Pubdate: Fri, 06 Feb 2015 Source: Seattle Times (WA) Copyright: 2015 The Seattle Times Company Contact: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409 Author: John Kingsbury Note: John Kingsbury is a medical-marijuana advocate, patient and is now reluctant activist. TAILOR LEGAL MARKET TO MEDICAL POT THE implementation of Initiative 502 is floundering. Its largest obstacle is not medical marijuana, as state lawmakers suggest, but its haphazard construction, an emerging marijuana market in Oregon and a group of I-502 advocates who have decided to scapegoat medical marijuana rather than fix a flawed initiative. Legislators must recognize that I-502 is based on an untenable regulatory model. It doesn't help that the state Liquor Control Board has an abysmal record of understanding how business functions. If it is to succeed, I-502 must be reworked to meet the needs of medical-marijuana patients as well as recreational purchasers. Denying the obvious threatens to derail the initiative and roll back the 1998 Medical Use of Marijuana Act, which first gave Washingtonians legal access to marijuana. Legislators must recognize that the No. 1 obstacle keeping medical-marijuana patients out of the state-licensed shops is price. A reworked I-502 must lower those costs for patients. The way to do that would be to follow Colorado's low 3 percent tax on sales to qualified patients. Making that patient registration process easy, not burdensome, is equally essential to keep patients out of the black market. After I-502 was approved in 2012, rather than pursue their "pass it, then fix it" sales pitch, initiative backers chose to go after medical marijuana. Legislators responded with confused proposals about an unfamiliar subject. Meanwhile, the so-called green-rush marijuana entrepreneurs are trying to make us forget that I-502 was supposed to be as much about decriminalization as generating profits and tax revenue. Sadly, few voices are speaking for legitimate medical-marijuana patients. Even Alison Holcomb, who has been called the architect of marijuana legalization in Washington state, has offered no solutions for the estimated 180,000 legitimate patients in this state - including those living with multiple sclerosis, cancer, epilepsy and chronic pain. Instead, those opposing medical marijuana have resorted to four fallacies to try to force patients into a defective system. Medical-marijuana don't really exist: Even this fallacy is fading away because so many people know legitimate medical-marijuana patients. People understand that believing patients to be frauds is to believe that hundreds of doctors, including those practicing at Providence, Group Health and other major health providers, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, are writing bogus medical-marijuana authorizations. Licensed stores will make home growing and medical-marijuana outlets obsolete: This falsehood suggests that chronically ill people, who usually suffer financial difficulties as a result of their illness, will be well-served by licensed stores. Even with a tax break, I-502 threatens to force patients to spend hundreds of dollars a month for marijuana on top of their existing health-care expenses. Price and availability of state-approved marijuana will become affordable and abundant: The problem is that I-502 was written not on the idea that cannabis is agriculture, but on a myth that it can be a golden cash crop the state can tax and regulate without consequence. Eliminate normal tax deductions, add an estimated 45 percent tax, add unprecedented layers of regulations, remove reliable access to banking and you begin to understand the financial pressures on state-licensed businesses growing marijuana for retail outlets. Medical and recreational markets are essentially the same: They could not be more different. While there are different product needs, recreational buyers have the choice to purchase or not, while patients must purchase it to avoid daily suffering. In most cases, patients' choices are between cannabis or narcotics or anti-seizure medications. Today, accessing higher priced, state-licensed stores is out of the question for most patients. If left uncorrected, I-502 will force patients back on to more harmful drugs or parking-lot drug deals. This is a return to prohibition for the poor and contrary to the basic postulates of public health. The reality is that medical and recreational marijuana cannot be reconciled without rewriting I-502. Making this work means basing policy on expert opinion and focusing on patients instead of putting tax dollars first. Wiping out medical marijuana would cause immense collateral damage in the lives of people, but it would not by itself rescue I-502. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom