Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jan 2012
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Copyright: 2012 C.E.G.W./Times-Shamrock
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: Larry Gabriel

TAKING ON POLS AT THE POLLS

A State Vote on Legalization May Not Win, but Could at Least Start an 
Important Dialogue

The No. 1 story about marijuana in Michigan in 2011 was the wrath 
anti-drug warrior Attorney General Bill Schuette unleashed on medical 
marijuana facilities and users. Schuette used his bully pulpit and 
legal resources to intimidate dispensaries, people who work at 
dispensaries, people who grow marijuana and medical marijuana 
patients - working with friendly county prosecutors (particularly in 
Oakland County), federal authorities and state legislators to try to 
put the medical marijuana genie back in the bottle.

Marijuana legalization activists are working hard to make 2012 a very 
different story. In reaction to Schuette's tactics, a group calling 
itself the Committee for a Safer Michigan is kicking off a campaign 
this week to amend the state constitution and flat-out legalize 
marijuana for adults. This is a citizens' initiative that requires 
collecting 322,608 valid signatures in order to get on the fall ballot.

"The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act was passed in an effort to remove 
patients from the line of fire," says CSM spokesperson Charmie 
Gholson. "They are increasingly investigated in a backlash to the 
MMMA. The sick and dying are in harm's way. We want law enforcement 
to focus on violent crime instead of going after patients and 
caregivers, which is increasingly happening."

Indeed, anybody who is involved in medical marijuana at any level is 
potentially in harm's way because Schuette has declared the supremacy 
of federal law on this issue (although he asserts states' rights when 
it comes to, say, health care). In several prosecutions of 
card-carrying patients or caregivers, judges have ruled that 
defendants cannot cite the MMMA in their defense.

"We're doing this because of the failure of Michigan to enact the law 
the way it was written and passed by voters," Gholson says.

CSM has already put up a website (help.repealtoday.org) where 
volunteers can register to help. That grassroots aid is the only way 
this petition drive will be successful, because there isn't much 
money available for this campaign. It looks like there will be 
initiatives in five states to legalize marijuana, and the deep 
pockets of billionaires Peter Lewis, George Soros and John Sperling, 
who have previously bankrolled initiatives across the country, won't 
be available in Michigan.

"This year is going to be a very active year for initiatives," says 
Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for 
the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Every successful initiative since 
about 1996 has been funded by Lewis, Soros or Sperling. Washington 
state and Colorado are the funded initiatives this year. They're 
probably going to make the ballot. Montana, Michigan, Missouri and 
California are nonfunded. People on the ground are filing papers and 
moving forward with a grassroots effort. They're probably going to 
make the ballot in California too."

Lewis, who St. Pierre says is historically the largest funder of 
marijuana initiatives, is funding the Washington Civil Liberties 
Union and SAFER in Colorado because they have long-established 
organizations on the ground. Lewis only funds initiatives he believes 
will be successful and apparently believes those have the best chance.

St. Pierre isn't making a direct statement about Michigan, but it's 
pretty easy to infer that he thinks it's a long-shot effort to get on 
the ballot - let alone win at the polls. He's told me in the past 
that in order for an initiative to be successful, support should have 
been polled at about 58 percent for six months. Others say that you 
need support at around 55 percent. Scientific polls in Michigan have 
shown support for legalization of marijuana at 51 percent; once the 
anti-marijuana forces kick in, that support will erode. But that 
doesn't mean that St. Pierre thinks the petition effort is useless.

"You might not win, but you create a vehicle for public discussion," 
says St. Pierre. "It creates a fairly long vehicle over several 
months for discussion. Politicians, law enforcement and mainstream 
media don't want to have these discussions. In a state like Michigan 
that has that vehicle, why not use it? If you don't get the big 
funding, statistically you don't have a chance of prevailing, but you 
create an educational vehicle. All that process is good. The more 
marijuana reform is discussed, the more prohibition is exposed as a 
flawed, bad policy, the more likely we see the public supporting 
these reforms. In 1995, about 20 percent of Americans favored 
legalization; about 50 percent want legalization now. This is a good 
thing for advancing the laws in general."

There will be plenty of discussion about marijuana across the state 
and the nation. On the state level, Flint's Ben Horner, publisher of 
the Michigan Medical Marijuana Report, plans on having numerous 
workshops around the state sponsored by the Vote Green initiative. 
(Not to be confused with the Green Party.) Horner hopes to have 
discussions about everything from the "recall Schuette" campaign to 
municipal efforts to assign marijuana offenses the lowest law 
enforcement priority to voter registration drives to efforts to bring 
disparate activists across the state together.

"This is to support progressive, compassionate thinking about 
cannabis in general," he says. "There are a lot of ideas out there. I 
don't know what the final solution is going to be. "

Vote Green workshops are already planned for Waterford, Prudenville 
(near Houghton Lake), Lapeer and Ann Arbor. Horner points out that 
each of the 110 state representative seats are up for election this 
fall, creating an opportunity for voters to engage their state reps 
on the issue. If nothing else, state House elections could easily 
engage a lot of people who believe they can make a difference on the 
issue in their communities.

"Well under 1 percent of people who use cannabis are involved in the 
legal reform of cannabis," says St. Pierre. "Absent that dedicated 
funding from one of those known sources, this is a maypole to 
organize around, to draw people out from their smoky closets."

The fact that Wayne State University is hosting a Jan. 27 symposium 
on the implication of national and state marijuana reform shows that 
the discussion is taking off. Former state Attorney General Mike Cox 
is scheduled to give the keynote address at the Law School's Spencer 
M. Partrich auditorium. Seating is limited, and the event is likely 
already full, but more information is available at 313-577-8032.

Nationally it's hard to ignore that there could be five different 
states calling the question on legalizing marijuana. That's an 
unprecedented amount and something national pundits will have to 
address. If even one of those state initiatives is successful at the 
ballot, there will be celebration and caterwauling across the nation.

"California's Prop. 19 kicked off a massive discussion in the last 
election cycle," St. Pierre says. "Many failed initiatives forced a 
public discussion the elected body politic doesn't want to have. If 
Michigan and Montana officials had not clamped down so hard on 
medical marijuana, I don't think we would have seen these 
initiatives. The vicious political rebound has pushed activists to 
say, 'You don't like medical marijuana; you're not going to like 
legalization any better, so we'll go for that.'"

It's going to be a very interesting year. By the time November rolls 
around, we could be having a very, very interesting discussion.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom