MUDDLE OVER MARIJUANA DEMANDS A SOLUTION

If uncertainty could cure nausea, Washington state's new medical
marijuana laws would be a grand success. Alas, this not the case.

Before the last legislative session in Olympia, the call came from
all quarters to please produce legislation that would clarify the
muddle of laws on medical marijuana. Washington state voters passed
an initiative saying pot should be available for medicinal purposes,
but clear guidelines have never been produced for its production and
procurement.

Instead, state leaders have doubled down on the confusion, and
communities have returned to groping along their own paths.

Looming large over this mess are some federal law enforcers who are
hanging back, and some who are not. Those who jump in cite a federal
law proclaiming there isn't any medicinal value to marijuana. That
law was adopted 41 years ago, when it wasn't known that pot could
quell nausea and stimulate hunger in chemotherapy and AIDS patients,
and lower eye pressure in glaucoma patients.

The Seattle City Council recently passed rules designed to fill in
the gaps between what the Legislature passed and what the governor
vetoed. In doing so, the city will regulate the production of
marijuana and tax it. Some medical marijuana proponents like it; some
don't. To show how strange this issue has become, one medical
marijuana attorney says he will sue the city over the ordinance,
because it has no right to tax a substance that the state and feds
deem to be illegal.

Meanwhile, in Spokane the feds have indicted the owners of two
medical marijuana dispensaries that were shut down after raids in April.

This disparate treatment of the same issue in the same state
demonstrates the need for a clear-cut solution. We need a
cross-jurisdictional meeting of the minds so that medicinal marijuana
can be dispensed just like any other drug that requires a prescription.

Yes, there is a federal law, albeit obsolete. Ideally, Congress would
simply rewrite it. In the meantime, federal law enforcement has the
leeway to set priorities on what it will pursue. Raids and
prosecutions of well-meaning suppliers of medical pot don't strike us
as a high priority or a smart use of taxpayer dollars. This is
especially true in a state whose voters overwhelming adopted a
medical marijuana initiative. It's not enough to robotically state,
"Just doing our jobs."

Once the feds show that they will back off, the Legislature can focus
on writing clear guidelines, as opposed to the dozens of laws that
recently went into effect. These new laws have left potential
suppliers puzzled over how many patients they can help, and how to
legally deliver the goods.

As one proponent told the Associated Press, "I don't even think (Gov.
Chris) Gregoire understands what she put in (the law)."

The answer is to put the wishes of voters and the needs of patients
first. The solutions will grow from there.