THE NEXT FRONT IN THE MARIJUANA BATTLE

California, Nevada, Alaska, Massachusetts, Florida: Marijuana Initiatives
Are Burning Up The Ballots - Not Just For Medical Use, But For Regulated
Adult Use Too.

While the battle to allow marijuana for medical use is still being fought
across the nation, the forward edge of the war for acceptance is pushing
further: towards ending prohibition altogether. Campaigns to regulate
rather than prohibit marijuana are catching fire around the country. The
residents of Oakland, California - which already has legal medical
marijuana dispensaries, will soon vote on whether to permit marijuana sales
to all adults as a way to eliminate street dealing and fund city services.

On June 29, county officials qualified the Oakland Cannabis Initiative for
the November election. Supporters of the initiative had turned in over
32,000 signatures. "It would require the City of Oakland to develop a
system to tax and regulate adult sale and use of marijuana as soon as
possible under state law," says Joe DeVries, a board member of the Oakland
Civil Liberties Alliance, which supported the measure. "And until state law
makes it possible, it requires that the Oakland police treat adult use and
sale of marijuana as the lowest policing priority."

The Oakland Cannabis Initiative is one of several similar measures intended
to show local support for statewide marijuana law reform legislation.
Medical cannabis is fully legal in only nine states.

"We want Oakland to be at the forefront of a new trend. We have had
inquiries from in and out of state to follow Oakland's language and use it
elsewhere," says Dale Gieringer, president of the California chapter of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which
backed the initiative. Gieringer says West Coast cities north of Santa
Cruz, California are ready to tax and regulate marijuana. "A couple of
local cities in the Bay Area are interested, they are waiting to see what
happens in Oakland," says Gieringer, who adds that a group of San Diego
activists also contacted the Oakland campaign.

National drug law reform groups - the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and the
Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) - supported the Oakland campaign. But
DeVries says half the funding came from local residents like himself who
believe that regulated marijuana sales will make the drug less available to
young people. Tight controls on youth tobacco use have resulted in a drop
in teen smoking, whereas drug war tactics have not lowered the number of
teens smoking cannabis. A study released in May by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention reported that 21.9% percent of teens reported
smoking cigarettes within the last month while 22.4% smoked marijuana.

"By not having any regulation, young people are just using marijuana and
putting themselves in danger and then moving on to other drugs," said
Oakland resident Jane Coast, 53, who added her signature to the Oakland
Cannabis Initiative one Sunday morning. Settling into a nearby cafe for
brunch, Margaret Clasing, 24, also signed but took a different view. "If
they use it responsibly I don't think its harmful at all,"said Clasing.
"But I think it's safer to regulate it and take it off the street."

Initiatives Throughout the Nation

MPP executive director Rob Kampia says his organization put out a call a
year ago looking for activists to run local marijuana initiatives. One
initiative in Gainesville, Florida, which sought to make adult marijuana
use the lowest policing priority, folded after organizers gathered only a
small number of signatures. But a similar measure is expected to make the
November ballot in Tallahassee, Florida.

In Michigan, a Detroit medical marijuana initiative has qualified for the
August 3 primary ballot. Another in Ann Arbor will be put to voters in the
November election. One local ballot initiative in Columbia, Missouri takes
a decriminalization approach, removing penalties and arrest for persons
possessing up to 35 grams of marijuana and allowing only a civil fine.
Massachusetts activists are still collecting signatures for up to a dozen
non-binding local ballot initiatives which advise legislators to support
marijuana law reform.

The first local medical marijuana initiative passed in San Francisco in
1991. But it took another five years for California to pass the
Compassionate Use Act (Prop. 215), which legalized medical cannabis
throughout the state. Gieringer suggests that passage of a statewide
California private adult use initiative will require the same time frame.
Kampia agrees that local initiatives are crucial for building statewide
support. "Once you get the debate heated up, public hearings and people
editorializing about it, then you win a statewide ballot initiative," he says.

Support appears to be strong for statewide medical marijuana in half a
dozen states this year. The Vermont legislature just passed a medical
marijuana law. Two more are pending in the Rhode Island and New York state
legislatures. According to Kampia, a medical marijuana bill will soon be
introduced in the Michigan state legislature. Statewide medical marijuana
ballot initiatives in Arkansas and Montana will be voted on in November.

DPA Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann points out that while about 80
percent of Americans are comfortable with medical marijuana, only 30
percent to 50 percent now support broader legalization. He notes that
state-wide initiatives are expensive and says he is hesitant to support
them until polling indicates that they have a clear majority of voters
behind them.

A statewide initiative to regulate and tax adult recreational use of
marijuana is on the ballot in Alaska this year, and Nevada is struggling to
place a major initiative on its ballot, despite a setback in the
signature-gathering. Some 6,000 signatures were lost in Clark County and
did not make the submission deadline. The Committee for the Regulation and
Control of Marijuana submitted 35,000 signatures; 31,360 are required to
qualify, but the verification process often discounts about 30 percent.

In 2002, a similar initiative in Nevada lost by 22 percentage points after
heavy opposition by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a massive
get-out-the-vote effort by Republicans and several highly publicized deaths
attributed to marijuana use. Kampia believes that if the initiative gets on
the ballot, the high voter turnout expected in the November election will
bring out enough supportive Nevada voters to carry this year's measure. The
Nevada initiative removes the threat of arrest and jail for those 21 and
over who possess up to one ounce of marijuana. It also also requires the
state legislature to establish a privately run system to grow, sell and tax
cannabis. Like Oakland, the Nevada initiative emphasizes lowering teen
access through marijuana regulation and points out that 28% of Dutch teens
have smoked grass (where it is legal) compared to 67% in Nevada.

But Nadelmann cautions activists not to underestimate the resistance to
drug reform measures. "We have an incredibly committed, emotional and in
some respects fanatical opposition willing to do virtually whatever it can
to block this," he says.

Oakland Confronts the Opposition

Some of the ongoing turmoil in Oakland illustrates the opposition against
drug law reform. Two Oakland city counselors backed the Oakland Cannabis
Initiative, and campaigners say their polls show 71 percent of likely
voters support it. But Mayor Jerry Brown, who is running for California
State Attorney General, has remained conspicuously silent and declined to
comment for this story. According to his spokeswoman, the mayor is still
studying the initiative. But Brown has been spotted enjoying a drink at at
a trendy new bar in Oakland's "Oaksterdam" district, which has been
revitalized by a cluster of medical marijuana clubs that the city has
largely shut down. The Oakland City Council decided to license only four of
the clubs citywide and went further this month, closing all but three of
the city's ten or so thriving medical cannabis dispensaries.

Richard Lee, owner of two Oakland medical cannabis clubs, said the city
felt that Oaksterdam was colliding with other development plans. But he
points out that the medical cannabis clubs brought in $70 million dollars
per year in gross revenue and attracted diners and shoppers that developers
find attractive. Lee is optimistic that the city will eventually license
more clubs, including those for non-medical cannabis users. "What we hope
is that by allowing more clubs, not less, they will eliminate problems and
at the same time generate revenue for the city and attract tourism," says
Lee who supported the Oakland Cannabis Initiative.

"We want to tax cannabis and get it off the streets," says initiative field
director Kim Swinford, who estimates that the marijuana trade in California
is a $2-billion-a-year business. "We want the city to put the money into
services like schools and libraries and youth programs which are way
underfunded. Our schools are the worst."

Swinford notes that California spends $100 million each year enforcing
marijuana laws, plus an estimated $40 million incarcerating those
non-violent offenders. She adds that people of color, who make up two
thirds of Oakland residents, are especially targeted by police for drug
arrests. Yet when Swinford ran into Mayor Brown at the Oaksterdam bar, she
said he was unhappy that the Oakland Cannabis Initiative received funding
from national organizations and later complained to another campaign worker
that Oakland was a "guinea pig" for drug law reform. "Oakland is a city of
thinkers and city of leaders, we are not guinea pigs," says an angry
DeVries. "We are proud to go out and tell John Ashcroft and the Bush
Administration that thirty years and billions of dollars spent locking
people up, ruining their lives, and making it impossible to return to their
jobs doesn't work."

But the Oakland Police are not convinced that the cannabis initiative will
reduce street dealing or availability to kids. "If marijuana is more
expensive in the stores than on the street you will have a black market and
it will not change anything. Street dealers don't have any overhead," says
police Lt. Rick Hart who heads the Oakland Police Department's narcotics
unit. "There are going to be those customers who have alternative ways to
purchase it."

DeVries points out that medical cannabis clubs sell marijuana at below
street prices, and those selling to adults from regulated cannabis shops
could too. He says undercutting street dealers removes the profit motive
and will help de-escalate drug related violence on the streets of Oakland.
As for a black market catering to young people, "I don't see a lot of kids
out there selling alcohol to minors on the sly," says DeVries.

But Hart says federal authorities will still target Oakland's proposed
non-medical marijuana sales whether or not they are sanctioned by state
law. "Just because you sell it in a store and because police have a lower
priority doesn't mean that the federal government won't target the store or
shut them down, make arrests and seize contraband," says Hart, who confirms
that two of his Oakland officers are cross deputized to work with a federal
Drug Enforcement Agency narcotics task force.

DeVries points out that most people are arrested on marijuana charges under
state laws. But he says preventing local police from targeting marijuana
sellers under federal law remains a big challenge for local drug law
reformers. "If the city of Oakland says we want to tax and regulate
cannabis and make it available to adults," says DeVries. "The local police
have to stop doing the federal government's dirty work and stop
participating in federal drug task forces - like San Jose did last year."

Note: California, Nevada, Alaska, Massachusetts, Florida: Marijuana
initiatives are burning up the ballots - not just for medical use, but for
regulated adult use too.