This week, Grand Junction and Castle Rock banned retail sales of medical marijuana, joining Loveland and many other Colorado municipalities that have enacted similar prohibitions.

Do these votes suggest that a proposed 2012 ballot measure to legalize pot for adult recreational use is doomed to failure? Hardly, says SAFER's Mason Tvert, who's expected to be at the center of the campaign.

"It doesn't make me fear that at all," Tvert says. He chalks up the failures of Grand Junction and Castle Rock voters to support medical marijuana businesses to the votes taking place in April, when turnout is traditionally lower than for November elections in even-numbered years, with the majority of those taking part skewing older and more conservative.

As such, he believes that "those communities represent a minority of Coloradans when it comes to their opinions about marijuana." Most of the survey he's seen of late show support for marijuana legalization in the 50 percent range, "and the rate is increasing dramatically with each poll, as it has for the past five years. And that's been fueled by people seeing the medical marijuana industry emerge and the lack of problems it presents."

Read the entire article at: http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/04/medical_marijuana_bans_pot_legalization_2012_mason_tvert.php