WA Gov. Gregoire rebuffs “35-ounce in 60-day” limit for medical marijuana possession
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 11:00 am | By: Radical Russ
Health | Medical marijuana: How much is enough? | Seattle Times Newspaper
A state Health Department proposal that medical-marijuana patients be allowed more than 2 pounds of pot every two months took law enforcement by surprise and prompted the governor to tell health officials to start over.Faced with a legislative mandate to spell out what constitutes a “60-day supply” by July 1, the department in February briefed Gov. Christine Gregoire’s office on its recommendation: Patients or caregivers could possess up to 35 ounces of cultivated marijuana and be allowed a plant-growing area of 100 square feet.
In four hearings around the state last fall, hundreds of patients and medical-marijuana advocates lined up to speak. But conspicuously absent from most hearings were the voices of two important “stakeholders”: doctors and law-enforcement officials.
Officially, law-enforcement leaders say they just want a number — any number — for the amount of pot qualified users can possess. They say they’re not doctors and they wouldn’t presume to set an amount any more than they would tell a patient how much cholesterol medication to take.
But when pressed, they express discomfort with the amounts revealed to the governor in the briefing.
Cowlitz County Sheriff Bill Mahoney says the whole issue is now “very, very difficult for law enforcement to deal with” because nobody knows what constitutes a 60-day supply.
“From my standpoint as a sheriff, I just need the state to step up and define it. I don’t care what the number is.”
But, he adds: “Most of our cops, if they were forced to come up with a number, they’d say 3 ounces.”
How did the state Department of Health (DOH) calculate the amount? According to its briefing memo, obtained through a Public Disclosure Act request, the department began with the average dosages given to a handful of patients enrolled in a federal medical-marijuana program.
The federal program, called “Compassionate Investigational New Drug”program, supplies a limited number of patients with 300 to 450 “joints” per month, or about 9 ounces, according to department research. It doubled that amount, because some patients might eat the marijuana instead of smoking it.
The 35-ounce amount is more than permitted in some places that allow medical marijuana use, but less than others. For example, Oregon allows 24 ounces of usable marijuana and six mature plants, while limits in California counties and cities range from 8 ounces to 3 pounds in Humboldt, Santa Cruz and Trinity counties, the Health Department’s memo said.
Washington State’s 60-day supply law is in real need of definition. I know when I first moved to Oregon I thought that three ounces was a whole lot of cannabis. And for a recreational user or someone suffering only from occasional pain or nausea, it is a lot of cannabis.
But I know patients who cannot smoke or vaporize, they must eat their medicine. Patients who are suffering so severely that the same three ounces that might last you months may only last them a few days. And we can never forget that marijuana is a crop; you don’t always get a guaranteed good harvest. A large possession limit allows a patient to stockpile in case of a failed crop.
This strange legislative dance between patients who need to grow medicine and police who need to catch potheads is always going to create these ludicrous situations where medical decisions must be tempered by the whims of “stakeholders” in law enforcement. This is why cannabis needs to be legal for all adults, otherwise patients will always suffer from non-medical limits, mistaken raids, and black-market prices.
