OAKLAND POT MEASURE SEEKS A SHIFT IN PRIORITIES

An alliance of marijuana legalization activists in Oakland announced Monday
that they are close to placing a measure on the November ballot that would
require police to essentially look the other way when dealing with
marijuana possession by adults.

The measure also would require the city to regulate and collect tax revenue
for adult cannabis use if the state ever allows it. The extra tax dollars
would be earmarked for police and other cash-strapped municipal services.

Efforts to make marijuana use the lowest law enforcement priority mirror a
similar initiative approved by Seattle voters last fall. But the push for
marijuana taxation is the first such effort in the nation, backers of the
Oakland measure say.

"This law will keep cannabis off the streets, away from children and out of
the hands of dangerous drug dealers, by making it available in licensed
businesses, not on neighborhood street corners," said Dale Geringer,
president of the California chapter of the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws.

But foes say it is a misguided effort meant to foist a dangerous drug on an
unsuspecting public.

"I'm very concerned about the message this sends to the rest of the nation
and world," said Richard Meyer, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman
in San Francisco. "I think the marijuana lobby is trying to deceive the
people again that marijuana use is harmless. That's far from the truth."

Under state law, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is a
misdemeanor, while anyone caught with more can face felony charges. The
possession of any amount of cannabis is prohibited under federal law.

The initiative's authors hope the Oakland push will serve as a springboard
for a broader effort to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana in California.
The effort was launched by Oakland Civil Liberties Alliance, a newly formed
coalition of local residents and national drug policy groups -- including
NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project and Drug Policy Alliance, which is
funded in part by New York billionaire George Soros, who is also financing
efforts to defeat President Bush in November.

On Monday, the coalition announced it had collected more than 30,000
signatures to qualify the initiative, nearly double what was needed to
place it on the ballot. A pivotal selling point, organizers said, was the
argument that police time was being wasted on arresting and investigating
adults for cannabis use while other city programs were being cut, including
parks and libraries.

Backers also say they are tapping resentment over the Oakland City
Council's decision to crack down on about a dozen medical marijuana
dispensaries in the city. One section of town earned the nickname
"Oaksterdam," a reference to the freewheeling Dutch city of Amsterdam,
where marijuana is legal.

"When the council reduced the number of cannabis clubs, it really ignited
people and got them out there to get this initiative going," said
Councilwoman Desley Brooks, who supports the November ballot measure.

Brooks said police last week attempted undercover purchases at several of
the medical cannabis clubs that hadn't halted their dispensary operations,
underscoring the need to keep officers focused on more important crimes.

"The whole federal drug war has been a joke at best," she said. "People
realize that doesn't work and we need to look to some other solutions."

Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, called marijuana's reputation as a relatively benign recreational
drug a persistent myth perpetuated among adults who came of age in the
1960s and '70s, when cannabis use skyrocketed.

"It's out of touch with the science," said Riley. "Until those sorts of
public perceptions change, we'll keep getting misguided policy based on
outdated information."

Riley also said that the perception of local police exhausting their
officers on low-level drug busts "is simply not true."

More than 700,000 pot arrests are made in the U.S. during a typical year.
But most federal prisoners incarcerated for marijuana crimes were caught
with in excess of 100 pounds of pot, Riley said, and just 1% of the inmate
population in state prisons are behind bars for cannabis. "Most people who
go to prison for marijuana offenses are serious drug offenders," Riley said.