cannabisnews.com: Calif. May 'Register' Legal Marijuana Users!





Calif. May 'Register' Legal Marijuana Users!
Posted by FoM on July 12, 1999 at 16:25:16 PT
Source: Fox News
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California's top law enforcement official Monday threw his weight behind a plan to establish a "registry'' of medical marijuana patients to protect qualified growers and users from prosecution.
State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, presenting a set of recommendations from a committee of police officials, medical marijuana advocates and doctors, said the proposed registry could cut through the legal tangle over medical marijuana use in the nation's largest state. "This was not an easy issue,'' Lockyer told a news conference. "For the past three years law enforcement, doctors and seriously ill Californians have struggled to find an appropriate manner to respect the will of the voters and protect the public safety.'' The committee's proposals were aimed at ending a log jam over medical marijuana, which Californians voted to legalize in the state for certain medical purposes in 1996. Since then, however, federal officials and the state's previous attorney general, Republican Dan Lungren, have mounted a series of legal challenges to the state law, shutting down medical marijuana "clubs'' and vowing to prosecute users under existing narcotics laws. Lockyer, however, has taken a far softer line on medical marijuana than his predecessor, and convened the 29-member Medical Marijuana Task Force in January to come up with a ''safe, fair and enforceable'' way of providing medical marijuana to those who legitimately may use it. Under the registry idea, already pioneered in Oregon, individuals with serious diseases including AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and migraines would be offered the chance to register voluntarily with the state Department of Health Services and county health departments as potential medical marijuana patients. After checking with their physicians, health officials would issue permits to legitimate marijuana users and their caregivers protecting them from arrest and prosecution for possession, transport or cultivation of the drug. The task force recommendations are due to be put before the state assembly's health committee Tuesday. It was unclear what sort of reception it will receive from state lawmakers or from Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, who opposed the original 1996 state law which legalized some medical marijuana use. Nevertheless, proponents of medical marijuana say that if the task force proposals are adopted, it would mark a big step toward fulfilling the spirit of the 1996 measure. They also maintain that the proposed photo ID cards would allow medical marijuana distribution clubs operating underground around the state to move back into the open with a clear set of operating guidelines. Some medical marijuana advocates, including Dennis Peron, the author of the original 1996 state measure, have voiced doubts about the registry idea, however — saying it puts a new and potentially dangerous bureaucratic wall between sick people and marijuana. "It's wrong,'' Peron told reporters Monday. "They say it's not going to be used for any insidious use, insurance companies won't get it, employers won't get it ... You can believe, and you mark my words for it, insurance companies will get this list.'' 5.12 p.m. ET (2112 GMT) July 12, 1999comments newsdigital.com© 1999, News America Digital Publishing, Inc. d/b/a Fox News Online.All rights reserved. Fox News is a registered trademark of 20th Century Fox Film Corp. © Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved 
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