California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown has announced that he will challenge a recent appellate court decision that struck down guidelines passed by the legislature on the amount of cannabis bonafide patients can have in their possession. His plan is terrible on several levels and reflects the unfortunate nannyism all too many so-called liberals embrace.
The first has to do with legality. As the appellate court correctly ruled, a law passed by the initiative process cannot be altered by the legislature, but only by a new initiative passed by a vote of the people. If the legislature doesn’t like an initiative, it doesn’t have the power to change it. Prop. 215 did not contain possession limits. From talking with the authors for my book, “Waiting to Inhale: The Politics of Medical Marijuana,” I know that this was not by accident or sloppy drafting but by design. Jerry Brown and some police may not like it, but their recourse is to write a new initiative, not to change it through legislation.
It could be argued that the limits contained in SB 420, which also set up the voluntary patient card program and was intended as orderly implementation by people sympathetic to medicinal marijuana, were suggested guidelines rather than legal limits. If that’s the interpretation, the patient for whom the appellate court ordered a new trial should still get one; his “crime” was that he had 12 ounces rather than 8 ounces.
Some police spokesmen claim that the lack of limits makes the police job difficult, but that’s mostly a cover for not wanting to implement the law at all. The California Narcotic Officers Association (marijuana is not a narcotic, by the way) still has pages on its Website arguing that “Marijuana is NOT a medicine.” That is simply unscientific nonsense. Or do you prefer the term “lie”?
The reason Prop. 215 contained no possession limits is because at the time it was written (1996) and still today, there isn’t reliable public information available as to how much cannabis is appropriate for various conditions. I’ve known patients who smoke 1 cigarette a day and some who smoke 10 or 12 and say they don’t get “high.” Because of federal prohibition there has been almost no decent scientific research on medical marijuana since the early 1970s (because the feds won’t let researchers have cannabis). However, the 1999 Institute of Medicine report made it clear that there’s an abundance of scientific evidence for marijuana’s therapeutic properties.
Prop. 215 had no legal limits to leave the system flexible — to let doctors and patients rather than cops, legislators or attorneys general decide. The enforcement “problem” can be solved very simply: Don’t arrest people with a physician’s recommendation.
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