Drugs, Guns, Suicide on Ballot in U.S. Polls

By Martin Wolk
SEATTLE (Reuters) Drugs, guns and death are among the hotbutton topics
facing U.S. voters Tuesday in state and local elections, with the most
closelywatched votes concentrated in the Pacific Northwest.

In Washington state, voters will decide on eight issues, including
initiatives that would allow medical use of marijuana and require trigger
locks on handguns.

In Oregon, voters will get the chance to reconsider their 1994 vote that
made the state the world's first jurisdiction to legalize
physicianassisted suicide.

With Congress's ability to act limited by political gridlock, the most
sensitive issues increasingly are being handled at the state level,
political analysts say.

The trend is clearest in the 24 states, mostly in the West and Midwest,
that allow voters to place issues directly on the ballot by petition.

"I believe we're in a longterm historical devolution of power from a
centralized to a more statebased situation," said Tim Hibbitts, a pollster
based in Portland, Oregon. "A lot of those issues that you're dealing with
are personal, so perhaps it's not surprising that those are resolved at a
state level rather than a federal level."

While the issues are being decided by state voters, plenty of money is
flowing from outofstate individuals and groups who are free of the
restrictions that limit contributions in campaigns for political office.

Billionaire currency trader George Soros has contributed $250,000 to retain
Oregon's assisted suicide law and $335,000 to the Washington measure that
would permit medical use of marijuana and make major changes in the state's
drug laws.

"Essentially these are all votes by the people, because the politicians
have not been there to lead," said Ty Trippet of Soros' Research and Policy
Reform Center in New York.

Soros has been joined in his support for the marijuana measure by
businessmen John Sperling of Phoenix, Arizona, and Peter Lewis of
Cleveland, who together have contributed nearly $1 million. Soros has been
active in similar campaigns including measures that legalized the medical
use of marijuana in California and Arizona.

But like the Arizona law, the Washington measure goes much further,
creating a new state drug treatment and education fund and making about 300
prisoners serving time for drugrelated offenses eligible for parole.

Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes has contributed about $70,000 to
oppose the measure, which critics say would have the effect of legalizing
hard drugs like heroin and LSD and would result in the release of violent
felons.

Soros and his allies have been vastly outspent in their battle to retain
Oregon's precedentsetting law legalizing physicianassisted suicide. Local
and national Catholic groups have contributed $1.5 million to the effort to
repeal the 1994 law, which was tangled in litigation until Oct. 14, when
the Supreme Court cleared the way for it to take effect.

A "no" vote on Measure 51, which appears likely according to the latest
opinion polls, would allow physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs
to terminally ill patients who request it.

Another hotly contested issue is Washington's Measure 676, which would
require trigger locks and other safety measures that would make the state
one of the most restrictive for handgun owners.

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, a suburban Seattle resident who has
become increasingly active politically, is one of the measure's major
financial backers. He and his family have contributed about $185,000,
according to the latest available records.

But they have been vastly outgunned by the National Rifle Association,
which likely will spend more than $2 million in its effort to defeat the
handgun proposal. NRA officials, citing recent polls, say they expect to
win the battle.

Washington state voters also will decide whether to ban job discrimination
on the basis of sexual orientation and whether to impose new restrictions
on health maintenance organizations.

In heavily forested Maine, voters will decide on new logging rules backed
by the paper industry and some but not all environmentalists. The
bill would limit clearcutting but is opposed by some green groups that had
sought a complete ban on clearcutting in a losing ballot initiative last
year.

Voters in Houston will be asked to decide whether to do away with an
affirmative action program in place since 1985 that sets goals for awarding
city contracts to firms owned by women and minority members.
REUTERS