RX FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

It's Time For Long Beach To Set Guidelines.

Earlier this year a Long Beach deputy city attorney told a citizens'
advisory commission on public safety that it shouldn't become involved in
medical marijuana issues because the City Council had no business in that
area. Actually, there are few policy issues more in need of council
leadership than medical marijuana.

Seven years have passed since the majority of California voters approved
the use of marijuana for medical reasons, yet many sick patients still live
in fear of arrest and prosecution. Their fears are well justified. Because
Long Beach's local policies have not been revised to match the state laws,
sick people legally using marijuana are considered to be criminals. They're
not.

Tonight the City Council has an opportunity to provide Long Beach, at last,
with a resolution to conflicting medical marijuana laws. The council will
be asked to form a task force to study ways in which Long Beach can
regulate the legal use of medical marijuana under Proposition 215, the
state law. (The task force recommendation was brought forward by the Public
Safety Commission, which, to its credit, didn't listen to the deputy city
attorney's initial advice.)

The task force idea isn't new or unusual. It has already been implemented
by several large cities in California, which have sought to clarify local
policy and resolve the conflicts brought up by Prop 215. San Diego, for
example, has issued Prop 215 guidelines that include carefully regulated
identification cards for patients, as well as official parameters on
possession and cultivation. Long Beach can, and should, do the same.

The arrests and citations of local medical marijuana patients in recent
years have been pointless, subjective and cruel. In some cases they have
amounted to an incredible waste of court resources, police time and
taxpayer money.

Judges have dismissed all but one of the four Long Beach medical marijuana
cases that have gone to trial. The other was overturned on appeal. One
particularly troubling case involved a septuagenarian veteran with chronic
hip pain who was arrested for growing some immature plants with a doctor's
recommendation. The man was forced to pay attorneys' fees in more than two
dozen court appearances while the case was tried, refiled and dismissed
three times.

The public doesn't want sick people arrested for using medical marijuana. A
2004 Field Poll found that 74 percent of Californians favor total legal
protection for patients, a substantial increase from the already high 65
percent of voters who approved Prop 215. Judges and juries are dismissing
or rejecting nearly all of the medical marijuana cases that come before
them. Police departments don't need to waste their time going after medical
marijuana patients, and individual officers in the field shouldn't have to
decide which conflicting law to uphold.

Maintaining the status quo is unacceptable, as lawful patients are
subjected to humiliating and stressful arrests, and overtaxed public safety
and judicial systems are further burdened.

The Long Beach City Council can fix that by creating a medical marijuana
task force, staffing it with reputable representatives from the medical,
public policy and public safety fields, and changing Long Beach's medical
marijuana policies so they conform to state law.

It is past time for Long Beach to find a reasonable solution to
contradictory and inconsistent medical marijuana laws.