SOUTH PORTLAND – On Monday, Citizens for a Safer Maine submitted a petition containing the signatures of more than 1,500 voters to South Portland City Clerk Susan Mooney.

The group is pushing to get a question that would legalize the use of a small amount of recreational marijuana by adults 21 and up on the city’s ballot this fall.

A total of 959 signatures must be verified for the referendum question to go out to voters, and Mooney now has 20 days to certify the petition.

David Boyer, political director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Maine, said in a press release that, “Our goal is to get people talking about marijuana and the benefits of ending prohibition. Marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol for the consumer and for society.”

Boyer added that marijuana use and possession should be treated and regulated in the same way as the sale of alcohol and in a way “that entails no longer punishing adults who choose to use it responsibly.”

In a prior interview, he also said that if marijuana were labeled and regulated, then people would know what they were getting in terms of quality and potency and it would take the criminal element out of obtaining the substance.

Although Boyer is confident legalizing the use of recreational marijuana is the best public policy choice, this spring the South Portland City Council unanimously passed a resolution declaring its opposition to any effort to legalize recreational marijuana locally.

In addition to South Portland, the Marijuana Policy Project is also hoping to get referendums on the ballot in the town of York and the city of Lewiston in November.

– Kate Irish Collins