Pubdate: Mon, 08 Aug 2011
Source: Portland Press Herald (ME)
Copyright: 2011 MaineToday Media, Inc.
Contact: http://www.pressherald.com/readerservices/Send_a_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.pressherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/744

WHILE CANNABIS IS ILLEGAL, DISPENSARIES WILL STRUGGLE

The Tension Between State and Federal Law Prevents Maine From
Fulfilling Its Vision.

Don't expect a sudden influx of out-of-state cash to fix what's ailing
the company that aspires to be Maine's biggest dispenser of medical
marijuana.

Augusta-based Northeast Patients group has lost two of its board
members, including state representative and former Cumberland County
Sheriff Mark Dion. State officials and patients are expressing doubts
about whether they can trust the company that came forward last year
looking like the most professional outfit around, but now is looking a
little fly-by-night, needing 11th-hour financing from a hastily
created Delaware corporation.

And it is the subject of a lawsuit from its original funding source,
the California-based Berkeley Patients Group, which alleges that
Northeast's top executive used insider information to attract outside
backers.

But the biggest problem comes from the unsettled legal status of
cannabis, which makes the state's vision of an orderly system for
delivering medicine to the people who need it something of a pipe dream.

Under certain circumstances, marijuana is legal in Maine. Two times, a
majority of voters have approved referendums, one to decriminalize it
for people with certain medical conditions and another to create a
system to make it accessible for them.

But the problem is that under federal law, marijuana is illegal under
any circumstance. People who grow, sell or use it are violating
federal statutes.

Marijuana dispensaries may look like legitimate businesses when you
see their storefronts and advertisements, but in the eyes of federal
law enforcement they are criminal enterprises and subject to
prosecution.

That uncertain legal status has already cost Northeast the
participation of Dion, who had a law enforcement background that gave
the business a sense of legitimacy. It also makes financing these
operations difficult.

In order to fully honor the will of Maine voters, our congressional
delegation should be working to get marijuana reclassified -- not
legalized, but made legal as part of medical treatment, like
prescription drugs.

Until then, the medical marijuana business will struggle to meet the
needs of the people it is intended to help. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.