Recent arrests shouldn’t be viewed as signal of coming medical marijuana crackdown

Wait and see: That’s what law enforcement agencies across Michigan are doing when it comes to the state’s medical marijuana law, which went into effect April 4.

At the moment, there is no reason to believe that an incident which occurred in March where a Madison Heights couple was arrested for growing marijuana they said was for medical purposes should be viewed as common law enforcement policy across the state, said Tom Hendrickson, executive director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police.

“It’s still too early” to determine what kind of impact the law is going to have on how law enforcement deals with the drug, he said. “There hasn’t been that much discussion on it — at least not yet.”

He said that the incident in Madison Heights has been the only such interaction between law enforcement and medical marijuana patients he has heard of.

“There are going to be a lot of gray areas in the coming year,” he said. “But I suspect law enforcement is not going to be policing for [the abuse of the medical marijuana law]. It will be a case-by-case basis.”

But there needs to be a lot more clarity when it comes to the law, said Matthew Abel, a member of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association and an attorney specializing in marijuana case litigation. He said he may become the lawyer for Torey Allison Clark, one of the two people charged in Madison Heights in a case that is being viewed as a the first significant test of the law.

“I’d really like to see some specific guidelines from law enforcement,” he said. “They aren’t clearing-up the gray areas. It’s almost like they’re saying ‘we can just mess up all day and then say it was a gray area.’ ”

Any potential abuses would likely be found when marijuana is discovered on someone who says they are a using it for medical purposes, Hendrickson said, thus prompting law enforcement officials to investigate the claim. Other concerns for officials are the possibilities of registered patients or caregivers providing marijuana to those who should not receive it, the manufacture of fraudulent identification cards and the cultivation of more plants than what’s allowed by law.

When voters passed Proposal 1 in November, Michigan became the 12th state — and first in the Midwest — to have some kind of medical marijuana law. Most of the laws between these states are similar, with the exception of California, which has medical marijuana dispensaries where users can obtain their pot.

That has led to several run-ins between federal, state and local law enforcement officials and those who are not supposed to obtain marijuana, said Dan Bernath, assistant director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that pushes for the reform of marijuana laws.

But California, where the first-in-the-nation medical marijuana law passed in 1996, is the exception rather than the rule, he said.

“It’s more complicated in California,” he said. “But in the other states we just haven’t seen a whole lot of problems. Based on the laws, it should be easy for law enforcement to tell the difference between someone who can have [medical marijuana] and someone who can’t.”

In the other states, there have been isolated incidents of abuse over the years by both law enforcement and those who should not have marijuana, Bernath said. But, for the most part, “these laws have been implemented very smoothly.”

“There will always be questions to figure out,” he said. “But in [medical marijuana] states like Michigan where the law is clearly laid-out, law enforcement should find it easy to enforce.”

Michigan’s medical marijuana law allows registered patients to grow up to 12 marijuana plants and possess up to 2.5 ounces of usable marijuana. Any proven abuse of the law by patients or caregivers carries hefty fines and possible jail time and a lifetime abolishment from the state’s medical marijuana registry. It is also silent on how patients can initially acquire their marijuana, and anyone selling them the drug would be committing a felony under state and federal law.

The state’s new law was discussed heavily at the mid-winter conference of Michigan police chiefs in February, Hendrickson said. There, representatives from several of the state’s 600 police departments were educated on the law and the protections it provides to registered users.

Hendrickson said he makes a point to include additional information on the law in regular communications he sends to law enforcement agencies across the state, but he admits, “some smaller departments may not be cognizant on the particulars of the law.”

Abel said there will likely be some abuses of the law by patients and caregivers in the coming year, but stressed that law enforcement should respect the protections it provides to registered users.

“They have to uphold the laws whether they like them or not,” he said. “It’s time to stop being cowboys and harassing people. It’s sad to say, but maybe it’s going to take the police being sued a few times to send a message.”