Jacob Redmond
Well-Known Member
Watching police and policymakers contend with shifting public attitudes toward marijuana would be downright comical if the lives and liberty of so many people weren't hanging in the balance.
The velocity of that shift has been breathtaking. As recently as Bill Clinton's tenure as president, every state in the union prohibited the sale of marijuana for any purpose. Today, 32 states (and the District of Columbia) allow doctors to prescribe it for a wide variety of medical problems.
Four other states have approved recreational sales. Washington and Colorado, with populations half the size of Michigan's, are each on track to collect about half a billion dollars in marijuana-related tax revenue this year.
Michigan voters approved medical marijuana by a large margin in 2010, and advocates of recreational legalization will launch a crowd-funding campaign later this month to put the issue on the November 2016 ballot.
But state legislators here are still struggling to agree on a workable plan for licensing and regulating medical marijuana dispensaries. A bill by state Rep. Mike Callton, R-Nashville, authorizing medical marijuana provisioning centers won lopsided passage by the House in November 2013, but an eleventh-hour lobbying effort by sheriffs and prosecutors kept it from coming to a vote in the state Senate last year.
Land Mine?
The federal government, too, has sent conflicting signals.
Although federal law continues to prohibit the sale of marijuana for any purpose, prosecutions of state-sanctioned marijuana dispensaries have plummeted in the two years since the Department of Justice issued an advisory discouraging the pursuit of patients and providers who comply with medical marijuana laws enacted by the states.
But U.S. attorneys in some of those states continue to press hundreds of medical marijuana prosecutions initiated prior to the advisory, creating a de facto double standard for patients accused before and after 2013.
Lawyers for a California man prosecuted for operating a medical marijuana dispensary in that state have asked the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to end the case, arguing that an obscure amendment to a congressional appropriations bill passed earlier this year bars the Justice Department from pursuing their client.
Justice Department lawyers say the amendment, which bars the government from spending money to prevent the implementation of state laws "that authorize the use, distribution possession or cultivation of medical marijuana" doesn't enjoin them from enforcing existing federal drug laws. But one legal scholar describes the amendment as "a hidden land mine" that could abruptly scuttle other medical marijuana prosecutions.
Behind The Curve
Back in Michigan, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Klint Kesto, R-Commerce Township, has scheduled a hearing this month on a new version of the medical dispensary bill that Callton introduced shortly after the new Legislature convened.
Callton, a third-term Republican from mid-Michigan's Barry County, says he is optimistic about satisfying law enforcement skeptics who blocked the bill's passage last December, but worries his efforts to regulate medical marijuana could be overtaken by the drive to legalize recreational marijuana sales, which he opposes.
"Legalization would blow away any progress we've made with medical," he told the Gongwer News Service.
Callton has every right to be apprehensive. Voters, and especially those with valid medical reasons for using marijuana, are fed up with the passive-aggressive hostility Attorney General* edit* Bill Schuette and other law enforcement officials continue to demonstrate toward the law the electorate overwhelmingly approved.
Four years later, it's unconscionable that state and federal officials have done so little to facilitate medical marijuana's safe and convenient distribution to patients who need it. If the foot-dragging in Lansing continues, Michigan voters may express their impatience by decriminalizing marijuana altogether.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Lawmakers slow to facilitate distribution of medical marijuana
Author: Brian Dickerson
Contact: bdickerson@freepress.com
Photo Credit: None Found
Website: Detroit Free Press - Home
The velocity of that shift has been breathtaking. As recently as Bill Clinton's tenure as president, every state in the union prohibited the sale of marijuana for any purpose. Today, 32 states (and the District of Columbia) allow doctors to prescribe it for a wide variety of medical problems.
Four other states have approved recreational sales. Washington and Colorado, with populations half the size of Michigan's, are each on track to collect about half a billion dollars in marijuana-related tax revenue this year.
Michigan voters approved medical marijuana by a large margin in 2010, and advocates of recreational legalization will launch a crowd-funding campaign later this month to put the issue on the November 2016 ballot.
But state legislators here are still struggling to agree on a workable plan for licensing and regulating medical marijuana dispensaries. A bill by state Rep. Mike Callton, R-Nashville, authorizing medical marijuana provisioning centers won lopsided passage by the House in November 2013, but an eleventh-hour lobbying effort by sheriffs and prosecutors kept it from coming to a vote in the state Senate last year.
Land Mine?
The federal government, too, has sent conflicting signals.
Although federal law continues to prohibit the sale of marijuana for any purpose, prosecutions of state-sanctioned marijuana dispensaries have plummeted in the two years since the Department of Justice issued an advisory discouraging the pursuit of patients and providers who comply with medical marijuana laws enacted by the states.
But U.S. attorneys in some of those states continue to press hundreds of medical marijuana prosecutions initiated prior to the advisory, creating a de facto double standard for patients accused before and after 2013.
Lawyers for a California man prosecuted for operating a medical marijuana dispensary in that state have asked the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to end the case, arguing that an obscure amendment to a congressional appropriations bill passed earlier this year bars the Justice Department from pursuing their client.
Justice Department lawyers say the amendment, which bars the government from spending money to prevent the implementation of state laws "that authorize the use, distribution possession or cultivation of medical marijuana" doesn't enjoin them from enforcing existing federal drug laws. But one legal scholar describes the amendment as "a hidden land mine" that could abruptly scuttle other medical marijuana prosecutions.
Behind The Curve
Back in Michigan, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Klint Kesto, R-Commerce Township, has scheduled a hearing this month on a new version of the medical dispensary bill that Callton introduced shortly after the new Legislature convened.
Callton, a third-term Republican from mid-Michigan's Barry County, says he is optimistic about satisfying law enforcement skeptics who blocked the bill's passage last December, but worries his efforts to regulate medical marijuana could be overtaken by the drive to legalize recreational marijuana sales, which he opposes.
"Legalization would blow away any progress we've made with medical," he told the Gongwer News Service.
Callton has every right to be apprehensive. Voters, and especially those with valid medical reasons for using marijuana, are fed up with the passive-aggressive hostility Attorney General* edit* Bill Schuette and other law enforcement officials continue to demonstrate toward the law the electorate overwhelmingly approved.
Four years later, it's unconscionable that state and federal officials have done so little to facilitate medical marijuana's safe and convenient distribution to patients who need it. If the foot-dragging in Lansing continues, Michigan voters may express their impatience by decriminalizing marijuana altogether.
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Lawmakers slow to facilitate distribution of medical marijuana
Author: Brian Dickerson
Contact: bdickerson@freepress.com
Photo Credit: None Found
Website: Detroit Free Press - Home
