cannabisnews.com: Marijuana Controversy Continue





Marijuana Controversy Continue
Posted by FoM on July 29, 2000 at 09:34:16 PT
By Ron Bain
Source: Denver Post 
Coloradans will have a second opportunity to vote on medical marijuana in November, and this time, by court order, their votes will be counted.During a 1998 ballot access court battle that lasted almost until Election Day, the group sponsoring the medical marijuana initiative in this state, Coloradans for Medical Rights, tangled with then Secretary of State Vikki Buckley over the exact number of signatures on their petitions.
The ballots got printed with the initiative on them while the court battle raged on. Ultimately, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that, although it was too late to reprint the ballots, votes cast in 1998 for medical marijuana would not be counted. Instead, the initiative would reappear on the 2000 ballot for official consideration. After Buckley died, it was discovered that petitions containing several hundred signatures had been mysteriously misplaced within the secretary of state's office. If the initiative passes, Colorado would be the ninth state to challenge the federal government's "zero tolerance" policies by legalizing cannabis in one form or another. California was the first in 1996, passing a citizen-sponsored medical marijuana initiative by a comfortable margin. Earlier this month, Hawaii's governor signed into law a combined medical marijuana/agricultural hemp bill sent to him by the state legislature.Since 1996, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska, Maine, the state of Washington and Washington, D.C., have approved initiatives to liberalize laws regarding the growth, possession and/or medical use of cannabis.Coloradans for Medical Rights, the original sponsoring organization, views the initiative as a referendum on the doctor/patient relationship."This gives patients and doctors, not the government, one more treatment op tion for glaucoma, cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses," said Luther Sy mons, president of CMR. Reorganized for the upcoming election fight, CMR plans to use grass-roots politicking as well as mass media advertising to ensure a victory, according to Symons. "In 1998, we were able to do some sophisticated exit polling that showed it would have passed with 60 percent of the vote," he said, citing recent polls show ing that support has grown to 70 percent. Some of that support is soft, but not for the reasons that opponents hope. Many supporters of the initiative believe it's only a step in the right direction."I'll hold my nose and vote yes purely for the symbolic value in favor of medical marijuana," said Tom Barrus, an expharmacist and legalization advocate who held the curious position of being the only qualified objector to the initiative during the original ballot title setting process. Barrus cites "bad language" in the initiative for his reservations.Laura Kriho, spokesperson for the Colorado Hemp Initiative Project, said, "We support the initiative because it might help some patients. And we see it as a referendum on the relegalization of cannabis for all uses."The initiative would create a state registry of authorized users of medical marijuana and actually lower the felony threshold for possession by non-registry users to eight ounces from 16 ounces. Barrus said another constitutional amendment probably would be required in two years to correct these problems. Opponents have recruited medical professionals who say marijuana does not provide any relief that is not readily available through other, legal medicines; there are many other medical professionals who attribute remarkable medicinal qualities to cannabis. A federal judge in California, after reconsidering that issue, agrees that marijuana has potential medicinal value. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, under appellate court orders to reconsider marijuana for seriously ill patients who have no effective legal alternative, in mid-July modified an earlier injunction against an Oakland, Calif., cannabis club, allowing distribution to resume. Peter McWilliams, a California AIDS victim who could only stomach his highly toxic medicines with a few tokes, died earlier this year by drowning in his own vomit. Denied the medical necessity defense in federal court, where the judge refused to even acknowledge the existence of California's medical marijuana law, McWilliams reluctantly accepted a plea bargain on federal charges of growing marijuana for personal use. Serving a probation sentence and subjected to drug testing, he gave up marijuana, but without it, had extreme difficulty keeping his AIDS medicine down. As the McWilliams case shows, even if Colorado voters decide to legalize medical cannabis, voters cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing its drug laws within Colorado, nor can the voters require that federal prosecutors and judges show an iota of compassion toward people suffering from severe, life-threatening illnesses. There's no medicine for hearts empty of compassion. Note: Ron Bain is a former Western Slope newspaper editor and past chairman of the Libertarian Party of Colorado. He owns and operates a resume writing service in Boulder.Forum: http://www.denverpost.com/voice/voice.htmContact: letters denverpost.com Pubdlished: Sunday July 30, 2000Copyright: 2000 The Denver PostNews Article Courtesy Of MapInc. http://mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1070/a07.htmlRelated Articles & Web Sites:Coloradans For Medical Rightshttp://www.medicalmarijuana.com/Drug Policy Forum of Coloradohttp://www.drugsense.org/dpfco/Medicinal Pot a Heated Debatehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6416.shtmlCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtmlCannabisNews Search - Coloradohttp://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=colorado
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Comment #2 posted by freedom fighter on July 29, 2000 at 14:17:19 PT
Denver Post
is very conservative. Rocky Mtn News tend to print out liberal viewpoints. I was glad to hear that the orginial group who start this are still   it. We will win this one by a wide margin! \|/
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Comment #1 posted by Dan B on July 29, 2000 at 13:06:38 PT:
Glad to See This
The Denver Post took awhile to publish something in response to an earlier article blasting this initiative, but I'm glad they finally came to their senses. The wording here is far less strong than some of the other letters they received on this topic (yeah, I'm still holding a grudge against them for refusing to publish my article), but at least it points out the genuine conspiracy on the part of Secretary of State Vikki Buckley and (we can be certain) others to keep it altogether off the ballot. This point may go a long way toward opening the eyes of more Coloradans to see the lengths to which elected officials will go to make sure they get their way. And once their eyes are that far open, they may begin to see the ban on cannabis for what it really is: a ruse, a hoax, an outright lie. ...And the dominos begin to fall...
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