The Senate voted unanimously Tuesday on a bill that makes clear that local jurisdictions can regulate medical marijuana dispensaries, but stopped short of allowing local governments to bar them outright, as some anti-marijuana quarters of the state have attempted.
Senate Bill 1531 was pushed by a bipartisan pair of marijuana opponents -- Democratic Sen. Rod Monroe of Portland and Republican Sen. Bill Hansell of Pendleton -- both of whom opposed allowing marijuana dispensaries last year through House Bill 3460.
The original bill would have allowed local counties and municipalities to bar dispensaries from their jurisdiction -- but Eugene Democratic Sen. Floyd Prozanski, who supports the legalization of marijuana as well as medical use, put a stop to those restrictions and forced the bill to be amended before it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs.
“We’ve never allowed any local governments to restrict access to any medicine … and that’s why that language came out,” Prozanski said on the Senate floor.
The amended bill clarifies that the governments can regulate but not ban dispensaries, allowing Hansell and Monroe to save face while clearing up some confusion resulting from the genetically modified organism bill passed in October, which stops most local governments from regulating GMO crops. That law was never intended to affect the dispensation of medical marijuana.
Local governments, including Medford, Beaverton, Marion County and Yamhill County, have actively tried to nullify HB 3460 and snuff out medical marijuana dispensaries from their communities, comparing them to the blue laws that followed Prohibition, in which certain counties and local entities voted to become “dry” and restrict the sale of alcohol.
“Last year, the Legislature passed House Bill 3460, creating the most unregulated marijuan dispensary program in the nation,” said Association of Oregon Counties legal counsel Rob Bovett in his testimony. As the Lincoln County District Attorney, Bovett sat on the task force charged with regulating the dispensaries. “The marijuana industry is saying ‘trust us.’ Many counties and cities are willing to do just that. Others want to wait and see. They should have that right.”
But while blue laws allow local communities to stop the sale of recreational vices like beer, wine and liquor, barring medical marijuana dispensaries would stop patients diagnosed with cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis from getting their prescribed medication, setting up potential civil rights concerns. SB 1531 triggered the opposition of the American Civil Liberties Union in the Judiciary Committee.
“The outright bans and efforts to deny safe access to legal patients is wrong,” medical marijuana advocate Geoff Sugerman told The Lund Report. “There’s no place in this arena for purely political reasons when you’re talking about the health and safety of patients.”
Prozanski and other medical marijuana dispensary supporters like Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, pushed HB 3460 last year as an attempt to better rein in the Wild Wild West nature of Oregon’s medical marijuana law, enacted through a voter initiative in 1998.
Without dispensaries, patients have had to rely on private growers to provide them with the drug, and unless patients already have a familiarity with the sale of illegal marijuana, they face a difficult time safely procuring their medication. Unregulated dispensaries had also been operating in a legal gray area.
The new dispensaries are sanctioned and overseen by the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, and also pay them fees.
Sugerman supports allowing local jurisdictions to make reasonable restrictions on time, place and manner, which are still allowed under the amended version of SB 1531 that passed the Senate. State law already prohibits operating dispensaries within 1,000 feet of schools.
He said that most of the local governments that are most vocal about barring authorized medical marijuana dispensaries, such as Marion County, have looked the other way while unlicensed dispensaries have operated in their communities for years.
Monroe said in his speech that SB 1531 would help avoid litigation because medical marijuana is still illegal under federal law, but it actually may lead to more litigation if local governments still choose to defy state law and go beyond what’s allowed in SB 1531.
Christopher David Gray can be reached at [email protected].
Image for this story by Chuck Coker (CC BY-ND 2.0) via Flickr.
