BILL IN R.I. GENERAL ASSEMBLY WOULD TIGHTEN RULES FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

PROVIDENCE -- Two state lawmakers -- who are retired Providence police
officers -- have introduced legislation to close what they see as
loopholes in the state's medical-marijuana law that allowed a man with a
long criminal record to obtain a marijuana-use card from the state
Department of Health months after his latest arrest on drug charges.

The case, known as State of Rhode Island versus Orlando Martino, is headed
to court again for a status conference on Thursday, with Martino's lawyer
seeking a dismissal of all of the charges pending against him -- including
a marijuana-possession charge from last August -- on the grounds that the
same law that enabled him to obtain a medical-marijuana card insulates him
from prosecution.

Representatives Joseph Almeida and John M. Carnevale say they support the
state's effort to allow marijuana use by sick patients, but believe that
the current law governing who can grow the drug and who can use it leaves
room for abuse.

However well-intentioned the law named for the late Rep. Thomas Slater,
the two Providence lawmakers said they believe it can be used as a "cover
for illegal activities." They are not trying to bar anyone with a criminal
record from obtaining a medical-marijuana card, and they are not seeking
to remove from the law the so-called "affirmative defense" that allows
anyone, with a doctor's backing, to "assert the medical purpose for using
marijuana as a defense to any prosecution involving marijuana."

The attorney general's office said that the provision of the law may force
them to drop the marijuana possession and probation-violation charges
pending against Martino, a 36-year-old Providence man who says marijuana
alleviates the pain of his frequent migraine headaches.

In an interview Wednesday, Almeida and Carnevale said they want to take a
second look at the affirmative-defense provision before trying to strike
it entirely.

But their bill seeks to place stricter limits on who can legally grow the
drug, and it would give the state police a power they do not have under
current law to conduct unannounced inspections of the three official
marijuana-dispensaries that lawmakers authorized last year.

More specifically, their bill would bar the state from registering anyone
with a capital offense or felony drug conviction as a "caregiver," which
is the state's term for someone licensed to grow and provide the illegal
drug to someone legally allowed to use it.

Their bill would eliminate these caregivers from the medical marijuana
pipeline entirely after Jan. 1, 2012, when the three marijuana
dispensaries are presumably up and running. They are also seeking to
eliminate a provision that allows registered users and "caregivers" to
share their marijuana with others, noting that "in no other case are
patients allowed to swap their prescription drugs."

Their bill would also remove the power to periodically inspect and scour
the records of these marijuana dispensaries from the Department of Health,
and would give that power to track dispensing records to the state police.

And finally, the bill would strip from the law a requirement that the
governing board for each dispensary be made up of Rhode Island residents
only. Carnevale said he has spoken with operators of a comparable facility
in Colorado, and believes people with experience in this new arena could
be helpful.

In the four years since the General Assembly passed a law allowing
medicinal use of marijuana, the program has been growing steadily. As of
Jan. 19, there were 966 licensed marijuana growers and providers supplying
the drug to 1,227 Department of Health-approved patients, on the basis of
medical-use applications signed by 345 doctors across the state.

A spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch said he had not yet seen
the bill, but "our staff met with Representatives Almeida, Carnevale and
[Peter] Kilmartin in December to talk about possible fixes and we look
forward to continuing that dialogue soon. Having watched his brother
suffer from and die of cancer more than 20 years ago, [Lynch] supports the
truly medicinal uses of marijuana, but he is very concerned about
defendants basically trying to tank the prosecution of legitimate criminal
cases by using a loophole in this well-intentioned law."