CRUSADE TO LEGALIZE POT - MEDICAL OR NOT

Efforts to Explicitly Allow the Sale of Marijuana - Whether Medical
or Recreational - Have So Far Failed to Make It Out of Olympia.
Voters Statewide Might Just Have the Final Word.

Efforts to explicitly allow the sale of marijuana whether medical or
recreational have so far failed to make it out of Olympia. Voters
statewide might just have the final word.

A measure to make Washington the first state to legalize marijuana is
trying to reach the ballot this year. A potentially bigger,
better-funded campaign is on the horizon for next year.

"We're very interested in the possibility of something being on the
ballot in 2012," said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the
state's American Civil Liberties Union chapter, which is talking to
potential supporters in Washington and elsewhere.

This year's Initiative 1149 would seek to legalize pot for adults 18
and older if it reaches the statewide ballot for the November
election. Volunteers are passing petitions around but had tallied
just 17,093 between March 18 and last week.

Organizers need 241,000 valid signatures and are hoping for warmer
weather that would make it easier to find signers. They also hope for
a warmer reception from donors.

The group raised $18,600 between December and March and spent most of
it. It was enough to pay for printing and mailing petitions but not
enough to hire professional signature gatherers.

"Somebody with a big checkbook could simply pay us onto the ballot,"
said I-1149 co-author Douglas Hiatt, a Seattle attorney. "That would
be super, but right now we're doing it the hard way."

The ACLU has political and policy objections to I-1149: It's being
tried in a year when turnout could be relatively low, and it
legalizes marijuana while leaving regulation of the drug up to the Legislature.

The lack of regulations "poses a big problem with voter comfort,"
Holcomb said. If lawmakers can't agree on rules, she added: "Then we
have an unprecedented Wild West."

The 2012 initiative is still in its early stages but would include regulations.

Holcomb said the younger voters who could turn out in support of
President Barack Obama's re-election would support legalization.

"Obviously among those people in the movement nationally that tend to
fund these sort of efforts, they believe there is historically a
precedent that you have a greater likelihood of success with these
sort of measures when they appear on the ballot in presidential
election years," said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,

A 2012 effort could also benefit from a multi-state approach.
Supporters of legalizing marijuana are trying to get measures onto
the California and Colorado ballots next year.

Last year, voters rejected a legalization measure in California.

Coalitions are reviewing draft proposals in California and Colorado,
while there's "very preliminary talk" about a similar one in
Washington, Armentano said.

First, the Legislature may be asked again next year to consider
legalization, he said.

But legalization proposals by Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle,
never gained any traction in 2010 or again this year.

And the separate proposal to legalize medical marijuana dispensaries
couldn't get the most important signature it needed: Gregoire's.

It's unclear how much the high-profile debate over the laws for
patients will affect the drive for outright legalization.

There's plenty of overlap in supporters of both.

Frank Colletti was once a recreational user of marijuana but now uses
it much more frequently as medicine. The drug eases the nausea and
vomiting caused by his gastroparesis, a complication of diabetes, he said.

Colletti, a 28-year-old East Side Tacoma resident, said medical use
of the drug "changed my life," but he figures everyone can benefit
from it, patient or not. "The No. 1 killer in America right now is
stress," he said, "and if people don't do something to alleviate that
stress and unwind, they can die from it."

Advocates said the logjam over the patient bill in Olympia shows it's
up to the voters.

"We think that it illustrates why the people of the state need to
establish the laws," Sensible Washington spokesman Lee Rosenberg
said, "because our politicians really aren't capable of standing up
to the feds."