Horner has been conducting meetings with cannabis activists in several cities around the state, planting the seeds for a statewide marijuana initiative and enlisting volunteers to organize a voters' movement that can effectively challenge the regressive forces in the state's Legislature and their allies in the court system. He has consulted veteran activists like Tim Beck, attends the weekly sessions at Matt Abel's office in Detroit, and has commissioned his own poll of Michigan voters that indicates support for decriminalization is at 57-58 percent and for legalization more like 50 percent.

Horner has also produced a concise half-hour video presentation of the history of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act and its effects, called Grass Roots, with testimony from Beck, Abel, Michigan NORML officials and a number of impressively articulate medical marijuana patients. Horner plans to circulate the film on the Internet, as a DVD, and hopefully through commercial television buys as an informational and organizational tool in support of the 2012 petition drive.

Whatever conclusion the activists reach in terms of the actual wording of the petition and its ultimate intention — legalization or decriminalization — it seems reasonable to project that these forces will unite around a single objective and mount a serious campaign to get the police as far out of the lives of marijuana patients and recreational smokers as humanly possible.

My prayer is that a solution will be achieved by early December and the 2012 initiative will be kicked off at the 40th anniversary reunion celebration of the John Sinclair Freedom Rally being planned for Masonic Temple on December 10. Stay tuned.

—London

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