Ten potential petitions that would legalize marijuana possession in Missouri are open for public review. The Secretary of State’s office has posted them on its web page so members of the public can comment on them before any are approved for public circulation.
Columbia attorney Dan Viets, the state Director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). says the ten are basically the same but differ by degrees in the number of marijuana plants someone can grow and the quantity of processed marijuana a person can have. “It’s not as dangeorus, not as addictive, but it’s similar to alcohol in some respects,” he says, continuing, “I hope everyone recognizes by now that marijuana is jsut not going to go away, that no matter how much money we squander on law enforcement, it’s not going to eliminate marijuana.”Â
He says the proposal wants marijuana to be treated the same way alcohol is in terms of possession, sales, and taxation. But he says the country is dealing with marijuana the way it dealt with alcohol during prohibition.
Viets says the campaign will do public polling to decide which of the ten petitions to circulate once the Secretary of State has approved the language.
