MEASURE 74: NO

The Medical Marijuana System Is Flawed, but This Initiative Is Not a
Good Solution

Oregon voters, with the best of intentions, legalized marijuana for
medical use in 1998. The system now in place allows Oregonians
suffering from various medical conditions to use marijuana to relieve
their symptoms if they obtain a medical marijuana card from the state.

The system is not perfect. It allows individual cardholders to grow
marijuana for their own use or to designate a caregiver to grow it
for them, but it does not allow the sale of marijuana or any
distribution except by specific growers to specific patients. This
can make it difficult for some patients to obtain the marijuana they need.

The existing system also causes problems for law enforcement
officers, who must determine who is and is not authorized to grow or
possess marijuana, and whether a grower is producing more than is
allowed under the law.

Ballot Measure 74 attempts to remedy this situation by creating a
system of licensed dispensaries where patients may obtain the
marijuana they need without having to grow it or deal directly with a grower.

We agree the existing system needs to be fixed, but we are not
convinced that Measure 74 is the answer. We recommend a no vote.

Measure 74 would solve the existing problem of patients who need
better access to the drug. But it would not make the system any less
confusing for law enforcement; in fact it would almost certainly make it worse.

The measure would allow nonprofit dispensaries to distribute
marijuana to cardholders. It does not say how many dispensaries would
be needed, and it does not say where they would be situated, except
that "initially dispensaries shall not be established within 1,000
feet of any school or within residential neighborhoods."

Anywhere else, apparently, is a permissible location, and eventually,
dispensaries could be situated near schools or in residential
neighborhoods. It's not clear why facilities for dispensing
medication should be prohibited anywhere, but this language is too
vague to be useful to voters trying to make sense of the measure.

The state Department of Human Services would be responsible for
creating the system and regulating it, and the measure requires all
costs to be paid by fees charged to dispensary operators and
producers. No one, including the measure's proponents, can say how
much money would be raised or if it would be enough to cover the
costs of creating a new bureaucracy.

The measure says dispensary employees would be exempt from
prosecution for possessing, distributing or transporting marijuana,
regardless of whether they are medical marijuana cardholders. This
would be necessary to allow dispensaries to operate, but would
increase the likelihood that some of the drug might find its way into
the hands of people not authorized to possess it.

That's the real difficulty with this measure and with the entire
medical marijuana system: A popular recreational drug is now freely
available to some residents and illegal for everyone else. The result
is a convoluted system that doesn't always serve the needs of the
people it was created to help, and undermines police efforts to
enforce the drug laws that apply to the rest of the population.

There are better solutions. One, which is largely out of the hands of
Oregonians, is to convince the feds to classify marijuana as a
Schedule II drug instead of Schedule I as it's now labeled (along
with meth and heroin). That would allow marijuana medicine to be
processed and distributed like other prescription drugs. Barring
that, a limited system of growers and dispensaries licensed by the
state would be easier to manage than a system that has sanctioned
thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- of marijuana gardens and now
proposes an unknown number of dispensaries to be added to the mix.

There's not much doubt what the end game is for most medical
marijuana supporters. California will deal with that on Nov. 2, when
voters could well declare marijuana legal for every adult in the
state. If that happens, there will almost certainly be a campaign
asking Oregon voters to do the same.

Legalization would solve many of the problems of the medical
marijuana system without having to create a new state bureaucracy. It
would also raise an entirely new set of issues for Oregon voters to consider.

We are not prepared to address the question of legalization now, but
we suspect it will not be long before we must. In the meantime,
voters should just say no to Measure 74.