Illinois is one House vote away from becoming the 15th state to legalize medical marijuana.

But Rep. Lou Lang, the sponsor of the measure that would enact legalization, is playing it safe. With a subject as sensitive as medical marijuana, he realizes that timing is everything.

“Many members will vote for this,” Lang told the Chicago Reader, “but they’ll only do it once. They’ll go out on a limb once.”

A new report from WBBM shows how tantalizingly close the state truly is to passing the bill. It squeaked out of the Illinois Senate almost a year ago; now, Lang says, more than 90 of the 118 members of the House of Representatives have told him they support the bill. And “he has been promised a vote by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) if he can muster the needed votes,” the report reads.

The trouble for Lang is that private statements of support may not translate into votes. Nearly 40 of the representatives who support the bill in private say they fear the political fallout of casting an “aye” vote for it in the harsh light of day.

And the clock is ticking on passage of the bill. On January 12, 2011, a new General Assembly will be sworn in. If by that time the bill hasn’t passed the House, the Senate’s vote won’t matter any more; it will be back to square one.

The Chicago Reader’s feature on the issue points out that medical marijuana has been technically legal in Illinois since 1978. But the law passed over 30 years ago, the Cannabis Control Act, required the Department of Human Services and the Illinois State Police to enact new policies on pot before it could be legally distributed. Neither agency has.

The Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act, the bill Lang is bringing to the House, would change all that. From the Reader:

It says that with a physician’s written permission, someone diagnosed with a “debilitating medical condition,” and also his or her primary caregiver, can have up to six cannabis plants, only three of which can be “mature,” or in the budding stage, when the levels of active chemicals are highest. The Illinois Department of Public Health would determine procedural specifics, and the law would expire three years after taking effect unless renewed by the legislature.

Marijuana would be used for the treatment of chronic pain. It would serve as a replacement for drugs like Vicodin and Oxycontin, both of which are addictive and can be lethal if overdosed. No tests have shown that either is the case for marijuana.

“The medical profession has no controversy on this, to speak of,” Illinois Public Health Advocate Dr. Quentin Young told WBBM.

The political profession, however, is a different matter. In that line of work, Lou Lang is still operating behind the scenes, trying to put controversy to bed before he calls for the decisive vote.

           

ABC News reports that the upcoming November ballot initiative to legalize the cultivation, possession, and recreational use of marijuana (the Tax Cannabis Act) is getting support from some unexpected allies.

While the fifty-two percent of Americans nationwide who oppose the legalization of marijuana consists mostly of “older Americans, conservatives, and mothers of teenagers,” California proponents of the Tax Cannabis initiative are creating a broad and diverse coalition of support, including the official endorsement of California NAACP President Alice Huffman.

“In California African Americans make up 7 percent of the population, but 22 percent of the marijuana arrests,” Huffman says. She continues:

I see it as a civil rights issue because so many of our young people get their start in the criminal justice system over a joint… if we want to rescue our young people and keep them out of prison, we have to not only attack the education system but also the dysfunctional parts of the system that’s criminalizing our children disproportionately and causing them lifelong harm.

While critics may decry the California NAACP for “race-baiting,” the facts are on Huffman’s side. According to the California Department of Justice, “Marijuana possession arrests of teenagers of color rose from 3,100 in 1990 to 16,300 in 2008 — an arrest surge that is 300 percent greater than population growth in that group.”

Indeed the civil rights aspect of marijuana legalization takes on a poignant historical character in light of circumstances surrounding its prohibition. Before the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, it was legal to cultivate, possess, and use the plant in the United States. Proponents of the act rallied support by using racially charged imagery against a drug that was predominately used by African Americans at the time- particularly in America’s vibrant jazz music scene.

One of the leaders of the movement to ban pot, Harry J. Anslinger, coordinated a campaign of propaganda to convince white Americans that marijuana use made African Americans violent and lascivious. He also wrote articles that included extremely offensive and very racist statements such as:

“Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy”

“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races”

“Two Negros took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis.”

With black Americans suffering disproportionately from the criminalization of marijuana, and a long, ugly history behind its original prohibition, it’s not hard to see why the California NAACP considers support for the Tax Cannabis Act to be a civil rights issue.

           

Legislation to permit marijuana use by people with severe chronic pain sparked heated Senate debate Thursday between a two-time cancer survivor who supports the bill and a physician who fears doctors would “over-prescribe” the illegal drug.

Sen. David R. Brinkley, who survived Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1989 and melanoma in 1995, said marijuana provides the best and safest relief for people living with constant pain. But Sen. Andrew P. Harris, an anesthesiologist, expressed deep concern that the legislation could be abused by treating physicians or lead unethical doctors to exploit the law by starting a side business of growing marijuana for medicinal use.

The Senate is scheduled to continue its consideration of the measure Friday morning.

If the legislation is enacted, Maryland would become the 15th state that permits medicinal marijuana use without penalty. Maryland currently allows medicinal use to be asserted as an affirmative defense to a marijuana-possession charge. But the defense, if successful, merely reduces the penalty to a $100 fine.

“Whether we like it or not,” thousands of desperate Marylanders in severe chronic pain are getting marijuana illegally from drug dealers, said Brinkley, R-Carroll and Frederick. Brinkley, who said he did not use marijuana when he had cancer, would prefer that these patients receive the treatment legally and under the care of their physician rather than illicitly through the “black market.”

Harris, though expressing sympathy for those in severe pain, countered that the legislation does not place sufficient constraints on physicians. The measure also does not bar doctors from growing the drug and then recommending it to patients, he said.

“This will solve our physician shortage problem in Maryland,” said Harris, R-Harford and Baltimore counties. “Where is the oversight of the physician?”

But Sen. Jamin B. “Jamie” Raskin, a co-sponsor of the bill, defended the legislation as creating “a carefully controlled and regulated system” in which both patients and would-be growers of marijuana would have to receive prior permission from the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“It [the legislation] is about getting the drug dealers out of the medical marijuana business and the doctors into it,” Raskin said.

Doctors would remain subject to their professional obligations, as enforced by the Maryland Board of Physicians, added Raskin, D-Montgomery.

Regulating the players

The measure, Senate Bill 627, would enable a patient’s regular treating physician to recommend marijuana for “a chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition” that causes severe or chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, severe or persistent muscle spasms or “any other condition that is severe and resistant to conventional medicine.” Patients with these conditions would have to receive an “identification card” from the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene affirming they are qualified for marijuana treatment.

The application for the card would have to include a statement from the regularly treating physician that the patent has “a debilitating medical condition for which recognized drugs or treatments would not be effective.” The doctor would also have to state that “the potential benefits of the medical use of marijuana would likely outweigh the health risks for the patient.”

Growers of medical marijuana would also have to be certified by the department.

To get certification, the grower would have to cultivate the marijuana in Maryland, meet security and safety requirements set by the department and pass a criminal background check.

The certified grower, and any pharmacy dispensing marijuana, would be barred from hiring anyone who has been convicted of possessing or selling a controlled dangerous substance. The grower would also have to submit to testing of the marijuana to ensure its consistency and that it has not been adulterated or contaminated.

“I don’t think you can write a more airtight program” to permit the medicinal use of marijuana while preventing its illicit use or sale, Raskin said.

“There are thousands of our constituents” who want the General Assembly to pass this bill, Raskin told his colleagues. “They are suffering.”

But Harris reiterated the need for stricter limits in the bill to prevent doctors from over-prescribing marijuana and prohibit them from seeking the department’s authorization to grow the drug.

If passed by the Senate, the measure would move to the House of Delegates for its consideration.

The 14 states that allow marijuana use for medicinal purposes are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group that lobbies for the drug’s legalization.

The growing national movement to allow marijuana use to treat severe chronic pain received a boost in October, when the Obama administration announced it will not prosecute cases against individuals whose use of marijuana is in compliance with state law.

           

The marijuana legalization measure will be on the Nov. 2 ballot as well.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer has a message for marijuana law reform activists: Just say no.

The liberal senator’s position might come as a surprise, but it’s no surprise to those who follow California politics: Boxer is facing perhaps the toughest reelection race of her career in 2010. She’s neck-and-neck with former GOP Rep. Tom Campbell and slightly ahead of former Hewlett Packard chief Carly Fiorina.

In a statement issued late Friday to liberal blog Talking Points Memo, Boxer’s campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski said the senator opposes a California ballot measure that seeks to legalize and tax marijuana.

“Senator Boxer does not support this initiative because she shares the concerns of police chiefs, sheriffs and other law enforcement officials that this measure could lead to an increase in crime, vehicle accidents and higher costs for local law enforcement agencies,” Kapolczynski said. “She supports current law in California, which allows for the use of medicinal marijuana with a doctor’s prescription.”

Boxer’s six-year Senate term comes to a close this year. She’ll stand for election Nov. 2 against a yet-to-be-determined Republican challenger

If  California voters approve, it will be the most comprehensive reform of marijuana laws ever undertaken in the United States. While some states, such as Oregon, have relatively lax penalties for possession, no state has attempted to regulate and tax the herb before.

The measure’s chances are good: A poll taken last April found that 56 percent of Californians want to see the herb legalized and taxed.

According to the L.A. Times, the measure would make it legal for anyone over 21 to own an ounce or less of pot, and to grow pot for personal use in a space no larger than 25 square feet. It would also give cities the right to license marijuana growers and sellers, and to collect taxes on the crop.

           

If they aren’t already, elected officials in the District should be keeping close tabs on this year’s election in California.

On Wednesday, advocates for legalizing marijuana officially secured enough signatures to put a referendum on the California ballot this November asking voters to legalize and tax pot.

And, judging by recent legislation in the District, what starts in California often eventually makes it way to the left-leaning District.

San Francisco’s decision in 2007 to ban plastic bags, for example, was one impetus for the District’s recently enacted bag tax. And San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome launched the modern same-sex marriage movement when he issued marriage licenses to gay couples in 2004 — long before the District took up the issue.

And California voters approved a referendum allowing for the medical use of marijuana in 1996 - two years before voters in the District approved a similar referendum. The District’s medical marijuana law is only now being implemented because it was tied up for years on Capitol Hill.

But if California voters approve the legalization of marijuana - which remains an if, because polls show a potentially close election - how long will it be before pro-pot advocates seek to petition a similar measure onto the ballot in the District?

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, estimates it would be six years or less before the marijuana legalization debate makes its way to the District.

“California, like it or not, really pushes American politics and business in one direction or another,” said St. Pierre, noting the issue is also expected to soon land on the ballot in Nevada and Oregon. “I am going to guess four to six years after the citizens of California pass something like this, there is either an initiative here or the city council takes it up.”

Already, D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward has been grumbling publicly that some of the District’s drug laws need to be reformed because too many residents are being locked up for drug possession. But Council member David A. Catania (I-At large), the chairman of the Committee on Health, and other council members have made it clear they do not want the medical marijuana legislation pending before the council to spiral into a debate over outright legalization.

A Washington Post poll conducted in January found District residents were split on whether they supported legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Forty-six percent of residents favored the idea, but 48 percent opposed.

But while 60 percent of whites supported legalizing marijuana, only 37 percent of African-Americans felt that way, largely due to strong opposition among older black women.

A debate over marijuana legalization wouldn’t be entirely new terrain for the District. In 1977, the city council approved legislation to decriminalize possession of one ounce or less of the drug. But then Mayor Walter E. Washington vetoed the measure, citing the possible effects the law would have on city youths.

And even if legalization advocates won a referendum over the issue in the District, Congress would ultimately have the power to block it from taking place.

It’s hard to see Congress staying out of that debate. But who would have guessed six years ago that the debate over whether to legalize same-sex marriage in the District would have been such a snooze this year on Capitol Hill?

           

You may have heard there’s a push to legalize marijuana in California. You may not have heard that it’s for real.

Voting ballots in California this November will contain an initiative to legalize, tax, and regulate the sale of marijuana to adults 21 and older, and while this may sound like something that has no chance, whatsoever, of ever becoming law, the thing is: it actually might.

The organized campaign around this initiative is called Tax Cannabis, and it’s the brainchild of marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee. “Marijuana entrepreneur” sounds highly illegal, but, in California, where medical pot is sold unobstructed by the feds, it’s not: Lee founded Oaksterdam University, a school that teaches how to grow marijuana and run a marijuana business, as chronicled by Josh Green in The Atlantic last April.

This was not, mind you, originally an effort of the national marijuana policy establishment, per se. According to conventional wisdom on initiatives like this one, 2012 would be a better year to dedicate resources to a marijuana legalization campaign: it’s a presidential election year, and younger and marginal voters–voters who could be more sympathetic to legalizing pot–will come out to vote, whereas fewer people vote in the midterms. People who vote in midterms are more engaged in the process–if pollsters label respondents as “likely voters,” then the midterm turnout is made up of are even likelier voters than the electorate in presidential years–the type of people who might not, typically, support an initiative like this one. So, much like in California’s gay-marriage movement, there was some hesitation over whether 2010 was the right year to do this.

But Lee went ahead anyway, putting up money from Oaksterdam and another of his groups, marijuana provider S.K. Seymore, LLC, to obtain the 849,000 signatures needed to get on the November 2 ballot, with his donations comprising most of the roughly $1.3 million spent in 2009 on the petition drive.

Lee now has a a team of pros working for him as campaign consultants.

It includes Chris Lehane, the former Bill Clinton communications adviser and press secretary for Al Gore, both as VP and in the 2000 campaign; Dan Newman, whose firm SCN Strategies consults for Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D) reelection campaign and is heading up communications for Level the Playing Field 2010, the independent-expenditure campaign against multimillionaire GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman; and Doug Linney of The Next Generation, a firm that has worked for state and local candidate campaigns, as well as major issue-advocacy drives and marijuana decriminalization/law-enforcement-prioritization efforts in California.

In short, this will be a legitimate campaign operation. Tax Cannabis is already airing a radio ad in the state’s largest and most expensive media markets, L.A. and San Francisco, featuring a former law enforcement official.

“This isn’t some…whim of a couple of hippies,” said SCN’s Dan Newman, who is handling communications for Tax Cannabis. “It’s a serious, well crafted, well funded campaign that was put together very carefully and professionally run and hopes to win.”

The campaign will do “everything that a winning campaign does,” Newman said. That would mean radio ads, TV ads, volunteer and/or robo- phone calls, door-to-door canvasses, and direct mail. Newman would not specifically say which of those Tax Cannabis will do.

Messaging will focus heavily on invoking the support of former law enforcement officials, plus the argument that has driven so much media coverage around this push: estimates that legalizing and taxing marijuana could help California’s crippled state budget to the tune of $1 billion, including tax revenue and less spending on law enforcement.

Where will the money come from to fund this campaign? Lee infused it with cash to get the signatures, but according to state financial disclosures, Tax Cannabis has only $32,000 in the bank. The only state-registered opposition group, called “Opposition to the California Marijuana Legalization Initiative (2010),” has not filed disclosure paperwork, so it is unclear how much money Tax Cannabis is up against.

The campaign is reaching out to a broad coalition of donors, Newman said, including an online fundraising operation and traditional political donors.

But the elephant in the room is this: Tax Cannabis has the support of the Drug Policy Alliance, one of several major, national-level drug-policy reform groups. On its board sits liberal super-donor George Soros.

Given how expensive it is to buy air time in the Golden State–L.A. is one of the nation’s most expensive media markets–it’s not uncommon for political campaigns to wait until a few weeks before Election Day to blast the radio and TV airwaves with a major media buy. And, because California places no limits on donations and spending on ballot initiatives, it is conceivable that if things look close down the stretch, and he felt so inclined, Soros could inject millions of dollars into this initiative.

Right now, the campaign is working to secure endorsements, and the language of the ballot initiative was crafted, Newman said, with an eye toward garnering a broad base of support. It does not simply legalize pot outright: it allows individual counties to regulate the sale and possession to adults over 21, which would likely create a similar effect as “dry counties,” where alcohol can’t be sold. It does not legalize possession of marijuana on school grounds, or driving while impaired. The entire proposition is posted here.

Reformers claim legalization is popular. A major public poll hasn’t been conducted since April 2009, when Field showed 56% support out of 901 Californians polled. Newman says Tax Cannabis has conducted internal polls that show legalization polling in the mid-50s.

November is a long way off. Marijuana legalization gained significant traction in 2009, mostly because of California’s budget crisis, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s suggestion that it be seriously discussed, the drug war happening in Mexico, and the finding of the Field poll.

Although Tax Cannabis is airing a radio ad, a public messaging campaign has yet to ramp up against legalizing pot. When it does–when both sides are conducting this fight in public–look for opinion to congeal either for the ballot initiative or against it.

Until then, legalized pot remains a possible outcome in November 2010.

           

The Los Angeles City Council last week finally adopted a medical marijuana ordinance. Though not perfect, it balances the needs of local communities with those of patients who truly need access to medical marijuana. And it will rein in an out-of-control situation in which a federally banned substance has been sold for the last four years as hundreds of dispensaries proliferated in the city of Los Angeles, with no local regulations and ambiguous state laws to guide us.

To make the new ordinance work as effectively as possible, legislators need to clarify the state’s medical marijuana laws — Proposition 215 and its accompanying SB 420. Both are silent or vague on critical issues for the practical implementation at the local level.

As cities throughout California draft ordinances, they are grappling with issues that they have no power over and that should be handled at the state level. Moreover, they are trying to pinpoint evolving and changing court rulings interpreting state law.

In Los Angeles, one of the most difficult issues was what constitutes a “sale.” My colleagues on the City Council and I addressed this by stipulating that although no collective shall operate for profit, “cash and in-kind contributions, reimbursements and reasonable compensation” are allowed as long as they comply with current state law. However, we don’t know how this provision will be enforced because we are relying on state law that is unclear and in litigation.

It is also unclear whether the over-the-counter dispensary model was what voters intended when they approved Proposition 215. The law might have intended a much more limited distribution of marijuana, such as having either patients or their caregivers grow their own product or having collectives grow a small amount and reimburse members for their labor.

Without clarity from the state, the council also had to punt on the issues of cultivation and transportation of marijuana by saying that the ordinance would abide by state law.

Cultivation is important because the ordinance as written does not address where the collectives will obtain their marijuana. Will it be grown locally, imported from Northern California or bought on the black market? And are people who transport the marijuana to and from collectives immune from prosecution?

Another issue that is not being addressed locally but perhaps is the biggest impediment to properly regulating dispensaries relates to the wide discretion and relative immunity that physicians have in recommending medical marijuana to patients. When most of us have a medical issue, we don’t look through the pages of alternative weeklies to find a physician. We go to the doctor who knows the most about our medical history — our primary-care physician.

Yet under state law there is no requirement to curb abuse by having people see their primary-care physician first, or, as Oregon does, to require that a patient get a note from an “attending physician” with whom he or she has an established patient/physician relationship.

It’s interesting to note that Oregon, like several other states, only allows medical marijuana for a narrow list of conditions. In contrast, in California, marijuana can be recommended for anything from cancer to writer’s cramp. So, although California voters have not (yet) directed the state to legalize marijuana for nonmedical use, the state medical marijuana law has created de facto legalization because practically anyone can become a qualified patient.

Given these ambiguities, the city has provided an ordinance within existing state law that does its best to create access for medical marijuana patients while protecting local communities from potential negative consequences.

The council voted to support a requirement that dispensaries be at least 1,000 feet from sensitive-use areas where children and families gather, such as schools, playgrounds and places of worship — and from other dispensaries.

We also capped the number of collectives at 70 (instead of the estimated 700-plus that exist) and required notification to neighborhood councils before new dispensaries open in their areas. To control profiteering, we also required annual audits and outlawed common ownership of multiple collectives.

I, like a majority of California voters, voted in favor of Proposition 215 because I believe that patients dealing with cancer, AIDS, chronic pain and other serious ailments should have access to medical marijuana.

However, I remain concerned about profiteers looking to make a quick buck, recreational users looking to use an ambiguous state law to their advantage and less-than-scrupulous doctors willing to play along by writing quick and unverified recommendations. Though seemingly innocuous to some, these unchecked activities can lead to real problems in local communities should the state refuse to further regulate medical marijuana. I encourage state legislators to immediately amend SB 420 to deal with its ambiguities.

In the future, if the voters legalize marijuana for recreational use, I would hope that the state provides clear and practical rules for local implementation, unlike what has occurred with medical marijuana.

José Huizar represents the 14th District on the Los Angeles City Council. This post originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times

           

Since the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, cannabis, also known as marijuana, has been federally classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no legally accepted medical use and has the same classification as, for example, heroin. Over the last couple of decades, however, that classification has started to be challenged, especially at the state level.

Currently, 13 states have passed some form of legislation allowing the use of medical marijuana. California was the first, passing the Compassionate Use Act in 1996 that legalized medical marijuana and ostensibly set regulations for the production and distribution of the drug. In recent months, New Mexico has begun “breathing life,” to quote an Associated Press report, into its own 2007 legislation that legalized medical marijuana. That New Mexico has taken so long to formalize the systemization of medical marijuana is indicative of a larger national resistance to the notion of legal weed in the United States.

Before further discussion, the fact that marijuana does indeed have undeniable and considerable medical benefits must be made clear. Marijuana is unparalleled in its propensity for alleviating the side effects endured by chemotherapy patients, and in general the drug has well-chronicled benefits for chronic pain relief such as combating migraines and nerve pain in HIV patients. As Dr. Donald Abrams, a cancer specialist at San Francisco General Hospital, said, “I can recommend [this] one drug for all those [pains], instead of writing five different prescriptions.”

In fact, even the American Medical Association, or AMA, agrees with the need to reclassify marijuana. The current classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug puts it on par with drugs like heroin and LSD, which clearly have no medical use. On November 10, the AMA called for a federal review of marijuana’s status under the Controlled Substances Act, stating its hope for “the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines, and alternate delivery methods.” The AMA was promptly ignored by the relevant federal authorities.

This dismissal speaks again to the long-standing unwillingness of our nation to enter proper dialogue concerning medical marijuana. The recreational and cultural use of marijuana, most prominently associated with the flowery 70s, has stigmatized the drug to the point where, it can be argued, many are unable to delineate between supporting the legalization of medical marijuana and supporting the legalization of marijuana for, simply put, getting high.

Nevertheless, there is indeed a distinction. Marijuana has scientifically supported medical benefits, ones that are so persuasive that even the AMA felt compelled to call for its reclassification. But marijuana seems doomed by its negative connotations.

To resist the legalization of such a positive social good for reasons extraneous to its inherent medical benefits is simply a fundamentally flawed approach to enacting progress.

Detractors say that there is a high probability that the legalization of marijuana for medical use will lead to rampant abuse. And a Sept. 23, 2007, “60 Minutes” special on California’s notorious “pot shops” seemed to confirm this worry. Essentially, as long as a patient — and this term is used in the loosest fashion imaginable — can convince the doctor that marijuana is necessary to relieve his pain (“You know, all I can do is take my patients’ statements as factual,” said one doctor), he can easily gain access to marijuana.

But this lack of discipline can be partly attributed to the incoherence of medical marijuana’s legalization. The aforementioned “60 Minutes” feature highlighted the blatant conflict between marijuana’s legal status as a medical drug and the virtually arbitrary raids that federal authorities conducted on California’s pot shops. This summer, furthermore, New Hampshire’s governor vetoed medical marijuana legalization, citing its inconsistency with federal regulation. But clearly, the evidence says the current federal regulations are wrong.

Unless the government — and this country — are willing to approach marijuana reasonably, we will not even get the chance to attempt proper systemization of medical marijuana. California’s marijuana policy, the state’s doctors readily admit, is of course not stringent enough, but that does not mean the law needs to swing back to the other extreme.

In New Mexico, then, cautious steps are being taken to define a template for the production and distribution of legal medical marijuana. There are 15 qualifying conditions for medical use of the drug and there are five nonprofit organizations permitted to produce it. Each producer is limited to 95 plants. The success of New Mexico’s scheme is far from guaranteed, but it represents a willingness to at least explore the potential and limitations of a properly regulated system of medical marijuana.

Nobody is denying that marijuana, as a product, has its downsides. Science is not yet sure of its lung cancer-inducing properties as well as its addictive properties. But these risks are analogous to (which, to pre-empt the decriers, does not mean “are equal to”) the risks of other drugs that the federal authorities seem willing to condone — Vicodin and Valium come to mind. Why should marijuana be treated any differently?

What is needed is a paradigm shift, one that allows us to look at marijuana not as some taboo indulgence but as a legitimate medical product. Condoning medical marijuana is not the same as condoning marijuana for other purposes.

To use the words of one of New Mexico’s approved marijuana producers, “The faster we move away from a paranoid drug dealer model to a normal business model, the better it’s going to be [for medical marijuana].” Fortunately for its proponents, medical marijuana seems to have a strong ally in the current administration. Obama’s stance on state legalization, as of February, is that the federal government will no longer interfere in the form of raids and other similar attacks.

But for real change to be enacted, there still needs to be a fundamental rethinking of whether it remains appropriate to oppose medical marijuana based on concerns peripheral to its merit as a medical drug. Until then, the question of how best to maximize its medical usefulness through regulation and systemization remains a theoretical one.

http://phoenix.swarthmore.edu/2009/11/19/opinions/legalize-medical-marijuana

           

Great news for those in Wisconsin…

           

No tie-dye was on display at a standing-room only hearing held by a California lawmaker on Wednesday in a bid to get his marijuana legalization bill taken seriously.

Instead, suits and sober discussion were the rule at the state Capitol as Assemblyman Tom Ammiano presided over what his office said was the first legislative consideration of the issue since California banned the drug in 1913.

Both sides of the debate were heard, but Ammiano has long had his mind made up.

Before the hearing, the San Francisco Democrat and former comedian called the criminalization of marijuana a failed policy that denies the state significant revenue. He said the bill could put the state in a position to set the national agenda on pot.

“I think we have a real shot at it, particularly in the context of it being in some ways bigger than California,” Ammiano said.

His bill would tax and regulate marijuana in the state much like alcohol. Adults 21 and older could legally possess, grow and sell marijuana. The state would charge a $50-per-ounce fee and a 9 percent tax on retail sales.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he does not support legalization but caused a stir in May when he said he was open to debate on the issue.

At least one poll showed a slight majority of Californians would support a tax-and-regulate scheme for pot, but the bill’s chances remain unclear. Skeptics have questioned whether the state could truly enforce a tax on marijuana and whether users and sellers would want to expose themselves to possible federal prosecution.

“You’re going to create a record of some sort,” said Assemblyman Curt Hagman, a San Bernardino County Republican. “You can’t force me to self-incriminate myself.”

Supporters of Ammiano’s bill noted the state already collects taxes from medical marijuana dispensaries with little federal interference.

Legal experts on both sides also agreed at the informational hearing that nothing in current federal law can prevent California from stripping criminal penalties for marijuana from its own books.

“If California decides to legalize marijuana, there’s nothing in the Constitution that stands in its way,” said Tamar Todd, a staff attorney for the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance.

Speakers at the hearing argued a number of issues, including whether legalization would increase or decrease crime and help or hurt children.

State tax collectors presented an estimate that Ammiano’s bill could generate nearly $1.4 billion in tax revenue. They cautioned, however, that the figure depended on several untested assumptions about how rates of use and prices would change following possible legalization.

Rosalie Pacula, director of drug policy research at the nonpartisan Rand Corp., said data on the economics of marijuana were “insufficient on which to base any sound policy.”

Pacula said a failed effort in Canada to increase taxes on cigarettes showed that unless taxes had a minimal effect on prevailing prices, “you create the economic incentive for the black market to remain.”

As the legalization movement has gained momentum, organized opposition outside law enforcement groups has been sparse. Still, several anti-pot protesters spoke passionately during and after the hearing.

Marijuana use is commonplace among young people in his Sacramento neighborhood, said Bishop Ron Allen, president of the International Faith Based Coalition, an anti-drug religious group.

Legalizing marijuana to tax it would help fill state coffers at the expense of its kids, he said.

“It’s blood money, that’s it,” he said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jXqaCr8mSHC5wPjTJgCgnHv18Z3gD9BKQROG1