(Christian Science Monitor) Around the country today, hundreds – perhaps thousands – of high schoolers are bringing pot to school, and they’re doing it legally. Not to get stoned, but as part of prescribed medical treatment. And they don’t have to tell school authorities about it.

This is putting teachers and principals in a new and challenging position. In many counties and school districts, there are no clear guidelines – for school officials, students, or parents.

“This is all just kind of starting to happen,” high school principal Jeff Schlecht told the Ashland Daily Tidings in Oregon. “It does place us in an awkward position.”

For many students, the issue comes as no surprise.

“I’ve known about this for four years,” Ashland senior Wesley Davis, 17, told the newspaper. “Some of them have it for medical reasons, but others are just trying to get free weed and sell it, turn it around.”

This weekend at the Oregon NORML meeting I met a sixteen-year-old patient who uses cannabis for a rare brain disorder that builds up calcium deposits in his skull.  He was there with his mom and dad, both everyday-looking parents without a hint of counterculture about them.

But again, how much is the cause of legalization for all adults compromised when teenagers talk to the media about their classmates “just trying to get free weed and sell it”?  We have to show the skeptical parents that the reason the teenagers are even able to buy and sell the marijuana is because it is illegal, and that a legal regulated market for adults would bring licensed sellers who check IDs and depress the prices to the point of not being worthwhile to “turn it around.”

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Hemp Headlines

1. Australia grants approval for clinical tests of Sativex, a whole-plant extract of cannabis as a sublingual spray
2. Ashland, Oregon, considers school standards for teenaged medical marijuana patients
3. Washington State legislature hears testimony on marijuana decrim and legalization bills

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ASHLAND – Two Webster men who went to the Police Station to bail out a friend on Monday were arrested after police saw them with a marijuana-filled cigar while parked in front of the station.

Jason Barry, 22, and his cousin, Brian Cherry, 18, were arrested at 6:17 p.m.

According to a police report filed by Sgt. Gregg Wildman, the pair had come to the station to bail out Akeem Atkins, 23, also of Webster, who was arrested at 12:57 p.m. and charged with breaking into a car on Central Street.

Barry and Cherry were waiting in their car, when Wildman, who was in street clothes, walked by the car and saw what appeared to be a blunt — a cigar emptied of tobacco and filled with marijuana — in the car, Wildman wrote.

Upon questioning, Cherry said there was a black shoebox in the trunk.

Wildman said he found a digital scale and a plastic bag “containing a significant amount of green herbal substance” believed to be marijuana in the box.

When it comes to bailing out friends, I recommend the bus or a taxi.  I never like to drive to a police station or courthouse in my own car.  I’m not stupid enough to bring along a shoebox full of weed, blunts, bags, and scales, but who knows when your taillight is going to go out or a plainclothes policeman walking by thinks he sees or smells something?  In Massachusetts you have a bit of leeway because even if they found a little weed in your car it is just a civil fine, but if you’re in a place like Oklahoma or Idaho or Florida, that little seed that rolled out of your hand when you bought a bag and rolled underneath your car seat three years ago could be enough to put you in jail.

Ashland Daily Tidings :: Group works to legalize dispensaries :: September 27, 2008

Voter Power, a medical marijuana activist group with an office in Medford, plans to put a measure on a 2010 ballot to create dispensaries in Oregon, similar to those in California.

Under the plan, licensed growers would sell marijuana to the dispensaries, where it will be distributed either at a minimal cost or for free. Customers would need a valid Oregon Medical Marijuana Program card to receive marijuana from dispensaries.

The dispensaries would be taxed and the money would go to other health department programs and help to fund research into medical marijuana, said Alex Rogers, outreach coordinator for Voter Power. A health department regulated program would also be implemented to help patients get access to marijuana.

Voter Power is collecting signatures for its initiative, which was finalized in August, before it can be placed on an upcoming ballot.

If the dispensary system is approved, patients will still be able to grow their own marijuana or select a grower, Rogers said.

“We have a two part strategy — make the best of the current law and at the same time work for a better law,” said John Sajo, Voter Power’s executive director. “The OMMA (Oregon Medical Marijuana Program) has done pretty well at stopping most patients from being arrested, but it has not really addressed how the patients are supposed to get their medicine.”

Rogers said only half of the 20,000 cardholders in Oregon have safe access to medical marijuana.

Dispensaries are prohibited under current law. The Medical Marijuana Program explains, “There is no place in the State of Oregon to legally purchase medical marijuana.”

There are two initiatives trying to get on the ballot in Oregon for 2010, the Voter Power I-28 initiative and the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act or OTCA (full disclosure: I am the Political Director for OCTA).  Both initiatives set up a framework for the sales of marijuana to be regulated by the state and both create a system for growers to sell marijuana to the state.  

The primary differences are that the I-28 model restricts sales to medical marijuana patients only and allows the sales to be controlled by non-profits, like California’s system; the OCTA allows sales to all adults over 21 and keeps the sales in control of the state through the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

Will it be confusing to voters to hear from two different marijuana initiative petitioners?  Will the patient community be divided over whether to support both or only one initiative?  Would the efforts of the community be better focused on passing only one initiative?  Will supporters of one group campaign against the initiative of another group?  If both get on the ballot and both pass, what then; does the one with more votes win?  Do I ask rhetorical questions in order to voice my deep concerns without taking the Stash down the rabbit hole of personal grudges, rumored animosities, tactical disagreements, and assorted detailed idiocies involved in four decades worth of Beaver State marijuana politics?