DETROIT MIGHT VOTE ON MARIJUANA

Petitions Completed To Put Medical Use On Ballot

Organizers of a drive to stop enforcement of many drug laws in Detroit for
people using marijuana for medical purposes say they have enough signatures
to get the issue on the city ballot in August.

"This is a well-financed effort, backed by some very high-quality
individuals in the community," said Tim Beck, a Detroit health insurance
broker and political activist who heads the Detroit Medical Marijuana
Initiative.

"What this does, in essence, is make medical use of marijuana -- in
consultation with a medical professional -- the lowest law enforcement
priority of the Detroit Police Department," Beck said this week. "It doesn't
make marijuana use legal. We can't do that because of Supreme Court
rulings."

Beck said his group has collected 8,022 signatures on petitions that will be
presented to the City Clerk's Office the first week of December.

The city's Department of Elections then must check the signatures. At least
6,140 signatures of registered Detroit voters, representing 3 percent of the
votes cast for mayor in the last election, must be validated.

The proposal would bar the city from spending money to arrest or prosecute
anyone possessing small amounts of marijuana -- three or fewer mature plants
or the dried equivalent -- for medical use.

The marijuana use would have to be recommended by a licensed physician or
other authorized health care professional.

Cmdr. Harold Cureton of the Detroit police narcotics section said he has no
opinion one way or the other on the proposed ordinance.

"As far as we're concerned, it's still a controlled substance until the law
changes," Cureton said of marijuana.

Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano, who is a lawyer, said the proposal is
fraught with legal peril.

"This is an issue that has to be dealt with by the state Legislature,"
Ficano said. Medical marijuana use is "very debatable because you can get
the same benefits from medications that can be prescribed legally without
having to smoke marijuana."

Among members of the group's steering committee are community activist Ron
Scott of the Coalition Against Police Brutality and former Detroit Police
Chief Isaiah McKinnon. Despite his position on the committee, McKinnon said
he does not favor watering down drug laws.

"I don't stand for the legalization of drugs, and I don't stand for any
other illicit kind of act or action," McKinnon said. "But I do believe that
under controlled medical supervision, giving people drugs like morphine for
extreme pain, or people with glaucoma, marijuana is humane."

Scott, saying he was speaking personally and not for the coalition, said the
proposal would begin to shift the problem of substance abuse from punishment
to treatment.

"We have to find new ways of approaching this thing as a means of
eliminating this drug war which has been perpetrated on the community,"
Scott said.

State Rep. Hansen Clarke, D-Detroit, also is on the steering committee and
said he does not advocate legalizing marijuana.

"I've seen people suffer and die who did receive some type of relief from
marijuana-based treatment," Clarke said.

Noting that Canada recently changed laws allowing the medical use of
marijuana, Beck said the initiative would help "bring Detroit into the 21st
Century."

Beck said he doubts such a proposal could be approved statewide, but if it
succeeds in Detroit, similar drives would be tried in other cities.