IS THE MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW ABUSED?

Editor's Note: This is the first story in a two-part series about the
use of medical marijuana in Michigan.

About 90,000 Michigan residents have received approval to use
marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Since voters passed a law legalizing the use of marijuana for
medicinal purposes two years ago, a reported 90,000 residents have
successfully received a state-issued medical marijuana card.

But it's the suspicion of Berrien County Prosecutor Art Cotter that
many of those carrying cards are doing for purposes that aren't what
those voters had in mind.

"I think it borders on fraud," Cotter said. "The individuals who are
getting them are not who the public intended, in opinion, to get them."

Cotter isn't alone. A review of Michigan's Medical Marijuana Law is
currently being done to determine whether or not tougher regulation
needs to be administered to cardholders and caregivers, those who,
under the provisions of the law, are allowed to grow marijuana for
cardholders.

A number of state legislators are involved in that review, including
Sens. John Proos and Tonya Schuitmaker.

"It's an active group of state legislators," Proos
said.

The primary focus of that group, he added, is to determine in
accordance to the law, "what is appropriate and what is not
appropriate."

Proos gives an example from the perspective of someone currently on
parole. That parolee could very well - having been diagnosed with a
medical condition in accordance with the law - be given a certificate
signed by a doctor allowing him or her to apply for a medical
marijuana card. That card being issued to him or her would allow the
person to smoke the narcotic.

But failing a drug test would be a direct violation of the person's
parole, and Proos said that's just one of many areas where the law
isn't very clear.

"We're looking at the totality of the department's implementation of
this constitutional right," Proos said, "to understand if further
regulation is necessary to protect those who rightfully deserve the
use of this prescription drug."

The department the senator is referring to is the Michigan Department
of Community Health.

The department's handling of its role as being designated with "the
administration and leadership" of the law, Cotter said, is another
area of frustration.

"They could have provided a much greater leadership role," he
said.

Cotter, who is also chairman of the medical marijuana committee for
the Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said the MDCH has been
accepting applications for state-issued cards since April 2009. Though
a photo is required with the application to be used as identification
on the card, those cards are still being issued without those photos.

"They still haven't figured out a way to put a photo on the card," he
said.

The applications sent to the MDCH are another source of gray
areas.

According to the law a patient seeking a state-issued card must have a
certificate signed by a medical doctor in order to apply.

Since the law has taken effect, there have been the developments of
clinics throughout the state where doctors are certifying patients who
may come to them if their own doctor does not approve of the drug as a
treatment.

And state officials are concerned over reports of doctors setting up
makeshift clinics in hotel rooms, signing off on certificates at just
around $200 a pop.

This kind of certification, Cotter said, is not what's intended by the
law, as it's questionable whether or not it constitutes a bona-fide
doctor patient relationship.

"They're seeing them for half an hour," Cotter said. "That's it. Maybe
medical marijuana would help but maybe there would be some other
medications or treatments that would be appropriate... That's what's
happening, basically. They'll go to these guys who will give written
certificates, basically for anybody. To say that is a bona-fide
doctor-patient relationship ... I think is absurd. It's not and that
to me is one of the biggest issues the act needs to be fixed on."

Read in the second part of this series in Friday's Star about a local
medical marijuana clinic.