MEDICAL MARIJUANA LANDS SPOT ON BALLOT

Ann Arbor Voters to Face Proposed Charter Change

It's official: A question on medical marijuana use will be put before Ann
Arbor voters this November.

Final ballot language has not yet been approved, said Ron Olson, acting
city clerk, but the petition with 7,000 signatures was certified by the
city clerk's office on June 11. City council is scheduled to sign off on
the ballot language during its first regular meeting in July.

"We're very pleased with this and looking forward to a very successful
outcome," said Charles Ream, a Scio Township trustee who spearheaded the
initiative to collect signatures.

The question would ask voters to amend the city charter, adding language to
allow people who use marijuana for medicinal purposes to avoid prosecution.

Ream, chairman of the Washtenaw Coalition for Compassionate Care, said
medical marijuana advocates were considering a state petition drive in
order to put the question before all Michigan voters as early as 2006. Ream
added that he hoped federal marijuana laws would change by then instead,
however.

The coalition, which also goes by Medical Marijuana in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti
and Saline, is loosely affiliated with the Detroit Coalition for
Compassionate Care, which got a medical marijuana question placed on the
August ballot in the city of Detroit.

A previous effort also failed in Ann Arbor in 2000, when the city clerk
gave the group of Libertarians behind the effort the wrong deadline to turn
in their signatures. They lost a lawsuit over the incorrect information
when a judge ruled it was ultimately the party's responsibility to know
when the deadline was.

Ream has said the group plans similar initiatives in Ypsilanti and Saline
in 2006 and 2008, respectively.

Marijuana laws have been a contentious issue in Ann Arbor since the 1960s,
when an antiwar activist John Sinclair was arrested for giving two joints
to undercover Michigan State Police.

His sentence of up to 10 years in prison was later overturned on the
grounds that it was excessive, but not before some 15,000 rallied at
Crisler Arena on his behalf. Out of that rally in December 1971 was born
the idea of Ann Arbor's Hash Bash, an annual pro-pot rally focused on
marijuana law reform.

In 1974, possession and sale of marijuana was made punishable by a $5 fine
by amendment to Ann Arbor's charter (it was later raised to $25). In the
1980s, two attempts to repeal that amendment failed.

Today, eight states - Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada,
Oregon and Washington - have laws legalizing marijuana for patients with
physician recommendations. The sale or use of marijuana is still illegal
under federal law.