Buzzby

(BuzzNote: I think this op ed piece is valuable as an illustration of how abuses of medical marijuana laws provide fodder for the prohibitionists.)

California Shows Why Medical Marijuana Is Dangerous
Pot Bill Would Bring Chaos To Michigan
Bill Schuette and Daniel Michael | Detroit Free Press | 10/10/2008

A decade ago, voters in California approved a proposal to legalize marijuana smoking for so-called “medical” purposes. Today, even the proposal’s most vocal supporters admit the California law has resulted in “chaos,” “pot dealers in storefronts” and millions of dollars being dumped “into the criminal black market.”

(BuzzNote: Sterbo said he still likes it... )

Proposal 1 on the Nov. 4 ballot in Michigan is just like the California law. (BuzzNote: Except where it's different...) While its stated intent, to help people in serious pain, is well meaning, Proposal 1’s vague language, careless loopholes and dangerous consequences place Michigan communities and kids at risk. Michigan voters should reject it.

Proposal 1 allows one person to grow and provide marijuana for a number of other people, as long as the marijuana is kept in a locked facility.

What happens when that locked facility is your neighbor’s garage or a strip mall storefront, as they have in California?

(BuzzNote: Absolutely nothing. How can what's going on behind locked doors have any effect on people outside?)

Maybe you think this can’t happen in Michigan, but consider this: In North Hollywood, there are now more pot shops than Starbucks stores, and last week a security guard was gunned down outside a Los Angeles pot shop.

(BuzzNote: Pot's better for you than coffee...)

Everyday, diligent parents and teachers fight a difficult battle to protect teens from drugs and their influences. Law enforcement officials in California point to their state’s marijuana law as a cause for the dramatic increase in drug use among high school students. That’s a major reason why groups such as the Michigan Sheriffs’ Association and the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police are opposed to Proposal 1.

(BuzzNote: Didn't they hear that Drug Czar Walters has conquered the teenage drug problem? )

For doctors and hospitals, those on the front lines of medical care, Proposal 1 is “bad medicine.” For one thing, Proposal 1 doesn’t require a prescription. (BuzzNote: Which it can't because prescribing drugs is under federal law.) It not only relies on but promotes smoking as a delivery mechanism. And, Proposal 1 could result in costly lawsuits over such things as whether doctors and hospitals must allow patients to smoke marijuana in a doctor’s office or hospital room, despite every other law banning smoking.

(BuzzNote: Why? If the laws ban "smoking", then smoking anything is denied. If the laws ban "smoking tobacco" then they don't pertain to marijuana. Most state medical marijuana laws specifically state where it may be used.)

The Michigan State Medical Society, the Michigan Health and Hospital Association and the Michigan Osteopathic Association all oppose Proposal 1 because smoking marijuana is not the answer to the important scientific questions surrounding the effective care of patients.

(BuzzNote: Hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients, who are in a position to know, would beg to differ.)

A legal analysis of Proposal 1 outlines a situation where the worker next to you on the assembly line or the driver of a delivery van could smoke marijuana on the job and your employer could do nothing about it.

(BuzzNote: Wrong! The initiative contains this language:

Sec. 7. (a) The medical use of marihuana is allowed under state law to the extent that it is carried out in accordance with the provisions of this act.

(b) This act shall not permit any person to do any of the following:

(4) Operate, navigate, or be in actual physical control of any motor vehicle, aircraft, or motorboat while under the influence of marihuana.

and

(c) Nothing in this act shall be construed to require:

(2) An employer to accommodate the ingestion of marihuana in any workplace or any employee working while under the influence of marihuana.)

In fact, if that delivery van driver, or any other driver under the influence of “medical” marijuana for that matter, hits another car and injures someone, Proposal 1 may allow marijuana use as a defense in court.

(BuzzNote: Nonsense! See 7b4 above.)

Lastly, Proposal 1 would leave the regulation of a “medical” marijuana program up to Lansing to figure out. With Michigan facing such tough economic times, taxpayers can’t afford a new government bureaucracy to keep track of marijuana users.

(BuzzNote: Is that because it's less expensive to arrest, try, and incarcerate sick people? Is Michigan's government there to serve its citizens or itself?)

Proposal 1 is many things, but above all else it is a law of unintended consequences. The dangerous implications of its flaws and loopholes have brought together Michigan’s doctors, hospitals, sheriffs, police chiefs, prosecutors, family groups, and taxpayer advocates to urge voters to say “No” to Proposal 1.

California’s “medical” marijuana proposal brought chaos; Michigan’s proposal brings an opportunity to learn from California’s mistake.

(BuzzNote: California's big problems are for-profit dispensaries and doctors without scruples who recommend medical marijuana for hangnails. Michigan's proposed law doesn't allow for either.)

Judge Bill Schuette is a member of the Michigan Court of Appeals. Dr. Daniel Michael is a Detroit neurosurgeon and speaker of the Michigan State Medical Society’s House of Delegates.

(BuzzNote: The full text of the Michigan marijuana initiative can be found here )

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