October 10, 2008


California shows why medical marijuana is dangerous

By Bill Schuette and Daniel Michael
Detroit Free Press

A decade ago, voters in California approved a proposal to legalize marijuana smoking for so-called “medical” purposes. Today, even the proposal’s most vocal supporters admit the California law has resulted in “chaos,” “pot dealers in storefronts” and millions of dollars being dumped “into the criminal black market.”

Proposal 1 on the Nov. 4 ballot in Michigan is just like the California law. While its stated intent, to help people in serious pain, is well meaning, Proposal 1’s vague language, careless loopholes and dangerous consequences place Michigan communities and kids at risk. Michigan voters should reject it.

Proposal 1 allows one person to grow and provide marijuana for a number of other people, as long as the marijuana is kept in a locked facility.

What happens when that locked facility is your neighbor’s garage or a strip mall storefront, as they have in California? Maybe you think this can’t happen in Michigan, but consider this: In North Hollywood, there are now more pot shops than Starbucks stores, and last week a security guard was gunned down outside a Los Angeles pot shop.

Everyday, diligent parents and teachers fight a difficult battle to protect teens from drugs and their influences. Law enforcement officials in California point to their state’s marijuana law as a cause for the dramatic increase in drug use among high school students. That’s a major reason why groups such as the Michigan Sheriffs’ Association and the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police are opposed to Proposal 1.

For doctors and hospitals, those on the front lines of medical care, Proposal 1 is “bad medicine.” For one thing, Proposal 1 doesn’t require a prescription. It not only relies on but promotes smoking as a delivery mechanism. And, Proposal 1 could result in costly lawsuits over such things as whether doctors and hospitals must allow patients to smoke marijuana in a doctor’s office or hospital room, despite every other law banning smoking.

The Michigan State Medical Society, the Michigan Health and Hospital Association and the Michigan Osteopathic Association all oppose Proposal 1 because smoking marijuana is not the answer to the important scientific questions surrounding the effective care of patients.

A legal analysis of Proposal 1 outlines a situation where the worker next to you on the assembly line or the driver of a delivery van could smoke marijuana on the job and your employer could do nothing about it. In fact, if that delivery van driver, or any other driver under the influence of “medical” marijuana for that matter, hits another car and injures someone, Proposal 1 may allow marijuana use as a defense in court.

Lastly, Proposal 1 would leave the regulation of a “medical” marijuana program up to Lansing to figure out. With Michigan facing such tough economic times, taxpayers can’t afford a new government bureaucracy to keep track of marijuana users.

Proposal 1 is many things, but above all else it is a law of unintended consequences. The dangerous implications of its flaws and loopholes have brought together Michigan’s doctors, hospitals, sheriffs, police chiefs, prosecutors, family groups, and taxpayer advocates to urge voters to say “No” to Proposal 1.

California’s “medical” marijuana proposal brought chaos; Michigan’s proposal brings an opportunity to learn from California’s mistake.

Judge Bill Schuette is a member of the Michigan Court of Appeals. Dr. Daniel Michael is a Detroit neurosurgeon and speaker of the Michigan State Medical Society’s House of Delegates.

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doesn't feel like chaos.

i used to live out in hollywood, now i'm close by, never heard about the shooting, but damnnnn scare tactics!

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Just another example of prohibitionist propaganda, leading up to the Michigan vote on Medical marijuana next month.

Fortunately, I've read that it has a good chance of passing.

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Chaos, hell I have not seen to much of that in Cali since the LA riots and that was before MMJ . . . . I wonder what "chaos" they are referring to?

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Wow. The author clearly knows how to write with emotion. Scare tactics!

buzz kill..

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I love to lie, in fact everything I say is a lie.

This rubbish reads worse than Ann Coulter. At the end of every sentence, I found myself asking, "Oh yeah? Sez who?"

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I live in Michigan and this is complete bullshit propaganda. NOWHERE in the bill does it say that employers cant fire you because you smoke medical marijuana. I personally smoke pot and use other "illegal" things because I discovered that what I was taught in 5th grade about these things was all a lie.

They say this will cause High schoolers to do more drugs? Bullshit, people do drugs no matter what anybody else says or does, not having this wont lower drug use AT ALL.

SMoking pot is MUCH MUCH safer than the most popular drug among high schoolers, alcohol. No one EVER dies form smoking pot, ever. Cant say that about booze....

apparently this fucking idiot author thinks that a doctor is gonna wait outside an elementary school and go

"here have a perscription"

"here have a perscription"

on another note

IMHO , honestly, one of the things that would help the government in their "financial crisis" right now is to sell pot

Prohibition is dangerous.