Medical marijuana foes claiming “negative repercussions, abuse” in Multnomah County, Oregon

(Gresham Outlook) Since the passage of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act in 1998, the number of Oregonians with medical marijuana cards has soared to more than 20,000.

Oregon’s per capita rate of authorized medical marijuana cards is 13 times the ratio of medical marijuana cards in California.

Really? Oregon has 13x more medical marijuana patients? Really?

Anything sound fishy to you in that last sentence?  Can there really be 13 times the medical marijuana patients in Oregon than dispensary-laden California?  Let’s see, Oregon has a population of about 3.8 million, with 20,000 patients, that’s a ratio of 1:190 (3,800,000 ÷ 20,000 = 190).  There are 36.8 million people in California, so there would be about 194,000 patients at the Oregon 1:190 rate (36,800,000 ÷ 190 = 194,000), and if California’s 1/13th that number, there are less than 15,000 patients in California (194,000 ÷ 13 = 15,000).  With numbers like those, why wouldn’t you just say there are more patients overall in Oregon than California?

Ah, because it’s not “patients”, it’s “authorized medical marijuana cardholders”.  What this sloppy journalist isn’t telling you is that in order to get medical marijuana in Oregon, you are required by law to register with the state, but in California, you only need a doctor’s recommendation, there is no statewide registry, and the voluntary registry cards you get in California are administered on a county-by-county basis. There are hundreds of thousands of medical marijuana patients in California; they just don’t have to get cards.

Let’s see what else I can tear apart in this piece of scaremongering yellow journalism…

Deputy Adam Swail of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Special Investigations Unit said medical marijuana cards are being used as a front for illegal operations.

Because cardholders often need someone to grow their marijuana, formally illegal growers now have get-out-of-jail-free cards.

Swail said because of the [Oregon Medical Marijuana Act's privacy restrictions], it’s difficult to determine how much marijuana is legally allowed at grow sites. If a caregiver only grows for one patient and is holding 24 ounces, police would have to go to the patient’s house to make sure the caregiver isn’t holding more than legally allowed.

So, Deputy Swail is overwrought because he might find a caregiving grower with a pound and a half of weed and would never know if the patient wasn’t also holding a pound and a half of weed.  These people might have three pounds of weed when they’re only allowed a pound and a half!  Oh, the humanity!

Here, I’ll make it easy, Deputy.  Since Oregon law [ORS 475.320 (2)(c)] allows a grower to provide for no more than four patients concurrently, no grow site should ever have more than six pounds.  Below six pounds, just assume it’s medical and it’s legit, because the real trafficker / drug kingpin types aren’t messing around with six pounds of marijuana.

The Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that one large marijuana plant can yield in excess of 4 pounds of dried marijuana and 1 pound alone can be sold on the street for $4,000, making a grow site an easy target for criminals.

Who’s growing these four pound plants?  The great majority of medical marijuana growing in Oregon (see pg 13) is done indoors, and court-certified expert Chris Conrad testifies that the average indoor plant produces 4-6 ounces, not 64 ounces!

“What about the guy who can’t grow or doesn’t have any money?” Swail said. “He’s going to go out and rob the guy with the grow.”

Marijuana is not heroin, Deputy.  Nobody without money or weed gets the reefer jones so bad that he has to go rob the guy with the grow.  Criminals rob the medical marijuana patients because prohibition makes plant material worth more than palladium.

Growers are more likely to arm themselves than call the police to report a theft if they are growing more than they should, he added.

“You’re going to call the police because you shot someone who tried to rob your illegal grow? No,” Swail said.

Exactly our point, Deputy.  If someone hops your fence to steal your corn or cucumbers or breaks into your home to steal your prize indoor tomatoes, you can call the police because they are legal.  Of course, nobody steals home garden corn or cucumbers or tomatoes because they are very cheap and people can buy or grow their own.  Prohibition makes it difficult to buy or grow marijuana and makes it lucrative enough to take the risk of stealing.

Attorney Paula Barran of Barran Liebman Attorneys joined the conversation to explain the legal jam employers are left in when dealing with medical marijuana in the workplace.

Where California allows employers to fire medical marijuana users, nothing in the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act or Oregon law legally protects employer’s right to terminate — or not hire — authorized users of medical marijuana, Barran said.

Oregon law, however, (which follows the federal ADA) legally prevents employers from terminating or not hiring authorized users of any other medication, or even asking them what medications they may be taking.  It would be illegal to ask the bulldozer driver you’re hiring if he has a prescription for Vicodin, but you can legally make him pee to prove he’s not using his doctor-recommended medical marijuana at night at home after work so he can sleep, even though that’s legal in Oregon, because pot is federally illegal.

“Marijuana is the only drug I can think of where you can self-medicate,” Swail said.

Authorized users are often told to “smoke it until they feel better,” with no calibrated dosage, which can be dangerous if the person holds a position in society that makes them responsible for others, or operates heavy machinery, Barran said.

The reason aspirin, acetaminophen, cough syrup, laxatives, diet pills, anti-histamines, and naproxen have these “calibrated dosages” is because if they take them “until they feel better” and they accidentally take too much, they can become injured or die.  And those are just a few of the many medical drugs I can think of, not to mention alcohol, nicotine, guarana, taurine, and caffeine used non-medically, where “you can self-medicate” and overdose can kill you.

Unlike medical marijuana.

Now, to the Deputy’s point: have criminals made use of medical marijuana to cloak their operations?  Sure.  Criminals cheat any system, that’s what criminals do.  But the two-prong test we should use to evaluate that situation is 1) how much damage does the cheating cost society? vs. 2) how much damage to patients is caused by attempts to eliminate the cheating?

As noted above, cops can still bust anyone they find, grow site card or not, with more than six pounds of marijuana or more than 96 plants, as that violates statutory limits.  So the only people who could be effectively cheating the medical marijuana system are the small time growers and traffickers of marijuana.  Which means that, worst (best?) case scenario, people who already smoke marijuana may find it easier to acquire now and won’t get busted.  I’d argue it actually benefits society when cops can bust real criminals because they aren’t wasting their time busting tokers.

On the other side, the reason 24 ounces and 24 plants – 6 mature, 18 seedling – was set as a limit was to prevent legit patients from being outside the law.  There are some states that allow a person to grow multiple plants but only possess two ounces, which guarantees that come harvest time, even a patient with one 4-6oz average yield is breaking the law.  Most patients aren’t growing their full allotment of plants or harvesting that full pound and a half and stay well beneath the large limits.

This “bright line” possession limit, as well as the ridiculous “12-inch rule” determining whether a plant is mature, was requested by law enforcement lobbies in earlier legislative sessions to clear up the ambiguity of “affirmative defense”, which allowed cardholders to possess more than the original limit of three ounces at the grow site if a doctor said it was medically necessary.  Activists made the controversial move to trade affirmative defense for what at the time was the nation’s largest statewide medical marijuana limits.  Now, of course, law enforcement isn’t happy with that and would relish dialing back medical marijuana cardholders to a insufficient 3 ounce limit and having no affirmative defense.

This is part of that “pendulum swinging backwards” I’ve been warning you about.  This is just one of many stories I’ve read about the “abuse” of medical marijuana and how it is “out of control”.  Now is the time to show the public how every concern of the law enforcement and business communities about medical marijuana is really because of the continuance of the failed policy of marijuana prohibition.