FALMOUTH, Maine — The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, a group hoping to place a ballot question before Maine voters to legalize recreational marijuana in the state, is reporting it has raised $53,011 in the second quarter of 2015.

But $50,000 of the donation came from the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-D.C. based advocacy group that claims 200,000 supporters nationwide, with 4,000 in Maine.





But Boyer also said 90 percent of the 190 donations made to the campaign came from Maine residents.

“Mainers are clearly excited about the opportunity to end marijuana prohibition,”campaign manager David Boyer said in a prepared statement. “Most people agree that it’s time for our state to adopt a more sensible marijuana policy, and that’s exactly what we’re proposing. Regulating marijuana and taxing it like alcohol just makes sense.”

According to Boyer’s release the bulk of the campaign donations collected, or 90 percent of the total, came from Maine residents.

“The campaign is in full swing,” Boyer said. “In addition to raising thousands of dollars, we have already collected several thousand signatures. If we can maintain this momentum, I’m confident we will have what it takes to qualify for the ballot and run a strong campaign in 2016.”

To be placed on the ballot in 2016 the campaign needs to collect at least 61,123 signatures from registered Maine voters.

State lawmakers earlier this year soundly rejected a pair of bills that would have put a question before voters on legalizing marijuana and meanwhile another Maine-based group, Legalize Maine, is also working to collect signatures to place a question on the 2016 ballot.

The two groups have different approaches to how marijuana would be regulated and differ on a variety of issues including how much marijuana an individual could possess and who would be allowed to grow marijuana for commercial sale in Maine.

If they are both successful voters would be faced with picking between the two, supporting both or rejecting both.