Pubdate: Sun, 20 Feb 2011
Source: Aspen Times, The  (CO)
Column: Hit and Run
Copyright: 2011 Aspen Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/zKpMPhQ7
Website: http://www.aspentimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3784
Author: John Colson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?277 (Cannabis - Medicinal -  Colorado)

STATE GOVERNMENT SET ON SUBVERTING VOTERS' WILL

If you're a Colorado resident, you may remember back in 2000 when you 
voted on the medical marijuana amendment to the Colorado 
constitution, and you may even remember how you voted.

I remember.

I voted for the amendment, even though I generally do not subscribe 
to the idea that voter-initiated petitions ought to create 
constitutional law, primarily because it is too haphazard and too 
caught up in extremist crap, too much of the time. But I have always 
believed marijuana to be a relatively harmless substance that is 
better for us, medicinally, than most of what Big Pharma cooks up in 
its labs and sells to us at exorbitant prices.

Anyway, the amendment was approved and became law. Currently 15 
states and the District of Columbia have similar statutes.

But in Colorado, for nearly a decade nothing really happened as a 
result, because federal laws that haven't changed since the American 
equivalent of the Stone Age prevented anything from happening. People 
were scared that any effort to take advantage of the new law would 
put them in Dutch with the feds, who have gleefully done all they can 
to reinforce that fear.

But in 2009 the feds were told to back off enforcement of the federal 
marijuana prohibition in states that has medical marijuana laws on 
the books, and the Colorado medical marijuana industry was born and 
began to thrive.

But now the state legislature seems determined to subvert the intent 
of the voters, beginning with a decision to hand enforcement of the 
medical marijuana laws to the Department of Revenue rather than where 
it belongs, at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Last year the statehouse passed a new set of laws ostensibly meant to 
legitimize the industry, but really meant to restrict it and to set 
up a coercive monitoring system that would discourage people from 
getting their medicine.

A large part of that coercive monitoring system involves cameras at 
all points of sale, creating a database on patients that is open to 
law enforcement types, including the feds.

So, even though a buyer might be obeying all the pertinent laws, and 
has a legitimate need for this medicinal drug, he or she would 
suddenly be on file for all to see and open to prosecution by federal 
agents looking for an easy bust to bolster their stats.

Recently, state legislators have introduced bills to outlaw edible 
forms of medical marijuana, which happens to be the only way that a 
lot of patients can use the medicine because of pulmonary problems 
and diseases. They eat cookies, tinctures, ice cream, any form that 
meets their need without further damaging their already damaged lungs.

To make matters worse for patients, two hyped-up haters of anything 
they don't understand, Rep. Claire Levy (D-Boulder) and Rep. Mark 
Waller (R-El Paso County), both members of the House Judiciary 
Committee, have proposed making it illegal to drive with more than an 
infinitesimal amount of medical marijuana in your bloodstream. This, 
even though there is absolutely no evidence that the level described 
in the bill either impairs one's driving abilities or has ever been 
the cause of an automobile accident.

Like so many who see the medical marijuana issue as their ticket to 
political prominence, they are manufacturing a "crisis" for their own 
selfish ends, and further messing with people's legitimate rights to 
use this relatively harmless drug for its medicinal properties.

As for the fact that the voters approved medical marijuana use more 
than a decade ago, that doesn't seem to matter, just as it seems not 
to matter that a majority of American voters favor open access to 
abortion for women, and some kind of national health care system that 
does not leave everything in the hands of a corrupt insurance industry.

These issues are all intertwined, and all can be traced to the plain 
fact that the conservative wing of our political system is trying to 
push its narrow-minded, self-righteous, tight-fisted and repressive 
agenda on the rest of us.

Unfortunately, too many of us seem too willing to just sit back and 
let this happen.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom