cannabisnews.com: Colorado's Marijuana Program Starts Slowly





Colorado's Marijuana Program Starts Slowly
Posted by FoM on January 02, 2002 at 21:52:28 PT
By The Associated Press
Source: Register-Guard
Fewer Coloradans have signed up for the state's medical-marijuana program than expected but officials say the pace may increase in coming months. Ninety-nine Coloradans are legally smoking marijuana with their doctor's approval under the state's 7-month-old Medical Marijuana Registry program.The figure is well behind its projected pace of 700 applicants in the first 12 months, but registry administrator Gail Kelsey said a similar program in Oregon picked up steam after six months.
In Oregon, 61 patients got approvals in the first six months and 594 by the end of the first year, said Chris Campbell, spokesman for the Oregon plan.Kelsey said 61 percent of people on the registry say marijuana helps relieve pain, 30 percent say they need it for muscle spasms and 23 percent want relief from nausea.An analysis of the first seven months shows no doctor has recommended more than a few permits. Seventy-seven doctors signed authorization forms for patients. A half-dozen signed more than one.That's dramatically different from Oregon, where one doctor has signed certificates for 1,704 of the 1,808 patients since May 1999.Thirteen months ago, Colorado voters approved the medical use of marijuana under tight rules. The law went into effect June 1.Kelsey has rejected three applications. ``Not for fraud but just for incomplete applications,'' she said. ``There's no abuse I am aware of.''Patients tell her the marijuana is providing great relief, she said.``Their main complaints are that there is no place to get it - and the cost of the program,'' she said.Patients must pay $140 a year for a permit.Kelsey gives talks to physicians concerned about liability. She tells them that Drug Enforcement Agency officials have told her informally that doctors aren't breaking federal law by signing forms.``They're merely recommending marijuana, not prescribing it,'' she said.The law remains tricky, though, because it's still illegal for anyone to sell the drug to patients.An amendment to the law allows patients to grow six plants of marijuana. ``That way, they're getting a clean supply by growing their own, not dealing with the corner drug dealer,'' she said.However, Kelsey said she can't tell patients how to get the original seeds without helping the provider break the law. ``They're on their own on that one,'' she said.Source: Register-Guard, The (OR)Published: January 2, 2002Copyright: 2002 The Register-GuardContact: rgletters guardnet.comWebsite: http://www.registerguard.com/Related Articles:Medical Marijuana Rules Get Hearings http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11364.shtmlKaiser Lawyers Back Medical Marijuana http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10245.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by E_Johnson on January 03, 2002 at 00:03:50 PT
The bitter Drug Free myth
Drug Free America is such a mythological construct. Just go into the child protective services world to see the extent to which psychiatric drugs are relied upon for the care and treatment of children who have fallen into their system.They want to keep kids off "drugs", so when they catch parents with "drugs", they take the kid away to a place where the kid is going to get very little care outside of psychiatric "drugs" which are fairly likely to be improperly administered by what passes for a caregiver in that sitation.And Al Gore up there waving the Drug Free America banner from the convention stage in 2000, when his wife Tipper had just become America's newest poster child for Zoloft.
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Comment #1 posted by E_Johnson on January 02, 2002 at 23:02:02 PT
It's the Colorado DEA I suppose
Kelsey gives talks to physicians concerned about liability. She tells them that Drug Enforcement Agency officials have told her informally that doctors aren't breaking federal law by signing forms.That's not the message they've been sending in California. They've been threatening to revoke prescription licenses.I guess it depends on whom your state voted for in 2000. Maybe Bush is already thinking about 2004, about the complications of running for reelection on the states' rights record of the Ashcroft administration.I still think Ashcroft is Cassius come to life.CEASAR: But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
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