Listen to Voters

POLICE NEED TO HONOR PROPOSAL C

After a laborious petition drive and a bumpy legal struggle, Proposal
C, which protects medicinal marijuana users from prosecution and
arrest by local authorities, passed with overwhelming support on
Tuesday. Proponents of the ordinance hailed it as a critical step
toward preserving civil liberties and reducing excessive prosecutions
and arrests of medical drug users. Unfortunately, one day after the
ballot initiative passed, Ann Arbor Police Chief Dan Oates decided to
ignore the direct democratic mandate of Ann Arbor residents, ordering
officers to continue enforcing possession, sale and use violations for
medicinal marijuana as they had before Tuesday's vote. Aside from the
more intuitive reasons for police officers not to be arresting ailing
residents for attempting to temporarily alleviate their pain or
discomfort, Oates's decision to ignore Proposal C carries some much
graver implications.

Under the legal counsel of City Attorney Stephen Postema, the Ann
Arbor Police Department has argued that the city's prosecution
attempts can be referred to state law, even if the offense is
otherwise decriminalized under municipal statute. Accordingly, Postema
argues, the city has every right to continue to use its law
enforcement resources to halt the medicinal use of marijuana.

In its departure, Proposal C continues Ann Arbor's time-honored
support and recognition of the medicinal benefits of marijuana and
represents a critical step toward safeguarding residents' civil
liberties from unnecessary government criminalization. Supporters
hoped that the ordinance would be met with further legalization
initiatives to ensure that citizens using cannabis for medical reasons
will be able to obtain safe products from a noncriminal market.

By turning a cold shoulder to Proposal C's directives, city officials
have not only prolonged the anxiety of hundreds of Ann Arbor's ailing
residents, but subverted the democratic process -- ignoring the
popular opinion of its residents and gratuitously deferring to state
legal precedent. The collective voice of Ann Arbor residents could not
have been any clearer. On Tuesday, by a 74 percent margin, Ann Arbor
voters explicitly requested that their taxpayer dollars not be used by
the city to prosecute or arrest medicinal marijuana users. The city
already decriminalized marijuana for nonmedicinal reasons, and
usually, when they come across it, Ann Arbor police only charge a
small fine for possession. In fact, with the police department's
response to Proposal C, medicinal marijuana offenses within Ann Arbor
will now hold harsher penalties and steeper fines than they would have
under municipal statutes before the vote.

Although the state's more stringent laws will always supercede
municipal code, a city's residents should be able to decide how the
public authorities most immediate to them allocate resources. If the
majority of Ann Arbor's citizens collectively conclude that individual
possession and use of marijuana for medical reasons is not a threat to
public order, local authorities should respect the will of the people.