Bill Laitner

Detroit Free Press

A new survey of state residents likely to vote this fall found that a clear 53% majority of Michiganders would just say yes to legalizing and taxing marijuana.

The survey’s result was no surprise to groups hoping to gather 253,000 signatures in Michigan to get a marijuana measure on November ballots.

“Support for legalizing marijuana continues to increase here at a rate of at least 2% per year — that’s what we’ve been tracking in Michigan, and it seems to be roughly the same across the country,” said Detroit lawyer Matt Abel, a long-time supporter of legal pot.

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“To me, this poll actually under-represents the real number of people who truly would vote for legalization because some people just don’t want to admit how they feel to a pollster,” said Abel, the executive director of Michigan NORML — the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Michigan NORML commissioned the new poll.

“We’ve seen this in Michigan,” Abel said, pointing out that the 2008 ballot proposal to legalize medical marijuana passed with 63% support, despite polls showing “support only in the mid-50s.”

The latest poll followed a survey in 2014 that gave 50% support to a similar question and one in 2013 that showed 47% support, said Bernie Porn, president of the prominent Lansing-based polling firm EPIC-MRA, which conducted each of the three polls.

Each of the representative telephone surveys by live callers reached 600 people around the state, Porn said. All of the counties in Michigan contributed to the sample in the same proportion as they do in a presidential election, he said.

Survey respondents were asked whether they supported a ballot proposal “if there are enough valid petition signatures collected in the coming months.” They were then read a four-sentence summary of the lengthy language that supporters have proposed.

In brief, the ballot proposal would allow Michiganders 21 years or older to grow, possess and sell marijuana, let state and local governments pass regulations and impose up to a 10% tax on non-medical pot with funding earmarked for education, road repairs and local governments. The lengthy proposal would also legalize the statewide cultivation of industrial hemp, a crop that once supplied raw material for everything from textiles to rope, but which has been banned during the nation’s war on drugs because the hemp plant is related to marijuana.

The latest poll results were nowhere more welcome than at the Lansing law office of Jeffrey Hank, chairman of MiLegalize — a statewide group that is collecting petition signatures to put the legalization measure on fall ballots. The group has collected about 250,000 signatures, Hank said, but it needs as many as 300,000 by the state’s June 1 deadline to be assured of submitting the required 253,000 valid ones to state election officials.

“This poll will hopefully help MiLegalize gain support,” Hank said. “This answers the question from some of our funders — if you get it on the ballot, will it pass?”

MiLegalize urgently needs financial support to hire more petition circulators because the group is in danger of failing to meet the 180-day limit for gathering signatures that previous ballot campaigns have had to meet. But Hank said he might challenge that limit in court if the State Board of Canvassers fails to allow petition groups to prove that signatures they gathered outside the 180-day window are valid.

If the proposal fails to make the ballot, it would probably spell the end of what is apparently the best-funded and best-organized effort to put a cannabis question on state ballots this year. Two other groups dropped their efforts last fall. A fourth, Midland-based Abrogate Prohibition, is seeking to amend the state constitution — an even higher bar that requires collecting 315,000 signatures by July 1, according to state election law.

John Pirich, a Lansing lawyer and veteran constitutional law expert, testified in February and again last month before the state Board of Canvassers against any move to stretch the 180-day limit, Pirich said last month.

"When the framers of the constitution came up with this process, it was never meant to be easy. It's supposed to be a high bar," he said.

Around the nation, similar efforts by those who want to legalize and regulate marijuana for adult use are expected to put measures on November ballots in Arizona, California and Massachusetts, with one in Nevada already qualified for fall ballots, according to the nonprofit Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates legalization.

A measure to allow medical marijuana will be on Florida ballots, and petition drives on behalf of medical pot are underway in Arkansas and, soon, in Ohio, said Mason Tvert, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project.

“Just about every state seems to be experiencing some growth in support for ending prohibition” of marijuana, Tvert said.

Opponents have said that legalizing marijuana will unleash an addictive drug, although research is mixed as to how many Americans might be susceptible to marijuana addiction.

“We oppose legalization outright, although we don’t think people should go to prison for marijuana,” said Jeffrey Zinsmeister, executive vice president of SAM — Smart Alternatives to Marijuana, a nonprofit group in Alexandria, Va.

“We see legalization as tantamount to commercialization of an addictive product. It will be mainly geared to heavy users (and) to hooking minors, the same way that alcohol and tobacco are marketed,” Zinsmeister said.

A federal task force that studied the consequences of legalizing marijuana in Washington State and reported its findings March 10 found that there were “200 more recreational marijuana businesses than Starbucks” in the home state of the coffee shop chain, Zinsmeister said.

Bill would legalize recreational marijuana use in Michigan

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com

Survey question

Pollsters’ telephone survey question, March 2016, asked of 600 state voters:

“If there are enough valid petition signatures collected in the coming months, a proposal to legalize and tax marijuana in Michigan will be placed on the November election ballot. If approved by voters, the proposal would allow for the cultivation, possession and sale of marijuana to adults age 21 and over. It would impose an excise tax of up to 10 percent on the sale of non-medical marijuana, with the funding provided earmarked for education, improvements to roads and bridges, and to supplement the budgets of local governments if they license the sale of marijuana in their community. The proposal would provide regulations to protect the public, give local governments the authority to decide if they want to allow the sale of marijuana in their community, and to draft zoning and licensing ordinances to regulate commercial activity. Finally, it would authorize statewide cultivation and processing of industrial hemp.”

Note: This survey question is a simplified version of a proposed ballot measure that a nonprofit group seeks to place on Michigan’s November ballot.