Puff, puff, pass?

Staff Reporter

Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Updated: Thursday, January 26, 2012 01:01

A petition to put marijuana a legalization on Missouri's November ballot is circulating campus.

Truman State students and Kirksville residents are volunteering to collect signatures for the statewide campaign, Show Me Cannabis Regulation, which needs 150,000 signatures by the April 6 deadline, for the initiative to be on the November ballot.

The Show-me Cannabis Regulation campaign is a group of Missourians who think cannabis prohibition is a failed policy and are working to transfer the control of cannabis to the government and private business, rather than criminal enterprise, according to the campaign's website.

"We live in a society with finite resources, and every time a cop spends an hour or two arresting and prosecuting somebody for possession of marijuana, a non-violent offense, that's an hour or two that they could have been spending busting a meth lab or prosecuting a rapist or going after a murderer," said freshman Aaron Malin, a Show-Me Cannabis Regulation member. "We think it's a poor allocation of resources to spend time and money to the extent that we do prosecuting marijuana related crimes."

John Payne, Show-Me Cannabis Regulation's St. Louis regional director, said that if the incentive gets one vote more than the majority, it will pass as a Constitutional Amendment, which could not be overturned by the legislature.

If passed, Payne said regulations would be similar to those of alcohol usage, including that licensed vendors older the age of 21 could sell or keep marijuana for personal use in their home. Medical use of marijuana would require a physician's recommendation and parental consent for those underage. Taxing by the state would be determined by legislation at a later date, he said.

Malin hopes to clear up misconceptions of the organization's goals as seen by the public.

"We are not a campaign of stoners who want to sit around all day and get high without having to worry about the cops," Malin said. "It's a group of individuals who feel that this is a failed policy and that we have an obligation to change it."

The campaign has encountered problems getting people to sign the petition because of worries of being put on a government list and being harassed for signing it, Payne said.

"That's kind of frightening actually," Payne said. "We live in a society where people are scared to express their opinions out of fear of the government"..

Payne said that he thinks there is a 50 percent chance the incentive will pass if the incentive is on the ballot: odds he says he feels good about.

Payne said the Show-Me Cannabis campaign thinks that through an increase of taxes on cannabis and the decrease from enforcing prohibition, the state would benefit financially.

"The state of Missouri could be saving and bringing in about $100 million in tax revenue if we were to get rid of the cannabis prohibition and start taxing it at a reasonable rate," Payne said. "We could better direct our law enforcement resources."

Mo. House Rep. Zachary Wyatt, R-2, does not support the legalization of marijuana, but wants to see where the constituents of District 2 stand.

"I'm not going to go against something that my constituents may feel," Wyatt said.

He said he thinks there is a high likelihood of the Show-Me Cannabis campaign getting the initiative on the ballot.

"I think they will be able to get those signatures," he said. "I think it's great that students are getting involved. It's going to be interesting."

Show-Me Cannabis has pulled ideas from other campaigns regarding the legalization of marijuana, Payne said. California's Proposition 19 failure during 2010 partially was because of the incentive that employers would not be able to drug test if there were a suspicion an employee was under the influence of cannabis.

"That's one thing we did to improve our bill," Payne said. "We're taking the best ideas of the ones that have been proposed so far and getting rid of the bad ones so were getting closer to the one that is most likely to be approved."

This year — in addition to Missouri — Arizona, California, Indiana, New Jersey and Virginia are seeking legislation to legalize marijuana with nearly a dozen other states that have pending efforts.