Pubdate: Fri, 01 Aug 2014
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2014 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Eric Zorn
Page: 23

MEDICAL POT SHOPS ARE NO BIG DEAL

You'd think licensed dispensaries for medical marijuana were all-ages 
opium dens from the wariness bordering on paranoia with which state 
and local officials are grudgingly preparing for them to open.

A year ago Friday, Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law a four-year pilot 
program allowing patients suffering from specific maladies to obtain, 
with a doctor's OK, therapeutic doses of marijuana. The marijuana 
will be sold at dispensaries accessible only to patients.

The state law required the dispensaries to be located at least 1,000 
feet away from a "public or private preschool or elementary or 
secondary school or day care center, day care home, group day care 
home ... part day child care facility ... (or) area zoned for residential use."

You'd think our legislators were unaware that seemingly every few 
blocks in most communities in the state, businesses selling highly 
addictive drugs - narcotics, amphetamines, mood stabilizers and the 
like - have operated openly for years, even allowing children into 
their establishments.

I speak, of course, of licensed pharmacies.

You'd think they'd forgotten that most communities also host numerous 
establishments that sell, with no prescription required, an addictive 
substance that causes 88,000 premature deaths every year, according 
to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I speak, of course, of the restaurants, taverns and stores that sell alcohol.

Yes, these businesses are subject to zoning and other restrictions 
but nothing like the limits placed on medical pot dispensaries.

"I had no concern about these facilities being in our communities 
alongside other businesses," said state Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, 
chief House sponsor of the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis 
Pilot Program Act. "But remember, this bill passed very narrowly 
(61-57), so I had to make a lot of compromises."

Lang said his colleagues expressed concern to him about possible 
increases in traffic and crime around dispensaries, so he added what 
he believed to be unnecessary restrictions.

And since then, local jurisdictions have been adding their own, 
additional and unnecessary buffer zones as the state awaits the 
opening of up to 60 dispensaries. Wednesday, the Chicago City Council 
banned medical marijuana dispensaries - the city is slated to have 13 
- - from manufacturing districts and transportation corridors, from 
areas near parks and forest preserves, and from certain downtown areas.

Even this wasn't enough to prevent our friends at the Sun-Times from 
splashing their front page with the alarming headline "Neighborhood 
joints: New zoning rules mean medical pot spots likely to pop up in 
busy areas."

You'd think Illinois was the first state - not the 20th - to OK the 
medical use of marijuana. You'd think there were no data whatsoever 
about the impact, if any, of dispensaries in busy or even 
comparatively idle areas.

But police agencies and academics have looked at just these sorts of 
concerns over the years. The Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, 
D.C., has collected the results; nearly all of it reaches the same 
"hey, no big deal" conclusion reached by researchers from the 
University of South Florida, the University of Colorado and the New 
York City Criminal Justice Agency when they studied 275 medical 
marijuana distribution sites.

Despite all the advance warnings, they wrote in a paper published 
earlier this year, "these centers do not appear to have any impact on 
the urban landscape and, therefore, on the health of the communities 
in which they are located."

True, the model law promulgated by the Marijuana Policy Project calls 
for dispensaries and cultivation centers to be located 1,000 feet 
from existing schools. But Chris Lindsey, the organization's 
legislative analyst, said that restriction is intended simply to 
protect medical marijuana businesses from enhanced federal penalties 
should the Drug Enforcement Administration of the U.S. Department of 
Justice decide to crack down on dispensaries, which remain illegal 
under federal law.

That tension between federal and state laws is why conventional 
pharmacies and hospitals can't assume the responsibility for safe, 
medically approved distribution of the drug, the way they do with, 
say, OxyContin, Adderall and codeine.

You'd think we'd have a grip by now. You'd think that facts and 
experience, rather than residual "Reefer Madness" panic, would guide 
officials in their response to the prospect of relieving human 
suffering with clinical doses of marijuana.

But you'd be wrong.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom