Marijuana advocates deliver petitions to City Hall (VIDEO)

Decriminalization of marijuana in Wichita moved a step closer to a public vote Thursday when advocates turned in petitions with nearly twice as many signatures as they need to put the question on the November ballot.

City officials said they may have some questions and concerns about the wording of the measure, but they have no immediate plans to go to court to try to block the initiative.

Petition organizers Esau Freeman and Janice Bradley went to City Hall at 4:20 p.m. Thursday and presented a sheaf of papers they say contain the names of more than 5,800 people who signed in favor of decriminalizing possession of marijuana and paraphernalia.

They chose that time because 420 – pronounced four-twenty – is a traditional code phrase that originated among California teenagers for the time to get high after school. The meaning has expanded to symbolize broader national efforts to legalize marijuana.

The advocates need valid signatures of 2,928 registered Wichita voters to bring the issue to a vote.

They acknowledge that many of the signatures they’ve submitted won’t meet that test because some people who signed live outside the city limits or are not properly registered to vote.

Bradley said an intern for the Peace and Social Justice Center has checked a large sample of the signatures.

“We didn’t verify every single one, but we’re pretty confident with what we have,” Bradley said.

The petition also has support from at least two state legislators and the Community Voice, a newspaper focused on Wichita’s black community.

After consulting with the city law department, a city clerk accepted the petitions Thursday, saying she would stamp them as received and then send them to Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman Friday morning.

Lehman’s staff will count and verify the signatures to determine whether the petitioners collected enough.

The City Council has three basic options: Pass the ordinance unchanged, put it on the ballot or file a district court action challenging the wording of the petition.

Freeman said the city law department has already voiced some objections to the wording and that proponents are girding for a court fight if necessary.

It may or may not come to that.

City spokeswoman Lauragail Locke said there are no plans at present to try to block the petition and City Council member Pete Meitzner confirmed that.

“I don’t have any feeling that the city, at the council level, wants to be combative or obstructionist about this,” Meitzner said.

He said he’s gotten confirmation that the council could work with the petition organizers to clarify some of the language that the law department has questioned.

Scott Poor, a lawyer representing the petitioners, said he talked with a city lawyer who expressed concerns about wording related to civil penalties and medical use of marijuana.

The Sedgwick County counselor’s office did approve the language before the signature drive began, but that’s “not an absolute green light” and it still could be challenged in court, Poor said.

Freeman said the petitioners would be willing to accept technical changes in the wording as long as the intent remains unchanged.

He said they would welcome the council putting the question to the voters on its own authority, rather than starting what could be a protracted legal fight over relatively small points of phrasing.

The initiative has two main provisions:

Changing the city code would not actually legalize marijuana. Violations could still be prosecuted under state and federal law. But organizers say it would become less likely that city police would bother to arrest small-time users.

The petition organizers believe the current law acts as a gateway into the criminal justice system, creating thousands of criminal records that can follow young people for life and shut down their career and educational opportunities.

They say that effect is particularly noticed in the black community.

Wichita officers make about 1,800 to 1,900 marijuana arrests a year, according to city records the petitioners obtained through the Kansas Open Records Act.

The records show that 30 to 40 percent of those arrested are black, although black people make up only 11.5 percent of the city’s population.

A national study by the American Civil Liberties Union found similar overall rates of marijuana usage among teens and adults; 14 percent for black people and 12 percent for white people.

This story was originally published July 24, 2014 at 8:17 PM with the headline "Marijuana advocates deliver petitions to City Hall (VIDEO)."