June 26, 2013 — The House passed a bill authorizing and regulating marijuana dispensaries for medicinal use Monday, as legislators moved to bring greater daylight and easier access to a system some lawmakers call out-of-control.
House Bill 3460 now moves to the Senate, where it faces a tough vote, but supporters said they have enough votes to send it to the governor. “We’ll have at least 16,” said medical marijuana advocate Geoff Sugerman, noting the number needed for the bill to receive a constitutional majority.
In the House, all Republicans, plus Democratic Reps. Caddy McKeown of Coos Bay and Brent Barton of Gladstone opposed HB 3460.
Sen. Rod Monroe, D-Portland, voted against the bill from his seat on the Joint Ways & Means Committee, but at least one Republican, Sen. Jackie Winters of Salem, supported the measure.
“We have already legalized [medical] marijuana. This gives us better controls. We need to legitimize those who are legitimate and then go after those who aren’t,” Winters told The Lund Report, noting her support for licensed dispensaries. “You begin to weed out the illegal entities.”
Sen. Brian Boquist, R-McMinnville, has also shown a libertarian bent on medical marijuana, having sponsored the successful Senate Bill 281 this session, which expands the list of ailments for medical marijuana to include post-traumatic stress disorder.
Oregon passed its medical marijuana law through a ballot referendum in 1998, becoming only the second state to permit marijuana for use as medicine. But unlike some states such as California and Colorado, the Oregon law has not allowed dispensaries, which act as drug stores for medical-grade pot.
If someone is prescribed pot through a medical marijuana card under the current system, that person must either grow their own cannabis or authorize someone else to grow it for them. Sanctioned medical pot growers can be compensated for costs but not labor.
House Bill 3460 will allow patients to get their cannabis from dispensaries, which will use leftover buds and juvenile plants from authorized growers to distribute to cardholders. The Oregon Health Authority will also monitor the marijuana for quality, helping to cull a weed supply that has been contaminated by mildew, mold, rodents and pesticides.
Sugerman said marijuana costs at dispensaries will be about the same as now, $10 for a gram or $200 or $250 for an ounce. Dispensaries may not generate a profit but will be allowed to charge for employee and overhead costs as well as growing costs.
Dispensaries Exist Without Regulation
In Senator Winters’ home district, five men were arrested last month on charges of using an unlicensed dispensary as a front for marijuana trafficking.
Oregon has about 200 unlicensed dispensaries operating around the state despite the lack of regulation. “This doesn’t create dispensaries. It regulates the ones that exist now,” said Sugerman.
Marijuana remains strictly forbidden under federal law, but with a growing number of states legalizing marijuana for medical use and two states having legalized marijuana for recreational use, the Obama administration has not made prosecution a priority.
At the public hearing before the House Health Committee in April, would-be medical marijuana users testified that they had difficulty getting the cannabis they needed because they had no experience buying marijuana on the street and didn’t know how to establish a relationship with a grower.
Without dispensaries, Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, said many people who wanted medical marijuana were afraid they’d become victims of crimes if they tried to get it.
“The inspiration for this did not come from the drug task force, it came from senior citizens unsure of where to go,” said Buckley, the chief sponsor of HB 3460. “Should they go to the Ashland Plaza and hang out?”
Tom Chamberlain, the president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, testified that he acquires medical marijuana at unlicensed dispensaries for his son, a quadriplegic. He didn’t realize at first that the underground facilities that proliferate Portland were not sanctioned by the state.
“Joe is not going to be able to grow marijuana by himself. And Lord knows he’s not going to grow it in my garage,” Chamberlain said.
Republicans Cite Chaotic System
In the House, Republicans lined up in opposition to dispensaries behind one of their own, Rep. Andy Olson of Albany, a former state police narcotics officer.
Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, voiced his support for HB 3460 only to vote against it after he consulted with Olson.
Olson said he supported medical marijuana after the experience of a friend dying of multiple sclerosis: “Only smoking marijuana twice a day helped him from taking several prescription drugs,” Olson said.
But Olson testified that the program was out of control, with Oregon medical marijuana getting distributed across the United States with little oversight on how it’s being used or where it’s going.
Rep. Jim Thompson, R-Dallas, who supported HB 3460 in the Health Committee but chose to oppose it on the floor, told The Lund Report the bill doesn’t go far enough to regulate medical marijuana.
“We would never allow any other medications to be produced this way,” said Thompson, the former executive director of the Oregon State Pharmacy Association. He protested that there was more government oversight for a bag of potato chips than over the state’s marijuana supply.
“The amount of marijuana we grow is far in excess of what we have prescriptions for,” Thompson said. “We need to start over from square one.”
One way Olson noted that Oregon’s system was out of control was by pointing out there were nearly as many authorized cannabis growers — 42,000 — as medical marijuana patients — 55,000. Growers are allowed to keep enough plants for four patients.
But Sugerman dismissed this argument, noting that each cardholder must list a grow site when they get their marijuana card. If they don’t know where to get any, they often list their home address, he said, leading to a large number of inactive grow sites that Olson wasn’t acknowledging.
He said HB 3460 will change that discrepancy by not requiring marijuana cardholders to list a grow site if they prefer to get their cannabis from a dispensary.
Olson said that a leading Democratic representative indicated he would work him before the next session to bring the program under better control, something that Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, the House Health Chairman earlier said he was interested in.
Image for this story by Dank Depot (CC BY-NC 2.0) via Flickr.
Christopher David Gray can be reached at [email protected].
