A CHEECH AND CHONG MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILL

It must have taken some doing, but advocates of "medical" marijuana
have come up with a bill that would actually invite more abuse of the
drug than straightforward legalization.

The "medical" belongs in quotation marks here, because the measure in
Olympia would junk a key rule designed to prevent common drug seekers
from getting marijuana on medical pretenses. And once recreational
users or addicts got their pseudo-medical authorizations to use the
drug, they'd enjoy more privileges than simple legalization would give
them.

They'd be protected, for example, if ex-spouses objected to leaving
children in their care; judges would not be permitted to consider
marijuana use as a factor in custody arrangements except in extreme
cases involving "long-term impairment" whatever that means.

The bill would bring down the hammer of discrimination law on
companies with anti-drug policies. Employers who refused to hire or
employ marijuana users the drug stays in the body long after use
could be investigated and sanctioned by the state Human Rights Commission.

That's just scratching the surface of this amazing piece of
legislation. It would also legalize large-scale commercial marijuana
grow operations and wholesaling no specified limits on quantity.
Cities and counties would not be permitted to ban grow operations in
their jurisdictions; the measure leaves all control over licensing to
the state.

Growing, processing and selling could be conducted in secrecy. Call
this one the Home-Buyer's-Surprise Provision.

There's more: Police officers would have to check state databases for
medical marijuana licenses before responding on probable cause to
"cannabis-related incidents" (more traditionally known as "crimes").

Individual officers could be personally fined or sued for failure to
do so. There's no obvious reason this wouldn't apply to, say, a cop
who spots dope and money changing hands in a dark alley. Odd: The law
doesn't paint a legal bull's-eye on officers for responding to
"alcohol-related incidents."

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, has been touted
as a "clarification" of the legal status of the illegal marijuana
dispensaries that Washington cities and counties including Tacoma
have begun to tolerate.

The measure's actual reach is far, far more sweeping; it amounts to
legalization with privileges.

To legitimize the dispensaries, the logical first step would be to
impose genuine medical-pharmaceutical rigor on the authorizations that
allow people to acquire "medicinal" pot in the first place.

As things stand, a handful of clinics often fly-by-night operations
do brief, assembly-line-style "exams" of marijuana seekers and churn
out authorizations like factories. They rubber-stamp the documents
often for about $200 a pop for users with nebulous complaints of
"intractable pain." These mills have been transforming who knows how
many garden-variety marijuana smokers into "patients."

The law permits little effective regulation, and no one has ever been
sanctioned for over-authorizing marijuana. The lack of controls blurs
the line between legitimate providers and money-hungry enablers.

Instead of tightening the process, Kohl-Welles' bill would actually
loosen it. Under the existing law an initiative approved by the
voters marijuana is largely treated as a last resort to be used only
when legal, conventional treatments and FDA-approved medications fail.
Her measure would let it be used as a first resort.

With this in place, any drug abuser who didn't get his
get-out-of-jail-free card would deserve to be arrested for sheer stupidity.

Words fail. This bill could have been written by Cheech and Chong 30
tokes past midnight. Any lawmaker inclined to support it should make a
point of reading it first.