Ehlen Drive Business Gets Conditional Approval From Planning Director As far as Linn County is concerned, Sheri Levit can go ahead and keep running her "horticultural resource center" for Oregon medical marijuana patients and anyone else. Robert Wheeldon, director of the county's Planning and Building Department, has given the business on Ehlen Drive his conditional approval. In a letter dated Aug. 26, Wheeldon responded to a code interpretation request filed by Corvallis attorney George B. Heilig on behalf of the center's landlord, Ron McReynolds. [continues 333 words]
The sheriffs of Jackson and Washington counties have argued before the Oregon Court of Appeals that they should not have to give concealed handgun licenses to otherwise qualified citizens who hold medical marijuana cards. Their case is not convincing. They claim they are in a bind because of the federal law against marijuana, medical or otherwise. The sheriffs ought to remember who votes for them and who pays them - and it's NOT the federal government. Further, only recently the same sheriffs made the valid point - in regard to a proposed change in public records law, a change that failed to get through the 2009 legislature - that people often get those licenses because they have security concerns. Seems like of all the people in Oregon, medical pot permit holders may have more need of personal security and protection than most. Let's hope the court quickly confirms that the sheriffs have no grounds to withhold handgun licenses from the users of medical pot. [end]
Last month the Marion County Sheriff's Office issued a report of a type that has become almost routine in the mid-valley. And it will remain common unless the country makes a change in its laws. The department's street crimes unit had ripped up more than 300 marijuana plants from a field in remote Silver Creek Canyon between Sublimity and Silverton. Deputies found four different pot plantations on privately owned land in very rugged terrain. The plants were from 1 to 7 feet tall. If they had been left standing until harvested, deputies said, they would have had a street value estimated at nearly a million dollars. [continues 388 words]
Oregon's medical marijuana law needs to be clarified in view of the latest court decision. The Supreme Court may do so eventually, but it would be better - more democratic - for the legislature to perform that chore. In early 2005 the state Supreme Court ruled against a worker who had been fired from a forest-products plant because he used medical marijuana. In a different case, however, the Bureau of Labor and Industries ruled in favor of a worker, a drill press operator, who had been hired as a temporary and who was let go in 2003 when he disclosed his medical marijuana use. The labor bureau ruled that his employer had to make a reasonable accommodation of his disability, which was that he was smoking pot off the job to relieve his nausea and stomach cramps. [continues 346 words]
Being under the influence of illegal drugs and showing pornography to children would become crimes under separate bills being considered by state Rep. Andy Olson, R-Albany. Olson mentioned these and other pending proposals in a newsletter he e-mailed last week. It was the second time he issued the letter. The first time it came out during the primary election, and Olson withdrew it after being reminded that it's against the rules for legislators to issue state-paid newsletters within 60 days of an election. [continues 250 words]
Assuming that enough signatures turn out to be valid, we'll vote this fall on expanding the law on medical marijuana. In preparation for the expected arguments against this idea, it's recommended you look up "Going to Pot," an article in the July 12 National Review. In this conservative magazine, Ethan Nadelman, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, argues persuasively for an end to the national prohibition of marijuana. And he touches on all the arguments used in Oregon against the further legalization of medical marijuana. [continues 386 words]
We are faced with plenty of conflicting advice on the medical marijuana initiative, Ballot Measure 67. In the face of uncertainty, the question ought to be resolved in favor of suffering people who say that smoking marijuana is the only thing that relieves their vomiting or pain. Most of us are not in that unhappy boat. Most of us are not in wheelchairs, don't have treatments for AIDS or cancer and have not been afflicted by the various other ailments mentioned in the measure. [continues 339 words]
If the sheriff of Multnomah County had a medical degree and had acquired experience treating patients as a doctor, what he says about the medical marijuana initiative would have some weight. Since he does not and has not, he has no standing to declare, as he did last week before the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, that marijuana would be "the least effective and most risky" medication to give to someone. On the subject of the effectiveness of various substances in treating people for illnesses, you would think sheriffs would disqualify themselves. [continues 291 words]
