BANNING MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES NOT THE ANSWER

When I need tomatoes for pasta sauce, I don't walk down my street
knocking on doors asking if anybody has ripe romas. I go to the
grocery store. When I need a T-shirt, I don't drive 1,200 miles to
the nearest cotton farm, pick a bale of cotton, spin it and sew
together a shirt. I go to Aeropostale. Or occasionally Target. And
when my son has an ear infection, I don't phone random people asking
if they have any spare antibiotics. I go to the pharmacy.

Dispensaries, like grocery stores and clothing stores and pharmacies,
are the safest, most practical means for making medical marijuana
accessible to those who need it. They developed like every service
always has throughout history -- need.

It is likely, in hindsight, that the drafters of the Michigan Medical
Marihuana Act did not anticipate the industry that would be created
from the simple act of making marijuana available for medicinal
purposes. It puzzles me, however, that we are surprised -- in a
country at war and in a state with high unemployment and no more
manufacturing base -- that an industry developed where a need exists.

It surprises me more that its most vehement opponents are the same
politicians who espouse states' rights, individual liberties and
economic growth. While Gov. Rick Snyder is cutting education funding
nearly $300 per student, Attorney General Bill Schuette is clearing
prison space to make room for the very people keeping our economy
afloat. I have an idea: Let's close every dispensary, hydro store,
smoke shop and Home Depot in Michigan and see what happens.

Schuette's justification for his charge to shut down dispensaries is
protecting public safety when, in fact, the only violent crime
happening is the state-sanctioned, SWAT-style raids against unarmed
Michigan citizens. To those shouting marijuana leads to violent
crime, the facts and research support the opposite.

Perhaps there is a way to do this without Michigan declaring war on
its own people. I don't know if our legislators have noticed, but
this industry has created jobs and revenue, and is a monster of a tax
base waiting to happen. Perhaps, just maybe, we can work together
toward reasonable regulation, licensing and taxation of providers.

Will marijuana be abused? Of course. Like any other drug, it will get
to minors and those who don't truly need it, but outlawing
dispensaries will only send it back into subdivisions and back alleys
where it came from, where it does not belong and where nobody wants
it. Instead of law enforcement monitoring two or three safe, central
locations, they will have to monitor entire cities. Instead of going
to a dispensary with a reliable supply of quality medication, very
sick people in pain will have to call around hoping to find someone
qualified to grow the right strain of medicine, and then hope that
person never moves, gets sick or goes on vacation. Our elected
officials' hysteria will have cancer patients going door to door
begging for relief. No less ridiculous than me begging for tomatoes.

The people of our state thought it was a good idea to make this
much-vilified, yet remarkable, plant available to sick people who
wanted a natural, alternative form of medication. So here's another
idea. Let's help them.