Medical marijuana may soon be legal, but questions remain

Medical marijuana (photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, laughingsquid.com)

In a matter of days, state residents suffering debilitating ailments and serious diseases will have a natural — and now legal — option to treat the pain and discomfort of their conditions. But on April 4, when Michigan becomes the 13th state to sanction the use of medical marijuana with a physician’s recommendation, there are some questions about the legalities of how the product will be procured.

While the Department of Community Health has outlined the rules, regulations and application requirements since voters overwhelmingly approved Proposal 1 last fall, the new law is mum on where exactly patients can obtain their legal pot.

There are three options for patients: Buy it on the street, grow their own or have someone grow it for them. A registered patient will be able to possess up to 2.5 ounces of usable cannabis and up to 12 marijuana plants without facing state criminal prosecution.

But the increase in the amount of marijuana “legally” available in the state could open the door to potential abuses. Selling the drug is still illegal, according to state and federal law.

“The first year, there will be some bad press,” said John Targowski, a Kalamazoo criminal defense attorney who specializes in drug cases. “It’s going to be a maturing process. The first year or two, it’s going to be a test. But it could head in the wrong direction if we’ve got those idiots who think they can operate like a drug dealer.”

Targowski, who is a member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ legal team, was speaking about caregivers, people who would assist pot patients in the cultivation of their marijuana and assist them in the delivery of the drug into their body if they can’t do so themselves. One caregiver can assist up to five patients and is protected from prosecution provided he or she does not ingest the marijuana or distribute it to a non-patient, according to the law.

And regardless of the legal protections in place for patient and caregiver alike, the initial marijuana purchase means that “someone will have to break the law,” Targowski said, referring to patients buying pot in the first place.

Tom Hendrickson, executive director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, has worries, too.

Although he said local law enforcement agencies throughout the state have no intention of monitoring patients’ behavior, the law does “open the door to complete legalization.”

Marijuana being grown for medical use has “the potential for abuse” by non-patients, he said. “If you’ve got one caregiver growing pot for five patients, that’s 60 plants, which is a potential quasi-commercial operation. Look at your access points: If there are more gas stations and 7-11s, they are used more.”

Hendrickson said that law enforcement officials will just have to wait and see. “We’re concerned about how they’re going to implement the law. It’s going to be a learning process, and right now we don’t know what it’s going to look like. It’s new to all of us.”

Patients can’t use their marijuana in public and cannot operate cars and machinery while under the drug’s influence, the law states. They also can face stiff fines and possible jail time if they sell or furnish marijuana to those who are not registered to possess the drug.

In all cases, failure to operate within the confines of the regulations outlined in the law would lead to a permanent ban of a patient from the state’s medical marijuana registry.

Greg Francisco, executive director of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association, said that medical marijuana patients will be able to meet at “compassion clubs” that have been forming over the past several months to learn more about how the drug can alleviate their symptoms.

But marijuana cannot be purchased at the meetings. “These aren’t medical marijuana hook-ups,” Francisco said. “It’s hard for marijuana to become any more available than it already is.”

Francisco said that ideally patients would grow their own cannabis.

“We’re expecting things to go smoothly,” Francisco said. “We don’t expect anything major to happen. The sky’s not going to fall. There could be a few speed bumps, though. The police have said they will respect it.”

Still, Francisco does have concerns, including so-called “grow-rippers” or other criminals who steal a crop of marijuana plants, irresponsible caregivers who sell the drugs they grow on the black market and law enforcement personnel who abuse the new law.

Proposal 1 passed with 63 percent of the vote in November, making Michigan the first state in the Midwest to have some kind of medical marijuana law. It also becomes the second-most populous of the medical marijuana states, behind California, which approved a similar ballot initiative in 1996.

The Michigan measure collected 250,000 more votes than Barack Obama did in the Great Lakes State during the November elections. It also garnered a majority of votes in every county.

Advocates are estimating that 500 applications will be filed before the law’s official introduction on April 4. Within two years, about 50,000 Michiganders are predicted to be using medical marijuana legally.

Since taking office, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has signaled a considerably more relaxed federal attitude toward the state-level sanctioning of medical marijuana. “The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law,” the attorney general said at a press briefing last week.

In 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal authorities had the right to prosecute marijuana sellers, regardless of state laws. Later, in 2005, justices ruled that the federal government could still ban possession of marijuana in states that have sanctioned the medical use of the drug.

(Chris Killian is a freelance journalist based in Kalamazoo and writes regularly for the Kalamazoo Gazette.)