CREATE SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

MEDICAL patients who rely on marijuana to ease pain won a major
victory this week in protection promised by the Obama administration.
Attorney General Eric Holder said threatened federal interference
with laws in Hawaii and a dozen other states allowing medical use of
marijuana has come to an end. The state should work toward a system
facilitating that legitimate use.

As former President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft
ordered raids of medical dispensaries in California that provided
marijuana to patients legally under that state's law. The U.S.
Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the federal government may prosecute
medical users of marijuana for violating federal drug laws despite
state laws permitting that use.

The ruling upholding the Bush administration's zero-tolerance policy
has had little effect in states other than California, because most
drug cases are prosecuted at the state level. The issue has not
reached federal courts in Hawaii.

From now on, Holder told reporters that the policy will be "to go
after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the
extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a
shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the
intention was of the state law. Those are the organizations, the
people, that we will target."

More than 1,000 residents have been registered with the state to use
marijuana to treat their illnesses since the state legalized it for
that use in 2000. Certification by a doctor is required for
registration, and patients are limited in the amount of marijuana
they may possess. Marijuana is credited with easing pain for those
suffering from AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other diseases.

Registered patients have complained about the difficulty in obtaining
access to marijuana or even seeds or facilities to grow their own. In
November, police arrested seven Maui residents accused of using
medical marijuana laws as a front for drug trafficking. The group
maintains that the marijuana was to be distributed to 300 members of
Patients Without Time who are qualified to use it medically.

A bill introduced by Rep. Joe Bertram of Maui that would allow
operations for growing marijuana for distribution to as many as 14
patients has been endorsed by two state House committees in the
current session. The Lingle administration has opposed the bill,
citing the Supreme Court decision upholding the federal law banning
any possession of marijuana.

The Obama administration's decision to exempt marijuana for medical
purposes from the sweeping federal ban should cause the state to
reconsider its stance on a secure distribution system like that
proposed by Bertram. Without such a system, the Hawaii law allowing
medical use of marijuana would continue to be crippled.