OREGON MUST MAKE A DECISION ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Oregon must make up its mind about marijuana -- either it is a legal
substance or it is not. As disclosed in recent stories in The Gresham
Outlook and the Portland Tribune, the state's medical marijuana
program places pot in a murky legal status. For approximately 36,000
Oregonians who have gone to the trouble of obtaining a medical
marijuana card, it is perfectly OK to use marijuana and grow it for
personal use. For the rest of the population, marijuana remains illegal.

And for all Oregonians, the law still prohibits selling marijuana for
profit.

By now, it should be clear that the medical marijuana program has
strayed from what Oregon voters thought they were approving 12 years
ago. Back then, voters acted out of compassion primarily for cancer
patients who found that pot provided relief from chemo-induced nausea.

Today, however, slightly more than a thousand people obtain a medical
marijuana card for that purpose. Most of the people who possess these
cards have received them for relief from pain symptoms. A few doctors
write prescriptions by the thousands without much regard, it would
appear, for whether marijuana is a good treatment for what ails the
patients.

In short, just about anyone who wants to smoke pot can provide a
medical reason to do so. This quasi-legal status for marijuana causes
understandable problems for law enforcement officers, for workplaces
that do drug testing and for the marijuana-card holders themselves.
Oregonians may be asked in the fall or in the next election cycle to
support initiatives that either revamp the medical marijuana program
or make pot legal altogether.

There will be ample time to debate the two approaches, but what
Oregon doesn't need is to continue a disingenuous law. Oregonians
should decide once and for all whether marijuana belongs with alcohol
and tobacco as a legal but regulated substance, or whether it should
be banned outright.