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Paul Stanford, as seen during the 2012 campaign for his measure to legalize marijuana in Oregon, announced that he won't be able to qualify two proposed initiatives for the 2014 ballot.

(The Oregonian)

Medical marijuana businessman Paul Stanford is giving up on his campaign to qualify two ballot measures for the November ballot that were aimed at giving adults broad rights to grow and possess marijuana.

Stanford announced on his Internet video show, Cannabis Common Sense, that it was clear he can't gather the needed signatures by the July 3 petitioning deadline.

Although Stanford is ending his campaign, it appears highly likely that a marijuana legalization initiative sponsored by New Approach Oregon will qualify for the November ballot. Peter Zuckerman, a New Approach spokesman, said the campaign may turn in signatures to the secretary of state this week.

The New Approach measure has stricter limits on marijuana possession and is backed by several major out-of-state donors -- including those who had also played a big role in helping pass Washington state's 2012 initiative that legalized marijuana there.

Among the major donors is the family of the late Peter Lewis, a billionaire insurance magnate, and Drug Policy Action, a New York-based group critical of the nation's war on drugs.

Stanford, who runs a chain of medical marijuana clinics, was unable to attract these donors when he had a marijuana legalization measure on the ballot in 2012 because they were concerned that it wouldn't attract mainstream voter support. It wound up losing 53 percent to 47 percent.

This time around, the donors once again decided to bypass Stanford.

"I liked ours better," Stanford said in his video, "but the big multimillionaire funders didn't."

In the video, posted Friday, Stanford said he had gathered about 50,000 signatures for each of the two measures. His proposed constitutional amendment, which needed 116,284 signatures, would have given adult Oregonians the right to possess marijuana.

A companion statutory measure, which needed 87,213 signatures, provided the framework for how marijuana could be grown, sold and taxed in the state.

Stanford's measure would have allowed 21-and-older adults to possess up to a pound and a half of marijuana, while the New Approach measure would allow possession of up to one-half pound in a residence. Adults would be limited to possessing one ounce in public and would not be allowed to consume it in public.

Stanford's group had been gathering signatures for several months, but it had sometimes had trouble paying canvassers on time. Earlier this month, some of the petitioners went on strike.

-- Jeff Mapes