Pubdate: Fri, 17 Aug 2012
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.utsandiego.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Author: John Redman

U.S. ATTORNEY IS RIGHT TO CLOSE POT SHOPS

When Californians passed the "Compassionate Use Act" -- otherwise
known as Proposition 215 -- in 1996, most voters thought that it was
reasonable to allow chronically ill patients to use marijuana without
fear of arrest. And if that patient could not grow marijuana on their
own, the initiative stipulated that patient caregivers could help to
grow marijuana for their patients collectively, or cooperatively for a
patient's personal use. These were adverbs, not nouns. Likewise, the
voter pamphlet stated that, "police officers can still arrest anyone
who grows too much, or tries to sell it."

Of course, a lot can change in 16 years.

No one can say with a straight face that the original intent of
Proposition 215 is even close to being carried out today. Donning
white coats and using words like "compassion" and "natural,"
profiteers are amassing huge sums of money in the name of "medical"
marijuana. "Patients," as documented by numerous peer-reviewed
studies, are usually nothing more than "users" who now get pot from
dispensaries under the guise of medicine. According to most research,
fewer than 3 percent of "patients" have the stated chronic illnesses
that Proposition 215 spelled out.

So-called "dispensaries" are nothing more than pot shops, some with
scantily clad women acting as "medical professionals" and tinted doors
protected by 300-pound bouncers guarding cash-only transactions. It's
little surprise then that many shops are the targets of property theft
and other crimes. And twenty-somethings behind the counter often hand
out medical advice as if they actually have been to medical school,
but of course few have.

You might think that operating in this quasi-legal gray area would be
a deterrent. But it hasn't been. There are more medical marijuana
"dispensaries" than Starbucks stores in some cities. Though the
medical profession has largely rejected smoked marijuana as medicine
because it has not passed FDA muster, a handful of unscrupulous
doctors and dispensary owners have made millions of dollars in the
name of "compassion."

Medical marijuana has officially turned into a sad
joke.

That is why it should not surprise anyone that U.S. Attorney Laura
Duffy, whose jurisdiction covers San Diego and Imperial counties, has
been moving to shut down these drug-dealing operations. These
enterprises represent the antithesis of what voters intended in 1996.

This sense of discontent is having spillover effects: There are signs
that California's love affair with marijuana is receding. Medical
marijuana moguls bankrolled an unsuccessful effort to legalize
marijuana outright, and it turns out that none of the six attempts to
get it back on the ballot in 2012 were successful either.

Rev. Scott Imler, who co-wrote Proposition 215 and advocates for the
limited use of medical marijuana, put it best recently when he said,
"We created Prop. 215 so that patients would not have to deal with
black-market profiteers. But today it is all about the money. Most of
the dispensaries operating in California are little more than dope
dealers with storefronts."

Selling joints to anyone with a pulse and $200 cash was never the bill
of goods that the voters were sold.

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Redman is the executive director of Californians for Drug-Free Youth,
the oldest anti-drug coalition in California.
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MAP posted-by: Matt