MEDICAL MARIJUANA USERS NEED PROTECTION

Sharon Tracy "may have been exactly the kind of patient the voters of
this state had in mind when they enacted the medical marijuana
initiative, I-692."

So said the Washington State Supreme Court in a Nov. 22 ruling about
a woman who suffers from, among other things, diabetes, heart
disease, degenerating discs in her back, a hip deformity, and who has
had a series of eight corrective surgeries for a ruptured colon and
bowel conditions. On her doctor's recommendation, Sharon Tracy was
using marijuana to treat her pain.

Nevertheless, Skamania County saw fit to arrest and prosecute her,
and the Supreme Court saw fit to uphold her conviction, all because
her doctor got his license in California instead of Washington. Now
she is serving home detention in Stevenson, more than 25 miles from
the nearest hospital, and her felony conviction means that she'll no
longer be able to help out at the day care at her church.

Prosecuting Sharon Tracy and monitoring her through the department of
corrections is probably not the way most taxpayers want their money
spent. And, as the court pointed out, it is clearly not what
Washington voters had in mind when they voted for Washington's
medical marijuana initiative. Those voters recognized that protecting
people like Sharon Tracy from prosecution and jail time is a matter
of compassion, common sense and fiscal responsibility.

However, law enforcement and the courts have had difficulty honoring
the voters' will. Time and again, the people whom the law was meant
to protect find themselves in handcuffs or worse. A Centralia man,
the caretaker for a muscular dystrophy patient, was arrested and
prosecuted for possessing that patient's medical marijuana (which was
then confiscated) - even though the law explicitly allows him to do
so. A Bremerton woman who has lupus and a doctor's recommendation for
medical marijuana was arrested and prosecuted for possessing a pipe
with nothing but marijuana residue in it. There are stories like
these all across Washington.

If we want to make sure that the law does what it was intended to do
- - that is, to protect patients and caregivers from unnecessary and
cruel prosecution - we need to make some changes.

The law needs to be clarified so that those who follow the rules can
avoid arrest, not just conviction. As it stands, the law provides
only a defense at trial.

The law needs to be clarified so that qualifying patients and
caregivers can create community medical gardens, providing the
intangible benefits of community support and ensuring that all
patients who need medical marijuana have access to it. Growing
marijuana is an expensive, time-consuming endeavor - frequently too
much for a sick patient too handle alone. If one of your elderly
relatives learned she needed chemotherapy in a week, and her doctor
recommended marijuana for the nausea, do you think she'd be able to
grow what she needs in seven days? If she could join a community
garden, she'd be sure to have her medicine when the treatments began.

The law needs to be clarified to protect employees who use medical
marijuana. Employees who treat their pain with cannabis on a doctor's
recommendation should not be treated any differently from employees
who treat their pain with opiate-based drugs like codeine on their
doctor's recommendation. Testing positive for following your doctor's
advice shouldn't mean losing your job.

The law should be clarified so that doctors' expert opinions are
given their due. Washington respects a California doctor's opinion
that a patient will benefit from conventional painkillers; it should
also respect that same doctor's opinion that another patient would
benefit instead from medical marijuana.

It's too late for our medical marijuana law to protect Sharon Tracy,
but Gov. Gregoire should issue a commutation so she can return to
California to care for her very ill mother, and a pardon to rid her
of the felony conviction that prevents her from working with
children. Just as importantly our Legislature needs to make sure that
future patients don't have to undergo her ordeal. It's a simple
decision - compassion, common sense and fiscal responsibility tell us
that it makes no sense to prosecute and jail sick people for pursuing
doctor-recommended medication. Let's do the right thing and protect
Washington's medical marijuana patients.