Rules for new medical cannabis program draw complaints
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 12:48 pm | By: Radical Russ
Rules for new medical pot program draw complaints | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press
The draft rules for the state’s medical marijuana program treat users as criminals and put undue responsibility on law enforcement, say those who spoke at the only public hearing on the topic Monday in Lansing.More than 100 people gathered to voice concerns about regulations drawn by the Michigan Department of Community Health, which will oversee the program starting April 4.
Under the draft rules, registered users of marijuana for medical purposes or their caregivers would have to keep records of the amounts of marijuana they grow, and users would have to identify other users on registration forms.
“I don’t have to tell my pharmacist every other patient who my doctor has written a prescription for,” Francisco said.
Some rules imposed actions not mentioned in the law, including requiring users to keep all marijuana under lock and key, instead of just plants. Melissa DiPirro, of the Macomb County office of substance abuse, spoke in favor of the rule, adding that prescription drugs should be locked up as well.
The requirement that patients would have to keep an inventory of how much cannabis they grow certainly would patients at risk for federal prosecution; what US Attorney wouldn’t want to have a nice neat ledger of federal drug manufacturing activity to prosecute?
Another of the proposed rules would define “public view” for the purposes of the law that requires patients to use out of “public view”. As proposed, “public view” would be so restrictive you couldn’t use cannabis in your own home if the windows were open or on your back porch if your neighbor’s two-story home looks over your eight-foot-privacy fence.
Finally, I could actually support a measure that required cannabis to be kept under lock and key… so long as you’re going to apply that standard to alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs, too. But to think a patient would be punished because children might get into her unlocked stash of cannabis when she had a bottle of Bacardi 151 in the cupboard, a pack of smokes on the coffee table, and a bottle of Darvocet in the bathroom medicine cabinet seems to be missing the point.
