Pubdate: Tue, 22 Jan 2013
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2013 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Marie Myung-ok Lee
Note: Marie Myung-Ok Lee is a novelist who teaches at Columbia and 
Brown universities.
Page: A11

OVERKILL IN THE WAR ON POT

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama emphatically stated that medical 
marijuana use was an issue best left to the states.

One of the first promises he made as the newly elected president was 
that he was "not going to be using Justice Department resources to 
try to circumvent state laws." This was even reiterated formally in 
the so-called Ogden memo of 2009, in which the Department of Justice 
instructed U.S. attorneys that federal enforcement should apply only 
to medical marijuana operations that were not in clear compliance 
with state law.

Obama has since "clarified" those promises, but it still makes no 
sense that Matthew R. Davies, a business school graduate who set out 
in 2009 to create a medical marijuana dispensary that would be in 
full compliance with California law, is facing up to 15 years in 
prison - with a mandatory five-year sentence.

This is just one more puzzling incident in the history of a president 
who not only made these promises but has also admitted to heavy 
recreational use of marijuana himself in his youth.

As a second-term president, with little to lose, why is he continuing 
his odd campaign on a state-approved industry that employs people, 
pays taxes and distributes a safe and clinically useful product?

Lost in this fray is the fact that marijuana is medicine.

My son is autistic and has an autoimmune gastrointestinal problem for 
which, at my suggestion, his doctor prescribed him Marinol (a 
synthetic THC drug). When that proved ineffective, the doctor agreed 
to prescribe medical cannabis, which is legal in Rhode Island where 
we were living and, unlike in some states, such as California, is 
approved for pediatric use. At the time, our son was eating his clothes.

Whether as an autistic behavior or because of gastric pain, we 
weren't sure; but every day, unless we had him shirtless, he would 
consume the entire front of his cotton shirt, and sometimes his 
jacket, on the bus to and from school.

Medical marijuana cured him. But it wasn't as easy as running out and 
buying him a joint.

When we first considered cannabis, my husband and I made a decision 
not to procure it illegally.

That was complicated because although medical marijuana was legal in 
Rhode Island at the time, dispensaries were not, and we needed 
information about what kind of marijuana might help our son.

There are hundreds of strains of cannabis, with varying clinical 
properties - anxiety relief, sleep promotion, analgesia, anti-nausea 
- - and the ways they are processed also affect the way they work. I 
realize that some people use dispensaries to purchase cannabis for 
recreational use, but I can attest that the cannabis experts at the 
out-of-state dispensaries we consulted were focused on the medical 
properties of the marijuana they sold. They shared their considerable 
knowledge to help us find the particular strain that cured our son's 
pica (the medical name for eating nonfood items). I keep a corduroy 
jacket with a halfnibbled sleeve as a reminder of that day.

Our doctor, who started out as a healthy skeptic, was so impressed 
and moved by our son's experience that he asked if I'd speak with 
another parent in a similar situation.

This woman was desperate for help. Her son was even more destructive 
and aggressive than ours, and she had several children (we have one) 
and just didn't have the time and energy for the kind of 
trial-and-error experimentation we had done. If she'd had access to a 
good dispensary, things could have been different for her.

Without access, a medical marijuana license is a piece of paper.

Even with the attentive grower we found in Rhode Island, we ran into 
problems, including a pest infestation and a robbery.

Then came an even more devastating obstacle: After a year or so, he 
informed us he was giving up growing because he needed to find work. 
If there had been a dispensary in Rhode Island, he could have sold 
his excess there. But because he wanted to follow the law - which 
meant patients could only pay his actual costs - he was in an economic bind.

For a medical marijuana patient, a well-run, reliable dispensary like 
Matthew Davies' should be a basic patient right.

There is scientific consensus that cannabis has useful clinical 
benefits, and unlike synthetic pharmaceuticals, it has almost no toxicity.

An article in the Atlantic estimates that prosecuting Davies' 
dispensary is going to run more than a million dollars, not to 
mention putting a man with two small children and no criminal record 
in prison for five to 15 years.

The federal government has charged Davies with cultivating marijuana.

It contends he "sought to make large profits," which, if true, might 
have put him out of compliance with California law. He has insisted 
he violated no state laws. Putting that issue aside, it is clear that 
he was operating transparently and attempting to stay within the law. 
Is he really the biggest threat federal law enforcers can find to prosecute?

When large banks illegally game the system and ruin people's lives 
with subprime mortgages, instead of prosecution, our government bails 
them out and allows the CEOs huge bonuses.

And yet a person who creates a business that provides safe, reliable 
medicine that patients rely on may have his life upended for 
following state law. According to press accounts, Davies' business is 
transparent, efficient and provides professional service - all things 
worthy of praise. It has the additional social benefits of both 
employing people and helping law enforcement by keeping illicit 
marijuana off the streets.

If a well-run, meticulously inventoried, statelaw-compliant place is 
a target for federal action, no dispensary is safe.

According to Marijuana Policy Project estimates, there are more than 
1 million medical marijuana patients in the U.S. An attack on 
state-approved dispensaries is an attack on patients.

We would consider it inhumane to take away anti-nausea or pain 
medicine from a cancer patient.

But when the administration raids dispensaries and destroys plants, 
that is exactly what it is doing.

So what is the lesson here? Smoke marijuana illegally, and you can 
become president.

Try to provide a safe, consistent product that keeps the trade out of 
domestic and foreign drug cartels and brings in tax revenue, and face 
15 years jail time.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom