Pubdate: Thu, 01 Oct 2015
Source: Tucson Weekly (AZ)
Copyright: 2015 Tucson Weekly
Contact:  http://www.tucsonweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/462
Author: Jayson Chesler, Lex Talamo and Sean Logan, News21

NEWS21: AMERICA'S WEED RUSH

While marijuana advocates look to legalize in Arizona, concerns 
remain about medical marijuana program By Jayson Chesler, Lex Talamo 
and Sean Logan

Whether he's advocating for marijuana or gathering petitions for a 
ballot initiative, it's tough to miss Dave Wisniewski, chairman of 
Safer Arizona, a political action committee. His rigid 6-foot-4-inch 
stature makes him easy to notice. His giant "Marijuana is safer than 
alcohol" sign helps, too.

Wisniewski said he uses medical marijuana to treat his back pain and 
post-traumatic stress disorder. He supported marijuana legalization 
well before his time in the military, but the conditions he developed 
while serving overseas in the Army showed him the drug's medical 
benefits compared to the four pharmaceutical drugs doctors prescribed 
him after his combat service.

"When I would take the (anti-anxiety drug) lorazepam, it would feel 
like I was hit in the head with a shovel," Wisniewski said. "When I 
use cannabis, it's like I'm very calm and collected, and I can get 
back to actually being productive and go to work."

Statistics show cartels, crime not impacted

Some supporters of the medical marijuana program - and the push for a 
potential recreational program - argue that a legal, taxed market 
helps curb drug cartels and illegal trafficking in the state.

Federal and local officials said there's no evidence Arizona's 
medical marijuana program has hurt the black market.

Phoenix Police Department Commander Brent Vermeer said via email that 
he didn't have empirical data to show the impact of medical marijuana 
on law enforcement, but "it unequivocally has not impacted the 
cartels' sales practices for marijuana."

He wrote in an email that the department has investigated homicides 
related to marijuana, and burglars recently stole $500,000 worth of 
marijuana from one dispensary. "Within two days, their front office 
was robbed at gunpoint of several thousands of dollars," he wrote.

"Violence follows drugs, regardless of whether they are legal or 
not," he added. "The drugs have value ... and human lives don't to 
those who operate in the drug world."

Border protection officers at the DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales 
said thousands of vehicles enter the U.S. from Mexico there daily. 
While it's nearly impossible to determine how much of the illicit 
marijuana that is trafficked through the Mexico border actually 
remains in the state, Arizona still remains a hub for distribution to 
other parts of the country, and authorities haven't seen any decrease 
in trafficking.

Cartel trafficking has shifted, placing more focus on hard narcotics 
like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines than in the past, officers 
said. Despite the change in demand, marijuana still remains the most 
smuggled drug in Arizona, officials said.

According to the agency, the amount of marijuana seized across all 
Arizona ports of entry has increased by 19 percent - from 38,050 
kilograms to 45,255 kilograms - in fiscal year 2015.

Officer Marcia Armendariz said large cargo shipments of marijuana 
have increased.

"Marijuana is still there," Armendariz said. "They're still trying to 
smuggle in marijuana because it will pay off ... the cartels."

Schindel said drug cartels will always exist, because they can sell 
their product more cheaply.

"They can always undercut," she said. "They don't have the overhead. 
They don't have the taxes."

Phoenix medical marijuana dispensaries Encanto Green Cross and 
Nature's AZ Medicines list their cheapest ounces of marijuana at 
$280, while medium-quality black market marijuana goes for under $210 
per ounce in Arizona, according to Price of Weed, a crowd-sourced 
marijuana price index.

Marijuana-related arrests within the state have not seen a dramatic 
decrease either, according to statewide police data compiled by the 
Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Yearly possession arrests have dropped since the state legalized 
medical marijuana, from as high as 20,000 in 2009 to roughly 16,000 
per year since 2010. However, arrests for marijuana distribution have 
remained steady at about 1,600 per year.

Opponents to legalization said the most important marijuana crimes 
involve children, including kids illegally obtaining legal medical marijuana.

"A big thing parents need to pay attention to is where kids are 
getting drugs and alcohol from," said Justin McBride of Drug Free AZ 
Kids. "And the youth survey tells us it was from (medical marijuana) 
cardholders."

In the 2014 Arizona Youth Survey, a survey of kids in eighth, 10th 
and 12th grades conducted by the state justice commission, 14 percent 
of kids who reported use of marijuana stated that they got it from 
someone with a medical marijuana card. The sample size was roughly 
8,000 students.

Revenue and regulations prove challenging to track

In 2010, then-Attorney General Tom Horne estimated the tax from 
medical marijuana sales would bring in $40 million a year. Five years 
later, state officials said they still don't have exact tax revenue 
figures from the sale of marijuana.

While the Department of Health Services keeps track of how much 
medical marijuana consumers buy in any given year, they don't track 
how much money changes hands.

The Department of Revenue, the agency in charge of administering tax 
laws in Arizona, tracks medical marijuana tax collections. But 
officials said marijuana sales aren't distinguished from sales of 
other individual retail, so they don't have exact numbers or 
estimates of how much tax revenue marijuana has generated.

Arizona taxes marijuana sales at 6.6 percent, and cities tack on an 
additional 2 to 3 percent. Health department figures showed consumers 
bought more than 9,000 kilograms of marijuana in 2014, which the 
department estimated generated about $112 million in sales.

Tom Salow, branch chief for Arizona's Medical Marijuana Program, said 
many states have reached out to use Arizona's regulations as a model. 
When Arizona became the 15th state to legalize medical marijuana, the 
pro-legalization campaign emphasized stricter rules and regulations 
than those found in other medical states.

Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical 
marijuana, but Salow said Arizona's system remains one of the best.

"I'm still told today that our regulations are still a model in the 
country," Salow said.

However, critics of Arizona's medical marijuana system said it's 
difficult to tell just how well it works. Because of the 
confidentiality clause written into the voter-approved measure, the 
Department of Health Services can't release all of the information it collects.

For example, the department can't share information like the physical 
addresses of dispensaries or individual dispensary inspection records.

The department can share aggregate data, such as infractions among 
dispensaries and cultivation sites. According to the department's 
2014 annual report, inspectors found an average of 12.35 problems per 
inspection. The department conducted 113 inspections at dispensaries 
and cultivation sites.

Some of the most common issues inspectors found involved dispensaries 
that did not have a medical director on site, problems with 
administrative procedures and poor inventory control.

"That industry is cloaked in secrecy," said Polk, the Yavapai County 
attorney. "The database is only used to track cardholders."

The department isn't able to use and compare records to better 
understand the public health impact of medical marijuana in the state 
because of its heavy restrictions, Polk said.

Groups look ahead to potential recreational legalization

Attempts to pass recreational marijuana through the state Legislature 
have failed to pick up momentum since medical legalization.

Voter initiatives in Arizona need 150,000 signatures to make it to a 
ballot, so the push for recreational marijuana will require major 
financial backing. The Marijuana Policy Project, the national 
marijuana politics group that backed legalization in Colorado, 
provides support for one initiative for the 2016 ballot, the Campaign 
to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol.

The national group's support should make it the only initiative 
capable of gathering the number of signatures needed for the ballot, 
said Barrett Marson, a spokesman for the campaign.

"We're looking at a multimillion-dollar spending effort that includes 
getting signatures," Marson said. "That's a significant effort. It 
could be as much as $1 million to get signatures."

Alfaro, the group's Arizona political co-director, said they will 
push three key points: The taxes collected from sales will fund 
education, marijuana is safer than alcohol, and marijuana users will 
have a legal means to access pot, which will decrease the black market.

"I don't think anyone disagrees that Arizona needs education 
funding," Alfaro said. "This tax that will generate millions and 
millions of dollars toward education will be a big boost to that, and 
that's one of the reasons why our initiative is so popular."

Two of Arizona's most prominent anti-drug forces, Polk and 
Montgomery, are helping to lead the charge against whatever marijuana 
initiatives make the 2016 initiative through their Arizonans for 
Responsible Drug Policy group.

The push for recreational marijuana only shows that medical marijuana 
companies aren't actually interested in medicine, Polk said.

"Since when is a medicine something you use recreationally? Treat it 
like a medicine," Polk said. "Keep it locked down."

Seth Leibsohn, chairman for the group, also doesn't buy the notion 
legalization will affect illegal drug trafficking.

"It would be basically an organized drug cartel," Leibsohn said. "The 
idea that we would solve a problem in another country, that we would 
solve cartelized, illegal industry in another country by negatively 
affecting our children is public policy malfeasance."

On top of opposition from anti-marijuana groups, the Marijuana Policy 
Project faces challenges from a collection of medical marijuana 
activists. The Campaign to

Legalize and Regulate Marijuana splintered off from involvement with 
Marijuana Policy Project and is gathering signatures for a ballot 
initiative of its own.

That initiative includes higher possession and grow limits and lower 
penalties for breaking those limits, in addition to the potential for 
more marijuana stores. But it also targets one section of the policy 
project's campaign that anti-marijuana groups agree is 
problematic""potential advantages for current dispensary owners.

The Marijuana Policy Project initiative allows city governments to 
forbid retail marijuana stores from opening within their borders, but 
cities could not bar stores opened by prior dispensary owners. It 
also creates a marijuana board to regulate both medical and 
recreational licensing, with three of the board's seven members 
coming from members of the marijuana industry.

"They're protecting their industry, the medical marijuana 
dispensaries, from newcomers entering the business," Leibsohn said. 
"(Marijuana lawyer Tom Dean and I) don't agree on much, but he put it 
well: If the MPP's initiative passes, a handful of people will get 
very, very wealthy."

This is from a continuing series from America's Weed Rush, an 
investigation of marijuana legalization in America, a 2015 project of 
the Carnegie-Knight News21 program produced by the nation's top 
journalism students and graduates.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom