Taking on pols at the polls

The No. 1 story about marijuana in Michigan in 2011 was the wrath anti-drug warrior Attorney General Bill Schuette unleashed on medical marijuana facilities and users. Schuette used his bully pulpit and legal resources to intimidate dispensaries, people who work at dispensaries, people who grow marijuana and medical marijuana patients — working with friendly county prosecutors (particularly in Oakland County), federal authorities and state legislators to try to put the medical marijuana genie back in the bottle.

Marijuana legalization activists are working hard to make 2012 a very different story. In reaction to Schuette's tactics, a group calling itself the Committee for a Safer Michigan is kicking off a campaign this week to amend the state constitution and flat-out legalize marijuana for adults. This is a citizens' initiative that requires collecting 322,608 valid signatures in order to get on the fall ballot. 

"The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act was passed in an effort to remove patients from the line of fire," says CSM spokesperson Charmie Gholson. "They are increasingly investigated in a backlash to the MMMA. The sick and dying are in harm's way. We want law enforcement to focus on violent crime instead of going after patients and caregivers, which is increasingly happening."

Indeed, anybody who is involved in medical marijuana at any level is potentially in harm's way because Schuette has declared the supremacy of federal law on this issue (although he asserts states' rights when it comes to, say, health care). In several prosecutions of card-carrying patients or caregivers, judges have ruled that defendants cannot cite the MMMA in their defense. 

"We're doing this because of the failure of Michigan to enact the law the way it was written and passed by voters," Gholson says. 

CSM has already put up a website (help.repealtoday.org) where volunteers can register to help. That grassroots aid is the only way this petition drive will be successful, because there isn't much money available for this campaign. It looks like there will be initiatives in five states to legalize marijuana, and the deep pockets of billionaires Peter Lewis, George Soros and John Sperling, who have previously bankrolled initiatives across the country, won't be available in Michigan. 

"This year is going to be a very active year for initiatives," says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Every successful initiative since about 1996 has been funded by Lewis, Soros or Sperling. Washington state and Colorado are the funded initiatives this year. They're probably going to make the ballot. Montana, Michigan, Missouri and California are nonfunded. People on the ground are filing papers and moving forward with a grassroots effort. They're probably going to make the ballot in California too."

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