Pot Bust

MARIJUANA INITIATIVE FAILS TO MAKE THE BALLOT

An initiative that would have made marijuana offenses the lowest law
enforcement priority in Portland failed to make the ballot this week,
after a Multnomah County analysis of the initiative's signatures
showed that the petition's backers, Citizens for a Safer Portland,
didn't submit 26,691 valid signatures.

The initiative--largely funded by the Washington, DC-based Marijuana
Policy Project, which gave the campaign over $120,000 to
date--collected a little over 40,000 signatures. But the campaign
scrubbed duplicates, the city tossed another 5,000 due to "circulator
error"--a decision the campaign is not happy about--and only 62
percent of the remaining 27,000 signatures were valid, according to
Multnomah County Elections' calculations. The campaign spent over
$94,000 on petition circulators, according to the July 24 campaign
finance filings.

Local pot activist Chris Iverson filed the petition without much
fanfare back on February 7. Given Portland's already strong support
for the state's medical marijuana measures, Iverson's strategy was to
keep quiet and avoid drawing any opposition that might jeopardize the
built-in advantage. In hindsight, that strategy may have backfired.

Iverson disagrees. "The fact that we only had four months hurt us.
The fact that we didn't have a whole lot of money hurt us," Iverson
says. "I still think not talking to the media and laying low was a
smart decision."

In Seattle, where a similar measure made the ballot and passed in
2003, there was a 63 percent reduction in arrests, prosecutions, and
sentences for marijuana offenses. Portland's measure could have had a
similar effect by making "adult marijuana-related offenses the lowest
law-enforcement priority in the City of Portland," and backing up the
measure with a citizens' oversight committee to ensure the directive
was being followed by cops and the district attorney.

Supporters, like Iverson, had hoped that the city measure would have
paved the way for statewide marijuana reforms--ambitious ideas like
regulating and taxing the drug. "It seems that [the Marijuana Policy
Project] and the activists here in Oregon want to continue down this
low-priority initiative road," Iverson says. "It's very likely we
will obtain another grant and do this next year or in '08. I am not
stopping until this is legal, and the war on marijuana is over."