Pubdate: Fri, 20 Mar 2009
Source: Honolulu Star-Bulletin (HI)
Copyright: 2009 Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Contact: http://starbulletin.com/forms/letterform.html
Website: http://www.starbulletin.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/196
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?161 (Cannabis - Regulation)

CREATE SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

MEDICAL patients who rely on marijuana to ease pain won a major 
victory this week in protection promised by the Obama administration. 
Attorney General Eric Holder said threatened federal interference 
with laws in Hawaii and a dozen other states allowing medical use of 
marijuana has come to an end. The state should work toward a system 
facilitating that legitimate use.

As former President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft 
ordered raids of medical dispensaries in California that provided 
marijuana to patients legally under that state's law. The U.S. 
Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the federal government may prosecute 
medical users of marijuana for violating federal drug laws despite 
state laws permitting that use.

The ruling upholding the Bush administration's zero-tolerance policy 
has had little effect in states other than California, because most 
drug cases are prosecuted at the state level. The issue has not 
reached federal courts in Hawaii.

 From now on, Holder told reporters that the policy will be "to go 
after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the 
extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a 
shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the 
intention was of the state law. Those are the organizations, the 
people, that we will target."

More than 1,000 residents have been registered with the state to use 
marijuana to treat their illnesses since the state legalized it for 
that use in 2000. Certification by a doctor is required for 
registration, and patients are limited in the amount of marijuana 
they may possess. Marijuana is credited with easing pain for those 
suffering from AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other diseases.

Registered patients have complained about the difficulty in obtaining 
access to marijuana or even seeds or facilities to grow their own. In 
November, police arrested seven Maui residents accused of using 
medical marijuana laws as a front for drug trafficking. The group 
maintains that the marijuana was to be distributed to 300 members of 
Patients Without Time who are qualified to use it medically.

A bill introduced by Rep. Joe Bertram of Maui that would allow 
operations for growing marijuana for distribution to as many as 14 
patients has been endorsed by two state House committees in the 
current session. The Lingle administration has opposed the bill, 
citing the Supreme Court decision upholding the federal law banning 
any possession of marijuana.

The Obama administration's decision to exempt marijuana for medical 
purposes from the sweeping federal ban should cause the state to 
reconsider its stance on a secure distribution system like that 
proposed by Bertram. Without such a system, the Hawaii law allowing 
medical use of marijuana would continue to be crippled.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom