Truth Seeker
New Member
Arizona has a medical marijuana law that is in full-blown implementation.
As with any new law, bringing it online revealed a needed fix. Senate Bill 1440 would require branding and advertising any dispensed marijuana medicine in a way that communicates it is medicine. How this is accomplished is up to the dispensary as long as the package is white, opaque and uses black lettering.
The public is at risk when it cannot readily identify a product is intended as medicine. Couple that with a recent study showing that our youth are increasingly obtaining marijuana from cardholders, and you have a recipe for disaster. These developments are alarming from a public-safety perspective; while there are various ways to take your marijuana medicine, it really ought to be handled like every other medicine.
This is not a fairy tale. In short order, food products started showing up in the marketplace that look exactly like snacks, candy and ice cream but contain marijuana. One cannot tell they are medicine any more than Snow White could distinguish that poisoned apple.
In recent testimony before the House Health Committee, Richard Fitzpatrick of the Cannabis Standards Institute spoke of marijuana cookies unwittingly being eaten by the child visitors of a hospice patient. He called for treating medical marijuana as we do all medicine and cited federal poison-control standards.
The Medical Marijuana Act is voter-protected; it cannot be tinkered with unless the change furthers the purpose of the act and is agreed upon by three-fourths of the Legislature, rather than a simple majority.
Clearly, dispensing medicine in a manner that shows it is medicine furthers the voter's intentions to provide a medicinal alternative to those with debilitating conditions. It is hard to imagine how anyone could take issue with packaging and advertising medical marijuana as medicine.
Oddly, instead of rising to the social obligation that comes along with their chosen industry and working with us to pass this measure, the dispensaries have organized an association and are diligently working to defeat SB 1440 in the House of Representatives, even though it passed out of the Senate with nearly unanimous support.
What's more, they have accused law enforcement of a grand conspiracy to shut down the industry through such backdoor measures. This is simply irresponsible fantasy and does not bode well for the future.
Are we going to battle the high-pressure, high-dollar lobbyists brought in by this fledgling industry each and every time we seek to protect the public? One would hope that we can all work together to safely deal with the reality the voters were seeking with this medicine.
News Hawk- Truth Seeker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: azcentral.com
Author: Kimberly Yee
Contact: Contacting The Arizona Republic
Website: Medical marijuana should be labeled as medicine
As with any new law, bringing it online revealed a needed fix. Senate Bill 1440 would require branding and advertising any dispensed marijuana medicine in a way that communicates it is medicine. How this is accomplished is up to the dispensary as long as the package is white, opaque and uses black lettering.
The public is at risk when it cannot readily identify a product is intended as medicine. Couple that with a recent study showing that our youth are increasingly obtaining marijuana from cardholders, and you have a recipe for disaster. These developments are alarming from a public-safety perspective; while there are various ways to take your marijuana medicine, it really ought to be handled like every other medicine.
This is not a fairy tale. In short order, food products started showing up in the marketplace that look exactly like snacks, candy and ice cream but contain marijuana. One cannot tell they are medicine any more than Snow White could distinguish that poisoned apple.
In recent testimony before the House Health Committee, Richard Fitzpatrick of the Cannabis Standards Institute spoke of marijuana cookies unwittingly being eaten by the child visitors of a hospice patient. He called for treating medical marijuana as we do all medicine and cited federal poison-control standards.
The Medical Marijuana Act is voter-protected; it cannot be tinkered with unless the change furthers the purpose of the act and is agreed upon by three-fourths of the Legislature, rather than a simple majority.
Clearly, dispensing medicine in a manner that shows it is medicine furthers the voter's intentions to provide a medicinal alternative to those with debilitating conditions. It is hard to imagine how anyone could take issue with packaging and advertising medical marijuana as medicine.
Oddly, instead of rising to the social obligation that comes along with their chosen industry and working with us to pass this measure, the dispensaries have organized an association and are diligently working to defeat SB 1440 in the House of Representatives, even though it passed out of the Senate with nearly unanimous support.
What's more, they have accused law enforcement of a grand conspiracy to shut down the industry through such backdoor measures. This is simply irresponsible fantasy and does not bode well for the future.
Are we going to battle the high-pressure, high-dollar lobbyists brought in by this fledgling industry each and every time we seek to protect the public? One would hope that we can all work together to safely deal with the reality the voters were seeking with this medicine.
News Hawk- Truth Seeker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: azcentral.com
Author: Kimberly Yee
Contact: Contacting The Arizona Republic
Website: Medical marijuana should be labeled as medicine
