Pubdate: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA) Copyright: 2005 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. Contact: http://www.uniontrib.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386 Note: Does not print LTEs from outside it's circulation area. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) TAKING ON THE POT LAW County Should Take Its Objections to Court Anecdotal evidence and activists' efforts persuaded Californians to approve a 1996 ballot measure making marijuana use for "medicinal" purposes legal in California. It was a major mistake into which the Legislature drew county governments with the later passage of Senate Bill 420. The bill's very number - "four twenty" - is standard pot slang for time to toke. But the bill's provisions are no joke: It sets guidelines, which localities can amend, for the amount of marijuana that constitutes "medicinal" intent. And it mandates that counties establish an identification card for people who have a doctor's prescription for pot and a voluntary "registry" for them, the better to avoid arrest for pot possession. Though the city of San Diego unwisely leaped to meet the mandate and more, few counties have met it. But San Diego County has boldly refused, in a 3-2 vote last week, and for good and researched reasons: the mixed legal status of pot, the practical problems of implementing SB 420, its unproven medicinal value and the proven harm it can do. Good reasons, though, won't stop lawsuits, as the county attorney will point out in a closed board session on Tuesday. Rather than simply flout the law and invite suits, the supervisors can and should directly challenge the state law, pressing rather than defending its case before the court. And it has a case. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, which the U.S. Supreme Court says trumps state law. So compliance with state guidelines doesn't preclude federal arrests and can facilitate federal arrests through access to the cards and registry. Nor, the California Supreme Court has ruled, does state law necessarily preclude arrest under state law. Despite an I.D. card along with various pounds of pot, the defendant has the burden of proof of medicinal use. SB 420, then, puts the county in the awkward position of facilitating both constituents' illegal drug use and their arrest for it. Meantime, marijuana's medicinal value use remains, well, anecdotal. No study has yet shown that smoking marijuana is safer than smoking anything else or that it is even as effective medicinally as other legal prescription drugs, some of them derived from the active ingredients in marijuana. Numerous studies have demonstrated that inhaling the carcinogens in marijuana can be dangerous and that pot itself, especially for children, leads to the use of even more harmful illegal drugs. The notion that smoking pot is good for any reason won't help dissuade San Diego youth as young as 11 from making it their most widely used illicit drug. The supervisors, in short, have defied a law of a state that delights in defying federal law. Trying to change that law is the next, and better, step. State courts haven't shied in the past from overturning the people's will as expressed through the ballot. Here's another flawed expression ready for their review and, ultimately, rejection. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake