PUNTING ON POT: IS MEDICINAL MARIJUANA TOO TOUCHY FOR DAVIS?

A task force assembled by Attorney General Bill Lockyer has sketched a
sensible though vague outline of how to make an illegal substance,
marijuana, legal medicine for the seriously ill, as voters mandated by
passing Proposition 215 in 1996.

The task force of prosecutors, legislators and medicinal marijuana
advocates decided to leave many of the tough decisions to Gov. Gray Davis
and his Department of Health Services. The proposals are now embodied in SB
848, authored by Sen. John Vasconcellos of Santa Clara, a co-chairman of
the task force. The bill deserves to advance, at the very least, to keep
this debate before both the governor and lawmakers.

The bill seeks to define what the poorly drafted proposition did not, and
to delegate further definitions to the state. Proposition 215 legalized
undefined quantities of marijuana for "seriously ill" people and authorized
"primary caregivers" to cultivate the marijuana on a sick person's behalf.
The proposition has proven unworkable by omitting any reasonable process of
identifying who truly is seriously ill or a process of cultivating and
distributing medicinal quantities of the marijuana to this population.

The task force proposes to establish a registry program to provide identity
cards to those who qualify for marijuana. This would be administered by the
Department of Health Services along with county health departments. It is
up to the department to determine both the details of this registry program
and to identify the appropriate quantities of marijuana. Patients could
delegate the cultivation of marijuana to cooperatives, which, again, would
be defined and regulated by the state. How much money could be made in the
marijuana trade? The compensation must be "reasonable," says the legislation.

Vasconcellos' bill wrongly seeks to permit public smoking of medicinal
marijuana just about everywhere cigarettes can be legally smoked. The few
exceptions include near a school, in a vehicle or on a school bus. The bill
allows local governments to adopt "consistent" laws. Does this prohibit
further restrictions at a local level? Most Californians who voted for this
proposition surely assumed that seriously ill people who smoke marijuana
would do so discreetly. Any definition to the contrary unnecessarily runs
the risk of a backlash.

Despite this flaw and many unanswered questions, the approach by this task
force represents a welcome change of direction by Lockyer. Unlike his
predecessor, Lockyer seeks to accommodate the will of the voters to the
extent legally feasible. This accommodation is the moderate stance that
Davis has taken with respect to followup policies for Propositions 187
(benefits for illegal immigrants) and 209 (banning race-based affirmative
action programs). Curiously, he has threatened to veto SB 848. Why the
double standard? The governor shouldn't punt on pot. He should lead.