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VOLUNTEERS ASK VOTERS TO PUT MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION ON BALLOT

With a stack of petitions in his car, Tom Tucker went straight from his overnight shift last week to stand outside the Royal Oak post office with a clipboard.

"Do you what to sign a petition to legalize marijuana?" Tucker asked as people filed past.

Don Jones, a professional photographer, signed right away.

"We voted on ( medical marijuana ), and now the big shots keep dreaming up ways to stop us from using it," said Jones, 62, of Pleasant Ridge.

So did 19-year-old Jasmine Hunt of Troy.

"I feel like, if I get caught with marijuana, it will ruin a lot of my plans.  But it helps my anxiety," said the Oakland Community College student.

Royal Oak attorney Dave Wolock, 67, hesitated.

"I need to do more thinking before I'll sign," said the retired Wayne County assistant prosecutor.  "I'll grant you - the authorities have not been responsible as far as implementing the statute.  That's forcing these people to go back to the ballot."

The new push for outright legalization of pot in Michigan comes just four years after voters approved its use for medical purposes - a law that led to numerous arrests of state-registered users while authorities complain that it is too vague and promotes drug dealing.

Outside the post office, Tim Keenan, 50, of Royal Oak wouldn't sign.

"I don't know if it should be totally legal.  How would it be controlled?" asked Keenan, who sells church supplies.

Tucker persisted, snagging 25 signatures in two hours.

"I only use it maybe two times a month," said Tucker, 61, a baker at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak and a state-registered medical marijuana patient who said he has pain from breaking his back twice.  "I just don't think it should be so hard to get, and dangerous to try to get it."

Tucker is one of about 2,500 volunteers statewide gathering signatures, said organizers of the petition campaign to make pot legal in Michigan.  They must gather 322,609 signatures by July 8 to get their proposal on Michigan's November ballot.  Their hope is that voters will approve this the way state residents ap-proved the medical marijuana proposal in 2008, with 63 percent yes votes.

Opponents have said little about the campaign, but they're waiting to see how far it goes, said Judy Rubin of Huntington Woods, leader of a youth substance-abuse-prevention group called the Tri-Community Coalition.

"I don't see it passing.  Do we really want another harmful substance available to our youth and everyone else? I just feel we have enough problems, dealing with alcohol, and we're doing a pretty poor job with that," Rubin said.

So far, the legalization effort counted only 15,000 signatures and received just $10,000 in donations, organizers said.  But this weekend in Ann Arbor, they are hoping for fresh momentum.  At the 41st annual Hash Bash on Saturday, hundreds of volunteers will converge with what organizers hope will be tens of thousands of new signatures they gathered in recent weeks.  Then they hope to recruit hundreds of new volunteers to fan out across Michigan.

Hash Bash "might be the only time we can get a lot of new volunteers from all over the state," said Christeen Landino, 62, of Eastpointe, treasurer for the Committee for a Safer Michigan - the group behind the push for legalization.

Landino said she is one of countless medical marijuana users who decided that full legalization was necessary because Michigan authorities made it hard for patients to get the drug.

The group clearly needs more donations, "but it's going to get a lot easier to get signatures as the weather warms up," said Matt Abel, 53, a Detroit attorney who heads the campaign.