Through the 1960s and early 1970s, as Ann Arbor played host to a number of radical organizations—including formative meetings of Students for a Democratic Society, the establishment of the White Panther Party, and the local Human Rights Party—public opinion in the city moved steadily to the left on the criminalization of marijuana possession.
The event brought together proponents in left-wing politics, including pop musicians John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Seger, jazz artists Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd, and speakers Allen Ginsberg, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale.
The second factor was the April 1972 election to Ann Arbor city council of two candidates from the Human Rights Party (HRP), an organization that promoted local progressive and radical causes.
However, both police and independent academic observers asserted in national media articles that the amount of marijuana smoked in the city had not increased; the locations had merely switched to include more public spaces.
In the first test case, decided on September 29, 1972, a district court judge ruled the ordinance unconstitutional as an "intrusion of Ann Arbor in the judicial functions of the State of Michigan.
"[6] City voters responded in November by electing Perry Bullard to the Michigan House of Representatives on a platform that called for full legalization of the possession, but not sale, of marijuana by adults throughout the state.
The local debate attracted attention from a number of national media outlets, including CBS and NBC television news programs[8] and The New York Times.
[9] On April 2, 1974, voters in Ann Arbor overruled the council's decision by amending the city charter with the famous Section 16.2, which, in somewhat altered form, remains in effect today.
[10] The charter section reinstated the $5 civil-infraction penalty for possession, use, giving away, or selling of marijuana and prohibited city police from enforcing the more stringent state laws.
[17] In the same election, using a tactic modeled on the city's original $5 marijuana law, voters approved a charter amendment intended to protect access to abortion in Ann Arbor if it ever became illegal in the state of Michigan.
Crafted as the state legislature debated increased restrictions on abortion in Michigan, including the adoption of a parental-consent bill, the measure declared the city a "zone of reproductive freedom.
The Ann Arbor initiative was only one of several similar measures on local and state ballots that day: Columbia, Missouri, another college town, approved a similar law on medical marijuana, as did the state of Montana, while Oregon voters rejected an initiative to loosen its existing medical-marijuana program, and Alaska voters rejected total decriminalization of marijuana possession.
Shortly after its approval, the Ann Arbor city attorney Steve Postema characterized the initiative as "unenforceable," citing its conflicts with federal and state law.
[22] But since medical-marijuana users in Ann Arbor are very rarely prosecuted, and because the penalty for first-time possession remains a $25 civil-infraction fine, both the 2004 ballot measure itself and Oates's subsequent statements on enforcement may prove to be more symbolic than substantive.