Detroit might vote on marijuana
Petitions completed to put medical use on ballot
November 23, 2001 Original Link
BY JACK KRESNAK
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
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 smallamounts 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.
Contact JACK KRESNAK at 313-223-4544 or kresnak@freepress.com.
