Essay: Marijuana Mess - 12/4/2008 - Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Dianne Byrum, who was just elected a Michigan State trustee, was a capable leader during her years in the state legislature. But last year, she played a new role as the spokesperson for two really messed up ballot initiatives.

She was first associated with the infamous Reform Government Now proposal, which attempted to rewrite much of the state constitution on the cheap in a way designed to improperly benefit the Democratic party. The courts rightly tossed that turkey off the ballot before it ever saw the light of day.

What is surprising to me is that some court, or the state board of canvassers, didn’t do the same thing with the medical marijuana ballot proposal, which passed almost two to one. For me, the problem isn’t medical marijuana.

The problem is that a high school civics class could have done a better job writing a proposal. It doesn’t specify how the patients are supposed to get the marijuana, other than saying that those eligible can grow small amounts.

Nor are there any standards for making sure the marijuana isn’t really some other kind of plant, or that it hasn’t been grown in a brownfield and just sprayed by the highway department. Instead, we’ve got officials scratching their heads and trying to figure out some way of implementing this poorly constructed law. What’s needed is legislation that would spell all this out.

Frankly, the state ought to be growing and selling any approved marijuana. For that matter, it would be a good idea to have some sort of clinic where patients could go smoke marijuana under approved supervision. That would make sense. And that’s not going to happen, even though you could easily structure this whole program to make money for our cash-strapped state. That’s primarily because our legislators don’t want to touch this with a ten-foot roach clip.

They fear being tagged as friendly to the drug culture, even though medical marijuana was overwhelmingly approved.

So what we have is a vast legal gray area. Most policemen and most police departments probably will observe a de facto don’t ask, don’t tell attitude.

Except, that is, when the marijuana buyers are under age. But you just know that somewhere out there, Patrolman Hot Dog will bust some poor glaucoma sufferer for trying to buy his marijuana. That will then turn into some sort of precedent-setting case, or maybe not. And then there will be another.

Anyway, that’s our crazy system. Meanwhile, a disbarred Michigan attorney who lives in Boston wants to open a medical marijuana distribution service. Carl Swanson even got the voters in Ferndale, a small but zany working-class Detroit suburb, to approve the idea.

That’s not going to fly, however, and the cops have put everyone concerned on notice that they aren’t going to tolerate one joint being handled by Swanson’s National Organization for Positive Medicine.

Clearly, all this will take some time to sort out. I only have one wish. When they get around to writing the auto bailout legislation, let’s hope those drafting the language do a better job.