POT PROTECTION

Abuse? Hardly; ID Cards Safeguard the Sick, Work As Intended

The Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition's representative,
Roger Anderson, grossly distorts the truth about the state's
compassionate medical-marijuana law and those who support it ("Pot
law: a scam," Sept. 3).

Anderson's organization claims to be concerned that California's
medical-marijuana law is prone to abuse, but it applauds San
Bernardino and San Diego counties for suing to overturn a portion of
the law that is designed to limit any abuse.

The state's medical marijuana ID card helps Riverside County's law
enforcement officers to identify those who are bona fide patients --
that is, people who are using medical marijuana in compliance with the
law. The state's
medical marijuana law is good for taxpayers as well as patients. Only
an extremist minority still believes in arresting those who use pot
for pain relief.

A recent memo released by the California attorney general's office and
praised by the state's Police Chiefs Association says the ID cards
"represent one of the best ways to ensure the security and
nondiversion of marijuana grown for medical use." But Anderson and his
ilk seek to make the jobs of criminal-justice officials more difficult
by tossing out this valuable program.

And Anderson is flat wrong when he claims that the medical-marijuana
ID card program is operated at the expense of taxpayers. As a quick
read of the law easily reveals, application fees paid by the patients
themselves cover the cost of the program.

Scrapping the program, as suggested in Anderson's reactionary tirade,
would in fact be a drain on Riverside County tax dollars. It costs a
lot of money each time a medical-marijuana patient is arrested and
dragged through the judicial system -- only to have his or her case
later dismissed because there was no violation of state law.

Costly Spin

Additionally, another representative of the Inland Valley Drug Free
Community Coalition has been quoted in the media as saying that she is
seeking federal grant funding. That's right, the group wants taxpayers
to bankroll its misinformation campaign against our popular
medical-marijuana law.

Riverside County has issued a little more than 1,000 medical-marijuana
IDs since the program was launched nearly three years ago. According
to Anderson, this number is "nonsense" and somehow indicates the
program is being abused. Let's put that number into perspective, shall
we?

According to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health,
Riverside County is home to more than 85,000 regular marijuana users.
Of those, about 500 -- or less than 1 percent -- were state medical
marijuana ID cardholders that year. These figures strongly suggest
that this program isn't being abused in any significant way but is
instead doing exactly what it was intended to do: protect a very small
number of seriously ill people from unnecessary arrest.

Anderson would have people believe that only a small cadre of "drug
legalization" groups support safe and legal access to medical
marijuana. He fails to mention that these groups include organizations
like the American Public Health Association, the American College of
Physicians, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and the American Academy
of HIV Medicine.

These medical organizations' statements leave no doubt as to what the
research really shows.

Clinical Proof

For example, the American College of Physicians -- 124,000
neurologists, oncologists and other doctors of internal medicine --
"strongly urges protection from criminal or civil penalties for
patients who use medical marijuana as permitted under state laws" and
reclassification under federal law to allow medical use, "given the
scientific evidence regarding marijuana's safety and efficacy in some
clinical conditions."

These organizations and nearly 80 percent of the nation's voters
understand that only an extremist minority still believes in arresting
patients for medical-marijuana use.