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PrintCOLUMBIA — Missouri marijuana advocates want to ask voters next year to legalize the drug and regulate its medical use.
A group called Show-Me Cannabis filed its initiative request with the Missouri Secretary of State on Wednesday.
If the state approves the ballot language for the proposed Missouri constitutional amendment, supporters would need to collect enough signatures from registered voters by next May to get the question on the November ballot.
The measure would decriminalize pot use, possession and small-scale cultivation by Missourians age 21 and older. It would also require the state to issue retail licenses to sell the drug and oversee a medical marijuana program.
Sixteen states have medical marijuana programs. Activists are targeting several other states next year.
Show Me the Errors 
Comments
And just when I was really ready to move...
As I understand it there is a large and very lucrative market for industrial hemp and, pre 1940, MO was one of the largest producers in the US.
Yes - I know that industrial hemp is not the same as medical-grade cannabis. I think both should be legal.
Combine both into a singe inititive, get the MO Farm Burea or rural voters to support it, and it's a done deal.
Hey everyone, good to see support on this issue.
Would like to take a minute and shed a little light on the initiative... It would actually legalize it across the board. Medical,recreational, and agricultural. For more info check your local NORML website or show-me cannabis website.
President KcNORML
I feel we need medical cannabis.If you do a poll on how many over the age of sixty use it for everyday pain that can't be treated you will be surprised.Give us older folks a break.
@ Marvin... I agree, and want to add that pot is SAFER than most/all prescripption pain meds. Just look at the warnings for these pain drugs, then figure that many/most people with chronic pain are on multiples of these drugs just to get minor and unreliable relief from pain. The system is killing us, literally.
BTW - I have read that 100% 'food grade' hemp oil, taken as 2-5 tablespoons a day, has helped reduce pain, repairs liver/bladder/pancreatic function,improves blood flow and helps repair skin/tissue damage. Don't know the mechanism by which this works. Amazon online sells it, along with hemp seed and hemp protein powder. Lots of people claim this hemp stuff works miracles for them.
@ Jeff Goodfirnon /President KcNORML
Have any insight on why none of the KC news services (not even Fox) are reporting this news?
Kathy Snowberry wrote:
"I agree, and want to add that pot is SAFER than most/all prescripption pain meds."
Actually both are quite safe, in terms of organic damage. Opiates can be used safely for decades (there were heroin addicts in Britain that had been on maintenance for thirty years and more). They're just physically addictive, where marijuana is not (at least under conditions of normal use).
However, opiates are far more potent and reliable as far as relieving pain. Marijuana can actually make a user in pain more aware of it - it's great if it relieves someone's pain, but it doesn't work for everyone.
There's also the issue of smoking (anything) being harmful to the lungs.
I'd like to see marijuana legal. Keeping it illegal doesn't keep anyone from getting it, it just makes them criminals. But it has never been convincingly shown to be medically useful for anything but the nausea of chemotherapy, glaucoma (in some cases), and stimulation of appetite in cancer patients.
DK
Let's do this Missouri! There's not one reason why it should be illegal in the first place. The government is being ignorant in ignoring the economic decline when this opportunity has sat on the table for decades. Why let a plant with so many economic and health benefits go to waste?
Vote Ron Paul 2012!