Pubdate: Fri, 07 Mar 2014
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2014 The New York Times Company
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Kirk Johnson

PROVIDERS OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA FACE NEW FEARS

SEATTLE - There should be, one might think, a note of triumph or at
least quiet satisfaction in Muraco Kyashna-tocha's voice. Her
patient-based cooperative in north Seattle dispenses medical marijuana
to treat seizures, sleeplessness and other maladies. And with the
state gearing up to open its first stores selling legal marijuana for
recreational use, the drug she has cultivated, provided to patients
and used herself for years seems to be barreling toward the mainstream.

But her one-word summary of the outlook for medical marijuana is
anything but sunny: "Disastrous," she said, standing in her shop,
Green Buddha, which she fears she will soon have to close.

The legalization of recreational marijuana for adults in Washington,
approved by voters in 2012 and now being phased in, is proving an
unexpectedly anxious time for the users, growers and dispensers of
medical marijuana, who came before and in many ways paved the way for
marijuana's broader acceptance.

In the 16 years since medical marijuana became legal here, an entire
ecosystem of neighborhood businesses and cooperative gardens took
root, with employees who could direct medical users to just the right
strain; there are now hundreds of varieties with names like Blue
Healer, Purple Urkle and L.A. Confidential, each with a variety of
purported medicinal benefits. Medical users could also start gardens
in their backyards and keep large amounts of marijuana at home. It was
all very folksy - and virtually unregulated, which the authorities say
led to widespread abuses.

Now, under pressure from the federal government, the state is moving
to bring that loosely regulated world, with its echoes of hippie
culture, into the tightly controlled and licensed commercial system
being created for recreational marijuana, which goes on sale this
summer. (The first license to grow marijuana was issued on Wednesday.)
This week, the Legislature is debating bills that would reduce the
amount of the drug that patients can possess or grow, eliminate
collective gardens under which most dispensaries operate, require
medical users (unlike recreational users) to register with the state
and mandate that all marijuana be sold only by new licensees,
effectively shutting down the medical dispensary system.

Proponents say the changes are needed to stamp out fraud and help
ensure that Washington has a uniform system, supplying the medical
products people need and want while at the same time passing muster
with guidelines issued by the federal government last summer, even
though marijuana remains illegal under federal law. But many medical
marijuana users and dispensary owners say the rules will inadvertently
discourage the legitimate use of marijuana to treat illness and pain
even as science has increasingly been validating its therapeutic effects.

Trusted dispensaries will be closed, they contend, and choices will
diminish, with the varieties that marijuana medical users prefer
squeezed off the shelves by more profitable recreational varieties
grown for their greater, high-producing THC content, not for headache
or nausea relief. In Seattle alone, about 200 dispensaries will have
to close, replaced by 21 licensed retailers, and under current state
regulations, employees in those shops will not be allowed to even
discuss the medical value of the products for sale.

A medical marijuana user will certainly be able to enter a shop and
buy marijuana once the new stores are open in June, but the old system
of medical advice and supply, however flawed or beloved, is over, say
both critics and supporters of the new rules.

"Prepare for the end," said Hilary Bricken, a lawyer in Seattle who
works mostly with the marijuana industry, summarizing the advice she
is giving her medical marijuana dispensary clients.

Washington State's struggles - and the inevitable comparison with
Colorado's different, smoother path toward retail marijuana - are
being watched around the nation, Ms. Bricken and other legal experts
said.

California, for example, with a medical marijuana system far larger
but otherwise similar to Washington's in its absence of state
controls, also has active voter-initiative efforts pushing toward
legalization. Twenty states as well as the District of Columbia allow
medical marijuana, and at least 14 more are considering some form of
it this year. Oregon's Legislature is wrestling with how to administer
its dispensary system even as efforts continue to put legalization on
the ballot.

Colorado avoided trouble mostly by acting early. There, state
regulators stepped in with strict rules for medical marijuana long
before full legalization. And after voters approved legalization in
2012, those regulated dispensaries were put first in line for
licenses, forming the backbone of the new recreational market. The
dispensaries had supplies of the product in the pipeline - and
expertise - which is why recreational marijuana sales started there
from the first day of legalization, on Jan. 1, while Washington's are
still weeks away.

In Washington, some dispensaries might be well run, others poorly, but
without oversight, state officials could not know which was which. So
a clean sweep was seen as the only way forward, legislators say.

"We're moving from the wild, wild West to the regulated West," said
State Senator Ann Rivers, a Republican and a sponsor of one of the
leading bills. A similar bill, sponsored by a Democrat from Seattle,
Representative Eileen Cody, passed the House last month.

Ms. Rivers emphasized that her goal was to protect, not punish,
marijuana patients, though she said she understood their fear of
change. Without formalized rules allowing patients to continue growing
their own plants, for example (I-502, the initiative legalizing
recreational marijuana, prohibits that), and to have more than one
ounce in their possession, arrest and federal prosecution are a real
risk, she asserts. Her bill allows both.

A mandatory registry, she said, provided the legal spine to those
protections. Under her bill, a registered patient buying medical
marijuana at a licensed store with an "endorsement" from the state to
sell medical marijuana would also be exempt from the 25 percent retail
tax charged to recreational buyers. (Other state taxes, assessed on
growers and producers, would already be included in the retail price.)

"The feds have been very clear, that if we don't get our ducks in a
row, they are going to bring it to a screeching halt," Ms. Rivers
said. "We have a chance right now to define our destiny with this, and
if we don't we will most definitely allow the feds to define our destiny."

To many patients and providers, though, the proposed mandatory
registry is not a good thing. Some patients, especially those
receiving Social Security or other federal aid, have said they will
refuse to sign up because that would be a legal admission of drug use
that they said could jeopardize their benefits. Others have told
lawmakers they fear a loss of private information.

Some dispensary owners concede that the medical system was rife with
abuses but that patients were now about to pay the price.

"The state failed to regulate, allowing doctors to write these
prescriptions to 20-year-old gangbangers on the street who said, 'Oh,
I hurt my knee playing basketball,' " said Karl Keich, a dispensary
operator and founder of the Seattle Medical Marijuana Association, a
group of collective gardens.

Andrea Mayhan, who takes medical marijuana to control muscle spasms
and seizures that she suffers as a result of a degenerative disorder,
says she believes she will be able to get the strains of marijuana she
wants because she knows what to ask for. New patients, though, might
walk in - or, like her, roll in using their wheelchairs - and find a
clerk less familiar with medical strains, or prohibited by state rules
from giving advice.

"They're going to be lost," she said.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt