Talking over a car speakerphone, Oregon's marijuana impresario Paul Stanford describes what life would be like if his ballot measure to legalize weed wins next month.

"It would be just like liquor," says Stanford, who has tried for years to end what he considers an ill conceived and damaging pot prohibition. If you're 21 or older, you walk into a state-licensed store and buy a pack of pre-rolled joints, or a baggie if you're looking to buy in bulk, or marijauna-laced food, or a bottle of cannabis extract.

The state-licensed agent rings up the sale, which includes a state profit margin, and you're on your way to getting legally high.

"I don't like that term 'recreational,'" Stanford says about the most likely customers of such stores. "I like 'adult social use.' We don't talk about recreational alcohol use. It's pejorative."

Whatever the label,

would dramatically change the way the leafy drug is grown, bought, sold and enforced in Oregon. In addition to buying at state marijuana outlets, adults would be free to grow and use marijuana at will, whether for medical reasons or to relax after work.

How does that

go? "Must be a hippie's dream."

More like a nightmare, say state law enforcement officials, who are the primary opponents of the measure.

"From a pure policy standpoint, I don't want to introduce yet another intoxicant and open the spigot full blast so everyone can get stoned all the time," says Josh Marquis, district attorney for Clatsop County and a designated spokesman for the opposition. "Look at what a dreadful job we've done keeping alcohol from being abused by adults, and worse yet, by kids."

Marquis says the most salient argument against the measure is that pretty much anyone in Oregon who wants to smoke marijuana can -- and does.

"It's easier to get a medical marijuana card than it is to get a driver's license," Marquis says. Some 57,000 residents have a certificate to use medical marijuana. And even without one, anyone caught with less than an ounce of pot is issued an infraction -- akin to a speeding ticket.

Given the state's loose laws surrounding marijuana, few people end up in jail, much less prison, for using it, he says. State corrections statistics appear to back his statement.

Of the 14,200 inmates in Oregon prisons, fewer than one in five are in for any type of drug-related charge, says Liz Craig, spokeswoman for the state

Of those, 30 are in on drug possession-only convictions, and 10 are marijuana-related. A total of 51 people are in Oregon prisons on marijuana delivery charges, she says.

Such numbers don't stop supporters of legalization from arguing that society has gone overboard tracking down and prosecuting dopers. It's a big part of the case made by one of the most high-profile supporters of Measure 80, former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury.

"We're wasting so much time and so much energy and so many people's lives with our current policy," Bradbury says. "We're putting them in jail at the prime of their lives. It's just ridiculous."

Bradbury likes that under Measure 80, smoking marijuana would be treated the same as drinking a martini.

"Liquor has no medical benefit, but we allow it through a state-regulated monopoly," Bradbury says. "There are a number of people who like to smoke pot, and they enjoy it, just like people who enjoy liquor. I don't see the difference."

would create a seven-member "Oregon Cannabis Commission" that includes five members elected by licensed marijuana growers and processors. The commission would regulate sales of marijuana as well as cultivation for sale -- much like the Oregon Liquor Control Commission does for alcohol.

Also like the OLCC, the cannabis commission would set the sales price for marijuana, ensuring a profit -- most of which would go into the state's general fund. Some would go into hemp product research, some toward addiction and mental health programs. People with medical marijuana cards would be able to buy at a discount.

Stanford estimates $140 million a year in state revenues from sales, a number he says he got from a study by a Harvard economist. The official financial impact statement in the State Voters Guide states the revenue impact to be "indeterminate" but would likely cover the estimated $22 million yearly cost of running the new commission.

How much someone can buy at one time at a state store remains up in the air. The commission "may set a limit," according to the measure, but it doesn't specify how much.

The commission also would "work to promote Oregon cannabis products in all legal national and international markets," according to the initiative.

Beyond the state-regulated sales, the measure allows anyone other than minors to grow pot for "personal, noncommercial use." It also completely deregulates cultivation, processing and sale of hemp, defined as the parts of a marijuana plant that don't have psychoactive ingredients.

Stanford, who has become wealthy by setting up a nationwide chain of medical marijuana clinics after a number of failed business starts, considers the measure a grand "experiment" in revising drug laws for the better.

A longtime champion of hemp and marijuana use, Stanford helped pass the 1998 initiative campaign that made medical marijuana use legal in Oregon -- an industry that has boomed. Wholesale legalization is simply the next step in a rational deregulation process, Stanford believes.

Initially, he says, prices will spike. So will use, as people who have wanted to smoke it but didn't out of respect for the law or concern for appearances, take it up. But prices will go down over time as the market settles in -- usage, too, as the novelty wears off, he predicts.

Furthermore, Stanford says, he doesn't expect to see a huge outburst of home cultivators, because it's not as easy as it looks to grow good bud.

"It's easy to sprout and grow," he says, but not to produce the high quality, high-THC content plants that the state stores would sell. "There's a learning curve."

Opponents scoff at Stanford's reasoning.

"If you could legally grow your own, why go into a store and pay $200 an ounce?" says Umatilla County Sheriff John Trumbo, who represents a coalition of sheriffs and police chiefs opposed to the measure. Unlike Stanford, Trumbo expects a wave of home growers, which could lead to neighbor-on-neighbor complaints, thefts and plenty of other mischief that cities and counties don't have time and money to combat.

A rapid influx of marijuana users is going to mean a similar increase in intoxicated driving, he says. More police officers and deputies are going to be forced to take expensive and time-consuming courses at the state police academy to become drug recognition experts.

And the costs won't be offset by new state revenue, as Stanford predicts, because of the new grow-your-own mentality, Trumbo says.

"They say it's really intense and difficult to grow marijuana, and I'm saying no it ain't," Trumbo says. "You plant it and trim it. You can grow it all day."

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