cannabisnews.com: Washington Backs Use of Marijuana Late Tally Shows





Washington Backs Use of Marijuana Late Tally Shows
Posted by FoM on September 21, 1999 at 07:52:11 PT
By Irvin Molotsky
Source: New York Times
More than 10 months after they cast ballots, residents of the District of Columbia were told Monday that they had overwhelmingly voted in favor of a measure that would allow marijuana to be used for medical purposes. 
Congressional opponents of the measure had blocked a count of the initiative, but Judge Richard W. Roberts of Federal District Court here ruled on Friday that the restriction was illegal. The count that was released on Monday found that 68.6 percent of the voters approved the medical use of marijuana, with 75,536 in favor and 34,621 opposed. Advocates of the measure maintain that marijuana is valuable in relieving the pain of glaucoma and the nausea associated with AIDS and other diseases. Despite the vote, it is not certain that the measure will become law because, under the authority that Congress maintains over the District of Columbia, lawmakers have 30 days in which to block the measure. "We have to gear up to do a lobbying campaign," said Wayne Turner, the sponsor of the initiative and leader of the anti-AIDS group Act Up. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate would have to vote against the law to block it, and a spokesman for Representative Bob Barr, a conservative Republican from Georgia who sponsored the measure that prevented the vote count, said Mr. Barr's office was studying what steps would be taken. Mr. Turner said he drew hope from the fact that one-third of the members of Congress were from states that have voted to legalize the medical use of marijuana. Such laws were approved in referendums in Alaska, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Representative Barr said today: "The results of this initiative do not change my determination to insure our nation's capital does not legalize any mind-altering drugs, including marijuana. "Marijuana remains illegal under Federal law, and it would send a terrible message to America's young people to allow those laws to be openly flouted in the same city where they were passed." Mr. Turner said: "Bob Barr has called it a hidden agenda and says that we want to legalize heroin and crack, but that's not so. The original sponsor was my partner, Steve Michael, who died of AIDS in 1998. We started this project for patient access. "I am not a pot smoker and neither was he until a doctor told him to try marijuana to try to stimulate his appetite. He tried it and it worked. He stopped losing weight." The Washington chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which pressed Mr. Turner's case in court, pointed to the vote as a ratification of home-rule rights for residents of the District of Columbia. "In this instance," said Mary Jane DeFrank, executive director of the A.C.L.U. chapter, "when you have people very, very ill, it is really the humane thing to allow them to use marijuana so they can keep their food down and keep their pills down." Chuck Thomas, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group based in Washington that campaigned for the measure, said the vote in Washington was in line with that in referendums elsewhere. "To date, these initiatives have passed in every state in which they have appeared on the ballot," Mr. Thomas said. "This confirms what every scientific public opinion poll has found since 1995: 60 to 80 percent of the American people support legal access to medicinal marijuana."ACT UP Washington D.C.http://www.actupdc.org/Marijuana Policy Projecthttp://www.mpp.org/September 21, 1999Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company Results Are Out: Marijuana Initiative Passes - 9/21/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread2961.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by kaptinemo on September 21, 1999 at 12:00:40 PT
Freedom...isn't cheap
Look, friends, aside from the Great Anti-Hemp Conspiracy, the biggest reason why we are still having to endure this outright *insanity* from the likes of Barr and his ilk is that we got *lazy* in the '70's. Many of us around back then just naively assumed that reason and justice would prevail automatically. Government scandal after government scandal had been unearthed, the Sunshine Laws had been passed, and it seemd only a matter of time before cannabis was legalized. After all, nearly all the studies performed before 1980 (remember that date; the latest version of Reefer Madness was ushered in with the Ronnie&Nancy Show beginning its' run in Washington DC)had said exactly what people had had anecdotal information about for years; that cannabis was considerably less harmful than tobacco or alcohol. Because we were complacent, and didn't follow through, a vicious, rabid Fundamentalist minority powered by and fronting for Big Business assumed the reigns of government, and we have suffered increasingly ever since. So now, an even harder political battle has to be fought for freedoms we thought had already been won. But if we perservere, we will win. 
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on September 21, 1999 at 09:47:20 PT
What's Freedom?
Dankhank,Isn't Barr something? How does this man feel on other issues if this is how he feels about a medicinal PLANT! I sure agree with you!Peace, FoM!
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Comment #1 posted by Dankhank on September 21, 1999 at 09:21:41 PT:
Freedom?
This is an example of the "freedom" that we enjoy?That an evil man such as Bob Barr can appoint himself the gaurdian of "morality?" in the DC and use his self-appointed position to dictate WHAT DC residents may use and may NOT use to alleviate pain and treat illness?Those in Georgia should look to the possibility of throwing Mr Barr out of office. Let's show him his folly.
Hemp n Stuff
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