MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILL A BAD MOVE

Two bills have been introduced in the Illinois Legislature intending
to make legal the medicinal use of smoked marijuana. The companion
bills, entitled the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot
Program Act, have been filed in both the Illinois House and Senate
and are supported by a surprisingly large percentage of the caucuses
in both chambers. Legislative members, however, have been misinformed
by supporters regarding both the impact the bills will have upon
Illinois and the long-term motivations of the bill's supporters.
Lobbyists are making no attempt to conceal their long-range goal for
Illinois: cannabis legalization.

The Illinois bill is similar to one that passed in California several
years ago. In Northern California, marijuana has become the most
lucrative agricultural commodity in the region (surpassing wine), and
is known in California as the "cash crop." California is fast
overtaking Mexico as the exporter of the marijuana being smuggled into
the Midwestern and Eastern United States. During the past year, more
cannabis loads were interdicted along Interstate 80 in Illinois
originating from states that have legalized medical marijuana than
from Mexico. Is Illinois poised to become the next supplier of
marijuana to the East Coast?

The law is nominally intended for terminally ill patients. In
California, 40 percent of medical marijuana patients are between 21
and 30 years of age and not terminally ill. As the current legislation
is written, anyone complaining of chronic pain is eligible to obtain a
license.

Proponents of the bill claim that compounds in cannabis have medicinal
properties that ease the pain and suffering of certain terminally ill
patients. If so, then those chemical compounds should be isolated and
researched. In the United States, there is a process for creating and
vetting medicines that should not be averted with this particular
chemical compound. Several plant-based substances have been converted
to medicines (aspirin and morphine, for example), including opium
plants. In no medicinal prescription has smoking been determined to be
the best delivery system of the drug. The American Medical Association
also opposes smoking as a viable delivery system.

Dr. Rafael Meshulam from Hebrew University has been conducting brain
injury research for over 20 years. He has isolated compounds from the
cannabis sativa plant that experimentation has shown has some
promising medicinal qualities for trauma patients. He has patented
those medicines with injectable delivery systems, and a large Israeli
pharmaceutical company is working toward commercializing the products.

Featured in a National Geographic Explorer episode entitled "Marijuana
Nation," Dr. Meshulam questions the smoking of cannabis as a crude
medical delivery system. On the program he wonders aloud how a doctor
prescribing smokable cannabis can be sure of what dosage any
particular patient is receiving.

When doctors prescribe any other drug, the dosage recommendation is
extremely specific. There is a substantial difference, for example,
between giving a patient 30 milligrams or 10 grams of a particular
drug. Marijuana, on the other hand, can range by as much a 3 percent
to over 30 percent THC content. Is this a controlled medical drug?

Beyond the murky medicinal link, there are several other potential
community impacts that are contained in the bill. The bill allows each
license-holder to grow up to seven plants. Given that each plant
yields an average of one-half pound of smokable marijuana, and each
half pound of marijuana equates to 454 cigarettes, how could each
patient consume 454 joints produced by each plant? Coincidentally,
each patient is also allowed a caregiver who apparently can also grow
7 plants, making the yield for the patient actually 6,356 joints.

In the proposed legislation there are no restrictions for who may be
licensed patients. Police officers, day-care workers, bus drivers,
pilots, teachers, elected officials, surgeons, paramedics,
firefighters and air traffic controllers can all be medical marijuana
consumers under the law (they just cannot be impaired while flying a
plane or driving a bus). However, there is no objective definition of
"impairment."

The law also gives landlords and property owners no way to restrict or
prevent licensed patients from growing cannabis inside their
buildings. The odor, mold and chemical residue issues that police find
after raiding these indoor facilities make the buildings uninhabitable
and will be expensive for property owners to mitigate. Residential
properties are ill-suited to commercial agricultural operations of any
type.

This is not a road that Illinois wants to travel down. If there are
therapeutic benefits to compounds within the cannabis plant, let them
be extracted and delivered safely like every other medicine.

Raymond J. Rose

Chief of Police

Mundelein