Cannabis

A bill that would allow people in New Hampshire with chronic health problems to use marijuana received the backing of the Republican Senate this week, but with the proposal gaining momentum in Concord, local police chiefs worry it would strengthen efforts to legalize the drug in the Granite State.

Gov. John Lynch has indicated he will veto the Senate bill, which passed on a 13-11 vote late Wednesday night.

It would allow patients with “debilitating medical conditions” or their designated caretakers to possess up to 6 ounces of marijuana, four mature plants and 12 seedlings at a single, registered “cultivation location.” They could also avoid penalties for possessing up to two ounces of marijuana elsewhere.

In an email, Dover Police Chief Anthony Colarusso said he worries the bill is a “proverbial ‘foot in the door’” for efforts to legalize marijuana. He also fears marijuana grown for medicinal purposes will be diverted into the illegal drug trade, something that occurs now with prescription drugs.

Allowing medical marijuana use would also send youths the wrong message, and give “one more justification for a young person to try marijuana,” Colarusso wrote.

“When something is legalized, it is also legitimized,” he wrote.

The N.H. Association of Police Chiefs doesn’t support the bill, and Durham Police Chief Dave Kurz added his voice to the opposition Wednesday, saying the legislation will erode marijuana prohibitions down the road.

“If you want to legalize, let’s have the discussion, but I believe this is sort of a back-door entry into legalization,” he said.

Kurz said the legislation stands to make policing more difficult, since officers will need to be trained about the medical marijuana cultivation regulations, and then exercise discretion in the field. He also pointed out that marijuana cultivation is still illegal under federal law.

Supporters say the bill’s home cultivation approach would reduce the risk of abuse or federal prosecution. Caretakers would be volunteers — most likely family members, they say. The law permits compensation for actual costs like electricity, but not labor, which supporters say eliminates the business aspect.

Patients would need a registry identification card, which would require written certification from their doctor that medical use of marijuana would help treat a “debilitating medical condition.”

Qualifying conditions include cancer, HIV, AIDS and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some symptoms or treatment results such as severe pain or severe nausea would also qualify.

Patients with a qualifying condition visiting from out of state could also possess marijuana without a card, but not cultivate it. Caretakers would need a card as well and would be subject to a background check.

The bill passed on a narrow 13-11 vote Wednesday, after Senators adopted one last amendment by Sen. Jim Forsythe, the Strafford Republican sponsoring the bill, which reduced the number of plants patients are allowed to grow from six to four, with a maximum canopy of 100 square feet.

The bill would not legalize marijuana possession for anyone beyond registry identification card holders or visiting qualifying patients. Card holders who provide marijuana to anyone not allowed to have it would have their cards revoked and face a Class B felony, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Additional penalties for illegal marijuana sale would also apply.

The proposed law also would expire after three years unless lawmakers acted to renew it.

Colarusso said a recent youth survey found marijuana is now more widely used by Dover teens than tobacco. He said the drop in youth tobacco use suggests antismoking campaigns have been successful, and the Senate bill could have the opposite effect for marijuana use.

“I have been in law enforcement for 27 years, and I cannot remember a time when drug use and crime related to drug use is as prevalent as it is now,” he wrote. “The illegal use of legal drugs is currently the biggest problem. We need fewer options for those who abuse drugs, not more of them.”

Staff Writer Jim Haddadin contributed to this report.

Source: Foster’s Daily Democrat (NH)
Published: Thursday, March 29, 2012
Copyright: 2012 Geo. J. Foster Co.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.fosters.com/

Norm Stamper’s told the story a lot: He was a rookie cop, working a one-man car  in an affluent San Diego neighborhood, when he approached a home and smelled  burning vegetable matter.
This was around 1966.  Possession of marijuana  possession of even a seed or stem =96 was a felony.  Stamper, a young cop eager to score the brownie points associated with narcotics busts, knocked on the door.  No answer.  He then kicked in the door and heard footsteps racing down the hall, where he found a 19-year-old man trying to flush his marijuana down the toilet.  Stamper scooped out the soggy pot, placed the young man in handcuffs and led him from his parents’ house to the police car.

As I got closer to the jail,  Stamper said,  I kept thinking, `My God, I could be out doing real police work.’ It was my aha moment.  This kid was not hurting anybody.
Nearly 50 years later, a lot has changed regarding the country’s approach to marijuana, both medicinal and recreational.  And a lot is still changing.  But Stamper  a former Seattle police chief and 34-year cop   is still an exception: someone from the world of law enforcement who believes, or at least is willing to say, that our prohibition on pot is senseless.

In fact, Stamper says that a lot, and he’s been saying it for years   in speeches and essays, and even in a book.  Now he’s part of a group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, that’s supporting an initiative on the November ballot that would legalize, regulate and tax the sale of marijuana in Washington.  He’s speaking around the state in support of Initiative 502; he’s also appearing in Spokane next week as part of a community panel on policing.

I think it’s long past time we recognize marijuana is safer than alcohol, healthier than tobacco and does represent enormous revenue possibilities for the state,  he said.

That last point =96 money for the state’s bare cupboards   is no theoretical matter these days, though it’s hard to say exactly how much a taxed and regulated pot trade would bring in.  The state’s Office of Financial Management estimated this week that it could mean $560 million to $606 million a year in taxes, depending how reefer mad we go.  I-502 supporters have predicted a smaller boon, and the truth is, it’s all elaborate guesswork.

The OFM paper, as reported in the Seattle Times, describes what a state-run marijuana business might look like.  It assumed 100 growers, supplying 300 stores, selling nearly 190,000 pounds of marijuana a year to more than 360,000 customers.  It’s based on federal drug-use data.

Under I-502, the state would regulate stores and tax sales of one ounce of marijuana to people 21 and older.  It would add maximum THC levels to drunken-driving laws.

The initiative is being sponsored by New Approach Washington, a coalition of health officials, attorneys, law enforcement officials and others, including travel writer Rick Steves and former Spokane Regional Health District director Kim Marie Thorburn.

As hard as it might be to envision that future imagined in the OFM report, it is equally hard to rationalize the country’s current approach to pot.  It’s illegal, but the level of enforcement varies.  Medical marijuana is legal in some states, but it’s a legality that is impractically in conflict with federal law.  It’s so convoluted that Lewis Carroll might have come up with it while smoking opium.

And as attitudes toward pot have relaxed, we’re left with some glaring hypocrisies.  Many of the people who run the government that still criminalizes pot have smoked it.  Obama’s smoked it.  Bush probably did, based on the way he avoided the question.  Clinton at least pretended to.  Presidential candidates routinely admit smoking it.

There’s so much winking and smiling about it on the one hand that it’s sometimes hard to remember that people still go to jail for possession, as Stamper points out.

It’s this hypocrisy, in part, that makes this such an issue for him, he said.  How many of the people in positions of authority have a little pot-smoking in their own background  an experience that, had they been caught, might have changed the course of their life for no good reason?

That galls me,  Stamper said.  It’s just galling to me that we can preside over this system of law and law enforcement criminalizing behavior that very prominent Americans participated in when they were younger.

Stamper tells one more story from his early days as a cop.  He and his wife were helping take care of a friend, a young woman sick with kidney disease.  As she neared the end of her life she died in her 30s  she started saying smoking marijuana was helping her appetite, allowing her to keep food down, making her feel better.  Stamper told her to keep it away from him and wouldn’t help her get it.

But other than that, he supported her fully.

She was not a criminal, he said.

Source: Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)
Copyright: 2012 The Spokesman-Review
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.spokesman.com/
Author: Shawn Vestal

The sponsor of a state Senate bill in Michigan is looking to outlaw the use of medical marijuana by glaucoma patients.

In 2008, voters passed the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act, which allows state-registered patients to use the herb to treat certain medical conditions. Senate Bill 977, approved in a state Senate committee last week, would prevent the state licensing agency from issuing medical marijuana cards for glaucoma and remove it from the list of debilitating conditions.

Several studies in the 1970s showed that smoking marijuana could lower interocular pressure for people with glaucoma, according to the “Western Journal of Medicine.”

State Sen. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge) sponsored the legislation.

“I have met with multiple medical professionals, and not one of them has been able to tell me a benefit of treating glaucoma with medical marijuana,” Jones said in a statement.

“In fact, a large problem is that many patients forgo the use of approved treatments such as eye drops and exclusively use medical marijuana which increases their risk for permanent visual loss and blindness,” he continued.

The Michigan Society of Eye Physicians & Surgeons has also come out against the law.

“Michigan law has inappropriately included glaucoma as a condition that will benefit from Medical Marijuana,” the group stated in a press release, adding that the National Eye Institute and the American Academy of Ophthalmology do not support the practice.

Tim Beck, political director of the pro-medical marijuana group Michigan Association of Compassion Centers, disagreed with Jones’ assertions.

“Used in combination [with prescribed medicine] it’s proven very, very effective,” he told City Pulse, a Lansing-based publication. “Anyone silly enough not to use their eye drops, well, maybe there’s something else wrong with them besides glaucoma.”

This is not the first time Jones, a former sheriff, has tried to restrict access to medical marijuana. He also sponsored Senate Bill 504, which prohibits marijuana dispensaries from operating within 1,000 feet of a school or place of worship, and Senate Bill 505, which prohibits convicted felons from legally selling the herb.

Matthew Abel is the executive director of the Michigan chapter of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the campaign director of Committee for a Safer Michigan, a group trying to legalize marijuana in Michigan by a ballot initiative.

He told The Huffington Post that Sen. Jones was less motivated by health concerns than by his conservative agenda.

“I think Senator Jones is completely opposed to medical marijuana law and is attempting to chip away at it by any means necessary,” he said, though he doubted Jones’ ability to sell the bill to his colleagues.

“Nobody I’ve talked to in the legislature expects his bills to pass.”

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: David Sands
Published: March 26, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/