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POT DECRIMINALIZATION HEADED FOR FERNDALE BALLOT IN NOVEMBER

Marijuana advocates say they will file petitions with the Ferndale City Clerk's office this morning to get a proposal on the November ballot to decriminalize pot in the city.

The move is part of a statewide effort and activists say they will also file petitions for ballot proposals to decriminalize marijuana in Jackson today, and in Lansing sometime next week.

Andrew Cissell, 25, of Ferndale said he collected about 600 petition signatures nearly twice the number needed in his hometown over the past five weeks.

"I definitely think this will pass in Ferndale," he said.  "It's a liberal community.  Ferndale passed a medical marijuana ( ordinance ) in 2004 long before it was passed statewide."

Cissell said he will be joined at 10 a.m.  today at City Hall by former Ferndale Mayor Craig Covey and longtime marijuana activist Tim Beck, who was a prime mover in the statewide Medical Marijuana act that Michigan voters passed in 2008.

Beck is chairman of the Coalition for a Safer Michigan, a pot advocacy group that is fighting to decriminalize marijuana and similar issues.

Beck said the group's strategy is to pass local initiatives to pressure state lawmakers in Lansing to pass House Bill 4623, which would decriminalize pot statewide.

"We want to decriminalize it like they have already done in Ohio and New York and more than a dozen other states so that it's the equivalent of a traffic ticket," Beck said.  "If these three initiatives pass in Ferndale, Jackson and Lansing I think it will be the tipping point for passage of the bill in the ( state ) House."

This is the 15th pro-marijuana ballot proposal that Beck has been involved in.

He said he has helped local residents like Cissell with technical and legal assistance to make sure petition drives are done properly.

He was involved in passing pot decriminalization proposals in Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids and Ypsilanti in 2012, and in Kalamazoo in 2011.

Ann Arbor voters passed a similar local ordinance back in 1973.

"The best political poll in existence is an election, and politicians pay attention to elections," Beck said.

Covey has been a longtime supporter of marijuana legalization.  He collected some of the petition signatures that are scheduled to be turned in to the Ferndale City Clerk's office today, he said.

Marijuana has been irrationally demonized by government and law enforcement officials for decades, Covey said.

"This is a citizen-led, grassroots effort," he said.  "Politicians are afraid of the issue but the people aren't.  I think this will pass in Ferndale."