This article was originally published on the Marijuana Patients Organization site on April 16, 2013.
Imagine that you owned a retail store. For the purpose of example, let’s say a grocery store. Let’s assume a new regulation has been passed, let’s say some sort of environmental regulation regarding recycling of waste. Now let’s further assume the language in the statute is not precise and that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is having trouble figuring out how to enact the law. What reaction would you expect if it could not be determined whether or not the grocery was in compliance?
Most likely, the grocery store would continue to operate unaffected throughout the rule making process. At the very worst, the store might be subjected to fines for not properly recycling waste, something it would most likely appeal once formal procedures were in place. The last thing one would expect would be for police to raid the grocery store, arrest its patrons, and pocket any cash in the register. After all, even when liquor stores are consistently caught selling to underage patrons, the worst that happens is the store looses its license, but this only occurs after a series of hearings to ensure due process.
Yet, heavy-handed, ramboesque tactics are what the State of Michigan feels is the appropriate response to deal with lack of clarity which currently exists in the state’s medicinal marijuana laws. Rather than allowing the state agencies in charge of medicinal marijuana to do what they have been legislatively empowered to do, create rules governing marijuana’s use, police have determined a better approach is to bring in SWAT teams, take menacing cancer patients and dispensary employees into custody, and bring them before judges, so the criminal justice system can determine their legal status. Rather than letting the system create rules, the police are turning criminal judges into defacto legislators. For a group that normally condemns judicial activism, this is one heck of a reversal.
Certainly, this is not what Michigan voters had in mind when they overwhelmingly passed the medicinal marijuana act over four years ago. While most certainly expected there would be some growing pains, no one thought the state would use police action as a substitute for democratic process. This is something one would expect from a place like North Korea , not a state that bills itself as a center of innovation. If the State of Michigan can’t get something this simple right, recall 18 states and the District of Columbia that have enacted similar statutes without issue, why would any firm working with new technology trust the state to regulate it in a manner that allows it to be successful?
Michigan ’s citizens are not asking for much. They simply want their legislators to create a way for sick people to legally gain access to a potentially helpful medication. After four and a half years of waiting, such a system is still not in place. The solution to this problem lies in the legislative, not the law enforcement arena. Its time for lawmakers to step up to the plate, do their job, and make this happen or instruct law enforcement to stand down.
[box ]Ryan Richmond is a commercial real estate professional and director of the Medical Marijuana Dispensary Association (dispensaryassociation.org), a network of Michigan dispensary and caregiving operations.[/box]
I started having seizures, focal aura and grand mal in 2000. I have always smoked marijuana but my daughter got pregnant so I stopped smoking, when my grandson was 6 days old, after not smoking for 8 months I had my first Grand Mal Seizure. For 2 years I had Grand Mal and Focal Aura Seizures until I started smoking Marijuana again. I went without seizures for 6 years until I moved To Texas and stopped smoking for a year and a half. After about 9 months I had another Grand Mal Seizure and started having Focal Aura Seizures once again. Of course I started smoking again and for 2 years I no seizures once again. I stopped smoking again so I could get a better job. I got the job and after about a year I started having Grand Mal Seizures and Focal Aura Seizures that after having 9 of them in 6 months, I had to quit my job, move back to Michigan so my kids could take care of me. I have now been waiting 2 years this coming June for my appeal for Disability so I can not smoke even with a Michigan Medical License because SSA is federal not state. I have had many of both kind of seizures in the last 2 years and they are only getting worse. 3 days out of the week I can’t walk, my leg are like Jello then I can’t speak it’s like I try and get so floaty and can’t control my mouth or limbs. So why am denied a medicine that could put my Seizures in remission? Why is the Government so afraid? Why is it that anyone can judge me for something that would make my life what it use to be? I don’t judge anyone else. As long as they don’t hurt anyone or themselves it’s not my business.
I have a two year boy he.s been having seizers since he was born as well as I do I don’t know what to do he runs high fevers and then seizes up I need up but one problem I live: in Mexico they denied my wife ov er seven years ago and I’m from Detroit my mom and brothers and family there that I haven’t seen in years what do I do
We need to just make it recreational like Colorado did when the local government tried to stop what the people voted they want medical access to if they won’t let us do it as medically then lets vote to make it recreational then the state won’t have a say…how did marijuana become a controlled substance if the constitution says that congress can not dictate what the people use or put in their own body.
Exactly
I have a type of drug resistant seizures. I have had these since I was 13 years old. I am currently 54. I used this type of alternative medication for 41years without any harmful side effects. Growing up during the Nixon propaganda era, it is very apparent to me, that we have been brain washed.
I’m on SSD since 09 and filed for a license last year and got it. I’ve had a triple by-pass in 06, neck in 09, stomach in 10, back last year, and the list goes on……. I understand your grief…. but the feds don’t care… they’ll bust your ass just for the sake of doing it. Don’t get caught with it…. with or without your card. Seen some program on Discovery Channel last month on the subject and found some interesting finds. In short there is some kind of wording to use if you go to court on the matter. I’ts got to do with it being cannibis or some other form of weed. You’d have to read or see it for yourself to understand it. I hope I’ve helped a little. ThankX for your time……. Kenny
Hope Snyder can show some compassin to not shut down every dispensary and cut off all my access to marijuana. You cannot vote something in and say the law said we can only get it on the streets. Before the Attorney General took office he publicly stated that dispensaries would be allowed under our marijuana law. But now he says they are not. Both of these men need to be shown the door next election and stay away from my rights. Stick to fixing the budget.