MEDICAL MARIJUANA CREATES A LEGAL PURPLE HAZE

Question of the week: Can Green Harvest helicopter pilots tell the
difference between a medical marijuana plant and a commercial pakalolo
plant?

Answer: No one knows yet. But sometimes I wonder about the timing of things
in the universe, or in this particular case, the timing of different levels
of government functioning in Hawai'i.

On Tuesday, the state Senate approved a medical marijuana bill. A day later,
the Kaua'i County Council accepted $146,000 in federal and state funds for
the Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program.

The medical marijuana bill says seriously ill people can grow their own pot
plants in their backyard for their own consumption to ease their suffering.

The eradication program's goal is to seize and destroy as many of these
plants as possible.

The $146,000 goes mostly towards helicopter fees used in the Green Harvest
operations on island. The latest harvest two months ago yielded about 2,000
plants, according to Kaua'i Police Chief George Frietas.

How are these two things going to jibe?

Sure pakalolo growers hiding out up in the Kaua'i hinterland are a lot
different than cancer patients growing a few ounces worth of the stuff in
their backyards.

But, without proper instructions to local police --not to mention the fact
that the acquisition of marijuana is still illegal under federal law--these
patients can come under the same fire.

Will registered grower/users be given a special banner to fly near their
pot, which reads: "Don't land here, legally grown (er, at least in the state
of Hawai'i, but not in the United States)"?

Burned into my mind is that famous "screaming-Elian-in-the-closet"
picture --taken by an AP photographer at the moment Elian Gonzalez, in the
arms of his rescuer, Donato Dalrymple, was discovered by a heavily armed
federal agent in a pre-dawn raid on Elian's relatives' house in Miami
Sunday.

Now I can see a similar picture taking shape here in Hawai'i, only
Dalrymple--the ubiquitous Fisherman--is a sickly grandmother and little
Elian is an about-to-be-confiscated pot plant.

Sickly grandmothers are not your typical pot smokers. And most non-medical
pot smokers are not the type of villain demonized into crazed fiends in
polite society and depicted in anti-drug propaganda films such as "Refer
Madness." This I think everyone understands.

But what we have here is a case of where the law is the law is not the law.

Chief Freitas says that his department has not received any sort of prepping
on how to handle this tricky case of one group of exempted pot smokers.

"The concerns have been, what are the logistics going to be, and how is this
thing going to work, and I don't think those questions have been answered,"
he says.

I must stop right here and say I for one support the bill wholeheartedly. I
have not felt the kind of pain a terminally ill or dying person goes through
minute by minute, hour by hour. Give them whatever they need, I say.

I do think it is admirable that the state Legislature made such a bold move
as passing this bill, thereby sending a strong message to the feds that
medical marijuana should be regulated by the FDA.

U.S. Attorney Steve Alm has stated that he will not use the list of
registered users' names to hunt down those who use medical marijuana, but
that doesn't necessarily mean these frail, sick people will be safe from
abuse.

The bill has no provision about where the "legal" smokers will get their pot
seeds or plants from, thus forcing them to go to the street or to those
shotgun-toting pakalolo growers in the toolies for their supply.

"We still don't understand how you are going to go through the process of
obtaining an item that is illegal. How does that step occur?" Frietas says.

The bill only makes provisions after these people are arrested that their
pot and attending paraphernalia should be returned to them (although it
doesn't require the police to water and feed the plants while in their
possession).

That's only after they've suffered through the trauma of arrest.

Our lawgivers say they are gallantly joining the fight to legalize the use
of marijuana for medical purposes for the "health and welfare of (Hawai'i's)
citizens," but it's these sickly patients suffering from such debilitating
illnesses as cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and so on who are on
the front line of that fight.

Now if the senators came up with the idea of using the yield from the Green
Harvest to go towards medical marijuana use, that would be something.

The only thing that could top that would be the senators themselves offering
to grow that particular leafy medical requisite for the sick and dying and
thereby risk a knock on their own doors.