HOLY SMOKE

High times for marijuana marchers.

Maybe there were good vibes after all from the ninth annual Million
Marijuana March that rolled out at high noon on May 3 through downtown
Portland.

Less than 48 hours after an estimated 700 marchers demonstrated to
protest pot prohibition and to support the use of medical marijuana,
conservative activist Kevin Mannix announced he'd end a ballot
initiative drive that would have replaced the Oregon Medical Marijuana
Program with prescription THC pills. As first reported Monday on
www.wweek.com, Mannix says there wasn't enough time or money to collect
the 82,769 valid signatures needed to put his initiative on the
November ballot.

Madeline Martinez, executive director of the Oregon National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said Tuesday that she
couldn't be more thrilled.

"I think it speaks volumes about where the public is on this issue,"
Martinez says. (Paul Stanford, head of the nonprofit THC Foundation
clinics, says patients oppose THC pills because they're ineffective
and overpriced.)

Martinez, a medical-marijuana user for chronic disk and joint pain,
says her 1,200-member group aims to have medicinal pot taxed by the
state and eventually sold in state-run liquor stores. The pro-pot
demonstrators want to place an Oregon Cannabis Tax initiative on the
2010 state ballot that they say could add hundreds of millions of
dollars annually to the general fund for health care.

"Relax it and tax it," the crowd chanted at Saturday's march-one of
more than 200 pro-pot demonstrations held worldwide on the same day.

Among the marchers, who got a police escort for their 24-block route
around Pioneer Courthouse Square, were punks, parents and grannies;
hip-hoppers and hippies; people in wheelchairs and on crutches.

Portland Police Sgt. Robert Voepel said the only rabble-rousers during
the 45-minute march were two people-pestering drunkards who were
unconnected to the peaceful gatherers. No pot smokers were spotted.

"These guys are nothing compared to the anarchists," Voepel says.
FACTS: The initiative by Mannix, a candidate in the May 20 Republican
primary for Oregon's 5th Congressional District, also would have
provided stiffer penalties for repeat sex offenders and drunk drivers.

According to April 2008 data from the state, Oregon has about 16,000
medical marijuana users, and 2,865 licensed physicians who have signed
medical marijuana applications.