Pubdate: Tue, 18 Mar 2014
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2014 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, Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?275 (Cannabis - Michigan)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Tim+Beck

POT ACTIVISTS PREPARE FOR NEW CAMPAIGNS IN MICHIGAN

Political organizers behind Michigan's string of victories in local
ballot proposals on marijuana said they will soon launch campaigns in
as many as a dozen other communities.

After wins in cities as large as Detroit and as small as Ferndale,
organizers said they will start gathering signatures April 1 for
proposals in Hazel Park, Oak Park, Utica, East Lansing, Mt. Pleasant,
Port Huron and several other communities yet to be decided.

The push, which is to include running some free-the-weed candidates
for local and state office, is sure to jar law-enforcement officials
and youth drug prevention groups that for years have fought efforts to
ease marijuana laws. And even when the proposals pass, they are merely
symbolic, according to police chiefs in Detroit and Ferndale, both of
whom have vowed to continue making marijuana arrests under state laws.

"When you put the badge on your shirt, you say you're going to enforce
all the laws -- not just the ones you think you should," Ferndale
Chief Tim Collins said.

Still, Tim Beck, a pro-marijuana Detroiter who cofounded the Safer
Michigan Coalition of cannabis supporters, said of the elections,
"This is going to be big."

Beck, 62, a retired health insurance executive, has worked behind the
scenes for more than a decade on legalization campaigns across the
state. At Safer Michigan branches in the cities Beck has targeted,
volunteers have told him they'll gather signatures without pay,
leaving more money to spend on billboards and other advertising, Beck
said.

The language of the ballot proposals is expected to go beyond
Michigan's medical marijuana act, passed by voters statewide in 2008,
to approve limited steps for making nonmedical possession either legal
in small amounts or an offense equivalent to a traffic ticket. Most
proposals will appear on November ballots, but those in Oak Park and
Hazel Park are to be in the August primary, which is virtually
guaranteed to have a low turnout, Beck said. That's part of a broader
effort to recruit those who otherwise would not vote into showing up
to support not only a ballot proposal, but also a candidate, Beck said.

In Oak Park and Hazel Park, that candidate is to be Andrew Cissell,
who has never held political office and is fighting criminal charges
for allegedly selling marijuana in Detroit. He has said he is running
for state representative in the strongly Democratic district where
Ellen Cogen Lipton, D-Huntington Woods, is term-limited this year.
Cissell is "a good guy and he's totally devoted to our issue" --
legalizing cannabis in Michigan, Beck said.

Cissell, 26, was convicted in February of voter fraud for falsely
listing himself as a Ferndale resident when he gathered signatures in
June for Ferndale's marijuana campaign. If convicted on the charges of
selling marijuana and sentenced to prison, in a trial scheduled to
start April 23 before Oakland County Circuit Judge Rudy Nichols,
Cissell said he'd give up his campaign.

"But I'm really, really optimistic that I could get probation" and
then he'd stay on the campaign trail, "because I know my supporters
are going to stick with me," said Cissell, who has a business degree
from the University of Michigan and is a volunteer for the Sierra Club.

In Lyon Township, another single-issue marijuana candidate said he
will run for the township board. Steve Greene is a state-approved
medical-marijuana user whose criminal case, filed by township police,
was dismissed in 2012, his attorney said.

"I've never done this kind of thing before, but I figured, why not?
It's time we had candidates running who offer people a real choice,"
said Greene, 46, a freelance radio broadcaster who hosts a website
called Radio Weed Show.

Greene is using his site to enlist support statewide for a list of
what he calls cannabis coalition candidates. This week, he asked
scores of organizers by e-mail to join him in pledging their votes, he
said.

Even largely unknown candidates who strongly support marijuana
legalization could get nominated in primaries where several candidates
split the vote and a marijuana proposal draws an unexpectedly strong
turnout, according to one political scientist.

"If they have devoted supporters whom they know they can turn out to
support them, I think this type of candidate has a chance," said David
Dulio, chair of the political science department at Oakland
University.
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