Lit_Match

Medical marijuana fight wastes funds
08-11-08|Daily Bulletin|David Herrick

Even as California's massive budget deficit prompts new cuts to Medi-Cal's drug benefits for HIV/AIDS patients, county officials here waste precious resources in doomed legal challenges to state medical marijuana laws designed to help many of those very patients.

For more than two-and-a-half years, San Bernardino and San Diego county officials sought somebody - anybody - in the courts who might entertain their convoluted arguments against obeying state medical marijuana laws requiring an identification card system for qualified patients.

And twice - first in 2006 and then just last week by the 4th District Court of Appeals - the courts have quickly dismissed their arguments.

Despite coming up empty, the two county boards of supervisors must now decide whether to appeal their case one last time to the California Supreme Court. Whether out of respect for the rule of law, compassion for suffering medical marijuana patients or simply acknowledging the waste to taxpayers, the choice should be easy: It's time for county officials to drop their challenge, obey the law and move on to more important matters.

As a former San Bernardino sheriff's deputy and a licensed medical marijuana patient who was permanently injured in the line of duty, the counties' hell-bent opposition to providing qualified patients with some means of easily identifying themselves to police defies logic.

In fact, most local law-enforcement officers I know would welcome a system that allows them to easily verify valid patients. For them, time wasted investigating legal medical marijuana patients is time that could be spent pursuing actual crimes.

However, county officials' attempts to avoid their obligations under California law likely has less to do with legitimate legal disagreements than it does with sheer ideology and a knee-jerk reaction against medical marijuana patients.

As private citizens, board members are certainly entitled to their own opinions, but as public officials, they have an obligation to respect the rule of law, just as I did as a peace officer. The courts have made it clear that the counties' central argument - that federal law prevents the counties from establishing medical marijuana ID card programs - lacks merit.

By acknowledging this unavoidable reality, San Bernardino County officials wouldn't necessarily be abandoning their principles - misguided as those principles may be. They would merely be demonstrating that they understand the law and respect their constituents enough to devote their limited resources to more meaningful, urgent matters.

To do otherwise is cruel, arrogant and childish. With the state facing a $17.2 billion budget deficit, county residents - regardless of their personal views on medical marijuana - deserve better.

David Herrick is a former San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy and resident of Riverside. He holds a county-issued medical marijuana ID card.

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