Pubdate: Sat, 18 Aug 2012
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.utsandiego.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/386
Note: Seldom prints LTEs from outside it's circulation area.
Author: John Redman
Note: Redman is the executive director of Californians for Drug-Free 
Youth, the oldest anti-drug coalition in California.

U.S. ATTORNEY IS RIGHT TO CLOSE POT SHOPS

When Californians passed the "Compassionate Use Act"  otherwise known 
as Proposition 215  in 1996, most voters thought that it was 
reasonable to allow chronically ill patients to use marijuana without 
fear of arrest. And if that patient could not grow marijuana on their 
own, the initiative stipulated that patient caregivers could help to 
grow marijuana for their patients collectively, or cooperatively for 
a patient's personal use. These were adverbs, not nouns. Likewise, 
the voter pamphlet stated that, "police officers can still arrest 
anyone who grows too much, or tries to sell it."

Of course, a lot can change in 16 years.

No one can say with a straight face that the original intent of 
Proposition 215 is even close to being carried out today. Donning 
white coats and using words like "compassion" and "natural," 
profiteers are amassing huge sums of money in the name of "medical" 
marijuana. "Patients," as documented by numerous peer-reviewed 
studies, are usually nothing more than "users" who now get pot from 
dispensaries under the guise of medicine. According to most research, 
fewer than 3 percent of "patients" have the stated chronic illnesses 
that Proposition 215 spelled out.

So-called "dispensaries" are nothing more than pot shops, some with 
scantily clad women acting as "medical professionals" and tinted 
doors protected by 300-pound bouncers guarding cash-only 
transactions. It's little surprise then that many shops are the 
targets of property theft and other crimes. And twenty-somethings 
behind the counter often hand out medical advice as if they actually 
have been to medical school, but of course few have.

You might think that operating in this quasi-legal gray area would be 
a deterrent. But it hasn't been. There are more medical marijuana 
"dispensaries" than Starbucks stores in some cities. Though the 
medical profession has largely rejected smoked marijuana as medicine 
because it has not passed FDA muster, a handful of unscrupulous 
doctors and dispensary owners have made millions of dollars in the 
name of "compassion."

Medical marijuana has officially turned into a sad joke.

That is why it should not surprise anyone that U.S. Attorney Laura 
Duffy, whose jurisdiction covers San Diego and Imperial counties, has 
been moving to shut down these drug-dealing operations. These 
enterprises represent the antithesis of what voters intended in 1996.

This sense of discontent is having spillover effects: There are signs 
that California's love affair with marijuana is receding. Medical 
marijuana moguls bankrolled an unsuccessful effort to legalize 
marijuana outright, and it turns out that none of the six attempts to 
get it back on the ballot in 2012 were successful either.

Rev. Scott Imler, who co-wrote Proposition 215 and advocates for the 
limited use of medical marijuana, put it best recently when he said, 
"We created Prop. 215 so that patients would not have to deal with 
black-market profiteers. But today it is all about the money. Most of 
the dispensaries operating in California are little more than dope 
dealers with storefronts."

Selling joints to anyone with a pulse and $200 cash was never the 
bill of goods that the voters were sold.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom