GROUP INCLUDING 2 CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ASKS FEDS TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA

EL PASO -- A group that includes two El Paso City Council members
today is asking the federal government to legalize marijuana. The
event is timed in anticipation of a state visit to Washington, D.C.,
Wednesday by Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

El Paso city Reps. Beto O'Rourke and Susie Byrd are helping to
organize the event, at 1 p.m. at the base of the Paso del Norte
Bridge, which connects El Paso to Juarez. Oscar Martinez, a Juarez
native and history professor at the University of Arizona, will speak.

The Obama administration is about to unveil an initiative to reduce
the demand for illegal drugs in the United States. It will include
more money for drug treatment.

But O'Rourke also wants Obama to lead an effort to legalize, regulate
and tax marijuana.

U.S. residents spend $8 billion to $9 billion a year on marijuana
from Mexico, O'Rourke said. That money helps fuel a drug war that has
taken more than 5,000 lives in Juarez since the start of 2008, O'Rourke said.

"You have the deadliest city in the world on one side of the bridge
and the second-safest city in the U.S. on the other," O'Rourke said.

O'Rourke has twice pushed City Council resolutions calling on the
U.S. government to reconsider its drug policy. If they had been OK'd,
they would have been only symbolic measures.