Pubdate: Sat, 01 Jun 2013
Source: Portland Press Herald (ME)
Copyright: 2013 MaineToday Media, Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/J9R991Zc
Website: http://www.pressherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/744

'LEGALIZING' POT IN PORTLAND WOULD JUST ADD TO THE CONFUSION

We already have tension between state and federal law, and don't need 
an ineffective local ordinance that is at odds with both.

Marijuana is illegal. Unless you live in Washington state or 
Colorado. Then you can smoke it as much as you want.

Or unless you live in Maine or one of 17 other states where medical 
marijuana is legal, and you suffer from a condition approved for 
treatment. You can buy your medicine at a state government-approved 
dispensary, and you should be safe from prosecution - unless the U.S. 
attorney general changes his mind and starts aggressively enforcing 
the trafficking laws again. Then your dispensary could get busted.

Now an umbrella organization, Citizens for a Safer Portland, wants to 
further complicate the issue by passing a local referendum in 
Portland, instructing city police to ignore state and federal law 
when it comes to marijuana use and possession for people over the age 
of 21. Selling marijuana would still be illegal, regardless of your 
age, so there would be no legal way for Portlanders to acquire the 
substance that they would be legally able to use. (As long as they 
didn't wander into Westbrook.)

Enough. Whether the allegedly benign weed should be legal is a 
conversation worth having. But changing the law on a piecemeal 
town-by-town basis is not worth the trouble.

This is mainly a symbolic gesture that would have little real-world 
impact on anyone's life. Pot has been decriminalized in Maine. 
Possession of less than 2 ounces is a civil infraction, not a 
criminal one, and getting caught breaking this law gets you a ticket 
and a fine, not jail time. Telling officers that they have to enforce 
the law only for people under the age of 21 will not save police time 
that can be rechanneled to other more pressing needs.

If advocates want to send a message, they should send it to the right 
address. Since this is a really a matter of federal law, federal 
officials should be having this debate.

A good place to start would be reclassifying pot from a drug that is 
illegal under any circumstances, to one that is legal in medical 
applications, like prescription drugs. That would take the legality 
of medical marijuana dispensaries out of the hands of federal law enforcement.

Then maybe there should be a debate about whether pot prohibition is 
achieving its goals. But let's have that discussion at the right level.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom