Pubdate: Tue, 12 May 2015
Source: Reporter, The (Vacaville, CA)
Copyright: 2015 The Reporter
Contact:  http://www.thereporter.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/472
Author: Ernest Kimme

NO EASY ANSWERS FOR MARIJUANA ISSUES

So the Vacaville City Council stopped short of banning all marijuana 
growing in Vacaville. I'm surprised.

Previously, the Council has made its opposition to marijuana very 
clear, unanimously banning the sale of marijuana or marijuana 
products in the city. So I expected this 'no-grow' proposal from the 
police department also to be endorsed by the Council.

What changed? For starters, there were a parade of people who talked 
about the benefits of marijuana, and the change in the quality of 
life it has made for people. Loyal readers of this column know that I 
am one of them.

Several years ago, I got a horrible infection in the lining of my 
lungs, and was in the hospital for 10 days. Of course, I got every 
possible antibiotic, which eventually killed off all the bacteria in 
my gut. Long story short, I lost 20 pounds with no sign of stopping. 
Eventually I found a diet I could tolerate, although I still hurt 
every time I ate.

Most of the medications for that problem have significant side 
effects. Then a friend, who was dying of lung cancer, suggested that 
I try medical marijuana. It had enormously improved the quality of 
his life, and thought it might work for me. It did.

Now for the complaints. Medical marijuana is still in a quasi-legal 
status, so standardization of dosage is spotty and infrequent. Only 
recently have I found a tincture that had dosage measurements on it. 
Previously, I had no idea how much active ingredient I was getting in 
each droplet. That's irritating and possibly dangerous.

My second more general complaint is that smoking a product to get a 
medication into your body is completely stupid. Burn something, and 
the by-products of whatever you are burning, including carbon 
monoxide, will be in the smoke. Getting marijuana's active 
ingredients into a body should be safer.

However, marijuana is on the Hazardous Drugs list, along with heroin 
and crack cocaine. It is nearly impossible for a scientist to get 
permission to study marijuana. Therefore, isolating the active 
ingredients, studying them, and finding better ways to use them - and 
get them into a body - are all stymied.

Someday, before I die, I would like to see our Congress take 
marijuana off that list. But I am not hopeful. There is a huge 
bureaucracy now, dedicated to and partially financed by, drugs - 
especially marijuana - being illegal.

So where does this craziness leave Vacaville and our issue of illegal 
grow operations? The police are right: Marijuana growing operations 
in residential neighborhoods are dangerous. Houses are not designed 
to use huge quantities of electricity or water. (Take it to an 
industrial building, where there's lots of outlets and waterproof 
floors.) And due to marijuana's quasi-legal state, criminals can 
attempt to steal the marijuana, meaning the grower has to be ready to 
defend it. All of which puts the neighbors at risk. Unacceptable.

At the same time, legal users of medical marijuana are allowed, under 
state law, to grow just enough marijuana for personal use. The 
question is, how much is "personal use"? Five plants? Ten plants? 
Twenty? Thus the dilemma for our police: Where do you draw the line?

(Hint: if extension cords are involved, it's probably too many.)

And what about the smell of drying marijuana? To harvest marijuana, 
just like tobacco, you cut it off at the stem, and hang it upside 
down until dry. During this time, the drying leaves are smelly - a 
lot. Tobacco farmers don't usually live next to their drying sheds 
for a reason. Neither should neighbors be subjected to unpleasant 
smells. You want to grow some pot for personal use? Find a friend who 
lives in the country and cure it out there.

The answers are not easy. I don't envy our police, trying to make 
sense of this mess, and still protect neighborhoods. Simply banning 
it all is not the answer, but neither is simply ignoring the problem.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom