Pubdate: Sat, 18 May 2013
Source: Times-Tribune, The (Scranton PA)
Copyright: 2013 Associated Press
Contact:  http://www.thetimes-tribune.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4440
Author: Peter Jackson, Associated Press

KANE AGAINST POT LEGALIZATION

Attorney General Calls Marijuana a "Gateway Drug."

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane told a 
gathering of newspaper editors Friday that she opposes legislation to 
legalize marijuana because users often move on to harder drugs.

"It's a gateway drug," Ms. Kane said in a luncheon speech during the 
annual conference of the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors.

"When you don't get your high from marijuana you're going to turn to 
something else. It's going to be oxycodone and then it's going to be 
heroin. It doesn't stop just at marijuana," she said. "I oppose it 
for criminal justice reasons."

Ms. Kane, a Democrat who previously spent more than a decade as a 
Lackawanna County prosecutor, did not totally close the door on 
medical marijuana bills but said more information is needed about 
what qualifies as a medical use and how prescriptions would be regulated.

"Who can get it? What are going to be the safeguards to make sure 
that these scripts or letters from your doctor aren't given out 
willy-nilly? And also ... it creates a market for selling these 
things and we want to make sure that that doesn't happen," she said.

At least one bill to legalize the personal use of marijuana and two 
bills to decriminalize medical marijuana are pending in legislative committees.

Ms. Kane made her comments about marijuana in response to questions 
from the audience following a speech in which she described her 
hectic four-month tenure as Pennsylvania's chief legal officer, her 
efforts to make the office more accessible to citizens and the 
difficulty of deciding whether to release or withhold information 
about high-profile cases.

"I usually tell everything that I can tell," she said. "So I want you 
to know that the information can go both ways and, if I'm not telling 
you something, you need to trust in me that it's for a very good reason."

One subject Ms. Kane has declared off-limits is the status of her 
office's ongoing probe into the handling of the investigation that 
set off the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal and ultimately 
sent the former Penn State assistant football coach to prison for at 
least 30 years.
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