Pubdate: Wed, 28 Dec 2011
Source: Providence Journal, The (RI)
Copyright: 2011 The Providence Journal Company
Contact:  http://www.projo.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/352
Author: Philip Marcelo

Medical Marijuana

FOX WANTS ACTION ON DISPENSARIES

House Speaker Says He'll Petition Federal Government to See What 
State Needs to Do

PROVIDENCE ---- House Speaker Gordon D. Fox says he'll personally 
petition the U.S. Department of Justice to seek a way for Rhode 
Island to open the medical marijuana dispensaries that advocates have 
long sought.

"I plan on going to the federal government to ask them: what do you 
need it to look like?" the Providence Democrat said Tuesday. "Because 
I think it's been too long and there have been too many people 
waiting. ... I hear so many stories of people waiting for relief and 
they are not being addressed. They deserve better than that."

Earlier this year, Governor Chafee halted the process of issuing the 
state's first dispensary operating licenses, following a warning from 
the Justice Department that the facilities might violate federal law.

Later Chafee said he would petition, along with Washing-ton Gov. 
Christine Gregoire, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to 
reclassify marijuana so it can be sold as a physician-prescribed 
drug. He also said he would work with the legislature to scale back 
the size of the proposed dispensaries.

Fox says the governor's office has not yet presented Assembly leaders 
with such a plan.

He believes that the administration can potentially address the 
federal government's concerns through the rulemaking process, which 
falls under the auspices of executive branch agencies rather than the 
state legislature.

"If it is about volume of business, or whatever, I think you can come 
up with some rules, and you don't have to come to the legislature 
saying, 'This is what you have to do'," Fox said.

Like advocates, he believes that large-scale, state-regulated 
facilities where marijuana is grown and sold are preferable to the 
current system, which allows medical marijuana patients to either 
grow their own marijuana or purchase the drug from "caregivers" 
licensed to sell and grow limited quantities of it.

Fox argues that the federal government has lately been sending "mixed 
signals" about its stance on the medical marijuana dispensaries, 
which are also referred to as "compassion centers."

Under federal law, marijuana is a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance, or 
drug, with no medicinal value. Anyone operating a dispensary, 
therefore, could be charged with running large-scale drug operations.

But Fox says that while individual U.S. Attorneys have issued 
warnings to state officials, their boss, U.S. Attorney General Eric 
H. Holder Jr., has told Congress that his department would not 
crackdown on government-approved dispensaries if they met certain 
legal requirements.

And Fox says that in California, a recent federal deadline to shut 
down dispensaries has come and gone. "It is like, what's really going on here?"
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