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