ACTIVISTS PLAN MEASURE SHIELDING MARIJUANA USE

If local petitioners get their way, the Lane County sheriff's and district
attorney's offices will devote even less of their resources to go after
adult marijuana users than they do now.

Organizers have formed a political action committee, Sensible Lane County,
to raise funds for an initiative petition that would tell county law
enforcers and prosecutors to make marijuana enforcement their lowest priority.

It would also forbid both offices to spend general fund money on
enforcement, arrests, prosecutions and county jail time for adult marijuana
users.

The specific language of the petition is still being worked out, said Chris
Wise, who is coordinating the effort, but it is designed to protect adult
users, not commercial growers or youths under the age of 21.

"Commercial enterprises will be punished just as they are now," he said.

Seattle voters passed such a measure on Sept. 16 by a 59-41 ratio. That
success, coupled with a similar measure that passed in Mendocino, Calif.,
gave Wise and Eileen Erdelt, the committee's treasurer, reason to hope such
a measure could work here.

"We're pretty enthusiastic," Wise said. "We've had really good positive
responses with everyone we've shown it to so far."

A lot of people would rather see public funds spent on violent crimes, he said.

Lane County Sheriff Jan Clements said the agency already spends little of
its own money going after adult users, although the agency receives between
$50,000 and $80,000 each year from federal agencies such as the Bureau of
Land Management to go after growers using public lands.

Clements hadn't seen a copy of the draft petition, but he said it seemed
unlikely that a petition could abridge his authority to enforce the law.

"I already have a mandate from the people to enforce the laws and if it's a
law on the books, it's a law on the books," he said.

But citizens have the same authority as commissioners to amend Lane
County's charter, Wise said, and commissioners control the budget.

Clements agreed that commissioners control the amount of money his
department receives and, for example, could direct him to not spend money
on an Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team detective, but they can't tell
him how to investigate drug crimes generally.

Lack of county money already has made marijuana enforcement a low priority,
Clements said.

"We don't have time to respond to property crimes, so small possession
doesn't get a lot of attention," he said.