Pubdate: Thu, 29 May 2014
Source: Bradenton Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2014 Bradenton Herald
Contact: http://www.bradenton.com/submit-letter/
Website: http://www.bradenton.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/58
Pubdate: 29 May 14
Author: Neill Franklin
Note: Major Neill Franklin (Ret.) was a police officer for 34 years 
and is now executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, 
a group of cops, judges, prosecutors and other law enforcement 
officials opposed to the war on drugs.

TO SERVE AND PROTECT

When I became a police officer, I thought I was going to serve and 
protect the public.

I wanted to defend the vulnerable and punish those who threaten society.

After more than three decades of service, my perspective on the role 
police should play in society didn't change. What did change was my 
perception of the role public policy plays in protecting and serving 
the people of our society.

Police are sworn to enforce the law, so they can only be as ethical 
as the laws they enforce. And I believe the laws criminalizing 
medical marijuana are among the least ethical there are. They have no 
place in a free society.

As long as medical marijuana remains illegal, police are duty-bound 
to treat patients, their caregivers and the dispensary owners who 
risk imprisonment in order to help people feel better-like criminals. 
Officers enter their homes and arrest them for providing medical care 
many doctors, including CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta 
and TV's Dr. Oz, believe has real potential in the treatment of 
serious illness. And every time they do it, many of us wonder the 
same thing: "Why are politicians dictating how these people treat 
their ailments? Shouldn't their medical care be decided by doctors 
and by the patients themselves rather than by police and legislators?"

More than forty years of a failed drug war and a brief flirtation 
with criminalizing alcohol has proven that prohibition does not 
reduce use. What it does do is guarantee profits to organized crime, 
incentivize criminals to turn to force in order to protect their 
market share, waste law enforcement time and make users less safe 
than they would be under a system of regulation. You'd think we would 
have learned that lesson already, but as Mark Twain said, "history 
does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." People - especially 
patients who use marijuana to treat medical conditions - will 
continue to use it regardless of the law. If we acknowledge this, the 
best policy approach then becomes to legalize and regulate marijuana 
for the benefit of public health and safety.

We have safety regulations for most medicines, but in states where 
medical marijuana is illegal, producers aren't required to do any 
quality control or safety evaluations, and it is sometimes 
adulterated with other drugs or harmful chemicals.

Worse, many patients are forced to venture into the dangerous illicit 
market in order to acquire their medicine. We're talking about very 
sick people.

We're talking about the elderly. We're talking about veterans who 
fought for this country and came back deeply emotionally scarred.

In the states where medical marijuana is now legal, on the other 
hand, dispensaries test and label the medicine for potency and purity 
so consumers know exactly what they're getting.

Patients go to licensed providers regulated by the state where they 
know what they're putting into their bodies will be untainted with 
other substances. They can feel safe and accepted, not ostracized and 
endangered, for pursuing the treatment they feel is most effective.

Creating a legal medical marijuana system would also allow the state 
to collect revenue through licensing and fees. That money should go 
into state coffers, where it can fund public safety, treatment and 
education, rather than into the pockets of violent international drug 
cartels and the street gangs responsible for much of the violence on 
our streets.

By repealing these unworkable, harmful laws, we can re-assert law 
enforcement's role of protecting people from other people, rather 
than from themselves. Legalizing medical marijuana will let us focus 
on violent crimes like murder and rape while stopping the inhumane 
practice of arresting those who merely want to help very ill people 
feel better in whatever way they can.

If you believe it's better for patients to have safe access to 
effective medication without fear of repercussions, and for police to 
spend their time fighting real crimes, the solution is to legalize 
and regulate medical marijuana.

Please support Amendment 2.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom