Pubdate: Wed, 26 Mar 2014
Source: East Bay Express (CA)
Copyright: 2014 East Bay Express
Contact: http://posting.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/SubmitLetter/Page
Website: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1131
Column: Legalization Nation
Author: David Downs

POLICE LOBBY WANTS TO GUT MEDICAL POT IN CALIFORNIA

Proposed legislation would clamp down hard on medical cannabis, but
weed activists are pushing for saner reforms.

In a recent interview for a Culture magazine cover story, CNN's Dr.
Sanjay Gupta, the one-time US Surgeon General candidate, told me he
believes that FDA-approved medical marijuana products should be
available in every pharmacy in America. Medical pot patients and the
latest research on cannabis have convinced him of the drug's efficacy,
he said, and he is advising increased medical marijuana access around
the globe.

But in California, lobbyists for police chiefs and cities want to do
the opposite and drastically curtail access to the sometimes
life-saving drug. The police lobby and the League of California Cities
are sponsoring proposed legislation this year that, critics say, would
effectively gut the state's medical cannabis industry.

The proposals by the California Police Chiefs Association and the
League of California Cities, which are embedded in Senate Bill 1262,
include a requirement that doctors can only recommend pot to a patient
during an in-person visit, and not over the phone or Skype, like how
other medicines are often prescribed. SB 1262 also would require
physicians to fill out much more paperwork, and mandate that any
doctor who writes more than one hundred recommendations for medical
cannabis be audited by the state. Critics say the bill also would
effectively ban physicians from becoming medical cannabis
specialists.

Not surprisingly, groups that have a stake in California's medical
cannabis industry are already mobilizing for a major fight in
Sacramento this spring and summer against SB 1262. And activists are
vowing to make significant alterations to the legislation. "You should
expect to see some massive changes to that bill," said Nate Bradley,
executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association.
"[Those doctor's regulations] are not going to happen."

In some ways, however, the introduction of SB 1262 marks the beginning
of what could become a historic period in California medical marijuana
law. For the first time since Californians legalized medical weed in
1996, police chiefs have stopped opposing all cannabis regulations.
The California Police Chiefs Association and the League of California
Cities have acknowledged that regulations are coming one way or
another, writing in a February statement, "We realized that without
our proactive intervention it could take a form that was severely
damaging to our interests."

"The police chiefs are now at the table because they don't have a
choice," state Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) wrote in
an email to me earlier this week.

So the League of Cities and the police chiefs got state Senator Lou
Correa, who represents a city - Santa Ana - that has banned medical
pot dispensaries, to sponsor and introduce SB 1262. The bill consists
of two main parts: the first part is the new doctors' rules cited above.

The second part would put the state's Department of Public Health in
charge of licensing the multibillion-dollar industry's farms and
stores. It would also put county health departments in charge of
enforcement.

Although SB 1262 represents something of a victory in that police
chiefs have dropped their total opposition to dispensaries, the bill
is a mess for a number of reasons.

For one, muzzling doctors with miles of new rules and red tape is
probably unconstitutional, some critics say. And members of the
advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) note that pot
specialists exist because police have intimidated almost all other
doctors.

After Prop 215 passed, law enforcement officials targeted physicians
who recommended pot. Doctors had to fight in court to clarify their
First Amendment right to talk to patients about cannabis. But to this
day, most physicians won't write a recommendation for fear of
reprisal. "We've had just countless reports of this," said ASA
spokesperson Kris Hermes. "[Doctors] don't want to risk losing their
license to prescribe medications, which the Drug Enforcement
Administration controls. Therefore, they are not willing to write a
recommendation."

For the same reasons, primary care doctors are unlikely to refer
patients to medical cannabis specialists - as SB 1262 requires. And
without such referrals, medical pot specialists would be prohibited
from recommending weed to their patients under the proposed law.

The California Medical Association's public affairs office told us
Friday that it also has "a number of concerns about SB 1262," and has
been "communicating with the office of the bill's author."

Correa's bill states that there are "widespread problems" with the
recommendation system as is. Officials from the senator's office wrote
in an email to me that they think "it is entirely too easy to obtain
marijuana for what are supposed to be medical purposes. Virtually
anyone can get a recommendation, and get their hands on marijuana."
Correa's office also disagrees with the assertion that aspects of SB
1262 are unconstitutional.

But Ammiano's office contends that the California Department of Health
is unqualified to license the medical pot industry. Likewise, many
county health departments are unqualified to police legal weed.
Several counties in rural areas of the state and in Southern
California have refused to issue medical marijuana patient ID cards.

Ammiano plans to push competing regulations in Assembly Bill 604. "My
bill is very much alive and I think anyone who actually reads [AB 604
and SB 1262] will recognize that my bill is a better fit," he stated
in an email.

The last day for each bill to pass out of its legislative house of
origin is May 30. Peter Hecht, a political reporter for the Sacramento
Bee who wrote the book Weed Land, said last week that he thinks "the
two bills will cancel each other out and nothing will get done this
year."
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MAP posted-by: Matt