Detroit, MI: Sixty percent of city residents voted Tuesday in favor of Proposition M: The Detroit Medical Marijuana Act.
The measure amends the Detroit city criminal code so that local criminal penalties no longer apply to any individual “possessing or using marijuana under the direction … of a physician or other licensed health professional.”
Voters in Ann Arbor and Columbia, Missouri will vote on similar municipal initiatives this fall. Montana voters will also decide on a statewide medical marijuana legalization proposal in November.
Campaign organizer Tim Beck of the Detroit Coalition for Compassionate Care said that his group intends to work with lawmakers to place the medicinal marijuana issue before the state legislature in 2005. If lawmakers are resistant to the issue, Beck says that he will push for a statewide ballot proposal in 2006.
Similar laws exempting patients who use marijuana medicinally from state arrest and prosecution have been passed by voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Washington, DC, though the District’s law was never implemented.
State legislatures in Hawaii, Maryland and Vermont have also enacted similar laws protecting qualified medical marijuana patients.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the NORML Foundation, at (202) 483-5500. For a summary of this fall’s pending state and local initiatives, please visit:
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6172