Pubdate: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 Source: Detroit Free Press (MI) Copyright: 2011 Detroit Free Press Contact: http://www.freep.com/article/99999999/opinion04/50926009 Website: http://www.freep.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125 Author: Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press Columnist DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR A MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW THAT MAKES SENSE Michigan's medical marijuana users are in a pickle. A 2-year-old state law gives them immunity from prosecution for "the acquisition, possession, cultivation, manufacture, use, internal possession, delivery, transfer or transportation of marijuana," so long as they've been authorized to do so for the relief of a legitimate malady or symptom. But Michigan continues to make it a crime for almost anyone -- including other licensed medical marijuana users -- to provide the pot that card-carrying patients are entitled to acquire, possess, cultivate, etc. The paradox was outlined in sharp relief earlier this year when a frustrated Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Joel Hoekstra asked an assistant attorney general appearing before him how prosecutors were supposed to enforce such an illogical muddle. "So you can have a (marijuana) transaction," Hoeskstra began incredulously, "where one half of it's legal, and the other half is illegal?" "That's how the Medical Marijuana Act is designed at this point," answered the assistant attorney general, Heather Meingast. "And the attorney general believes that's a workable definition of how this should happen?" Hoekstra pressed. "It's not a question of whether it's workable or not," Meingast retorted. "Is there a better way? Clearly." Death to dispensaries The Michigan Marijuana Act of 2008 -- adopted by a majority of Michigan voters even more substantial than the one that delivered the state's electoral votes to Barack Obama -- is fraught with hazard for innocents who imagine that just because it is legal for some people to buy marijuana, it must be legal for somebody else to sell it. In the case referenced above, Isabella County Prosecutor Larry Burdick sought the Court of Appeals' sanction for his efforts to close a local marijuana dispensary where licensed medical marijuana patients and their caregivers stored and exchanged harvests from the 12 pot plants each patient is authorized to cultivate. A county trial judge had rebuffed Burdick's crackdown, reasoning that while the Medical Marijuana Act failed to authorize such dispensaries explicitly, it appeared to protect licensed medical marijuana patients or caregivers -- such as the founders of the Isabella County dispensary -- from prosecution or police harassment for transferring small amounts of medical marijuana among one another. But Hoekstra and two other appellate court judges -- Engler appointee Christopher Murray and Granholm appointee Cynthia Stephens -- agreed with Prosecutor Burdick and Assistant AG Meingast that the law protects only patients and caregivers who receive marijuana, not those who provide it. Under the law, as Meingast explained to the court, "The patient walks away, the dealer is subject to prosecution" -- even if the dealer in question is a patient providing surplus marijuana to another patient. It might not make a lot of sense, she conceded, but fashioning a more workable law was up to the state Legislature or "the democratic process." They'll fix it, all right It is the democratic process, of course, that got us into this mess in the first place. In 2010, the same Michigan electorate that had voted to legalize medical marijuana two years earlier elected Republican legislative majorities, a Republican attorney general and a few dozen county prosecutors convinced that the Medical Marijuana Act was a terrible idea from the get-go -- and determined to use the law enforcement resources at their disposal to limit the scope of the act or emasculate it altogether. And these are the very same public officials that legitimate medical marijuana users are depending on to make the new law more "workable?" You can inhale, ladies and gentlemen (providing you have the requisite state issued license, of course), but I wouldn't hold your breath. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.