The good news for medical-marijuana advocates in Michigan is that they finally got a hearing in the state legislature; the bad news was that lawmakers killed the measure, anyway.

The Detroit News reported Nov. 29 that the Michigan House Government Operations Committee this week took 90 minutes of testimony on the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana for medical use, then failed to take a vote on the measure, effectively shelving it until the next legislative session in January.

Backers of the proposal said they would likely take their case directly to voters on the 2008 ballot.

During the hearing, Michigan lawmakers heard testimony from Republican state Representative Penny Bacchiochi, who said smoking marijuana helped her husband cope with terminal bone cancer and improved his quality of life in his last years.

But Scott Burns from the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy appeared before the panel in opposition to the bill, introduced by Rep. Lamar Lemmons III (D-Detroit), saying that marijuana does not meet the safety standards for medicine and that legalizing the drug for medical use would be confusing to young people.