and the people responsible for changing the laws regarding cannabis should be charged with criminal negligence. Proposition 215
In California, under the Proposition 215 guidelines, medical marijuana dispensaries must operate as not-for-profit collectives or cooperatives, and are prohibited from buying marijuana from growers who are not themselves patients or registered caregivers. The only fees dispensaries can collect are those covering overhead and operating expenses.
It would be an interesting court-case were we to try and "fix" the pharmaceutical industry using the same laws and one wonders how OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma would have paid their $400 million fine to the US government when they were found guilty of lying to the US public over just how "addictive" OxyContin is, without selling their goods for profit?
The new guidelines, brought into play by California attorney general Jerry Brown strongly urge patients to obtain state medical marijuana ID cards, and also advise police to accept such cards as proof of legitimate medical need.
The guidelines also call on police to return seized marijuana to patients who are later proved to be legitimate. They prohibit medical marijuana patients from lighting up near schools and recreation centers or at work, unless employers approve.
Affirming that California's medical marijuana law is not preempted by federal law, the guidelines further direct "state and local law enforcement officers [to] not arrest individuals or seize marijuana under federal law" when an individual's conduct is legal under state law.
So what did the Police have to say about all this? Anyone who has had any experiences with law enforcement and cannabis may will expect the Police to be disgruntled about having to molly-coddle the medical marijuana program which allows people to use a schedule 1 narcotic (American Law) which is rated right up there with heroin and cocaine? But thats just not the case.
California law enforcement pronounced itself pleased with the guidelines. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, praised Brown for promulgating them. "Since Proposition 215 was passed, the laws surrounding the use, possession and distribution of medical marijuana became confusing at best. These newly established guidelines are an essential tool for law enforcement and provide the parameters needed for consistent statewide regulation and enforcement."
Despite the apparent threat to non-compliant dispensaries and their suppliers, most medical marijuana advocates also pronounced themselves generally satisfied with the guidelines. The medical marijuana defense group Americans for Safe Access has been working with Attorney General Brown and his predecessor, Bill Lockyer, for several years in an effort to see guidelines promulgated. ASA spokesman Kris Hermes said this week that while the guidelines are not perfect, they are a step in the right direction.
"Given the vagueness of the initiative and the statutes, the guidelines are pretty good," said Bruce Mirken, San Francisco-based communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. "They establish parameters within which the distribution of medical marijuana is to be treated as legitimate and legal. That's important because some prosecutors have been adamant that there is no legal authority for dispensaries -- period. This cuts the legs out from under them," he said.
Still, said Mirken, the guidelines are a step in the right direction. "Given that we have all these issues here in California, anything that moves us in the direction of an orderly system with some legal clarity is a good thing. When you have local authorities who just don't like medical marijuana and are looking for an excuse to bust people, which some of them have been doing all along, this is going to provide protection."
Protection
So it would seem the state of California, at great public expense, has set about protecting the rights of those who use cannabis out of medical necessity.
United Kingdom
Meanwhile here in the United Kingdom, those same medical cannabis patients who California attorney general Jerry Brown has protected with new laws, would face imprisonment for 5 years, just for simply possessing cannabis used in the treatment of painful, often debilitating, and sometimes terminal, medical conditions.
The British Home Office on the other hand, believes cannabis to be dangerous. Which is quite a statement when you bear in mind the "prime movers" in the British cannabis debate, Home Office drugs minister Vernon Coaker and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith both admitted they used to use cannabis themselves.
"Lethal and toxic" are two words used recently, in an attempt to scare the hell out of our youngsters when in actual fact, they gave up listening to the scare stories decades ago, when the 40-something parents of today were raising hell back in the 70's and the 80's and perhaps this is the real crux of the whole cannabis issue?
The fact is there are many tens of thousands of British citizens who are approaching the onset of middle-age, having spent their youth smoking cannabis. And they're not dead, nor are they mad.
So to be told something is dangerous, and will kill you, when you know from hard-won personal experience its not as nearly risky as the government tells us, is perhaps the bitterest pill to swallow.
Adapted from material originally displayed on AlterNet.
SOURCE |
