Recreational marijuana measure to be put to Colo. voters

DENVER (Reuters) - Colorado voters will be asked to decide whether to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in a November ballot measure, setting up a potential showdown with the federal government over America's most commonly used illicit drug.

The measure, which would legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults, is one of two that will go to voters in November after a Washington state initiative to legalize pot earned enough signatures last month to qualify for the ballot there.

"This could be a watershed year in the decades-long struggle to end marijuana prohibition in this country," Art Way, Colorado manager of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement. The Alliance supports the initiative.

"Marijuana prohibition is counterproductive to the health and public safety of our communities. It fuels a massive, increasingly brutal underground economy, wastes billions of dollars in scarce law enforcement resources, and makes criminals out of millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens."

Colorado is one of 16 states and the nation's capital that already allow marijuana use for medical purposes even as cannabis remains classified as an illegal narcotic under federal law - and public opinion is sharply divided on the merits of full legalization.

No states allow marijuana for recreational use, and California voters turned back a ballot initiative to legalize the drug for such use in 2010, in part because of concerns about how production and sale of the drug would be regulated.

Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice has cracked down on medical cannabis operations in several mostly western states including Colorado and Washington, raiding dispensaries and growing operations and threatening landlords with prosecution.

A spokesman for Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said on Monday that the office opposes the legalization proposal.

"The attorney general will oppose any measure that makes marijuana more accessible," spokesman Mike Saccone said.

The Colorado measure, if approved by voters, would legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana or up to six plants for cultivation, said Mason Tvert, co-founder of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.

It would also set up a regulatory framework for the sale of cannabis products and the application of sales and excise taxes, in addition to legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp.

WOULD EARMARK TAX REVENUE FOR SCHOOLS

A provision of the measure would also annually earmark the first $40 million in tax revenue generated from pot sales to fund public school construction, Tvert said, although he could not estimate how many tax dollars would be generated.

Any remaining money over $40 million would go to the state's general fund, he said.

Colorado voters rejected a measure to legalize small amounts of cannabis in 2006, but Tvert said the new proposal with its taxing provision, and potential jobs created through the marijuana industry and peripheral businesses would make it more palatable to voters.

"The time is right," he said, citing a December poll by Public Policy Polling that showed 49 percent of Colorado voters now support legalization.

Nationwide, an October 2011 Gallup Poll that found a record 50 percent of Americans polled supported legalizing marijuana use, up from 36 percent five years earlier.

Under a medical marijuana law enacted in 2000, Colorado currently maintains a registry of more than 80,000 card-carrying patients and rules governing how physicians and distributors operate.

However, federal prosecutors launched a crackdown last month against nearly two dozen medical marijuana dispensaries located within 1,000 feet of schools, giving proprietors 45 days to cease operations or face civil and criminal penalties. That deadline lapsed on Monday.

Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver, said an investigation was underway to determine if the alleged violators complied with the ultimatum.

A second round of notifications to other pot dispensaries who federal authorities said were in violation of the 1,000-foot law will be notified "sooner rather than later," Dorschner said.

Proponents of legalized recreational possession initially submitted more than 163,000 signatures on a petition to place their measure on the ballot, but the state's secretary of state declared the petition insufficient on February 3.

Advocates then submitted an additional 14,000 signatures two weeks ago, and after a second review, the state certified that the proposal would qualify for the general election ballot on November 6, 2012.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Johnston)

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For Santorum voters, he's a candidate like them

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - Sporting his signature sweater vest and telling stories of his coal miner grandfather, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has struck a chord in the Rust Belt that is helping propel his once long-shot candidacy.

Although he is a millionaire, Santorum has found a common touch that has helped put him atop opinion polls in the industrial states of Michigan and Ohio and raised serious doubts about whether longtime front-runner Mitt Romney can win the Republican nomination to take on President Barack Obama in the November 6 election.

Santorum's portrayal of himself as the blue-collar Republican has managed to overshadow Romney's jobs message in a part of the country troubled by unemployment.

In conversations with nearly a dozen voters preparing to cast ballots for the former Pennsylvania senator in the Ohio and Michigan primaries, not one person volunteered that Santorum was the best candidate to revive American industry.

Instead, voters said they were coming to Santorum's side because his everyman style and Christian faith reminded them of themselves.

"He's basically down-to-earth," said Janice Thomas, 56, of Pickerington, Ohio, who is retired.

"Maybe I think he is more like me," said David Diyani, 58, a pastor at the Vineyard Church in Etna, Ohio. "I feel like I can relate to him."

Santorum's life, though, is far from ordinary.

He spent 12 years in the Senate, known as the "world's most exclusive club," and earned degrees in law and business. He purchased a luxury Audi sedan and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars as a consultant in recent years. Santorum's 2010 salary - $923,000 - placed him squarely within the top 1 percent of income earners in America.

Yet he can still draw a sharp contrast to Romney, a former Massachusetts governor whose fortune is estimated at up to $270 million and who often makes gaffes that show a lack of familiarity with ordinary Americans' struggles.

"I do my own taxes," Santorum said at the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday. "Heck, Romney paid half the taxes I did. He doesn't do his own taxes. Maybe I should hire an accountant in the future."

Santorum's previous criticism of the government bailout of the auto industry in 2009 might be a problem in Michigan where millions of people rely on the car companies. But Romney was a more vocal opponent of the rescue, leaving his rival's opposition to it largely overlooked.

A Detroit News poll, released last week, showed Santorum leading Romney 34 percent to 30 percent in Michigan, the state where Romney was born and where his father was governor. A Quinnipiac poll had Santorum leading Romney 36 percent to 29 percent in Ohio. Michigan's primary is on February 28 and Ohio votes on March 6.

GINGRICH DEFECTORS

Part of the Santorum surge can be accounted for by disaffected supporters of Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"I decided to support him three weeks ago. Before that, I was for Gingrich," said Steve Izev, 34, of Westerville, Ohio. "The more popular he got, the more I liked him."

Santorum's rise in the polls is also fueled by the same phenomenon that successively lifted Texas Governor Rick Perry, former pizza magnate Herman Cain, and Gingrich to the front of the pack: He is not Romney.

In a Pew Research Center poll released last Monday, 50 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents nationwide said Romney was not a strong conservative.

"They are the 'anybody-but-Romney' people. They are the 'un-Romney' people," said Bill Ballenger, editor of the "Inside Michigan Politics" newsletter. "There is no reason in Michigan that they should be for Santorum. They don't really know who he is really."

A political climate featuring renewed debate over religious freedom, contraception and gay rights has benefited the devoutly

Catholic Santorum among evangelical Republicans.

In the Inside Michigan Poll, Michigan voters who said social issues were most important to them chose Santorum over Romney by 64 percent to 19 percent.

Faith is never far from the Santorum campaign. At a phone bank for Santorum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the Ten Commandments were nailed to the wall. Paintings of Jesus and Mary hung in a back room.

Supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement praise Santorum for his frequent references to the U.S. Constitution. Santorum campaigns with a pocket-sized version that he removes from his coat for emphasis on the campaign trail.

In a MRG/Inside Michigan Poll released on Wednesday, Santorum bettered Romney among Tea Party supporters by 51 percent to 22 percent.

Female voters are the most resistant to Santorum. In Michigan polls, where Santorum leads Romney among a number of groups, the two are neck and neck in support among women.

In recent weeks, Santorum has drawn controversy with comments about working women and women in the military.

On the campaign trail, Santorum stokes voters' outrage that they are underappreciated by people in power.

"You are not being talked to as adults," Santorum told a Tea Party rally in Columbus on Saturday. "You are being treated as mindless, fly-over-country rubes who don't need to know the truth."

"We used to be called the Silent Majority," said Terry McGiffin, 69, a retired management trainer from Westerville, Ohio, describing Santorum's supporters.

Many supporters confess a lack of familiarity with Santorum's policy prescriptions but say they find him to be the Republican field's most likable entrant.

"I don't know a lot about him," said Gary Henson, 32, the owner of a medical supply company in Columbus. "I like his demeanor. I like his personality."

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)

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