Did Michigan Roll with the Rest of the Country on Pot Legalization?

Voters in Huntington Woods and Berkley approved initiatives to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana possessed by adults, and a third Oakland County community, Pleasant Ridge, voted by a nearly 3-to-1 margin to make marijuana related crimes a low priority for law enforcement.

The communities were among 11 statewide considering marijuana ballot proposals in the midterm elections Tuesday.

In Berkley, 62 percent of voters approved decriminalization, compared with 38 percent who opposed it. The actual vote count was 3,811 to 2,311, according to unofficial Oakland County election results.

In Huntington Woods, 70 percent of the 3,288 voters who cast ballots on the proposal voted for legalization of small amounts of pot. Thirty percent opposed it.

Before Tuesday, the Safer Michigan Coalition had taken marijuana initiatives to the ballot 16 times without a single defeat.

On Tuesday, voters in the Clare County city of Harrison voted, 63 percent to 37 percent, against decriminalization. Voters in the Benzie County community of Frankfurt also turned down a decriminalization measure, 306 votes to 249 votes.

Saginaw, Mount Pleasant, Clare, Port Huron and Lapeer voted in favor of marijuana decriminalization.

It’s unclear how Onaway in Presque Isle County voted.

The results in Michigan support what recent polling suggests is a gradual shift of Americans’ attitudes about marijuana.

A 2013 Gallup Poll found that 58 percent Americans think pot should be legalized, while 39 percent oppose it, MSNBC reports. When Gallup first polled Americans on the topic in 1969, only 12 percent endorsed legalization.

Those results generally follow the findings in Pew Research Center report last month that found support for marijuana legalization is slowly outpacing opposition. That poll said 52 percent support legal weed, while 45 percent oppose it.

Across the country Tuesday, voters in Oregon and Alaska were voting on proposals to regulate pot shops, joining Colorado and Washington, which approved similar measures in the 2012 election. The measures in Oregon and the District of Columbia were approved, according to The New York Times, but the votes are yet-to-be counted in Alaksa. In the District of Columbia, the vote legalizes possession, but doesn’t allow retail sales.

In Florida, voters rejected an amendment that would have made the Sunshine State the 24th in the country to approve medical cannabis, South Tampa (FL) Patch reports. Because the vote would have amended the state constitution, a 60 percent approval was required.

Florida was the first state in the South to consider allowing medical cannabis, and conservatives mounted a well-funded campaign against it, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

The Safer Michigan Coalition, which backed the marijuana initiatives, is taking a community-by-community approach to pot legalization. The group would prefer a statewide ballot proposal, but concedes it’s politically unrealistic.

Terry Jungel, director of the Michigan Sheriff’s Association, told Michigan Public Radio. that the campaigns for marijuana reform are “economically and emotionally driven, which are two really bad reasons to be making decisions on anything dealing with public safety issues.”

Local communities that vote to legalize small amounts of marijuana are co-conspirators in state and federal crimes, because despite votes at the local level, it’s still against Michigan and U.S. law to possess marijuana.