Voters Favoring Medical Marijuana Initiatives

With a week to go, polls show that voters in at least four states and Washington, D.C., are poised to allow marijuana to be used legally as a medicine--ignoring the years-long and escalating opposition of the Clinton administration.

“It certainly is plausible that we can win everything” in this year’s balloting, said Dave Fratello, a Californian whose organization, Americans for Medical Rights, organizes medical marijuana initiatives around the country.

The group’s private polling, Fratello said Monday, squares with newspaper polls showing the measure ahead across the board, with the favorable numbers rising toward 60%.

With a ruling expected any day on the fate of the measure in Colorado--possibly making it the fifth state and the sixth jurisdiction to vote on the issue Nov. 3--medical marijuana advocates show no sign of surrendering to the federal government. Federal anti-drug officials, cracking down even harder as a result of the success of two such ballot measures in 1996, are not relenting either.

Marijuana has been banned from the federal list of legal drugs for a quarter-century on the theory that it is a dangerous narcotic that has only doubtful value as a medicine. Repeatedly, federal officials have rebuffed efforts to relax that ban.

Advocates of the practice, though, are striking back--directly in Arizona and with new initiatives in a widening campaign that will continue into 1999 and 2000, with petition-signing drives already underway in at least two more states.

This year, voters in Alaska, Nevada, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C., also will vote on the question--as will voters in Colorado, if the proposal survives a late court challenge.