Pubdate: Wed, 10 Jul 2013
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2013 Detroit Free Press
Contact: http://www.freep.com/article/99999999/opinion04/50926009
Website: http://www.freep.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Author: Bill Laitner

MICHIGAN MARIJUANA SUPPORTERS TO TOUT ECONOMIC CLOUT BY SPENDING $2 BILLS

Steven Greene watched through the clear partition of a credit union in
Southfield, his smile growing to a grin as a teller counted out $200
in $2 bills.

"That's a lot of twos -- thank you, brother!" said Greene, 45, of
South Lyon.

Teller Antonio Pritchard smiled back Tuesday as Greene walked out of
the Family Service Center Credit Union, pocketing bills that he hopes
will send a message that Michigan's green economy of marijuana puts
green into cash registers.

Starting today, leaders of medical marijuana and cannabis legalization
groups in Michigan plan a quirky three-week campaign to demonstrate
their economic clout. They want supporters to spend at least one $2
bill for every cash purchase.

"That translates into people saying, 'Hey, we should get a piece of
that, and we should start taxing it, too,' " said Greene, a
state-registered user of medical marijuana and a caregiver licensed by
the state to grow medical marijuana for others.

When $2 bills start popping up, "People will also realize, if you
arrest us, you're taking that same money out of circulation, and
you're spending tax dollars to put us in jail," said Greene, who hosts
the weekly Political Twist Up talk show on medical marijuana and other
issues, carried on AM radio stations in Flint and Grand Rapids and on
www.politicaltwistup.com.

■ Related: Police release tally of seizures in marijuana raids: 
$221,000, 736 plants, 31 vehicles

It's not the first time $2 bills are being used to highlight a
particular group's spending power. The odd denomination that never
caught on for regular use has been harnessed elsewhere to draw
attention to groups of spenders -- from an embattled steel plant in
Utah that in 1989 paid employees in $2 bills to show their value to
the local economy; to gun rights bloggers who asked fellow gun owners
last year to spend $2 bills at Starbucks branches to protest the
coffee chain's refusal to allow the open carrying of handguns.

In Michigan, with 130,000 registered users of medical marijuana and
30,000 caregivers licensed to grow the drug, cannabis advocates say
they hope their economic argument gets traction among those willing to
put jobs and the state economy ahead of moral arguments about drug
use.

According to a study released this year by several researchers,
including one from the prestigious RAND Corp. think tank in Santa
Monica, Calif., Americans who use marijuana -- both legally and
illegally -- spend about $30 billion per year just on the drug itself.

"Michigan has slightly over 3% of the U.S. population, so that should
mean that Michigan's marijuana users currently spend about $945
million a year on marijuana," said Karen O'Keefe, director of state
policies for the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Marijuana Policy
Project.

Harvard researcher Jeffrey Miron found that in 2008 dollars, Michigan
could see about $96 million in tax revenue from taxing and regulating
marijuana, according to O'Keefe, a native of Grosse Pointe Farms.

About 13% of Michiganders reported using marijuana in the past year,
according to annual federal surveys of nationwide drug use.

"We want this $2 drive to spark conversations in chambers of commerce
and during business lunches of shop owners," said Rick Thompson,
editor of the Flint-based Compassion Chronicles website. "They're
going to start to realize they shouldn't just dismiss this big segment
of Michigan's economy."

Thompson also hopes to reach marijuana opponents who have not been
swayed by other arguments for widening access to medical cannabis and
to outright legalization of the drug.

"Some people continue to cling to the war on drugs and the morality
argument," he said. "What they don't realize is that there's a
tremendous investment that the country is making in continuing that
war, and it's completely unproductive. It costs every taxpayer
hundreds of dollars a year. We need to turn that money into jobs, into
taxes and into productive activity."

Carol Mastroianni, executive director of the Birmingham Bloomfield
Community Coalition, said she was disappointed to hear of the $2 bill
drive. Hers is one of dozens of similar nonprofit community groups
throughout southeast Michigan that promote drug-free lifestyles for
youth and say legitimizing medical marijuana entices young people into
thinking marijuana is harmless.

"To me, the whole medical marijuana thing is not supposed to be about
economic clout. It's supposed to be about health and quality of life,"
Mastroianni said.

The campaign launches two days after federal, state and local police
executed 25 search warrants Monday as part of a seven-month
investigation into a marijuana trafficking ring operating in Wayne,
Oakland, Washtenaw and Jackson counties. Michigan State Police said
Tuesday that officers seized $221,509, 736 marijuana plants, 31
vehicles, 10 recreation vehicles, eight firearms and large quantities
of processed marijuana.

Those arrested during Monday's raids were released pending further
investigation and possible charges, according to Michigan State Police.

Medical marijuana user Christeen Landino of Eastpointe said she is
delighted to find the portrait of one of her heroes, President Thomas
Jefferson, on the $2 bill. Jefferson is from an era when the drug was
an accepted part of farming, said Landino, 63, who has been promoting
the $2 drive on Facebook.

Jefferson is credited with saying, "Hemp is of first necessity to the
wealth & protection of the country." Hemp is a plant widely used for
thousands of years to make rope, paper, cloth and livestock feed, but
it was banned in the U.S. in the 1930s because one variety of the hemp
plant produces marijuana.

Jefferson also is thought to have smoked some of his crop, used then
to make rope, on the veranda of Monticello, according to websites on
early American history. "There's a lot of quotes that I really like
from him, so it's fitting," Landino said.
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