WASHINGTON STATE'S MEDICAL-MARIJUANA LAW IS TOO RESTRICTIVE

The State Should Allow Dispensaries Selling to Physician-Approved Patients.

WASHINGTON'S medical-marijuana law was advertised as humane and
tolerant in the 1990s, when this state legalized cannabis as medicine,
along with California, Oregon, Alaska and Maine. Now most of the
states in the West allow it - and Washington falls behind. Our law is
unfairly restrictive.

In January, the Washington Supreme Court ruled in State v. Fry that
our law offers medical users no protection from search, seizure and
arrest. The court said the immunity is from penalty only. The
medical-marijuana user, the court said, has still "committed a
criminal act, but pleads an excuse for doing so."

This needs to be changed. People with a doctor's OK should be able to
use marijuana without having their doors kicked in. They are patients,
not criminals. This is the rule of tolerance Washington voters thought
they were approving 12 years ago, and it has now become a civilized
minimum.

Washington's law allows patients to grow marijuana for themselves or
for one other person.

In 2008, the Department of Health stated in a report that "home
cultivation is not feasible for all patients." That is clearly so. It
is not reasonable to require every patient, or every other patient, to
start and manage an indoor farm, but that is what the law effectively
says.

It also forbids selling processed marijuana or live plants. The raid
on cannabis entrepreneur Steve Sarich shows what happens when the law
is so restrictive. Somebody just does it.

Sarich was apparently growing and selling small plants for $15 each.
Police said he had 259 small plants started from cuttings, 80 medium
plants and 36 large ones. The maximum allowed by the Department of
Health is 15 plants.

The public question is not whether one man broke the rules, but what
the rules should be.

Start with the idea in the Department of Health's report that "there
needs to be a safe, legal source for qualified patients."

That means dispensaries - places where people with authorization can
buy plants or processed marijuana, in lawful, above-board and taxed
transactions. California allows dispensaries. Washington should, also.