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The Debate On California's Pot Shops
Morley Safer Reports On Proposition 215
9/20/07|CBS News| by

(CBS) -- The idea was a noble one: pass a law to make marijuana legal for cancer and AIDS sufferers whose pain and nausea the drug is known to relieve. But the law the Rev. Scott Imler thought would one day put the drug in pharmacies has instead created "pot dealers in storefronts" who sell to anyone with doctors' notes that are fairly easy to obtain.
60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer speaks to Imler and others for a report on medical marijuana, this Sunday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Imler admits the noble idea turned out to be a pipe dream. "I think there's a lot of [people just buying the drug to get high]," he tells Safer. "A lot of what we have now is basically pot dealers in storefronts."

Imler lives in California, one of 12 states to pass a medical marijuana bill. To pass California's Proposition 215, Imler says many more types of patients besides cancer and AIDS sufferers had to be included. "They all have their lobbies. The kidney patient and the heart patient," says Imler. That led to a blanket law covering anyone with pain, setting the stage for the easy-to-get doctor's notes and hundreds of storefront marijuana "clubs." "It's just ridiculous the amount of money going through these cannabis clubs," Imler tells Safer.

Don Duncan, an owner of three medical marijuana clubs in California, says abuse is to be expected as it occurs with prescription drugs as well. "There's bound to be abuse in the system," says Duncan. "What we really need right now are regulations that address those issues."

The "clubs" are supposed to be comprised of patients who grow marijuana for the sole reason of distributing it to fellow members, but Imler says, "Most of these cannabis centers are buying their marijuana off the black market. They're dumping millions of dollars into the criminal black market."

This has not escaped the notice of federal officials, for whom the drug is still illegal under federal law. One of Duncan's clubs was raided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Shutting down the clubs solves one problem, but could affect the quality of life for people like William Leahy, who suffers from vascular degeneration. "I have a deformity here," he says, pointing to his hip, "and a great deal of pain and discomfort. [The clubs] help me with that," says Leahy.

Imler says it's time for the federal government to step up for people like Leahy. "We only saw the local cannabis programs as a stopgap measure on the way to the federal government rescheduling it and making [marijuana] available in the pharmacy like regular medicines are.

Until that happens, we're going to have what we have now, which is chaos."

 

pkster8235

Now there is something I could use for my health benefits

__________________

I wanna live it out, I know I'm already dead.
No concrete adversity, only traps of our own actions.
How we wanted it to be, now I'm never gonna see you again..
you checked out.

kcbennie

That's great that 60-minutes is doing a piece on medical mj, but the way that they are presenting it will cause many people to think that it's failing. They are presenting it as chaotic and abused. It seems like they are going to focus on the negative aspects of it.

__________________
"My friend said 'Man, the weather is really trippy' and I said 'The weather's not trippy. It's just the way that you perceive the weather that is in fact trippy.' And then I though to myself 'I should've just said 'Yeah.''"

- Mitch Hedburg

kcbennie

Instead of closing the clubs down, there should be some type of licensed growing operation so that the dipensaries don't have to buy from the black market, and can prove where their product came from.

5drive

Now that it's so easy to get prescription drugs via the internet, with some unseen doctor rubber stamping your drug of choice, why is anyone surprised the same is happening with mj scripts? There's always going to be drug abuse, both legal and illicit.

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Inhale

He is right, this is just the federal governments way of keeping all marijuana illegal. It's supposed to be medicine so why can't it be sold in pharmacies. I think the federal government wanted this to happen, just so they can have another reason to try and get them shut down.

hash pancakes

Since there hasn't been pharmacies for cannabis in the past, right now we do have some power in making them what us, as patients, want them to be. There is no control except our power to choose how to obtain our medicine.
It's hard to apply standards for all, especially where prices are concerned. But what bothers me is that club prices are usually so high, the capitalistic attitude really turns me off.
It's about helping others, not the money.
Peace

Viper420

I just saw the 60 minutes piece on MMJ and they did a hachet job on California MMJ. They showed an undercover clip from some TV station that sent in 4 decoys wanting a doctors recommendation for MMJ and 3 out of 4 of the decoys got a note and there was nothing wrong with them. It seems to me that the MMj community has got to clean up its act or its quite possible that Prop 215 could get repealed. They had some hip hop artist turned med pot distributor who admitted making 13 grand a month off of MMJ and then they panned to one of his gangster videos with him smoking a joint and thumbing his nose at the police.....not a good image.

Viper420

Here is a link to the CBS 60 minutes show via Yahoo.......Pot Shops ...on 60 Minutes; Exclusive Video Only on Yahoo! News

Am not sure how long they keep the episodes up.

ssj3gotenks

Not true - there have been many many cases of busts for both the buyers and distributors who sell/buy controlled substances, which most prescription drugs are not a part of. It's a much major offense than misdemeanor mj possession.