Pubdate: Wed, 14 Jul 2010
Source: Morning Sentinel (Waterville, ME)
Copyright: 2010 MaineToday Media, Inc.
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http://www.onlinesentinel.com/readerservices/Send_a_Letter_to_the_Editor-MS.html
Website: http://www.onlinesentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1474
Author: Bill Nemitz

SHERIFF TOUTS POT SITES AS MORAL ISSUE

One day more than a decade ago, shortly after he'd turned heads 
throughout Maine's law enforcement community by publicly coming out 
in favor of legalized medical marijuana, one of Cumberland County 
Sheriff Mark Dion's senior officers knocked on his office door.

"Tell me you're not going to keep pursuing this," the officer said pleadingly.

"It's where we've got to go," Dion replied with a smile.

He wasn't kidding.

Some might call him window dressing for Northeast Patients Group, the 
nonprofit company that last week received four of six state permits 
to open medical marijuana dispensaries throughout Maine.

However, Dion, who will have a seat at the table when Northeast 
Patients Group's board of directors holds its first meeting on 
Friday, promises that his influence over Maine's fledgling marijuana 
distribution system will extend far beyond the company's letterhead.

"I'm not planning on dropping in twice a year for lunch and asking, 
'How are we doing?' " Dion said over a cup of coffee this week. "I 
want to make sure that when this begins, we begin it right."

His new cannabis connection aside, these are interesting times for Dion.

He'll step down as sheriff at the end of this year after three 
consecutive four-year terms, ending a law enforcement career that he 
began as a Portland police officer in 1977.

Armed with a 2005 law degree from the University of Maine School of 
Law, he's setting up a legal practice on India Street in Portland 
with law-school classmate and friend Jonathan Berry. (A running joke 
with the much-younger Berry is that the practice will give Dion, 55, 
"someplace to go when I'm 70.")

Now, as Portland and other communities scramble to make way for the 
medical-marijuana dispensaries that voters approved last fall, Dion 
has become the first law enforcement official in Maine -- if not the 
nation -- to go into the pot-selling business.

"I don't know that I'd care to put myself in the same position," 
mused Camden Police Chief Philip Roberts, president of the Maine 
Chiefs of Police Association.

Roberts, who works 20 minutes up the road from a site in Thomaston 
where Northeast Patients Group tentatively plans a dispensary, said 
his organization opposed last fall's successful ballot question. Its 
passage made Maine the third state, along with New Mexico and Rhode 
Island, to implement a system of state-licensed medical-marijuana dispensaries.

While the chiefs accept the reality that 59 percent of Maine's voters 
decided it was a good idea, Roberts said, Dion still stands alone in 
his all-out embrace of the new law.

"It's the law, but that doesn't mean we like it," Roberts said. "I 
don't know of any other police chiefs or sheriffs who support it."

Dion, long considered a far-lefty in a profession where political 
views typically skew to the right, has no qualms about standing alone 
in his belief that there's nothing wrong (and a lot right) with 
making marijuana available to sick people who can benefit from it legitimately.

Back in 1998, just one day after Dion declared his support for 
Maine's first medical marijuana initiative, the state's 15 other 
country sheriffs announced in no uncertain terms that Dion spoke for 
nobody but himself. (The news story quite correctly labeled Dion a "maverick.")

Sixty-one percent of Maine's voters agreed with Dion that year and 
made medicinal pot legal. The problem was, there still was no way for 
patients to get their hands on it legally.

Two years later, with the help of then-state Sen. Ann Rand, 
D-Portland, there was Dion, pushing for an outside-the-box solution 
to the supply problem: Rather than just torch marijuana that police 
confiscated, why not give it to sick people who could use it to allay 
their nausea, regain their appetites and otherwise offset the 
symptoms of various illnesses?

"That went nowhere," Dion recalled.

That was then -- and this is now.

Dion's long-held position on medicinal marijuana -- that compassion 
for those who need it trumps any concerns about how it meshes (or 
not) with other state and federal drug laws -- clearly has gained 
traction since he first went out on that thin limb 12 years ago.

Fourteen states now recognize pot as a legitimate and legal medicine. 
What's more, the Obama administration (unlike its predecessor) has 
called a de facto truce between the U.S. Drug Enforcement 
Administration and states whose pro-medicinal-marijuana laws remain 
in conflict with federal drug statutes.

Hence Dion has no qualms about jumping in once again -- this time 
with both feet.

He thinks, as does Northeast Patients Group Executive Director Becky 
DeKeuster, that it's important to have someone with a law enforcement 
background on the company's board, to instill public confidence and 
immediately open a line of communication with those still-skeptical 
sheriffs and police chiefs.

"I hope to be that bridge person," Dion said.

He'll also play an obvious role in devising a security plan -- not 
just for protecting the product, but also for screening prospective 
staffers. (The latter's importance was underscored by this headline 
Tuesday from the Maine State Police: "Owner of Rockland Meth Clinic 
Arrested" for alleged possession of cocaine.)

Finally, Dion hopes to dispel the lingering notion that smoking 
medicinal marijuana is nothing more than a party in disguise.

He still remembers the terminally ill, retired fire chief in the 
midcoast area who told him during a past campaign, "Sheriff, I don't 
know what it means, what's that word, to 'catch a buzz.' When I take 
marijuana, I just feel normal again."

"The problem is, unlike other medicines that come into our lives 
wearing lab coats and double-blind tests, marijuana comes to us 
wearing blue jeans, T-shirts and rock concerts," Dion said. "There 
needs to be more public education around all of this."

What Dion won't do, contrary to some of the whispering that greeted 
his new gig, is get rich from this venture. While Northeast Patients 
Group's bylaws allow for board members to be compensated, he said he 
won't accept a nickel.

"In my mind, it's no different from if I was asked to be on the board 
of directors for the YMCA," Dion said. "I don't want to create a 
perception, real or otherwise, that my opinion, my guidance or my 
statements about dispensary activity are somehow diminished by the 
fact that I'm taking a check. That doesn't work for me."

Last week, as the news of his latest affiliation set the tongues to 
wagging once again, someone slipped a note under Dion's office door. 
He took it as a sign that the times, even within law enforcement, are 
indeed changing.

"Good job," the note read. "Keep it up."

"I have no idea who wrote it," Dion said, "but it was nice to hear."
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart