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Plainsman1963

Guest Viewpoint By Brian Michaels | 10-12-2004 | Registerguard.com

Measure 33 is an initiative to correct deficiencies in the day-to-day operation of the Medical Marijuana Act passed by voters in 1998. It does not legalize marijuana, nor does it invite black market drug cartels to Oregon.
From the patients' perspective, the objective of Measure 33 is to make access to the medicine through their physicians as free from judicial impediments as possible. From the physicians' perspective, the objective is to lift the pall of political controversy hanging over those who provide this medicine to patients.

I have represented medical marijuana patients against criminal charges throughout the state. Juries have found in favor of these patients in counties dubbed both conservative and liberal.

Judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials, however, are far less willing to accept the law as written. In what I am certain is an unprecedented wave of resistance, they second-guess doctors' decisions and determine for themselves whether a patient is worthy of this medicine.

Oxycontin, morphine, Vicodin, codeine, Prozac, Xanex: None of these drugs has ever received the kind of scrutiny and pressure applied to a medical marijuana patient. I believe it is because marijuana has been an illegal substance for so long, and because the courts, the police and the prosecutors have all placed so many people in jail for so long.

It is unrealistic to expect people to suddenly change the way they view this substance and the people who use it. Truly, you cannot simply legislate behavior.

What Measure 33 does is expand and simplify the method by which patients can obtain access to medical marijuana. Currently, patients are allowed to possess four immature plants and three mature plants.

Overlooking the obvious mathematical disparity of how four immature plants grow to become three mature plants, how is one to know what is mature and immature? What is a plant? Do clones count? Is it OK to grow, say, 12 to ensure that seven survive?

Measure 33 allows a patient to grow 10 plants, of all stages, plus clones - thus eliminating technical discrepancies for patients who are merely trying to obtain the medicine their doctors see as beneficial.

Logistically, the grow-your-own strategy hasn't worked for many patients. Patients are in the unenviable position of having to grow their own medicine - or finding caregivers to grow their marijuana for free, since paying someone to do it is illegal.

Growing marijuana takes time, money and know-how, and also requires a good deal of space - not only for the lights and plants (or the land to grow it outside), but also a separate space for the beginning of the growth cycle.

Between the police and the expenses, it is increasingly difficult for patients to gain access to marijuana. Measure 33 establishes dispensaries whereby patients can obtain their preferred medicine in the same way that all other medicine is accessed - they would buy it at a licensed and registered establishment.

All sales would be accounted for by the governing agency. As with any other prescribed medication, unregistered sales would constitute a felony. Historically, black market cartels are less attracted to areas where their wares are dispensed under government regulation.

Because of the low medical risks presented by marijuana ingestion (zero, by all medical standards), the number of health professionals who can recommend medical marijuana would be expanded under Measure 33. This would relieve physicians of much of the political pressure currently being applied, and eliminate the second-guessing of doctors that is endemic in the courts.

By the latest polling, 83 percent of Oregon voters agree that marijuana has medicinal value - up from 54 percent when the original initiative passed in 1998.

Oregonians need look no further than California, where the voter-initiated law allows access to more marijuana by patients, without any of the horrors predicted by those opposing Measure 33. In fact, there has not been a single identifiable adverse effect.

So whatever your fears, and whatever the opposition fears, chalk it up to human inertia - because we have at our backyard an experiment we can look at to determine what the impact really is. We in Oregon can benefit from the knowledge and experience gained by the California experiment.

Brian Michaels is a Eugene attorney specializing in criminal defense and First Amendment law. He is working with Eugene's Compassion Center and the Measure 33 campaign.

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