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Medical Marijuana Ordinance Must Protect Patients Rights, Privacy

By Bruce Margolin

The day after California voters approved Proposition 215 in November 1996, the phones at NORML chapters around the state rang nonstop. Ca

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By Bruce Margolin

The day after California voters approved Proposition 215 in November 1996, the phones at NORML chapters around the state rang nonstop. Californians with health conditions wanted to know where they could find safe, legal medical marijuana. Back then, they were told that, according to the law, they could grow themselves, or appoint a caregiver to grow it for them. They couldn’t legally buy or transport their medicine. In a non-agrarian, far-flung city like Los Angeles, this was not a workable solution for most people.

In 2003, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 420 (The Medical Marijuana Program Act), a bill that recognized patients’ and caregivers’ right to cultivate and distribute their medicine cooperatively and collectively. Numerous court cases have honed the law, including the appellate court decision in People v. Urziceanu (2005), which held that collectives and co-ops that cultivate, transport and furnish marijuana, and maintain locations for distribution are protected under California law.

I have spoken to numerous prosecutors about their offices’ narrow interpretations of the medical-marijuana laws, and many have told me that they believe we ought to just fully legalize cannabis. Until we do, it seems the aim of some prosecutors is to defeat safe access to medical marijuana with an overly restrictive interpretation of state law. Those who are arrested and prosecuted become the only true victims. The Los Angeles City Council, which seeks to regulate the city’s collectives and cooperatives, has devoted numerous hours to crafting an ordinance to protect patients’ rights and to follow the relevant law.

However, the privacy of patient records is also at issue. The current Los Angeles draft ordinance protects the personal medical information of patients, but allows police to look at names and addresses of collective members at their whim. One wonders how many taxpayer dollars will be spent paying law-enforcement personal to look over these lists and waste police resources that are so desperately needed.

Thus, NORML offices regularly hear complaints from law-abiding medical-marijuana patients who are concerned about the exposure of their personal information through raids at collectives. They worry about losing their jobs, their parental rights and even their liberty for doing nothing more than exercising their legal right to obtain and use medical cannabis.

Patients are particularly concerned about losing their jobs. The California Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that employers may terminate the employment of legal medical-marijuana users, who are often exposed in employment drug testing. They can be terminated from employment even if they never bring the medicine into the work place or are impaired while working. The legislature has subsequently passed a bill protecting patients’ rights in the workplace, but Gov. Schwarzenegger, himself a former marijuana user, vetoed the bill.

Cities and counties throughout the state that have clamped down on collectives have instead seen a proliferation of medical-marijuana delivery services. These providers are much harder to tax and regulate, and are generally not preferred by patients, since the delivery services have fewer choices of strains of medicine and fewer other services, and do not provide the protections associated with dispensaries.

A recent poll by Mason-Dixon found that 77 percent of Angelenos favor having regulated dispensaries that are overseen and taxed like other businesses. Such dispensaries would provide the right to buy marijuana at a location of the patient’s choice, much as they buy any over-the-counter medication, not to mention alcohol. Why shouldn’t our cash-strapped state benefit from the tax dollars brought in by aboveboard cannabis co-ops, paying millions in sales and other taxes?

To this end, a survey of California dispensaries by California NORML found that they pay an average of $82,000 each per year in sales taxes and employ an average of 7.4 workers. If all of L.A.’s estimated 545 collectives were closed, the sales tax loss alone would be an estimated $45 million. Worse, more than 4,000 jobs would disappear.

The Redding City Council recently voted not to cap the number of collectives there, noting that it could not know the number required to assure patient access, and did not want to limit it. Also, an Orange County Superior Court judge has ruled that five Dana Point medical-marijuana dispensaries didn’t have to hand over patients’ names to authorities pending an appeals court review of a subpoena order to do so. On the privacy issue and others, L.A. should follow the lead of those who understand the importance of privacy rights of Americans.

Now that the law has taken the step into the light of legality, of allowing qualified patients to use medical marijuana, we should not now return to the darkness of ignorance, repression and stigmatization.

BRUCE MARGOLIN is a criminal defense attorney based in West Hollywood since 1967. He has served as director of Los Angeles NORML since 1973 and helped write Proposition 215. Reach him at 800-420-LAWS (5297), or through the website at www.1800420laws.com.

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