Posted by
Steve on Friday, January 27, 2012 1:56:34 PM
Medical marijuana is making the news this past week here in Phoenix. We passed a measure a couple of years ago to approve medical marijuana by a 50.13-49.87 margin. The critics of the measure said that it was just an attempt to legalize marijuana. The events that have transpired since passage of the measure have made those criticisms turn out to be true.
Of the approximately 12,000 people that have been approved to receive medical marijuana almost all are males between the ages of 18 and 40. Who are the highest users of marijuana in the United States? Males between the ages of 18 and 40 are the highest users of marijuana. The people we were told would get the permits to receive medical marijuana have not bothered to get permits. During the campaign we were told that the people getting permits would mainly be critically ill people and the elderly. Those people are nearly non-existent in the list of people to receive medical marijuana.
The single most common complaint named to receive medical marijuana is “chronic pain”. Chronic pain is something that cannot be tested for. The doctor either has to believe you or not. I happen to be one of those with chronic pain. I have no desire to ever obtain a permit for medical marijuana. I have a headache that started after nasal surgery in October 1996. No pain before that date, chronic pain after that date. But there is no test to determine if I actually have the pain. The only way to determine it is to study what happens when certain things happen to me. That takes time and documentation. I am sure that the people applying for chronic pain under medical marijuana have not taken the time to document the cycles of chronic pain they are having.
The voting pattern of when the votes came in is also interesting. Early mail ballots went largely for the measure. The later mail-in ballots went against the measure. Ballots cast on Election Day went against the measure. That shows that as more people learned about the measure the worse it fared. Early returns were based on the feel-good voting and the late returns on knowledge based voting. Knowledge based voting always is better than feeling-good voting because you get more logical laws.
With the medical marijuana law in place it puts our public officials in a difficult spot. If they enforce the State Law, they put themselves in jeopardy of being prosecuted for violating the federal law against marijuana. According to Bill Montgomery, Maricopa County Attorney, the federal law trumps the state law. People obeying the state law are just making prosecution of the federal law easier by creating a paper trail for the federal prosecutors to follow. Now, our current administration has sent out a message that they do not intend to prosecute marijuana laws. The next administration might not have that same policy. The federal laws are on the books and so Bill Montgomery has put out a memo forbidding any Maricopa County employee from obeying the state law. That is just to keep all county employees safe from prosecution.
There is talk beginning of putting a new ballot initiative out to repeal the medical marijuana law. Since you cannot enforce the current law, there is no reason to have it on the books. The only question is whether a new ballot initiative could repeal an old ballot initiative. Smarter legal minds than mine will have to decide that question.