Torn From The Front Page: Medical Marijuana Law Clarifications May Be Between Two Extremes

[Michael Komorn]

Torn From The Front Page: Medical marijuana law clarifications may be between two extremes

 

http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/2011/07/torn_from_the_front_page_medic.html

 

 

 

 

Published: Thursday, July 21, 2011, 5:07 AM

By Editorial Board | The Flint Journal

 

 

 

Some medical marijuana advocates and lawmakers opposed to what they see as free-wheeling distribution of the drug are coming at each other from extremes in the debate over handling what Michigan voters in 2008 declared a medicine.[/size]

 

The best outcome probably is somewhere in the middle.

 

The problem is the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act is much too hazy, with state Department of Community Health rules enabling the act not much clearer.

 

Confusion over what the law and the rules allow is what has caused communities such as Flint, Linden, Grand Blanc Township, Fenton and others to enact moratoriums on medical marijuana dispensaries.

 

They want clarification from the state on what’s allowed, and what is not.

 

Medical marijuana dispensaries, which popped up like seedlings all over the state in recent years, are mentioned nowhere in the initiative that voters approved, nor in the administrative rules.

 

Yet the act and the rules do allow state-registered caregivers to collect compensation from patients for which they are registered to supply marijuana. Each caregiver may grow up to 12 plants each for a maximum of five patients. The act states that those transactions shall not be considered a sale.

 

Yet, some in the state Capitol have sneaking suspicions that not all medical marijuana users really need the stuff. And they worry about the dispensaries.

 

They are right to be concerned. Voters approved the medical use of marijuana; they did not OK the recreational use of the drug.

 

Yet rulings and proposals we’ve seen spring up Lansing this summer seek to clarify the law with restrictions that may go beyond what voters approved.

 

Attorney General Bill Schuette recently issued an opinion that outlaws the sharing of marijuana between patients and others. That restriction is one shared by all prescription drugs, but was not in the original act.

 

On the other hand, the state Legislature is considering proposals that would strictly define the patient-doctor relationship when a doctor recommends marijuana as a treatment, and so makes it possible for people to get their medical marijuana registration cards from the state.

 

Further definition of doctor-patient interaction isn’t needed. The act already says that a physician must examine a patient’s medical history and perform a medical examination before recommending marijuana use.

 

That’s roughly the same kind of exam a patient might receive at a walk-in medical clinic, for example. Demanding that doctors and patients have a “traditional” relationship, as in long-term, is unrealistic, old-fashioned and unworkable. Not everyone sees a doctor on a regular basis, debilitating condition or not.

 

For their part, a lot of medical marijuana patients and advocates worry about any changes to the original law.

 

They shouldn’t get their wish, because the law needs clarification. But they should be assured that patient access to medical marijuana as defined in the original act is assured.

 

The law, for example, states that marijuana should be grown in a locked and secured facility, such as a closet. But it doesn’t have anything to say about plants grown in fenced, secure enclosures outdoors. It says that stems seeds and roots don’t count as marijuana. But what about new sprouts in a grow facility, is each one a “plant?”

 

The law that voters approved by a landslide of 63 percent is way too hazy and appears to have too many loopholes. Those gaps need to be filled through rigorous and public debate.

 

Until then, many would-be medical marijuana dispensaries will have to wait in communities where leaders are hesitant to approve zoning that would allow them.

 

Municipalities, police agencies, patients and doctors all should breathe a sigh of relief once the Medical Marihuana Act is clarified.

 

Patients want the drug, their doctors may say it could help them, and a majority of voters said that’s OK. Lansing lawmakers should concentrate on enabling the voters’ wishes, not restricting them.

[/size]

 

 

Posted By:

 

Michael Komorn

 

18006563557

[Uncle Bud]

This is the most important line:

 

 

Patients want the drug, their doctors may say it could help them, and a majority of voters said that’s OK. Lansing lawmakers should concentrate on enabling the voters’ wishes, not restricting them.

 

 

 

our problem is conveincing the lawmakers not to mess with the law, but establish a set of regulations concerning dispensaries and whether or not to allow them. That is all it would take.

[LansingAreaCaregiver]

Comment on the article left!

[Kevin]

Patients want the plant. We're trying hard to get away from drugs. Drugs are bad for you and do not return you to health, but only make you another zombie customer of big pharm.

 

They just need to stop trying to control us in every aspect of our lives and get to work fixing this state and country before it's too late. Not so difficult a task as they make it out to be.

 

State legislators will define the doctor-patient relationship. Ha. They can't even define a law which is clearly defined.

 

One of these days, the people will have had enough, but the cronies already know that and are prepared. A new homeland security video I watched this morning from their 'See Something, Say Something' comedy series goes so far as to say white middle class Americans are the most likely to commit an act of terrorism. WHAT!

 

If you want to see it, the link to the vid is on the right-leaning Drudge Report website which I do not often frequent. Watch it and see that Jihad Jane now has white skin and blue eyes.

 

Liberty? Freedom? Rights?

[Croppled1]

Patients want the plant. We're trying hard to get away from drugs. Drugs are bad for you and do not return you to health, but only make you another zombie customer of big pharm.

 

Liberty? Freedom? Rights?

 

I am a patient and it isn't one thing vs another . I want what works . What keeps me alive without discrimination or artificial imaginary problems that are hypothetical . I want to strive to solve the actual problems within my current care program . Many of which are not yet universally understood in our time with resistance to admit it . Were all different as patients . Someone terminal will have different pressure and treatment angles then a Long term Chronic Severe Pain Patient . There is no one answer . I think all of us do agree on one thing . There is no effective support for patients whose medication routines go horrendously wrong and even compiled law that supports injury by neglect with the discrimination the ' medical system ' distributes on those who " complain " . The difference for me personally when switching to cannabis was life and death dramatic but the largest improvement came when I had adjunctive care with medications . I still haven't been allowed to dose properly due to the system nor actually address difficulties popping up because access alone is nearly impossible to obtain going through others subjectivity who are afraid of DEA scrutiny and peer pressure from inside the medical system . Prohibition of items also used for health reasons with criminality has so severely injured many in society going way past people directly involved . I am at a loss to understand how people have upset are whole system of checks and balances in law thinking the ends justified the means . We need choice . The danger is the formation of a belief system that is allowing managed care over one that gives patients choices they freely choose .

 

History

I have been on the program 3 years . I have severe chronic pain with a nervous system injury / c section fusion after 5 non at fault car accidents at work . Used as much cannabis as I could ingest to titrate off and quit methadone with the help of naturopathy .IT was a miriacle no other plan ever worked . Have also incurred severe bowel injury from 12 years of stimulent laxatives . Took me all this time to find cannabis is irraplaceable in my health regimine for pain and anxiety from both medication and my situation . Cannabis is not effective for the sever pain on its own but I have been able to use less pain medicine and my bowels work unlike before when on pain meds due to the use of Peter Gillham's Naturally Calm . Which is basically magnesium powder with or without a calcium supplement . Magnesium is what they use in bowel prep for surgery . I wish we had compassion clubs so like patients can discuss health regimines it took me years to find that powder and then have legal cannabis which has improved my quality of life . Take out the Cannabis it was a fluke I tried and found that Naturally Calm product . Before that I would use pain control and it caused me more pain then I received relief at times . Now it is still a less then optimum situation but I have a few hours of quality time a day .

[taby]

could have easily said it as patients want their meds....in whatever form IMHO

[bobandtorey]

I am a patient and it isn't one thing vs another . I want what works . What keeps me alive without discrimination or artificial imaginary problems that are hypothetical . I want to strive to solve the actual problems within my current care program . Many of which are not yet universally understood in our time with resistance to admit it . Were all different as patients . Someone terminal will have different pressure and treatment angles then a Long term Chronic Severe Pain Patient . There is no one answer . I think all of us do agree on one thing . There is no effective support for patients whose medication routines go horrendously wrong and even compiled law that supports injury by neglect with the discrimination the ' medical system ' distributes on those who " complain " . The difference for me personally when switching to cannabis was life and death dramatic but the largest improvement came when I had adjunctive care with medications . I still haven't been allowed to dose properly due to the system nor actually address difficulties popping up because access alone is nearly impossible to obtain going through others subjectivity who are afraid of DEA scrutiny and peer pressure from inside the medical system . Prohibition of items also used for health reasons with criminality has so severely injured many in society going way past people directly involved . I am at a loss to understand how people have upset are whole system of checks and balances in law thinking the ends justified the means . We need choice . The danger is the formation of a belief system that is allowing managed care over one that gives patients choices they freely choose .

 

History

I have been on the program 3 years . I have severe chronic pain with a nervous system injury / c section fusion after 5 non at fault car accidents at work . Used as much cannabis as I could ingest to titrate off and quit methadone with the help of naturopathy .IT was a miriacle no other plan ever worked . Have also incurred severe bowel injury from 12 years of stimulent laxatives . Took me all this time to find cannabis is irraplaceable in my health regimine for pain and anxiety from both medication and my situation . Cannabis is not effective for the sever pain on its own but I have been able to use less pain medicine and my bowels work unlike before when on pain meds due to the use of Peter Gillham's Naturally Calm . Which is basically magnesium powder with or without a calcium supplement . Magnesium is what they use in bowel prep for surgery . I wish we had compassion clubs so like patients can discuss health regimines it took me years to find that powder and then have legal cannabis which has improved my quality of life . Take out the Cannabis it was a fluke I tried and found that Naturally Calm product . Before that I would use pain control and it caused me more pain then I received relief at times . Now it is still a less then optimum situation but I have a few hours of quality time a day .

 

:goodjob:

[bobandtorey]

doctor-patient relationship is why we are still inn court

[bobandtorey]

Torn From The Front Page: Medical marijuana law clarifications may be between two extremes

 

http://www.mlive.com...page_medic.html

 

 

 

 

Published: Thursday, July 21, 2011, 5:07 AM

By Editorial Board | The Flint Journal

 

 

 

Some medical marijuana advocates and lawmakers opposed to what they see as free-wheeling distribution of the drug are coming at each other from extremes in the debate over handling what Michigan voters in 2008 declared a medicine.[/size]

 

The best outcome probably is somewhere in the middle.

 

The problem is the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act is much too hazy, with state Department of Community Health rules enabling the act not much clearer.

 

Confusion over what the law and the rules allow is what has caused communities such as Flint, Linden, Grand Blanc Township, Fenton and others to enact moratoriums on medical marijuana dispensaries.

 

They want clarification from the state on what’s allowed, and what is not.

 

Medical marijuana dispensaries, which popped up like seedlings all over the state in recent years, are mentioned nowhere in the initiative that voters approved, nor in the administrative rules.

 

Yet the act and the rules do allow state-registered caregivers to collect compensation from patients for which they are registered to supply marijuana. Each caregiver may grow up to 12 plants each for a maximum of five patients. The act states that those transactions shall not be considered a sale.

 

Yet, some in the state Capitol have sneaking suspicions that not all medical marijuana users really need the stuff. And they worry about the dispensaries.

 

They are right to be concerned. Voters approved the medical use of marijuana; they did not OK the recreational use of the drug.

 

Yet rulings and proposals we’ve seen spring up Lansing this summer seek to clarify the law with restrictions that may go beyond what voters approved.

 

Attorney General Bill Schuette recently issued an opinion that outlaws the sharing of marijuana between patients and others. That restriction is one shared by all prescription drugs, but was not in the original act.

 

On the other hand, the state Legislature is considering proposals that would strictly define the patient-doctor relationship when a doctor recommends marijuana as a treatment, and so makes it possible for people to get their medical marijuana registration cards from the state.

 

Further definition of doctor-patient interaction isn’t needed. The act already says that a physician must examine a patient’s medical history and perform a medical examination before recommending marijuana use.

 

That’s roughly the same kind of exam a patient might receive at a walk-in medical clinic, for example. Demanding that doctors and patients have a “traditional” relationship, as in long-term, is unrealistic, old-fashioned and unworkable. Not everyone sees a doctor on a regular basis, debilitating condition or not.

 

For their part, a lot of medical marijuana patients and advocates worry about any changes to the original law.

 

They shouldn’t get their wish, because the law needs clarification. But they should be assured that patient access to medical marijuana as defined in the original act is assured.

 

The law, for example, states that marijuana should be grown in a locked and secured facility, such as a closet. But it doesn’t have anything to say about plants grown in fenced, secure enclosures outdoors. It says that stems seeds and roots don’t count as marijuana. But what about new sprouts in a grow facility, is each one a “plant?”

 

The law that voters approved by a landslide of 63 percent is way too hazy and appears to have too many loopholes. Those gaps need to be filled through rigorous and public debate.

 

Until then, many would-be medical marijuana dispensaries will have to wait in communities where leaders are hesitant to approve zoning that would allow them.

 

Municipalities, police agencies, patients and doctors all should breathe a sigh of relief once the Medical Marihuana Act is clarified.

 

Patients want the drug, their doctors may say it could help them, and a majority of voters said that’s OK. Lansing lawmakers should concentrate on enabling the voters’ wishes, not restricting them.

[/size]

 

 

Posted By:

 

Michael Komorn

 

18006563557

 

Very good P.R for us imo

[phaquetoo]

Pretty darn good article for the good guys for a change!

Thank you!