penalized with a violation in city court rather than being arrested and charged with a violation of state law.

This article was published in the Tuesday, February 4, 2014 edition of the Columbia Daily Tribune with the headline "Kelly has filed pot measure;�Prohibition is failing, he says."