Pubdate: Sat, 02 Aug 2014
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Copyright: 2014 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc
Contact:  http://www.philly.com/inquirer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/340
Author: Jessica Parks
Page: A1

SENATOR'S FIRST-HAND MARIJUANA RESEARCH

Leach Looks into Colorado Bill's Details, Samples the Product.

On a state-funded trip to Denver last week, Pennsylvania State Sen.
Daylin Leach aimed to study every aspect of Colorado's legal marijuana
industry. Even the customer side.

After touring growers and processors, visiting dispensaries, and
talking with the National Conference of State Legislatures, Leach
said, he returned to his hotel room and took two marijuana hits off a
vaporizer pen.

The Montgomery County Democrat has cosponsored a bill to legalize
medical marijuana, and said he was optimistic that it will pass in
September. Getting firsthand experience with modern strains of the
drug, Leach said, was a natural part of his mission.

"We hear a lot that, 'Oh, no, you can't legalize it because the
potency is so much stronger now,' " he said Friday. "We thought, we
probably should try this while we're here."

The two puffs, Leach said, were "much less than I would have smoked in
high school," and he stopped before "I became uncomfortable or
dysfunctional."

After that, the senator and his staff went to the hotel restaurant for
dinner - which he called "remarkably good" - and giggled a little bit
before heading to bed.

Leach said he had not gone to Colorado intending to smoke marijuana.
In an op-ed piece about the trip, published in the York Daily Record,
he did not even mention it. "You know how it is: You only have 750
words, and you want to get the most important stuff in," he said.

His impression of Colorado, Leach wrote, "is that we saw a system that
is working."

He praised Colorado's regulations as well-crafted and enforceable, and
listed the "astronomical" economic benefits to the state.

"Crime is down, and traffic accidents are down," he wrote, and "there
is no noticeable change in productivity, absences from work, or
dropping out of school."

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware)
said Friday that he did not know enough about Leach's trip to comment.

The three-day trip for Leach and three staffers cost about $ 5,000 and
came out of his Senate office funds, he said. The vapor cigarette came
in a gift bag from one of the dispensaries, he said.

"I think we should, if anything, be doing this far more often. In
private enterprise they do it, in other states they do it," Leach said
of the trip. "The stakes are so high ... we should have people on the
ground to understand what the impacts are going to be."

The trip also revealed some areas where his own medical marijuana bill
- - cosponsored by Sen. Mike Folmer (R., Lebanon) - needed improvement,
he said.

"Since dosage has to be precise, the strain has to be precise. ... You
have to have an extremely extensive testing protocol," Leach said.
"Frankly, far more sophisticated than my bill is, so we will have to
make some changes to that."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt