MEASURE 33: NO

Marijuana Patients Need Easier Access, but the Initiative Goes Too
Far

The state's medical marijuana law has one big flaw: It provides
patients with no safe, legal route for getting the drug. They can
smoke marijuana, but they can't buy it.

Measure 33 on the Nov. 2 ballot would resolve that by creating
state-run dispensaries where patients would buy their marijuana. And
if it stopped there, it would serve the state well. But it doesn't
stop there, and that's why we recommend a no vote.

Creating dispensaries isn't Measure 33's only goal.

Instead, backers of the proposal hope to expand Oregon's 6-year-old
law in two other major ways: by allowing patients to possess more than
five times as much of the drug as they can today, and by loosening
restrictions on who can recommend its use. Under the new law, that
would include not only doctors but also nurse practitioners and
naturopaths.

Oregon's already got a tough row to hoe on medicinal marijuana. The
federal government doesn't like the law and regularly attempts to
scare doctors away from it. Now the Bush administration is calling the
proposal to expand it a back-door attempt to legalize drugs -- a
criticism that will be tough for Oregon to dispute.

It's easy enough to make the case for sick people smoking marijuana.
The drug is capable of bringing relief to many seriously ill people
who suffer chronic pain and nausea -- without serious addiction
problems. It's relatively safe and relatively cheap.

But there's no question Measure 33 would take the law beyond what's
medically necessary by increasing the amount of the drug patients
could possess at once from 3 ounces to a pound, enough to last the
heaviest users a month.

And expanding the list of "doctors" who can recommend use of the drug
to nurse practitioners and naturopaths would do nothing to help the
law's credibility.

The problems with the law today don't exist because 3 ounces of the
drug is too little or because doctors aren't the right people to be
working with patients. They exist because it's hard to get the drug
legally and because the federal government is bent on making it harder.

Oregon's original medical marijuana law probably does need revision,
something that gives the 10,000 or so medicinal marijuana cardholders
safe and legal access to the drug.

But Measure 33 would do more than that. It would expand the present
system beyond what even most supporters could argue is credible.

Voters shouldn't make it Oregon law.