DON'T MAKE A HAZY LAW WORSE

Our view: As Chico grapples with the question of what to do about
medical marijuana, the only certainty is that current laws aren't working.

Ever since Proposition 215 was passed by state voters 14 years ago,
the vague wording in the law has left a lot open to interpretation.

E-R reporter Toni Scott has spent several weeks researching the
legalities and the realities. In her five-part series that concludes
today, there are several eye-opening revelations.

The most stunning is this: Selling marijuana is illegal, but there
are as many as eight dispensaries in the Chico area that do it. And
they get away with it.

Marijuana isn't a high priority for an understaffed police
department, the police chief says.

If that's the case, it makes one wonder if the marijuana threat to
public safety is overblown. People can argue about that question all day.

This much is clear to us: The laws on the books are not working.

Some believe the answer is to just legalize marijuana. Not us. We
think Proposition 215 was a ruse, the first step toward legalization.
It focused on getting medicine for sick people. That's a noble cause,
and few can argue with that. Most voters pictured elderly cancer
patients with nausea, not 20-somethings with anxiety or headaches.
Medical marijuana recommendations from doctors are simple to get for
people who just want to smoke pot legally -- and those are the people
most often taking advantage of the law.

Proposition 215 never stated how much patients could grow or how they
could get their medicine, only that they were entitled to have it.
Legalization proponents are using the failure of that proposition to
argue that simple legalization would eliminate the confusion.

Legalization is not the answer. Fixing Proposition 215 is the answer.
The state or federal government needs to establish laws that regulate
who can grow it, in what quantities, and who can dispense it. The
laws should be the same in every city and county, rather than the
hodgepodge that exists now, creating counties that are permissive
toward pot, like Humboldt and Mendocino.

More than anything, we'd like to see a better way of differentiating
between severely ill patients who really could benefit from the herb
and users who invent a malady just so they can legally get high.
Doctors who freely prescribe the drug -- every community has a "Dr.
Feelgood" who will give a medical marijuana recommendation to just
about anyone for a fee -- are doing society no favors.

Fourteen years into this political experiment, cancer patients and
others suffering chronic pain have trouble finding marijuana for
medicine. The solution isn't to give everyone access to marijuana
anymore than you would give everyone access to Vicodin. The solution
is regulating it correctly on a statewide or national level so
unprepared cities don't have to decide on their own. The way the
current laws are working -- or aren't working -- the Chico City
Council would be unwise to allow legal marijuana dispensaries. That
would only add to the haze.