AN OUNCE OF CURE?

Medical Marijuana: A Broken System Cops Want Tighter Controls on
Medical Marijuana, Advocates Want Legalization; Voters Get a Say

Paul Stanford wants to turn Oregon into the Anheuser-Busch of the
United States, with companies legally supplying marijuana products to
the entire country. Outside of a few law enforcement officials,
nobody is objecting.

Most everyone involved with medical marijuana in Oregon believes the
state program is broken, and dramatically different from the limited
concept Oregonians thought they were approving at the ballot box 12 years ago.

As the program has evolved and grown during the past decade, it has
reached a point where police say they can't investigate many growers
and dealers they believe are selling to the black market. On the
other hand, legitimate medical marijuana cardholders can't get the
drug they are entitled to because state law says they can smoke it,
but not legally buy it.

A fix for the program's flaws, however, is elusive. That's despite
the fact that other, newer models for state-run medical marijuana
policies exist.

Legalization vs. dispensaries

The solution advocated by Northeast Portland resident Stanford, who
owns a number of profitable medical marijuana clinics, is full
legalization of marijuana in Oregon. Stanford is spending a great
deal of his own money in support of a legalization ballot initiative.

However, many marijuana activists say they prefer an interim step on
the road to legalization dispensaries where medical marijuana
cardholders can purchase their cannabis. One or both of those
possibilities is likely to make it onto Oregon's November ballot.

With few voices and little money in opposition to well-funded and
organized national and local marijuana lobbies, Stanford's vision is
steadily coming closer to reality.

Even law enforcement officials are willing to consider that
dispensaries might be a positive step. Mark McDonnell, senior deputy
district attorney in charge of the Multnomah County drug unit, says
something has to change. "The present situation is intolerable,"
McDonnell says. "The police have thrown up their hands; they don't
know what to do."

The majority of the large marijuana growing operations, some with
hundreds of plants in barns and abandoned houses, have medical
marijuana cards to display. But the law, McDonnell says, doesn't
provide the tools that law enforcement needs to inspect sites to see
if growers are complying with the law, or if they instead are using
the law to disguise black market operations.

If police officers stop a driver they suspect of being drunk and the
driver refuses a breathalyzer test, his or her driver's license can
be taken away for a year. McDonnell would like that same right of
inspection applied to marijuana growers with cards. Currently, he
says, police can't get a warrant to enter and inspect a home where
marijuana is being grown if the person who meets them at the door has
a medical marijuana card.

McDonnell says there also has been a rise in the number of home
invasion robberies at large indoor grow sites. And that is why he
calls an initiative that would establish nonprofit dispensaries and
state-regulated growers to supply them "a possible solution" if it
allows police more latitude in going after private growers. "If you
have dispensaries, there's no reason to allow (individual) growers,"
McDonnell says.

But that wouldn't satisfy Madeline Martinez, executive director of
the Oregon chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws. Martinez, whose organization also runs the Northeast
Portland Cannabis Cafe, where cardholders can get and smoke donated
marijuana, says she will want to grow her own, even if dispensaries
become legal.

"I want to grow organic, and I don't want anybody taking that away
from me," Martinez says.

Is it compassion or business?

If it attracts enough signatures to make the ballot and is approved
by voters, the dispensary initiative would make Oregon the first
state in the country with legal, for-profit marijuana growers.

Surprisingly, one of the state's staunchest medical marijuana
activists opposes dispensaries. Salem resident Stormy Ray, a major
backer of Oregon's original medical marijuana ballot measure, says
dispensaries would gut the original intent of the measure passed by
voters in 1998.

That measure set up a system where cardholders were expected to grow
their own or have it supplied by growers who don't receive compensation.

"This program is about kindness," Ray says. "When you start
registering stores, you take it out of the ownership of the patients
and into the hands of a third party that is only there to make money.
I don't think you'll see medicinal marijuana at $40 an ounce out of a
dispensary."

That $40 an ounce, Ray says, is what kindhearted growers are asking
from cardholders as compensation for direct expenses, which is all
they are entitled to. The street price of an ounce of marijuana is
about $250. But Ray estimates that one in three cardholders are
unable to grow their own, or find someone to supply them.

Supporters of dispensary initiative are selling their proposition as
a tax-generating revenue boost that could produce millions of dollars
for the state of Oregon. But Ray thinks too much money at stake will
mean the dispensaries, though regulated by the state, will eventually
be corrupted.

"The same people we call the black market right now will be running
those dispensaries," Ray says.

In the long run, the proposed dispensary initiative might not matter.

Sandee Burbank, executive director of Mothers Against Misuse and
Abuse, a Southeast Portland medical marijuana clinic and education
center, says that if California voters approve a ballot measure in
November that would legalize marijuana there, she expects a domino
effect will lead to Oregon legalizing cannabis no later than 2012.
That's assuming that another Oregon initiative one that would
legalize marijuana in Oregon next year does not make the ballot or
get approved by Oregon voters in November. Tightening controls an option

Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis is worried about
widespread marijuana use that's already here. The fact that there are
nearly 36,000 Oregon medical marijuana cardholders is proof that
people who don't medically need cannabis are taking advantage of the
program, he says.

Marquis would reschedule marijuana from its Schedule One status among
controlled substances, which it shares with other drugs considered to
have no medicinal use. He would reclassify marijuana as Schedule Two,
which would require physicians to prescribe it just like other medicinal drugs.

Marquis also says that the criteria for Oregonians getting medical
marijuana cards must be tightened. That's exactly what New Jersey has
done in passing the country's most recent medical marijuana legislation.

New Jersey's program will not permit cardholders to grow their own
marijuana. Instead, they will have to obtain it at state-licensed
dispensaries that will get their cannabis from state-regulated growers.

It also establishes a limited list of medical conditions that can
qualify applicants for medical marijuana cards. Nonspecific pain
relief, the condition listed on about 90 percent of Oregon medical
marijuana authorizations, is not among them. However, more conditions
can be added to the list.

New Jersey is among states that have also tried to limit the growth
of high-volume medical marijuana clinics that employ physicians to
authorize medical marijuana cards. The New Jersey program requires
that patients have a pre-existing relationship with the doctors who
sign off on their cards.

But advocate Martinez isn't buying the idea that more qualifying
medical conditions will be added to the list as research becomes
available. She says that was promised when Oregon's medical marijuana
program was first set up, and only one condition, Alzheimer's
disease, has been added to the qualifying list in 12 years.

Martinez is among those who believe that anxiety, post traumatic
stress syndrome and depression all respond to cannabis.

What nobody disputes is that Oregon's medical marijuana program is
far different from what voters thought they were approving 12 years
ago. About 2,000 new applicants are approved every month, and very
few suffer from major diseases such as cancer or multiple sclerosis.

Whether most Oregonians like or resent the evolution may determine
the fate of new marijuana ballot measures in November.