WE CAN'T PUT THE GENIE BACK IN THE BONG

This was as predictable as the sunrise -- Michigan voters
overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure to legalize medical marijuana,
and two years later, no one can seem to decide who's a patient and
who's a pothead.

More than 60,000 residents have applied for medical marijuana
certificates, the ticket to being able to use pot legally, and even
grow small amounts at home; roughly half have received them. Wow,
that's a lot of suffering in our state.

Perhaps when voters passed the proposal in 2008 they envisioned
cancer and glaucoma patients toking in the restricted confines of
hospitals and clinics, and getting sanitized pot in carefully
measured doses from licensed pharmacies.

That's not exactly how it's worked out. Therapeutic pot is being
marketed about the same way as the everyday
let's-get-high-for-the-hell-of-it pot. It's being grown in basements
under hot lights and pushed to patients through head shops and
person-to-person deals that have the law enforcement community
struggling to figure out what's legal and what isn't.

The answer seems to depend on where you live. Oakland County, for
example, is busy putting the pot stores out of business and cracking
down on the home growers; Ann Arbor has 23 medical marijuana stores
that go unmolested by authorities.

And it's not just cops and judges who are confused. Employers have
fired medical marijuana patients for failing drug tests, even though
the law prohibits that, and landlords have evicted users for
violating no-dope clauses in their leases.

You don't have to be struggling with the effects of chemotherapy to
qualify for a certificate. The medical marijuana industry has
physicians lined up to certify patients with mysterious pains,
anxiety and other ailments often visible only to the sufferer. The
law isn't very specific on the diseases covered. Chronic headaches
can get you approved, and who doesn't have headaches these days?

Kids roam downtown events passing out cards with 800-numbers and
websites where you can get certificates. This isn't what voters
envisioned, but it's what they've got now, and putting the genie back
in the bong is impossible.

Critics of medical marijuana have called it the first step toward
legalizing all pot use. They're right. And it should be.

It's absurd for Michigan to still be arresting and jailing pot
growers and users whose only real crime is that they were too stupid
to apply for a medical marijuana certificate.

Give it up. Stop wasting taxpayer money in a futile fight to keep
marijuana away from the people who want to use it. If current trends
continue, most pot users will soon have a license to smoke anyway.

Better to focus our efforts on bringing the marijuana growers out of
their basements and onto the tax rolls. Michigan could use the
estimated $32 million in annual tax revenue it would generate, and
the untold savings in law enforcement and Corrections costs.