Pubdate: Thu, 01 Nov 2012
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2012 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Randle Loeb

THE PUBLIC IS TO BLAME

We have to wonder why nine years elapsed between voter approval and
the decision to protect the consumer and the public from graft and the
lugubrious practices of more than 180 dispensaries in Denver. There
will be a public hearing on medical marijuana dispensaries, Jan. 11,
before Denver City Council at 5:30 p.m. at the City and County Building.

Did the City Council feel that this was an innocent franchise business
connected to hospitals and clinics? Did they pretend to ignore the
outcome, thinking that no one would take these enterprises seriously?
Did we believe that the medical doctors would all have the highest
scruples and protect the patients from abusing the service? Did law
enforcement think that because they are already overburdened that the
incidental indiscretions of medical marijuana dispensaries would in
some way be an unnecessary waste of their precious energy?

Whatever the case may be, the public is actually to blame for this
mess because enough of us voted for this enterprise for it to take
root. If you read one of the local weekly papers, from pages 78
through 88 there are countless come-on ads in many styles and many
that are thinly reaching out to the clients on the proceeding pages
for other adult services. The placement of this cavalcade of ads is
planned to create the mystique that there is something sensual and
available to all who pay the price of admission.

The real purpose of medical marijuana dispensaries is to treat people
who are in the throes of dying and need relief. Most of those who
voted for Amendment 20 in 2000 expected that this would be an
enterprise that was highly regulated by the medical providers and
caregivers from places such as hospices. For a person experiencing
acute, chronic pain there is ample reason to provide any means of
sedation, and marijuana has long been sought as a means of relaxing,
as some people drink alcohol or smoke a cigarette. In Amsterdam, where
the limits of behavior are tolerated, the existence of all of these
practices finds a natural place in their well-formed and established
tolerance of diversity.

It is sad that this is not true for our lustful society, but it is not
without precedent. Insurance providers and the medical practice
continually overcharge and do not care for the patient ahead of
profit. The medical marijuana dispensaries simply fit into the
landscape of medical care in this market-driven economy.

Personally, the matter of regulating dispensaries is a moot point. We
would be much better served believing in what we have and our
relationship to one another with peace and justice for all. If a
person genuinely needs this medicine, then it should be freely
available, as the plants were growing all over the sides of the
highways in the 1930s. Anyone can grow the crop with little effort,
since it is a weed that is highly adaptable.

If everyone who wished to consume marijuana simply had their own
plants, that would be the end of this salacious feeding frenzy, and
the clinics would dry up and disappear.

Randle Loeb,

Denver
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