The General
New Member
While making it clear that she believes the legal marijuana market for recreational use created by I-502, the initiative she and the ACLU created, can serve the needs of medical marijuana patients, Alison Holcomb nevertheless hopes the state will continue to allow home growing for patients.
Part history lesson and part legal dissection of case law surrounding collective gardens, Holcomb's seven page letter is a response to the Washington State Liquor Control Board's design for the medical market. The most controversial part of the board's recommendation to the Legislature which is the only entity that can change the medical pot law has been the elimination of home growing and collective gardens. Currently, according to the Department of Health, authorized patients can possess 24 ounces of useable cannabis, instead of just one ounce allowed in I-502. And, authorized patients can grow up to 15 plants.
If the Legislature disallows home-growing and mandates all marijuana must come from growers licensed under I-502 rules, then many cannabis patients worry they won't have adequate access, the product will be too expensive and they won't be able to get the kinds of cannabis that does them the most good.
Holcomb writes in her response:
The availability of I-502 retail stores will accommodate the needs of most patients. However, due to federal obstruction of scientific research into the potential therapeutic uses of the cannabis plant, some patients have been forced to rely on trial and error to identify, and then reproduce, the specific strains of plants that possess the cannabinoid profiles most helpful for providing relief for their particular conditions. So, the option of personal cultivation needs to be retained.
Moreover, the right to grow their own gardens ensures access to cannabis should a patient's city or county refuse to allow a state-licensed store within its boundaries and force protracted litigation. It is unnecessary, and would be unfair and harmful, to take away patients' right to produce their own cannabis when they have developed a strain of marijuana specially tailored to their personal medical needs.
That said, she adds:
Patients who choose to purchase, rather than produce, their medicine will have greater assurance of quality and safety than is available to them under the current unregulated patchwork of commercial collective gardens. Given these conditions, it makes little sense to create a parallel system of production and distribution and incur duplicative administrative and enforcement expenses.
The next Legislative session will undoubtedly see at least one bill to restructure the medical marijuana system. "I absolutely believe we need to preserve home-grows," Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36th) said in our story: "Senator: Fight for homegrown medical marijuana not over in Washington." Kohl-Welles has been involved with medical marijuana legislation since roughly 1995, and in 2011 she sponsored a bill creating a medical system for cannabis that passed the state Senate and House but had key sections vetoed by then-Gov. Christine Gregoire.
Kohl-Welles is currently working on another bill, still largely unformed, for the next Legislative session starting in January that would create a structure for medical marijuana, she said. Many medical marijuana groups have been gearing up to protest the elimination of home growing as well as other problems they see in the boards recommendation.
Americans for Safe Access wrote in a news release yesterday:
Patient advocates have become increasingly concerned by an apparent unwillingness to accommodate two parallel markets and a desire to roll the state's 15-year-old medical marijuana program into the emerging recreational marijuana program by making the medical-use law much more restrictive, the requirements unnecessarily onerous, and the costs far too prohibitive for patients. Among the concerns are recommendations for abolishing patient cultivation, outlawing medical marijuana-specific distribution, imposing new taxes on patients' medicine, reducing personal use amounts from a 60-day supply to a one-week supply, increasing restrictions on medical professionals, and requiring the mandatory registration of all qualified patients.
"Patients in Washington will not sit idly by to see the state dismantle its 15-year old medical marijuana program and attempt to roll them into a nascent recreational market," said ASA Executive Director Steph Sherer. "The very real needs of medical marijuana patients cannot be adequately met by the recreational marijuana program and must be addressed by preserving and strengthening the law that currently exists," continued Sherer. "We're urging Governor Inslee and the state legislature not to abandon the tens of thousands of patients in Washington and continue to treat medical marijuana as a public health issue."
News Moderator - The General @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Seattlepi.com
Author: Jake Ellison
Contact: Contact the staff of seattlepi.com - seattlepi.com
Website: I-502 architect argues for medical marijuana home growing - The Pot Blog
Part history lesson and part legal dissection of case law surrounding collective gardens, Holcomb's seven page letter is a response to the Washington State Liquor Control Board's design for the medical market. The most controversial part of the board's recommendation to the Legislature which is the only entity that can change the medical pot law has been the elimination of home growing and collective gardens. Currently, according to the Department of Health, authorized patients can possess 24 ounces of useable cannabis, instead of just one ounce allowed in I-502. And, authorized patients can grow up to 15 plants.
If the Legislature disallows home-growing and mandates all marijuana must come from growers licensed under I-502 rules, then many cannabis patients worry they won't have adequate access, the product will be too expensive and they won't be able to get the kinds of cannabis that does them the most good.
Holcomb writes in her response:
The availability of I-502 retail stores will accommodate the needs of most patients. However, due to federal obstruction of scientific research into the potential therapeutic uses of the cannabis plant, some patients have been forced to rely on trial and error to identify, and then reproduce, the specific strains of plants that possess the cannabinoid profiles most helpful for providing relief for their particular conditions. So, the option of personal cultivation needs to be retained.
Moreover, the right to grow their own gardens ensures access to cannabis should a patient's city or county refuse to allow a state-licensed store within its boundaries and force protracted litigation. It is unnecessary, and would be unfair and harmful, to take away patients' right to produce their own cannabis when they have developed a strain of marijuana specially tailored to their personal medical needs.
That said, she adds:
Patients who choose to purchase, rather than produce, their medicine will have greater assurance of quality and safety than is available to them under the current unregulated patchwork of commercial collective gardens. Given these conditions, it makes little sense to create a parallel system of production and distribution and incur duplicative administrative and enforcement expenses.
The next Legislative session will undoubtedly see at least one bill to restructure the medical marijuana system. "I absolutely believe we need to preserve home-grows," Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36th) said in our story: "Senator: Fight for homegrown medical marijuana not over in Washington." Kohl-Welles has been involved with medical marijuana legislation since roughly 1995, and in 2011 she sponsored a bill creating a medical system for cannabis that passed the state Senate and House but had key sections vetoed by then-Gov. Christine Gregoire.
Kohl-Welles is currently working on another bill, still largely unformed, for the next Legislative session starting in January that would create a structure for medical marijuana, she said. Many medical marijuana groups have been gearing up to protest the elimination of home growing as well as other problems they see in the boards recommendation.
Americans for Safe Access wrote in a news release yesterday:
Patient advocates have become increasingly concerned by an apparent unwillingness to accommodate two parallel markets and a desire to roll the state's 15-year-old medical marijuana program into the emerging recreational marijuana program by making the medical-use law much more restrictive, the requirements unnecessarily onerous, and the costs far too prohibitive for patients. Among the concerns are recommendations for abolishing patient cultivation, outlawing medical marijuana-specific distribution, imposing new taxes on patients' medicine, reducing personal use amounts from a 60-day supply to a one-week supply, increasing restrictions on medical professionals, and requiring the mandatory registration of all qualified patients.
"Patients in Washington will not sit idly by to see the state dismantle its 15-year old medical marijuana program and attempt to roll them into a nascent recreational market," said ASA Executive Director Steph Sherer. "The very real needs of medical marijuana patients cannot be adequately met by the recreational marijuana program and must be addressed by preserving and strengthening the law that currently exists," continued Sherer. "We're urging Governor Inslee and the state legislature not to abandon the tens of thousands of patients in Washington and continue to treat medical marijuana as a public health issue."
News Moderator - The General @ 420 MAGAZINE ®
Source: Seattlepi.com
Author: Jake Ellison
Contact: Contact the staff of seattlepi.com - seattlepi.com
Website: I-502 architect argues for medical marijuana home growing - The Pot Blog
