MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROPONENTS HOLD SIGNATURE GATHERING EVENT IN
BOZEMAN

A group of folks gathered around a grill at the East Gallatin
Recreation Area early Saturday afternoon, hanging out and exercising
the principles of democracy.

Around 65 people showed up to sign a petition for Initiative
Referendum 124 and support Patients for Reform Not Repeal, the group
pushing to let Montana voters decide in November 2012 if they want to
keep the medicinal marijuana law passed early this summer.

Several petition sheets were filled out over the course of the
three-hour event, said Whitney Buckman, volunteer and harvesting
consultant with Redtop Organics Industries.

The volunteer organizers of the event were impressed and pleased with
the turnout, given the lack of formal advertising, said Monica
Blanchard, volunteer and co-owner of CCofMT. A nearly nonexistent
budget left volunteers to drum up supporters through social media, one
quarter-page advertisement in the, Chronicle and contact lists
developed during the summer's signature drive, she said.

"We're like the Arab Spring," Blanchard joked.

But the volunteers have outperformed expectations, said Rose Habib,
volunteer coordinator with Patients for Reform Not Repeal. More than
36,000 signatures have been collected this summer, almost 20,000 have
been processed and, of those, 15,000 signatures are valid, she said.

Professional signature collectors have an average of 30 percent of the
signatures they collect later determined invalid, said Erin Bell,
spokeswoman with KannaKare Health Services.

"Only 20 percent of ours got thrown out and we're volunteers," Bell
said.

The ballot initiative needs the signatures of five percent of the
number of voters that participated in the last gubernatorial election,
Habib said. That figure is 24,337, a figure that has haunted Habib the
entire summer, she said.

She believes the volunteer organization can reach that goal easily,
and Blanchard and others at the East Gallatin Recreation Area believe
they may already have.

"We've turned in enough (signatures), but I don't know that they've
been checked yet," Blanchard said.

People have been surprisingly receptive to the petition all summer,
Habib said. Most view it as a voters' rights issue rather than solely
a medicinal marijuana issue, she said. And that, along with the
dedication of volunteers throughout the state, give her reason to
believe the ballot initiative will succeed.

"We've shown Montana and we've shown, frankly, the country that we are
dedicated here in Montana and we intend to have our case heard," Habib
said.