RESERVATIONS ABOUT BM 33

In Ballot Measure 33, voters are asked to make it easier for people
with medical marijuana cards to get the stuff. But there's more to it
than that.

Six years ago, Oregon voted 611,190 to 508,2623 to allow the medical
use of marijuana within certain limits. Thousands of people have
obtained medical marijuana cards. They say smoking pot alleviates
their symptoms and makes their illnesses easier to bear.

We have no idea whether all the card holders really have a need, or
whether some got the cards under false pretenses so they can happily
smoke pot and not have to fear the law.

The measure would allow card holders to possess more marijuana than
now allowed. Instead of an ounce, they could have a pound. Instead of
seven plants, they could have 10. If they can show they produce only
one crop a year, they can have six pounds immediately after the harvest.

In addition to expanding the private cultivation of marijuana, the
measure would authorize state-licensed, nonprofit dispensaries where
patients could buy the stuff if they can't or don't want to grow it.
The measure seems to be silent on where the dispensaries would get
their supplies. Surely not from the black market? Would we have
state-licensed pot farms?

On the surface, the proposal makes sense because it makes easier a
practice, the medical use of marijuana, which Oregon has already said
is legal.

But it has other provisions. It would establish a "fundamental
personal privacy right" to use marijuana for "other medical purposes
as guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment..."

One medical purpose surely is to promote relaxation. So it's hard to
see how under this proposal any adult could be kept from getting high
on pot any time he chose.

If we could start over, marijuana should not have been made illegal.
We have legalized and regulated far more dangerous substances, such as
alcohol. But in the drive to legalize it, Oregonians may prefer that
we're not so much in the lead. These voters will want to vote it down.