Pubdate: Tue, 22 Apr 2014
Source: Brown Daily Herald, The (Brown, RI Edu)
Copyright: 2014 The Brown Daily Herald
Contact: http://www.browndailyherald.com/contact/letters
Website: http://www.browndailyherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/727
Author: Lindsay Gantz

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE EXAMINES MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION

Legalization Bill Would Allocate Millions In Tax Revenue To Narcotic 
Abuse Prevention

The House Judiciary Committee last week heard testimony on several 
bills proposing to legalize marijuana in Rhode Island and to improve 
current regulations on the sale and distribution of medical marijuana.

While marijuana legalization has gained momentum in the state 
recently, there remain concerns for some about regulation and 
legalization's effects.

Legalizing marijuana

The first bill - introduced Feb. 13 by Rep. Edith Ajello, 
D-Providence - would legalize the possession and cultivation of small 
amounts of marijuana for personal use for adults over 21 years old, a 
policy supported by 47.6 percent of respondents in an April 10 poll 
from the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. 
The committee heard testimony on the bill Wednesday.

Though laws prohibiting the sale and use of marijuana were passed to 
prevent drug abuse, rates of abuse in Rhode Island remain unchanged, 
said Robert Capecchi, deputy director of state policies at the 
Marijuana Policy Project, a national nonprofit advocating for the end 
of marijuana prohibition. And the state could better control who buys 
marijuana and where it is sold if the drug became legalized for 
personal use, he added.

The legislation would take "marijuana from criminal actors and (put) 
it behind the counter," he said. Retailers have the incentive to 
check IDs and refuse to sell to minors, Capecchi added. "Drug dealers 
don't have that incentive."

"Prohibition has failed utterly to achieve its goals," said Rebecca 
McGoldrick, executive director of Protect Families First, an 
organization that addresses the effects of drug policy on Rhode 
Island families and youth.

Unregulated use of marijuana has exposed young people to 
incarceration, violence and other harmful circumstances, McGoldrick 
said. She added that legalizing marijuana and regulating it using 
tools such as price controls, safety warnings and advertising 
restrictions would improve public health and promote social justice.

"We need to stop sending people to prison for recreational use of 
marijuana," said House Majority Whip Rep. John Edwards, D-Portsmouth 
and Tiverton.

Though some have claimed that marijuana is a gateway drug that leads 
to the use of more dangerous and addictive substances, McGoldrick 
said this idea is a "logical fallacy."

"What could be said is that where people buy marijuana is where other 
drugs are sold," McGoldrick said, adding that regulating its sale and 
consumption would increase public safety.

Legal limits?

The potential legalization of marijuana is predicted to generate 
between $21 million and $82 million in tax revenue for Rhode Island, 
according to a policy report from Open Doors, a nonprofit 
organization advocating on behalf of the formerly incarcerated. The 
legalization bill would allocate 40 percent of this revenue to 
alcohol and drug abuse prevention.

There is some debate about how legalization would affect access and 
consumption.

"There is no question that whenever you increase access to something, 
you increase use," said Frances Mantak, director of health education 
at Brown. Increased use creates public health concerns, Mantak said. 
"We don't want to add more impaired drivers on our roads when we 
don't have very strong enforcement and very strong laws."

Others argue that access to the drug would remain unchanged after legalization.

Colorado and Washington passed laws that legalized the sale and 
cultivation of marijuana for adults 21 and over in 2012. Licensed 
marijuana retail stores in Colorado officially opened this January 
and have generated nearly $6 million in tax revenue.

"The sky hasn't fallen in Colorado," Capecchi said. "It looks like - 
and this is not definitive by any stretch of the imagination - 
marijuana use is down." Decreased crime rates in Denver and increased 
tax revenue are early indications of the possible positive effects of 
legalization, he said.

"Marijuana is plenty accessible as is" in Rhode Island, Capecchi 
said. "All this change in policy will regulate is (who) is selling to whom."

Though outgoing Gov. Lincoln Chafee '75 P'14 P'17 has expressed his 
support for legalization, the gubernatorial candidates have remained 
largely neutral on the issue.

"A lot of people want to see what will happen in Colorado and 
Washington," said Jared Moffat '13, a former Herald opinions 
columnist and director of Regulate Rhode Island, a group that works 
to abolish marijuana prohibition in Rhode Island.

McGoldrick said she hopes the gubernatorial candidates will address 
this issue, which greatly affects community safety and health. "I 
really hope that one of them would step up and take a sensible 
approach to this issue," she said.

"I would say there's a decent chance of it going through," Moffat 
said of the legislation.

Medical marijuana

Marijuana was decriminalized in Rhode Island and approved for 
medicinal use through the 2006 passage of the Edward O. Hawkins and 
Thomas C. Slater Medical Marijuana Act, which made permanent the 
program in 2007. But there are several complications with current 
medical marijuana policy.

Testimony on a bill to revise medical marijuana policies in the 
state, supported by Attorney General Peter Kilmartin and other public 
safety officers in Rhode Island, was heard before the House Judiciary 
Committee Wednesday, the Providence Journal reported.

The use of medical marijuana is "not about getting high," said JoAnne 
Leppanen, executive director of the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy 
Coalition, a nonprofit organization coordinating patients, providers 
and caregivers in the medical marijuana community to promote safe 
access to care. "Most patients have no interest whatsoever in getting 
high. Most patients are just looking for relief."

There is some degree of stigma associated with joining the medical 
marijuana program, Leppanen said. Many people are hesitant to ask 
their doctors about signing up or do not want to park outside 
designated compassion centers for fear that their cars will be 
recognized. Others resort to illegal self-medication rather than join 
the program, she added.

There are currently three compassion centers, located in Providence 
and Portsmouth, serving as dispensaries for medical marijuana in the 
state. The dispensaries are currently limited to 99 plants each, 
which Leppanen said is not enough to sustain the volume of patients in need.

"Definitely we can use some changes in the law," Leppanen said. 
Today, more is known about the positive effects of medical marijuana 
than when the law was drafted, she added. "I think we would have 
drafted it much differently."

The recently proposed bill would eliminate the plant limit in these 
compassion centers, but it would also decrease the number of plants 
caregivers can grow in the home from 12 to three, which Leppanen said 
she believes is too few.

Smoking marijuana is not the most effective way to absorb the 
medicine for some, Leppanen said, adding that some patients require 
more plant leaves for their therapy if they are applying the plant's 
oils, rather than smoking it.

"It is the equivalent of taking medicine away from sick people," she 
said. "Plant numbers can be very misleading. If anything, we should 
be looking for an increase; we certainly need an increase in dry, 
usable cannabis."

As a result of the plant limit, compassion centers rely upon 
caregivers to provide the sufficient number of plants according to 
patient need, said Rep. Scott Slater, D-Providence, deputy majority 
leader and sponsor of the legalization bill. Slater's father, former 
Rep. Thomas Slater, was one of the General Assembly's biggest 
proponents of legalized medical marijuana, authored the Medical 
Marijuana Act and is the namesake for one of the state's compassion centers.

"The reason for the compassion centers was to allow patients to get 
safe and affordable access to the medicine. There are complaints that 
the compassion centers are too expensive," Scott Slater said.

'No business moving forward'

But some in the state do not support the current legislation or 
changing the prohibitions on cannabis use in the state. The 
government has "no idea where marijuana is being grown in the state 
of Rhode Island," said Rep. Lisa Tomasso, D-Coventry and West 
Greenwich, adding that marijuana abuse is "a problem that is 
pervasive throughout our entire state."

"I think we have been very successful in implementing a program that 
is providing a necessary service for people in Rhode Island," Tomasso 
said. But allowing individuals to cultivate marijuana in their homes 
negatively interferes with the quality of life of their neighbors, she added.

There have been several public safety concerns resulting from a lack 
of regulation. Several fires occurred due to the overloading of 
utilities for plant cultivation, and one explosion stemmed from 
unsafe growing practices, Tomasso said.

"We have been unable to regulate and provide safety in our community 
for a medical marijuana program. If we can't do that, we have no 
business moving forward with another unregulated system," she said. 
"If we are allowing anybody to grow marijuana for their own 
recreational purpose, there is no way to regulate it."

It is not entirely clear what the comprehensive implications of the 
proposed policy changes would be. More research needs to be done to 
better understand the effects of marijuana, Mantak said.

Many effects of cannabis on young people remain unstudied as a result 
of government restrictions, Tomasso said. "We are unable to do the 
proper research on it."
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