Another Oakland County City Votes to 'Free the Weed'

Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em — joints, that is.

Voters in Keego Harbor voted Tuesday to make recreational marijuana usage, possession and transfer legal for adults, according to unofficial election results. The measure passed by a 55 percent margin, with 260 votes in favor and 210 votes against it.

With the vote, Keego Harbor becomes the seventh Oakland County community to take a relaxed approach to pot smoking among adults. Six communities — Ferndale, Berkley, Huntington Woods, Hazel Park, Oak Park and Pleasant Ridge — previously either legalized cannabis use for adults or instructed police at the ballot box to make enforcement a low priority.

Also Tuesday, voters in the Kalamazoo County city of Portage legalized marijuana. More than a dozen Michigan cities have now OK’d the use of pot by adults.

Meanwhile two groups — the Michigan Cannabis Coalition and the Michigan Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Committee — are collecting signatures to put marijuana legalization questions before voters on statewide ballots in 2016.

However, a marijuana initiative didn’t fly in neighboring Ohio Tuesday. where voters defeated by a two-to-one margin a measure that would have legalized cannabis for both recreational and medical purposes.

The vote was seen as a blow to investors in the pot industry, who had been buoyed by a series of victories across the country in recent elections. Recreational marijuana is legal in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia.

» Photo by Chuck Grimmett/Flickr