CA:Commentary: Tough Love for Medical Marijuana

[IndianaToker]

By Hil Anderson
Source: United Press International

Calif. -- San Francisco's move Tuesday to temporarily rein in the opening of any new medical-marijuana clubs in the proudly liberal city by the bay could now turn into a step toward public acceptance of cannabis as a respectable medical treatment. The proposed 45-day moratorium on club openings would give the city time to draft a method of regulating the existing marijuana clubs that could serve as a template for other cities nationwide and would prevent the high-profile upscale city of San Francisco from becoming home to a shadier breed of pot purveyors whose clientele are chronic dope users.

"I believe medicinal marijuana is appropriate and right," first-term San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle Monday. "I also think there needs to be some common sense and grounding as it relates to the proliferation of these clubs in San Francisco."

The sprouting of marijuana clubs in San Francisco, or any other city that allows the use of pot as medication, would conceivably provide the proof that opponents of medical marijuana would need to conclude that the entire concept was merely a poorly disguised means of legalizing a potentially dangerous drug.

"This is hyperbole," Newsome warned, "but we are conceivably walking down a path that would allow for a club on every street corner in San Francisco."

By requiring licenses, zoning restrictions or some other type of permit for marijuana outlets, the city would be putting its imprimatur on the facilities that are currently allowed to open freely and operate with little or no government supervision; San Francisco is already home to 30 percent of California's 125 medical-marijuana outlets.

While such outlets might be technically legal, the very fact that they dispense a felony drug -- depending on the quantity -- puts them in the same outlaw category to many critics as crack houses and public nuisances that should be shut down at the earliest legal opportunity.

The Bush administration has made no secret of its official disdain for even the concept of legalized medical marijuana. The Justice Department has consistently maintained that the weed has no proven medical benefit and that, therefore, it's nothing more than an oxymoron, or the "big wink" in drug circles.

A 2002 raid by federal drug agents on a Bay Area provider of medical marijuana led to a court challenge in which the plaintiffs steadfastly alleged that they were protected from prosecution by Proposition 215, a measure passed by progressive California voters allowing the use of marijuana if recommended by a doctor.

The plaintiffs have prevailed thus far, although the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled that Prop 215 didn't violate federal interstate commerce laws and did not address the merits of medical marijuana.

Meanwhile, the issue is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, where legal analysts have thus far given mixed predictions on the government's chances of overturning the liberal-bent 9th Circuit.

Should the proponents of medical pot prevail, their entire movement could be easily unraveled by the maverick actions of some bad apples that would no doubt spring up in the absence of stringent controls by local and state authorities.

Allowing medical marijuana in the first place has been derisively chided as a means of opening the door for legalized marijuana -- replete with trumped-up "prescriptions" carried by determined card-carrying pot heads. If an unsupervised and wholesale expansion of marijuana clubs is allowed, it could be only a matter of time before some high-profile busts take place involving distribution to people who simply aren't sick but wish to get stoned with impunity on a regular basis.

And there goes the neighborhood. It is not unreasonable to assume that addicts and other unsavory characters would gravitate to neighborhoods around such free-wheeling clubs, possibly leading to higher crime rates and declining property values.

Such a development would swiftly turn the public against the entire medical-marijuana movement regardless of its merits, and that would leave patients who actually do get some relief from lighting up forced to obtain it from underground dealers.

Such an ugly scenario cropped up in San Francisco last week when a marijuana club opened its doors in a downtown hotel leased by the city to provide housing for the down-and-out, including a lot of recovering addicts struggling to get back on their feet.

Complaints from hotel residents appeared in the media, catching the city off guard and prompting Newsom, the same mayor who issued an order allowing gay marriages, to call for the 45-day moratorium on new club "openings."

Some cities in California have already put caps on the number of marijuana clubs they will allow to operate, and -- somewhat surprisingly -- opposition to the restrictions from the marijuana movement has been virtually nil.

Marijuana advocates, in fact, contend that local controls benefit everyone by putting police and patients on the same page of the law books. In a letter made available to city and county commissions throughout the state earlier this month, the East Bay advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access, maintained, "Medical cannabis collectives and cooperatives can be a positive part of a community."

"When properly regulated and operated, they will prevent lawful patients from unnecessary and potentially harmful entanglements with illicit markets or law enforcement," wrote Executive Director Steph Sherer. "They will also be a key element in ensuring that patients are legally qualified and well educated about their rights and responsibilities under the law."

The sentiment reflects the fact that voters in California and 11 other states have passed measures allowing their chronically ill neighbors to seek relief by smoking marijuana, but they didn't intend their humanitarian gesture to lead to a dope-dealing bazaar; San Francisco's decision to put the brakes on at this time reflects that sentiment and will lay the groundwork for an orderly role for medical reefer.

Newshawk: Mayan
Source: United Press International (Wire)
Author: Hil Anderson
Published: March 22, 2005
Copyright 2005 United Press International
Website: http://www.upi.com/
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Link to article: http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread20392.shtml