MEDICAL MARIJUANA RAIDS AMOUNT TO HARASSMENT

The Issue

Big Island police have seized marijuana plants from patients using
marijuana for medical purposes.

Police on the Big Island apparently don't care much for a new state law
allowing the cultivation and use of marijuana for medical use. Patients
have been subjected to raids in the past month resulting in confiscation of
plants and dried marijuana on the basis that they exceeded, if only
slightly, the law's limits. Police should lighten up and grasp the spirit
of the law.

On July 8, police seized 20 marijuana plants and 1.5 ounces of processed
marijuana from the North Kona home of two people who suffer from leukemia
and a third who has muscular dystrophy. All three had received permission
from the state to use marijuana to alleviate their ailments. Later in the
month, police arrived by helicopter at a Hilo area patient's home, seizing
two of seven plants and destroying a third.

More than 80 patients have registered with the state to use marijuana as
medicine since the law took effect seven months ago. The rules allow a
patient to possess seven marijuana plants, three of which are mature, and
an ounce of processed marijuana. Police said the plants at North Kona were
not labeled to indicate the owner of each; the processed marijuana was
returned to the owners. Officers claimed that too many of the Hilo man's
plants were mature, defined by state rules as having flowered and showing buds.

The four patients complain that the presence of buds doesn't mean a plant
is mature enough to be usable as medicine. After the raids, Big Island
Mayor Harry Kim signed county rules that cite the state definitions and
appeared to endorse the heavy-handed tactics of police in dealing with
technical violations of the law, if that.

County authorities on the Big Island and in other counties need to accept
the idea that patients registered with the state to use marijuana are not
criminals. At most, police should have issued warnings to the North Kona
and Hilo area patients and advised them about how to comply with the state
- -- and now county -- rules.

Marijuana can legally be used for medical purposes in Hawaii and eight
other states. The California Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that medical
reasons not only can be used as a defense at trial but can be cited in
asking a judge to dismiss the charges without trial. Such dismissals, along
with the civil lawsuit filed last week by the North Kona trio, may be
needed to dampen the zeal of Big Island officers.