BUSINESS GROUP TAKES AIM AT POT LAW

On the eve of its 10th anniversary, the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act
is facing a determined attack by a coalition of business and other interests.

In November 1998, a voter-approved initiative made Oregon the second
state, after California, to allow medicinal use of marijuana to help
people deal with pain and side effects of treatment of certain
conditions including cancer, AIDS and glaucoma. But the drug remains
illegal under state and especially federal law, an inconvenient fact
that has led to numerous difficulties in implementing the medical
marijuana act.

Nevertheless, participation in the state's medical marijuana program
has grown steadily, with more than 20,000 people currently holding
cards authorizing them to use the drug.

Some employers have never been comfortable with the program, and now
a coalition called the Drugfree Workplace Legislative Work Group is
mounting a concerted effort to keep medical marijuana out of the job
site and roll back major portions of the act.

"We are going to push hard this next session," Dan Harmon, the work
group's chairman, told Albany Area Chamber of Commerce members
Thursday. "We've told the legislative officers, 'You'd better tape
your socks on, because we're going to come hard.'"

The executive vice president of Hoffman Corp., a large Portland
construction firm, Harmon is also co-chairman of Associated Oregon
Industries. The Drugfree Workplace Legislative Work Group is an
offshoot of Workdrugfree, a program of the Oregon Nurses Foundation
whose backers include 10 chambers of commerce and several regional
business organizations.

When the Legislature convenes in January, the work group plans to
reintroduce Senate Bill 465, which would exempt employers from having
to accommodate medical marijuana users, no matter when or where they
use the drug. The bill cleared the Oregon Senate in 2007 but died in
a House committee.

In addition, the group intends to introduce legislation that would
amend the act in a number of ways, including:

* eliminating some conditions currently approved for treatment with marijuana;

* restricting the approval of new conditions;

* reducing the amount of marijuana patients can have;

* making it a crime "with substantial jail time and fines" to violate
the act; and

* requiring employer notification when a worker applies for a card.

For more than a year now, Harmon has been touring the state giving
similar presentations to chambers of commerce and organizations such
as Associated Oregon Industries, trying to build support for his cause.

Speaking to the Albany chamber last week, he said Hoffman Corp. won't
hire anyone with a medical marijuana card and cited several reasons
why other employers might want to take the same approach, including
concerns about workplace safety, legal liability and the potential
loss of federal contracts.

But he also claimed Oregon's medical marijuana law is being widely
abused, and he framed the effort to scale back the law as a moral crusade.

The OMMA "says something about permissiveness in this state, and
we've got to stop this permissiveness," he told business people
gathered at the Central Willamette Community Credit Union
headquarters. "It's a very symbolic issue."

Harmon claimed his proposed legislative package has strong backing in
Salem, and three mid-valley lawmakers were on hand at Thursday's
forum to back him up. Sen. Frank Morse, R-Albany; Rep. Andy Olson,
R-Albany; and Rep. Sherrie Sprenger, R-Scio, all voiced support for
Harmon's program.

But there is opposition as well.

A handful of medical marijuana advocates have attended or tried to
attend several of Harmon's presentations to challenge what they say
are distorted claims about medicinal pot. On Thursday, a half-dozen
activists who tried to attend for the Albany forum were turned away
at the door by Chamber of Commerce members.

"We've been haunting these people for a while now, and I'm sure they
wish we'd go away," said Sandee Burbank, one of the people excluded
from the Albany event. "They get real loose with the facts when
nobody's around to call them on it."

Burbank is the executive director of Mothers Against Misuse and
Abuse, a 26-year-old organization that lobbies for more liberal drug
laws and operates a medical marijuana clinic in Portland. She also
chairs the Advisory Committee on Medical Marijuana in the state
Department of Human Services.

She said it's unfair to lump people who use marijuana for medical
reasons in with those who abuse the drug to get high.

"I'm a patient as well," she said. "I use a tincture for my
arthritis. I put it on topically and there's no intoxication at all."

Employers could readily accommodate medical users, she argued, if
they tested workers for impairment rather than for metabolic traces
of pot, which can stay in the urine for weeks after use.

In his Albany presentation, Harmon argued that there are no practical
impairment tests available to employers. But he also characterized
the push to accommodate pharmaceutical pot users on the job as part
of a larger campaign to undermine drug laws in Oregon.

"It's not about sick people," Harmon said. "It's about legalizing marijuana."

But Dr. Grant Higginson, who oversees Oregon's medical marijuana
program, said employers ought to be able to accommodate workers who
properly use the drug as allowed under the 10-year-old state law.

"The intent of the law is to try to make medical marijuana more like
other medicines," Higginson said. "As long as medical marijuana is
treated like other drugs, I would think they'd be on fairly solid ground."