Marijuana Policy Project

It's tucked into the hills of northern Arkansas, where the White River winds its way into Missouri before finding its way back into Arkansas.

Eureka Springs is a town of only 2,000 or so residents. However, during the summer tourist season, the population can swell to 10,000 or more during a weekend festival.

"The people that are in this town are, as a general rule, very educated, very professional and very opinionated," Police Chief Earl Hyatt says.

He says the people there are not your run-of-the-mill hippies.

"You know the person that you encounter on the street may have run a Fortune 500 company two years ago," he says, "and now they're walking around with a ponytail, jeans and an earring, you just don't know."

Eureka got a lot of attention in November when voters approved a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of an ounce or less of marijuana. Hyatt says that in spite of the attention from newspapers and websites, Eureka Springs is not an enclave of stoned hillbillies and his department procedures have not changed a bit.

Hyatt says, "It's not like we ever treated the misdemeanor possession of marijuana as a high crime to begin with. It's a misdemeanor. Basically, except for complying with state regulations where we have to fingerprint them because it's a Class A misdemeanor, they get a ticket and they post a bond, after they get processed. We have to arrest and process them if they commit a Class A misdemeanor. We don't have a choice. And as far as legalizing marijuana, we can't."

It took less than 200 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. In the November elections, the question was approved by 67 percent of the voters in Eureka Springs. Therefore, it might be a surprise to know that the effort to put the question on the ballot didn't start in there.

It started on the campus of the University of Arkansas with the school's chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The group first attempted to get the question on the ballot in Fayetteville, but could not gather the needed signatures. So they set their sights on smaller Eureka Springs.

"You know, mostly only the newscasters that come to town are the only ones talking about it. Everyone here just accepted it," says Fatima Swallow.

She and her husband own the Pied Piper Inn and Cathouse Lounge in the historic district.

Swallow says, "I guess it's a national phenomenon. But it hasn't changed the way we live or the way we act, or the tourists that come to this town. They're not lighting up in the park or anything like that."

Hyatt worries more about fire in a town full of historic buildings than who is or isn't firing one up.

"This old church, they're so old and so dry that fire would just devastate them," Hyatt says.

Business owners hope the allure of Eureka's turn of the century flavor keeps drawing tourists off the beaten path.

Swallow adds, "You can still see the way things used to be."