MARIJUANA PROPOSAL GETS MORE SIGNATURES

30,000 Names Added to Put Plan on Ballot

Supporters of a proposed initiated act to legalize marijuana for medical
use submitted about 30,000 more signatures to the secretary of state
Wednesday in their attempt to get the measure on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Phyllis Thompson of Little Rock, a consultant for the Arkansas Alliance for
Medical Marijuana, said she's "very confident" that the alliance now has
the necessary 64,456 registered Arkansas voters' signatures.

On July 27, Secretary of State Charlie Daniels rejected the proposed
Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act because its petition didn't contain enough
signatures. That gave the group 30 days to submit more.

On July 2, the alliance submitted about 66,000 signatures. Daniels
certified 29,947 of them. Not counted were about 17,000 because of an error
in the notary public's signature on the petition pages.

"We were able to locate key notaries to correct some of the problems among
that first rejected group of 17,371," said Denele Campbell of West Fork,
executive director of the alliance. "We feel that batch will yield an
additional 10,000 valid names to our tally."

Thompson said paid canvassers collected most of the 30,000 new signatures,
which were in 15 boxes when turned in Wednesday.

She said she expects a larger share of these to be verified as valid.

Her company, The People's Rights, was paid about $35,000 for gathering the
signatures, she said.

The alliance spent $228,500 with the Southwest Group of Las Vegas to gather
the names that were turned in July 2.

The new signatures were turned in late Wednesday about two hours later than
had been scheduled.

"We had to run this to the wire because of the numbers that we needed, so
we worked until noon today. We had to have them all notarized as well as
signed off on," Thompson said.

The petition pages also had to be alphabetized by counties in the boxes,
she said.

Chris Kauffman of the Jeffrey Phillips Mosley & Scott accounting firm in
Little Rock said he hopes to finish verifying the signatures before Labor
Day, which is Sept. 6.

The firm supervises temporary employees hired by the secretary of state to
verify signatures.

Larry Page, director of Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana, said he has
to assume that the proposed initiated act will qualify for the ballot.

He said he plans to run a grassroots campaign against the measure and "get
out empirical information and try not to sound like the Grinch who stole
Christmas." He said he doesn't know how much his group would spend
campaigning against the measure.

Former state Sen. John Riggs, D-Little Rock, a spokesman for the group that
supports the proposal, said he respects Page and the many things Page
stands for.

But, Riggs said, "I have a hard time understanding why the Christian Right
doesn't want to help the people who suffer."

Page said he doesn't believe that smoking marijuana is the best way to
relieve people's suffering.

The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act would allow Arkansans with "debilitating
medical conditions" to use marijuana on the advice of a physician. The
ailing person or a caregiver would grow it.

The campaign for the proposal had been funded largely by $336,000 in
donations arranged by the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project from
Peter Lewis, an Ohio billionaire who has supported similar efforts in other
states.

But the project pulled out of the campaign in the first week of July. It
cited the expense of the campaign combined with the need to gather more
signatures.

Lewis is chairman of the insurance company Progressive Corp.

Campbell said in an interview that the alliance has raised about $40,000
since then, and most of the money has come from outof-state individuals.
She declined to say who they are. That information will be available in the
alliance's next report due at the Arkansas Ethics Commission on Sept. 15,
she said.

She said the alliance hasn't set a budget to promote the ballot measure.

Other proposals that may be on the Nov. 2 ballot are:

Proposed Constitutional Amendment 1. Referred to the people by the
Legislature, it would expand the number of terms that legislators can serve.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment 2. Referred by the Legislature, it would
allow the Legislature to issue hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds
financed from state tax revenue to pay for infrastructure improvements to
attract major industries.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment 3. Promoted by a petition campaign, it
would bar samesex unions and declare marriage to be the union of one man
and one woman.

A referred question on whether to raise the minimum property tax rate for
school district operations by 3 mills. The current minimum is 25 mills. A
mill is one-tenth of a cent.