Idaho Mountain Express: Hailey to vote on pot initiatives—again – May 23, 2008
As Hailey officials prepare to battle about marijuana in court, the city’s electorate prepares to go to the polls to vote once again on four pro-pot initiatives.The latest round in the city’s ongoing cannabis dispute will be settled Tuesday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. when the same initiatives voted upon last November will once again be put to the ballot-booth test.
Three passed last time and one failed. Approved were initiatives to legalize medical use of marijuana, to legalize use of industrial hemp and to make enforcement of marijuana laws the lowest priority for the Hailey Police Department.
Not approved was an initiative to require the city to tax and regulate distribution and use of the drug.
So why a second vote?
“Cause I knew that the city would pull something like this,” said Ryan Davidson, a former Bellevue resident and the man who got the initiatives on the ballot. He is chairman of The Liberty Lobby of Idaho and is often referred to simply as “the pot guy.”
Davidson, who now lives in Garden City, was referring to the lawsuit that the mayor, the police chief and a city councilman filed against the city in Blaine County 5th District Court to have the previously approved initiatives declared illegal.
Davidson described the new vote as “kind of an insurance policy.”
“If I hadn’t put them on the ballot again, they probably would have killed them all by now,” he said. “It makes it politically less viable for them to do something if they pass twice.”
