Fighting Dan Harmon

[Stoney Girl]

We need people to fight Dan Harmon and his Work Drug Free Program.

When the time comes for hearings this session, we need teams, and we need to attack on a lot of fronts from the basic ADA violation of SB465 to a flat out demand for an end to the war on marijuana. A team to demand impairment testing.

I feel we need to attend appropriations hearings and demand a reduction in WDF funds. We need to get a couple of folks in wheelchairs to go down to the WDF office and try to talk to these people about how wrong they are, and hopefully find some ADA violations while they are there.

We need to push our dispensary initiative in the legislature as well as with the electorate.I intend to keep pushing it at the Health Fund Board, the Health Policy Commission and the Pain Management Commission.

 

[Keith Lake]

Hi Stonygirl

How's the polling on this one? Hopefully Harmon's group is losing badly.

I understand OCTA is polling well.

Good luck to all our Oregonian brothers and sisters.

 

[Stoney Girl]

Actually, Harmon doesn't have to spend money on polls for SB 465 because it is sponsored by Sen Metsger (D) and has solid support from Republican Leadership.

In the Senate, we had 5 votes against it and 25 for it, with Democrats and Republicans both supporting it. The House split down party lines with Democrats supporting OMMP patients and Republicans supporting Harmon. We just barely killed it last year in the House.

OCTA has been withdrawn. It polled in the low 40's. The problem is that it also faced major patient opposition. That's because OCTA would repeal the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act.

There is supposed to be a meeting to rewrite it to gain patient support. Many patients said they would fight OCTA because they are not willing to allow the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act to be repealed. Our program is very successful, and we don't want to lose the small protections we have.

 

[Keith Lake]

Sorry to hear that OCTA got pulled.

Thanks for the update on 465, I didn't realize that the legislature could overrule a citizens initative. That doesn't seem to be very democratic to me.

Maybe the Oregon politicians will think twice about trying to overturn your program based on the countrywide success of all the MMJ initiatives.

Hopefully it's getting harder for them to remain in denial about the will of the people

 

[Stoney Girl]

The 2 are not related. SB 465 is an employment bill in the legislature that would allow employers to fire employees for testing positive for mj even if the have an OMMP card. It does not affect OCTA. Because it is a bill that is sponsored by an already elected legislator, it does not have to be polled.

OCTA is a citizen initiative. It was pulled because the people who were running it never bothered to vett it with the community. Unsurprisingly, patients revolted against it because it repealed OMMA. The legislature had nothing to do with pulling it, it was pulled because the mmj community was loudly opposed to it.

Because they were stupid and didn't bother to get community consensus, they now have to start over from scratch. They have rewritten OCTA, and there will be a meeting today to decide how to proceed.

However, I was hoping to get some help with the Harmon situation. That is a direct threat to every medical marijuana patient in the nation who wants to continue to hold a job. We need as many people as we can get to help, and we need to have specific plans of attack for this bill.

Last week in Albany, a mmj patient was assaulted by Dan Harmon's thugs at a public meeting. These guys are playing hardball: they are not afraid to attack a disabled old woman to keep her mouth shut. We need people with cameras to document these kind of abuses.