I’m not the only blog-writing toker in the Pacific Northwest taking notice of the latest group of medical marijuana industry players to oppose legalization for the rest of us. Dominic Holden, a former NORML activist and now writer for the Seattle Stranger‘s blog, The Slog, examines the motivations behind the No on I-502 / Patients Against I-502 / Patients Against NAW campaigns:
(The Slog) The medical marijuana industry—threatened by the prospect of legalization harming their business model—was a leading opposition to the 2010 legalization initiative in California. Similarly, medical marijuana activists in Washington have been opposing I-502.
The anti-I-502 campaign was filed by Martinelli and Gil Mobley, a doctor who operates a clinic in federal Way that writes medical marijuana authorizations, and the campaign has the backing of Patients Against I-502. That organization’s advocacy has been led in part by Hempfest director and medical cannabis patient Vivian McPeak along with marijuana defense attorneys Jeffrey Steinborn and Douglas Hiatt. All except Mobley have direct ties to Sensible Washington, a campaign that twice failed to qualify their own legalization initiative that contained no DUI provision and zero regulations.
…and of course, Dr. Gil Mobley will be writing a whole lot fewer $150 – $200 medical marijuana permission slips when any adult 21 and over can get and possess an ounce without one. (I know, y’all will write to me and say that your financial interest in the issue has no bearing on your opposition to I-502. I’ll take you at your word, but it is only fair for our readers to be aware of any potential conflict of interest, just as I’d tell them how President Obama takes a lot of campaign cash from Big Pharma.) And let’s not forget the well-documented animosity felt by Sensible Washington’s proponents when ACLU of Washington (the proponents of I-502) would not endorse Sensible Washington‘s I-1068.
Those activists have been hammering Holden (as they have me) over the dire threat looming if I-502 passes; namely, we’re “throwing medical marijuana patients under the bus” in order to get our “recreational ounce”, because all patients would be re-criminalized as DUID drivers thanks to the 5ng/mL per se DUID standard included in I-502. Those patients, they’ll tell you, could never drive because they use so much cannabis they’d never be below 5ng/mL. To bolster their claims, they’ve presented some of the DUID studies that Paul Armentano has done such a great job of condensing. Unlike Armentano, Holden, and myself, they didn’t bother to read them.
(Seattle Slog) The same scientific study that medical marijuana activists are using to blast a marijuana-legalization initiative, it turns out, debunks their own leading argument.
Yesterday, Anthony Martinelli, the treasurer of a new campaign to oppose pot legalization on the fall ballot, claimed that Initiative 502 would subject sober pot smokers to DUI charges if they’d smoked pot the day or week before. Over the past few months, that talking point has become the primary line of attack to stop legalization in Washington State—and now their campaign is picking up donors. But at the time of our interview, Martinelli couldn’t produce the study to validate his central argument.
Martinelli did send me that study later yesterday afternoon, and I checked it out, but it shows the opposite of what he said it did.
Martinelli is referring to the work performed by Karschner et al where 25 long-term regular cannabis users were studied over a seven day period. Of those 25 tokers, “most of the participants reported daily or near daily cannabis use in the last 14 days.” And of those 25 tokers, just one was above 5ng/mL – Participant S was at 7ng – and that was on the day of admission where she admitted she had smoked four blunts that day. Now, nothing in the study tells me when she was admitted that day, but logic dictates that it would probably have been during the workday. So, yeah, if you smoke four blunts between waking up and, say, 5pm, you just might be above 5ng/mL.
For comparison’s sake, Participant N is a 21-year-old obese African-American woman who admits to smoking pot starting at age 9. She admits to smoking a half-ounce per day and had done so that day. She didn’t even have detectable ng/mL when she checked in. Participant L, a man who’d smoked an ounce that day tested at only 0.4ng. The next highest level was only 2ng/mL for Participant W, a morbidly obese woman who’d smoked eight blunts that day. And the next day after not toking, Participant S was down to 2.9ng and Participant W was down to 1.4ng.
In short: Given 25 tokers who smoked anywhere from 1-10 blunts or from a “dime” to an ounce per day, there was only one who tested above 5ng/mL. For the vast overwhelming majority of tokers, if you wait 1-4 hours after toking, you’ll never be above 5ng/mL.
Now remember my belief that I-502 calculated the per se DUID provision would win more votes than it loses? Looks like I was right by an over 5-to-1 margin:
The reason we’re talking about this at all is because strict DUI provisions will help get this thing passed (and help stave off attacks about stoned driving that have helped defeat other pot initiatives, such as Prop 19 in California). A poll last May by Quinlan Rosner Research found that the DUI provision alone prompted 62 percent of voters to say they were more likely to support I-502, and only 11 percent said it would make them less likely to support the initiative.
So if we want to stop arresting 10,000 people for marijuana each year, we need to pass I-502 this fall. And we can ignore ginned up claims by medical marijuana activists that I-502 will ensnare drivers who are sober. For now, they seem to be fighting I-502 because it won’t let them drive high.
Also consider that the people so concerned with the welfare of the patients are asking you to vote against:
- finally providing patients with real protection from arrest instead of just an affirmative defense you need to pay a medical marijuana lawyer upwards of $10,000 to mount in court;
- providing patients who have moderate need a way to be legal without buying an annual $200 permission slip from a medical marijuana clinic;
- creating truly legal retail outlets for patients to acquire medicine aside from quasi-legal medical marijuana dispensaries; and
- establishing a legal way patients could grow and sell marijuana commercially.
Contact your elected representatives and urge them to 'Stop Arresting Marijuana Smokers'. 
[...] life of a medical cannabis patient in Washington State is to live in fear every day. If I-502 passes, non-patients will also get to know about life in the crosshairs: risking not just [...]
Next week I will be debating a former ONDCP flack, Dr. Kevin Sabet, at the prestigious James E Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. My writing on drug testing has been published in two college textbooks. I have presented as an expert on marijuana policy at several universities. Last year, I was requested as an expert speaker on marijuana policy for events in Missouri, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Montana, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, and California. I’ve broadcasted on live nationwide AM talk radio as a recognized expert on marijuana and won three awards for excellence in marijuana podcasting. People take me plenty seriously.
I also have never referred to all patients as “stoners and long-haired hippies”. I have pointed out that some of the people in opposition to I-502 are quite readily perceived by the public as “stoners and long-haired hippies”.
But Mimi, stop trying to bullshit me about the nature of medical marijuana in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve lived it for six years. My wife runs a medical clinic where patients get recommendations. And for every patient who is desperately ill, who must smoke marijuana every day, and for whom there is absolutely no reasonable substitute, there are four of them who need it for their occasional nausea or pain, but could get by with other medications if they had to, and found that qualified them for a piece of paper that would keep them safe for their recreational marijuana smoking, too.
I know, because my wife is that patient. She gets excruciating migraines and to-the-point-of-dry-heaving nausea, and marijuana is the only thing that cures those symptoms, and it does so very quickly. But she doesn’t get migraines or nausea every day. Yet, she smokes marijuana every day, because she likes to get high. And so do a whole bunch of patients who I’ve been with at Seattle Hempfest and plenty of other venues, who are experiencing no symptoms in need of “medication” except the desire to have fun.
What you patients don’t understand is that your holier-than-thou attitude is dooming medical marijuana in other states. The whole reason four East Coast states have no home grow is because the legislatures there don’t want “another California”. The whole reason most states have <3oz possession and <6 plants limits is because of multiple busts in the Midwest where hundreds of pounds of medical pot from the West Coast is seized on its way East. And when the general public sees the bikini girls twirling signs for $45 recs on Venice Beach, when they see young people with recs for insomnia moshing and toking at the Cypress Hill show, and when they see far more tie-dye and dreadlocks than they see scrubs and stethoscopes, the more they think medical marijuana is bullshit.
This is why the clock is ticking on legalization and it is so important to pass it now. In 2013, the first few approved companies want to begin FDA trials on cannabinoid pharmaceuticals. By the time the next election-year chance to legalize comes around in 2016, the DEA may have passed its rule allowing pharma companies to extract natural THC as a Schedule III substance for inhalers, patches, pills, and tinctures. Here in Oregon, right-wingers proposed replacing our medmj program with a prescription Marinol program – imagine how much more resonant that will be with the public when there is an inhaler that is just as medically effective as plant cannabis, but doesn’t get you high.
Imagine that scenario where effective cannabinoid pharmaceuticals exist. What’s your angle for keeping access to the whole plant cannabis? How do you convince people that your variable dose, variable potency, variable effect, gets you high, loved by potheads medicine is better than their consistent dose, consistent potency, consistent effect, doesn’t get you high, eschewed by potheads medicine? You’ve painted yourself in a medical corner and Big Pharma and the Federal Government is more than happy to keep you there.
At that point, the only argument for securing whole plant cannabis is for the healthy people who want to get high. Patients’ input will be moot, since science has taken care of their medical needs.
This is why I keep pouring thousands of words into this, because while you’re focused on short-term effects on a minority of tokers, I’m focused on the long-term effect on all tokers. I’m pursuing a strategy that does the most good for the most people in the long term and gets us out of that medical corner by establishing a right to use cannabis for all. State by state medical marijuana only gets more restrictive and, eventually, it becomes a cannabinoid pharmaceutical.
So, should your votes with the Drug Czar eventually doom I-502, don’t come crying to me when your legislature is seeking to replace your plants with Sativex. You wanted medical marijuana; you can have it.
Actually, you’re slipping on the public sentiment. While strong majorities approve of the medical use of cannabis (70%-80%), they approve in the context of “Well, of course we shouldn’t lock up cancer patients for smoking a joint if their doctor says so.”
More telling is the recent CBS News Poll (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57327004-503544/poll-public-supports-medical-marijuana-but-not-full-pot-legalization/) showing that while “77 percent Americans think [medical marijuana] should be allowed… for serious medical conditions”, we also find “Just 31 percent of Americans think marijuana purchased under such programs is being used to alleviate suffering from serious medical illnesses. More than half – 52 percent – think it is being used for other reasons”
Since medical marijuana began in 1996, legalization support has risen in the Gallup Poll from 25% to 50%. Meanwhile, medical marijuana support has stalled at 70% (in Gallup’s poll). Now I figure all legalizers would support medical, so that means we’ve gone from 45% who only support medical and not legalization to just 20%.
Whether Alison Holcomb’s strategy pays off has yet to be seen. But I’m betting that no matter how I-502 was written, there would be a fringe group of patients who’d still be against it. During Prop 19, we had patients fighting it because they thought a 5′x5′ home grow site was too small and a patient who sunk $1.5 million on it was going to monopolize marijuana. Right now, in Colorado, there are a fringe group of patients who oppose “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol”, which has home grow and no DUID provision, because they say it’s not “true legalization”, it “doesn’t regulate like alcohol”, and, of course, it will “harm patients”.
If there is an irreparable divide between patients and tokers, so be it. But that divide was created back in 1996, not 2012, when activists made a politically pragmatic decision to only fight for the rights of patients. Since then, we’ve seen that patients are the only tokers opposed to freeing us. Since then, we’ve seen almost all of the West Coast marijuana activism focused exclusively on the patients. “Oh, 60 day supply is too vague for patients, let’s fix it!” “Oh, we need more conditions for patients, let’s add them!” “Oh, we need more recs, let’s get DOs and NPs the ability to recommend!”
Meanwhile, we legalizers have been working to protect EVERYONE, including patients. it was our votes that helped get medical in the first place, even as we knew it didn’t protect us. And the thanks we get from patients is organized opposition to every legalization attempt in the 21st Century that has made the ballot from people who make money because of marijuana prohibition.
So if you really think there is a divide, you’d better hope our side, which outnumbers yours 9-to-1, doesn’t start organizing to oppose positive changes in medical marijuana law when they reach the ballot. Of course, we won’t, because we support EVERYONE who smokes pot, not just the sick people.
Fortunately for us, public sentiment is with the patients, not the government. We will fight this and it will not make the ballot. We aren’t asking for perfect, just that no more innocent persons get persecuted in the making of new laws. Not much to ask, I’d think, in this day and age.
It’s too bad, really. If the people at New Approach Washington would have listened to patients in the first place, none of this would be happening. The entire community would be in support and this would pass with flying colors. Alison Holcomb and her minions were informed we would not stand for this before the petitions were ever printed. She chose to go ahead and make a decision that divided the cannabis community in this state.
It appears that division was quite intentional. It was also a big mistake.
[...] been troubling to me is how much of the debate over the DUI provision seems to have very little scientific backing and how much of the “science” surrounding this topic appears to be [...]
Martinelli is trying to cite the Karschner study, showing that of 25 tested subjects who were all above the age of 21 and regular, chronic tokers, a few had measurable readings six days after abstinence.
And we’re supposed to apply that to all 18-20 years olds.
Y’all keep trying to point out that a 5ng/mL per se DUID standard is unscientific, unnecessary, and unjust, and that it will snare an unimpaired driver.
NOBODY IS DISPUTING THAT.
What we’re disputing is this scaremongering that “no patients will ever be able to drive!” Karschner showed that even people toking a few blunts that day could have no measurable reading and only one of 25 was above 5ng.
What we’re supporting is the beginning of the end of prohibition that, unfortunately, comes with a bad DUID law.
What we’re supporting is The Needs of the Many Outweigh The Needs of The Few.
What we realize is that there are 27 million marijuana smokers in America who do not begin to recognize their rights until one state finally stands up to the feds and legalizes, no matter how flawed.
What we realize is that legal marijuana consumers have a better chance of repealing or amending a per se DUID than pot criminals have a chance of getting another legalization initiative on the ballot in the next four years.
We’ll see come November, but most people realize that cannabis patients, while there are some who abuse it just like anything else, also benefit greatly from the drug. The big problem you are facing now is getting anyone to take YOU seriously.
You sit there and call us stoners and long-hair hippies, but we just want to be able to live without wrongful persecution and stay alive. It’s the NORML crowd, it turns out, who are the “the long-haired medical marijuana lawyers and the pierced dreadlocked stoners”. It’s the NORML crowd who seems to be in it for the money. Yeah, legalization would be a big moneymaker for a bunch of you, wouldn’t it? It’s interesting.
First we got asked to step aside, then we got called names and now NORML folks are personally and individually threatening cannabis patients who oppose I-502. Calling US the stoners was funny as hell, but now you stoop to the level of threats of violence and harm to us? Yeah, you’ve made your point, and you’ve drawn the lines.
We get it. You’ve gone to war against patients and you’ll gladly toss us under the first bus that comes along so you can legally get high. Just sayin’, we are not gonna just lay there and take this. We are going to fight, and I think the voters in this state have a LOT more compassion than you people, and I think they are a lot more open to medical cannabis than full legalization.
I think you have a BIG problem. You shouldn’t have dissed the patients like that.
It’s Thursday evening in Asia ,and I haven’t seen a NORML Live Show archive all week ??? Something is wrong.
I would drop this one, Russ. Dom’s been straying from reality more than I think you’d be comfortable with. (I know you to be above smear tactics.) I’m going to post the comment Martinelli posted to Dom’s original post about the “anti-pot (sic) campaign”. Notice how Martinelli’s not citing it to demonstrate lack of impairment. He’s referring to the zero tolerance for the under-21 set.
“I responded to Dominic a couple hours after his e-mail inquiry regarding the study I mentioned where individuals can fail the 0 ng/ml test for patients under 21 even 6 days after smoking, but it must not have been quick enough:
‘Hey Dominic, please checkout http://www.patientsagainsti502.org/resou….
Please also checkout http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19804…, which is a study showing that 6 days after consuming cannabis, 24% had detecable active THC in their system, meaning they would fail a 0 ng test which is imposed upon those under 21, despite voters in our state declaring the access to medicinal cannabis for those under this age. These tests also are not based on medical patients, which are likely to consume cannabis at much higher rates than those tested in this study. Other studies on this website also make it very clear that the limit, whether 0 ng for those under 21, or the 5 ng limit for adults, is absolutely not based on science, which makes taking away our defense in court (not even including rebuttable presumption) all the more unacceptable.’”
Thanks very much for helping debunk this second-hand smoke nonsense. However, you do yourself no favors citing Holden without closer inspection. It’s a very Bush-like tactic: misrepresent the argument so you can prove the false argument wrong.
I’m sure Martinelli would appreciate a retraction, but I’ll also understand if you decide to let this one quietly slide through. (Dare I hope for a personalized rebuttal?)
Peace!
Okay. Thanks, Russ. – Does that mean they are not archived for on-demand viewing anymore?
Yes – you’ll hear the replay at 10pm Pacific.
Excuse me. Is there a NORML Show Live this evening? I thought I saw a reference to it, but it does not appear (nor does any show) in the scrolling area above where I usually find it. – Thanks.
I’ve thought that myself, MoL. I can just imagine the on-the-fence average voter who’s somewhat negative on pot thinking, “Wait, the long-haired medical marijuana lawyers and the pierced dreadlocked stoners who run that annual festival in the park where they toss out buckets of joints to crowds filled with teenagers… they’re AGAINST I-502? Well, maybe there IS something good to this…”
Your if fails. There are plenty of meaningful results for both Rep. Ron Paul and NORML to point to. Marijuana is decriminalized in 14 states. Its medical use is legal in 16 states. Hemp farming is legal in eight states. And public support for marijuana legalization is at an all-time high.
I wonder if their actually hurting their own cause more… because to some non-tokers, I-502 might finally be adding the level of “protection on the roads” that the current WA MMJ program does not give… All their really doing is highlighting that under I-502, you cant drive “high”, that seems like a strategy to gain yes votes imo.
Dominic Holden is an excellent writer & Alison is a wonderful spokesperson,but were are the average hempsters supporting I-502 ??? The elitist mindset of I-502 has created a load of ‘sour grapes’ emotion that won’t easily be overcome.
Ryan Xcannabis was on your show second hour and played me a reply of the discussion. Karri had some very insightful comments. Ryan is ridiculous (i call him FLAKY) like the SenWah nonsense that has infected Vivian McPeak–he’s the one I’m worried about & he’s under tremendous pressure from our illogical ‘I got mine’ subset.
Russ,if RPaul is a failure in 30 years of promoting liberty & access to hemp/MMJ,and NORML has a 40 year record of similar promotion without meaningful results…RPaul & NORML should manufacture bastard children for Alex Jones College ,and we don’t need NO Aristotle. Alex Jones College is dedicated & forever indebted to his father ,Bill Hicks .