(The Romeo Observer) Members of the Northwest Zero Tolerance Coalition learned that new marijuana laws are leading to strains on law enforcement.
Assistant Prosecutor Bill Dailey of the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office spoke to the coalition about some of the drug use problems he has seen in the county, mainly with medical marijuana.
He said he is concerned it will be more readily available to students due to people owning medical marijuana cards that grow their own plants.
“I think there is going to be more marijuana available to our young people and I think that it’s because there is now a lawful way for it to be out in the stream of commerce,” he said. “The same thing has happened with Vicodin and OxyCotin pills.”
I think if medical marijuana were as toxic, addictive, and laden with side effects as Vicodin and OxyContin, that statement would scare me more. Or if I didn’t know that in the medical marijuana states that have been at it long enough to collect data, fewer teens are using marijuana and their use rates are declining faster than the national average.
“Not to offend anybody, (but) in my opinion, it’s pretty amorphous criteria to get a card,” Dailey said. “There are people I know who have got a card for asthma, which is kind of surprising.”
I don't think Georgine would be offended; I think she'd see it as a teachable moment.
Well, you wouldn’t be surprised if you met Georgine DiMaria or any one of the dozens of medical marijuana patients I’ve met who use cannabis to treat asthma. THC is a bronchodialator – it opens up the breathing passages – and other cannabinoids work as anti-spasmodics.
He said that the offices don’t want to bug people who are lawfully following the program. He said that part of him wonders why the state didn’t just totally legalize it so there could be quality control and regulation instead of the current “middle ground.”
That part of you would be called the “logical” part, Mr. Prosecutor. Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard that refrain from law enforcement. “Just legalize it,” one cop told me, “either it’s illegal for everybody or it’s legal for everybody, but this in-between some-legal some-not shit is impossible for us to deal with.”
We’re working on it. In the meantime, the way you folks in law enforcement have gone about scaring the hell out of people regarding marijuana for the past seventy years has made it very difficult for us to just legalize it. Only people’s compassion for the desperately sick and disabled people suffering with pain has allowed us even this tiny bit of marijuana regulation for a small subset of its users. So if the slow process from prohibition to regulation temporarily makes your jobs a bit more difficult, excuse me if hundreds of thousands of marijuana patients and twenty million marijuana arrestees don’t shed a tear.
Topics: Bill Dailey, Georgine DiMaria, Macomb County, Michigan
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Georgine is such a nice woman! I sent her a message on facebook thanking her for her work advocating using medical MJ for asthma (since I do the same for mine) and she sent a very nice reply back. I wish people like Jay Leno would just leave her alone and stop making fun of her.
No place to comment on their site but this is so much crap, them whinning about the law, just do your job. It would be better to lock up those sick people instead, like that had for years ad years? It would be better to have cops feeling like crap arresting a wheelchair bound marijuana consumer? And that helps keep who safe?
Marijuana is out there kids are getting now, in fact easyer than alcohol, so I dont see how or why a legal medical consumer, growing his own, would want to chance everything they have fought and won in there state, all over selling some marijuana to a kid/minor? makes no scence to me at all, and it wouldnt happen.
Well put!
Keep up the great work!!
“R” R, you look like Uncle Pervy (or were you going for Snidely Whiplash?) in that pic with Georgine,
but great commentary! Did she kiss you right after that? Looks like it, you lucky dog!
Everything seems to be swinging towards decrim or at least rescheduling, but the wolves of big pharma are salivating…they want all that money that patented combinations of as-yet un(der)-explored cannabinoids and terpenes might produce besides excellent broncho-dilation and anti-spasm.
How do we keep it out of their greedy paws? Their best and brightest evil minds are working 24/7 to deprive us of this wonderful, natural, (crude plant material, as they put it) medicinal herb.
I think the only patents issued should be on new medical strains proven to alleviate symptoms and/or actually cure specific targeted illnesses, as seems possible if it is studied without meddlesome government interference and restriction.
I know, the government already has patents on it, but is there some precedent for patents getting rescinded or revoked? If not, these are perfect candidates.
Next thing you know, I’m tying the poor girl up on the railroad tracks in advance of the oncoming train. Bwaa-ha-ha-ha!
Actually, it’s just a quick taking-my-own-pic with the BlackBerry move, I have an enormous head, and I told Georgine she needed to squeeze in close for the picture and before I knew it, she was leaning on me and going all glamour-girl. Within a lightning quick twenty-three or twenty-four seconds I said, “Enough, ye temptress! Dost thou knoweth I am a married man!” I think. It was backstage at Freedom Rally, so it’s all a bit hazy. I may have said, “Thanks for the picture, Georgine, it’s nice meeting you.” And maybe it was only three seconds.