ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
Marijuana got a big nod of approval in Arizona on Tuesday when voters passed a ballot measure legalizing use of the drug for medical purposes, a proposal that drew the scorn of three former presidents.
Pro-pot forces included a nurse who spoke compellingly of how the drug had eased her husband's pain before his death from cancer. Opponents included former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush, who urged voters to reject legalization for any purpose.
Arizonans also expanded gambling on Indian reservations and voted to allow 15-year-olds to be tried as adults for murder, rape and armed robbery.
In Florida, a controversial penny-per-pound tax on sugar to clean up agricultural pollution in the Everglades fell behind 53 percent to 47 percent, with almost a third of the ballots counted. Sugar companies and growers spent in excess of $23 million to influence the vote; supporters spent at least $13 million.
Gambling got the boot in Ohio, where voters rejected the notion of stringing riverboat casinos along the Ohio River and the Lake Erie shore.
And crime victims got special recognition in Indiana and Oklahoma, where they will be given greater participation in court proceedings. Six other states were voting on similar measures.
Across the country, Americans helped steer their states' futures at the polls, voting on hundreds of ballot measures that could become law, including at least 90 citizen initiatives.
Among those attracting the keenest national attention were California's hugely controversial Proposition 209, which would dismantle most affirmative action programs, and an attempt to enshrine into the Colorado constitution the rights of parents ``to direct and control the upbringing, education, values and discipline of their children.''
Whatever the voters say, Proposition 209 is likely to wind up in the courts almost immediately. ``The most controversial measures are never decided by voters, but by the courts,'' said David Magelby, political science professor at Brigham Young University.
Kentucky voters removed archaic language from their constitution that required separate schools for ``white'' and ``colored'' children. Minnesotans considered a one-time bonus of $300 to $600 for Gulf War veterans. And Montana voters, in the year of the Freemen siege, were offered an anti-extremism initiative that would make it easier to sue people accused of threatening or intimidating.
Maine's vote whether to ban clear-cutting on millions of acres of forest turned into the most expensive referendum in the state's history, with paper companies spending more than $5 million to defeat it.
Montana's motto, ``Oro y plata,'' gold and silver, became a symbol of that state's big ballot fight, as mining companies sank money into warding off stricter waste-water treatment standards.
And in Idaho, actor Bruce Willis gave $85,000 to the effort to reverse the state's nuclear-waste deal with the federal government.
Hunting tapped emotions - often through graphic television ads - in Idaho, Washington, Michigan, Massachusetts, Colorado and Alaska. Oregon hunters fought back, getting a measure on the ballot that would repeal a 1994 ban on the use of dogs and bait to hunt cougars and bears.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines KEYWORDS: ELECTIONSby CNB