Hawaii medical pot users up 87 percent

Hawaii medical pot users up 87 percent | HonoluluAdvertiser.com | The Honolulu Advertiser
The number of medical marijuana patients in Hawai’i has grown 87 percent in the past two years, with the biggest gains on Maui and the Big Island.

According to the state Department of Public Safety, 4,200 patients were registered state-wide as of June 30, with 444 more signing up since then.

One reason for the increase is that more doctors have been certifying patients for the program, according to Keith Kamita, head of the department’s Narcotics Enforcement Division. Still, a relatively few physicians account for most of the state’s medical marijuana patients, he said. One Big Island doctor, for example, accounts for about half of the total certified patients statewide.

In fiscal year 2008, patients statewide visited 85 on-island physicians to obtain a qualifying diagnosis for medical marijuana use, compared with 62 physicians in fiscal 2006, according to DPS.

Despite the growing use of medical marijuana in Hawai’i, access to the drug remains an issue for many patients whose marijuana use is protected by a state law that conflicts with federal and state laws prohibiting any use or distribution of marijuana.

State Rep. Joe Bertram III, D-11th (Makena, Wailea, Kihei), calls the medical marijuana law “a cruel joke” because it legalizes medical use of marijuana but fails to provide patients safe, easy access to it. Bertram has held a medical marijuana permit since 2005.

During the 2008 legislative session, Bertram proposed creation of a secure growing facility on Maui and expanding the amount of marijuana patients can legally possess, but settled for a bill that would have created a task force to study cultivation and other issues surrounding the medical marijuana law.

The bill was opposed by law enforcement officials, who object to any expansion of the state’s medical marijuana program. Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed the measure, calling it “objectionable because it is an exercise aimed at finding ways to circumvent federal law.”

As the Mentch case in California and this article from Hawaii so deftly illustrate, the elephant in the room in the thirteen medical marijuana states is cannabis supply.  Twenty-five percent of the citizens of the United States live in a state where their personal medical use of cannabis under doctor’s recommendation is protected from legal sanction, but they can still be prosecuted for their attempts to get the cannabis to use medically.

I think voters without much knowledge of the issue just figured, “If your granny is smoking a joint for her glaucoma or your nephew is smoking a bong to help him with his chemo treatments, then leave ‘em alone,” without considering that for them to get the medicine for the joint or the bong, somebody had to trafficking law at some point.  Where do they get that first seed or clone to grow their own?

This is the dilemma of medical marijuana.  We maintain a criminal prohibition against a plant, but except some people from that prohibition because of their illness.  It’s kind of a separate-but-equal solution for the patients – their medicine is never truly treated like other medicines – and a government price support for the sellers of medicine.  Prohibition endangers the patients by making acquisition of medicine a criminal act and providing profit motive for criminals to acquire patients’ medicine through robbery.