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Mannix Drops Anti-Marijuana Ballot Initiative
05-05-08|Willamette Week|By James Pitkin

Conservative ballot-measure supremo Kevin Mannix just told WWire he and his cohorts are dropping a proposed ballot initiative to kill the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program.

"That petition's going to stop this week," Mannix says. There was not enough time or money to gather the 82,769 valid signatures needed, he says.

"That's the best news I've had all day," says Paul Stanford, head of The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, a Portland-based national chain of medical marijuana clinics.

Mannix says the decision to drop the petition drive had nothing to do with lack of public support, but rather lack of resources. But Stanford says he believes Mannix ran into trouble because the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act, approved by voters in 1998, is still supported by a clear majority.

Stanford says it's good news for medical-marijuana advocates that the petition has been dropped.

"We don’t have to waste our resources encouraging people not to sign that petition," Stanford says. "We don’t have to mount a campaign against them in the fall. It just saves us a lot of time and effort."

The so-called Oregon Crimefighting Act would have done three things:

•Given repeat "major felony" sex offenders a minimum 25-year sentence.

•Made third-strike DUII convictions a felony.

•Replaced medical marijuana with prescription THC pills.

Stanford has called the initiative a cynical effort to tear down medical marijuana by tagging it onto slam-drunk issues like opposing drunk drivers and sex predators. He says many marijuana patients oppose the change because THC pills are too expensive and not as effective.

Mannix told WWire that the ballot initiative, which he drafted, had financial support from the Florida-based nonprofit Save Our Society From Drugs. He says backers may return with another effort to gut medical marijuana in the 2010 election.

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