A campaign for a system of medical marijuana supply systems in Oregon turned in enough signatures to put the measure on the November ballot – if the signatures are valid. According to an early turn-in, the initiative for a medical marijuana supply system has gathered 115,404 signatures. It needs 82,769 verified names of registered voters to make the ballot.

The preliminary total only reflects the signatures gathered by paid petitioners through May. The campaign will continue to gather signatures up to the July 2 deadline to give them a cushion for names that have to be thrown out.

Also, a Detroit City Council committee passed today on amending a city ordinance to allow adults in the city to legally possess a small amount of marijuana. Instead voters will get to decide in November.

Brought to you by the Coalition for a Safer Detroit – the same group that successfully got medical marijuana placed on the ballot in 2004 which passed – the ordinance amendment would allow anyone 21-years-old or older to legally possess less than an ounce of marijuana on private property, amending Chapter 38 of the city code regulating controlled substances.

Tim Beck, a registered medical marijuana user who filed the petitions, says the amended ordinance would “free up the police department to pursue crimes with actual victims.”

Dennis Mazurek, assistant corporation counsel with the city Law Department, told the council’s Internal Operations Committee that the ordinance amendment violates state law, specifically, the Michigan Public Health Code, and cannot be enacted. The state only allows registered medical marijuana use.

According to the City Clerk’s Office, the Coalition submitted 5,750 signatures in May; 3,895 were required and 4,598 were validated.

Beck is confident voters will pass the ordinance, as they passed the medical marijuana ordinance in 2004.

“It’s going to win,” he said. “I have no doubt about that.”

Written by: The Weed Blog

An initiative to legalize marijuana and allow it to be sold and taxed will appear on the November ballot, state election officials announced Wednesday, triggering what will probably be a much-watched campaign that once again puts California on the forefront of the nation’s debate over whether to soften drug laws.

The number of valid signatures reported by Los Angeles County, submitted minutes before Wednesday’s 5 p.m. deadline, put the measure well beyond the 433,971 it needed to be certified. Supporters turned in 694,248 signatures, collecting them in every county except Alpine. County election officials estimated that 523,531 were valid.

The measure’s main advocate, Richard Lee, an Oakland marijuana entrepreneur, savored the chance to press his case with voters that the state’s decades-old ban on marijuana is a failed policy.

“We’re one step closer to ending cannabis prohibition and the unjust laws that lock people up for cannabis while alcohol is not only sold openly but advertised on television to kids every day,” he said.

Lee, tapping $1.3 million from his businesses, has put together a highly organized campaign that he emphasized Wednesday would be led by a team of experienced political consultants, including Chris Lehane, a veteran operative who has worked in the White House and on presidential campaigns.

“There’s all kinds of big professional politicos who are coming on board now to take it to the next level,” Lee said.

Opponents have also started to put together their campaign. “There’s going to be a very broad coalition opposing this that will include law enforcement,” said John Lovell, a Sacramento lobbyist who represents the California Police Chiefs Assn. and other law enforcement groups. “We’ll educate people as to what this measure really entails.”

The measure, like the medical marijuana initiative, could put California on a collision course with the federal government. The possession and sale of marijuana remain a federal crime.

This month, President Obama’s drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, decried legalization in a speech to police chiefs in San Jose.

The initiative would allow adults 21 or older to possess up to an ounce for personal use.

Possession of an ounce or less has been a misdemeanor with a $100 fine since 1975, when Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, who was then governor, signed a law that reduced tough marijuana penalties that had allowed judges to impose 10-year sentences.

Written by John Hoeffel from LATimes.

Voters in California will likely decide this November whether or not to legalize marijuana, after legalization activists handed in far more than the necessary number of petition signatures to get the measure onto the ballot.

Organizers of the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 filed some 700,000 petition signatures with county clerks around the state. The amount of signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot is about 433,000, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, so the measure is all but certain to be on the ballot in November.

If California voters approve, it will be the most comprehensive reform of marijuana laws ever undertaken in the United States. While some states, such as Oregon, have relatively lax penalties for possession, no state has attempted to regulate and tax the herb before.

The measure’s chances are good: A poll taken last April found that 56 percent of Californians want to see the herb legalized and taxed.

According to the L.A. Times, the measure would make it legal for anyone over 21 to own an ounce or less of pot, and to grow pot for personal use in a space no larger than 25 square feet. It would also give cities the right to license marijuana growers and sellers, and to collect taxes on the crop.

One of the major talking points that the pro-legalization crowd has used has been finances. California’s government is facing a deep, prolonged budget crisis, and legalization proponents have argued that the revenue generated by taxing marijuana would bring an estimated $1.3 billion into state and municipal coffers.

Richard Lee, a medical marijuana entrepreneur from Oakland who is the principal backer of the movement, told the L.A. Times he plans to raise $10 million to $15 million to fight the legalization campaign. And Lee’s opponents are already beginning to line up to oppose the measure.

”We’re going to talk about blood money, about trying to raise taxes on the backs of our youth,” Bishop Ron Allen, head of the International Faith Based Coalition, told the Associated Press.

Another obstacle will be the conflict between state and federal law. Even if California passes the measure, marijuana will still be illegal under federal statutes. In an editorial this month, the L.A. Times argued:

Cannabis may be the nation’s largest cash crop, but marijuana remains a Schedule I drug, deemed by the federal government to have a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical value and illegal to use under all circumstances. Perhaps Californians have been emboldened by their pioneering role in legalizing medicinal marijuana, but in truth, the conflict between state and federal law has had serious consequences for users and distributors caught in the federal web.

But, in a rebuttal, Tamar Todd argued that “there is nothing in the US Constitution that requires states to criminalize anything. We could scrap our entire penal code tomorrow if we wanted to. States get to decide state law, not Washington.”

And Jacob Sullum at Reason.com argues that, while the feds may still want to enforce federal marijuana laws in California, they won’t have the resources to prosecute cases that were previously handled by state authorities.

via The Raw Story