[420 Girl]

PHOENIX — Choosing to concentrate its efforts elsewhere, a national group has decided not to finance an initiative in Arizona to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes this year.

Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the national Marijuana Policy Project, confirmed Monday that the group, which was going to bankroll the initiative here, has decided to focus its energies, and its funds, on two other states where similar measures already are virtually assured of qualifying for the ballot.
In Michigan, backers have already submitted petitions with an estimated 496,000 signatures to allow patients who have a recommendation from their doctor to use marijuana.

In Massachusetts a group has already gathered enough signatures to require state lawmakers to consider the measure. If the Legislature does not act, then some additional signatures will qualify the measure for the November ballot.

Joe Yuhas of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project said it simply comes down to money. "It was just really a strategic decision. Where can we take limited resources and best apply them?" Yuhas said. But both Mirken and Yuhas said their plan is to pursue the initiative in Arizona in 2010. And both said Arizona will be a battleground on the issue, regardless of what voters decide this fall in Michigan and Massachusetts.

Yuhas said the Arizona group will keep the $10,000 it already received from the national group, putting it toward a 2010 race.

Until then, Yuhas said the local group will not be taking positions on local races, backing or opposing individual candidates based on their views on the medical use of marijuana. He said initiative backers believe only a direct vote of the people actually will change the law. Yuhas did say the outcome of the presidential race could also affect exactly how an Arizona initiative is crafted.

He noted the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, unable to undermine California's medical marijuana laws, has instead raided some of the California "dispensaries" set up under that state's statutes. Yuhas said whoever takes over the White House may direct the DEA to take a less hostile approach to allowing states to pursue their own policies on the use of marijuana.
Arizona actually already has a law on the books allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana and other otherwise-illegal drugs to serious and terminally ill patients.

But that measure, approved by voters in 1996, never took effect. That's because the DEA threatened to revoke all prescription-writing privileges of any physician who actually wrote out a prescription for marijuana.
Subsequent initiatives have instead said doctors could "recommend" marijuana.

That distinction is critical. In a historic 2003 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court barred the DEA from penalizing California doctors who recommend marijuana to patients. The justices, without comment, accepted arguments doctors have a First Amendment right to discuss all options with their patients.

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