The New York Times

Tuesday, March 14, 2000

STATEHOUSE JOURNAL

Maine Sees Medical Use for Its Seized Marijuana

By CAREY GOLDBERG

AUGUSTA, Me., March 13 -- Breaking new ground in the national campaign to legalize the medical use of marijuana, the sheriff of Maine's most populous county recommended to lawmakers today that marijuana confiscated during drug arrests be doled out to the ill.

Such a system, Sheriff Mark N. Dion of Cumberland County told legislators, would mean that patients would not have to violate laws against buying marijuana and "become criminals in order to survive their illness."

Sheriff Dion spoke at a hearing on a bill that highlighted the increasingly common confusion and contradictions that ensue when a state approves a referendum allowing use of marijuana for patients with cancer, AIDS and certain other diseases.

Thus far, the Hawaii Legislature and voters in eight states have passed such ballot measures, all in the West except Maine, which approved its Maine Medical Marijuana Initiative last November by 61 percent to 39 percent. The law exempted patients from state laws against the personal use of marijuana and said they could grow up to six plants to supply themselves.

But the initiative could not exempt patients from federal laws, nor could it help those who could not grow plants themselves and must buy marijuana from suppliers who were, by definition, criminals.

So Maine, like other states, has found itself facing a knotty question: voters have said they wanted medical marijuana available, but how can it be legally distributed?

One answer is the bill examined today by the Legislature's Joint Committee on Health and Human Services, which sets a national precedent by proposing that the state take a step beyond the approval of medical marijuana and actually supply it.

The bill would create a system for registering patients whose doctors had affirmed that they had a condition that might be alleviated by marijuana, and it would have the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency provide them with confiscated supplies.

The bill's sponsor, Senator Anne M. Rand, argued that such a system would help law-enforcement officers, who could better distinguish who was a legitimate possessor of marijuana and who was not, and might even discourage Mainers from growing more marijuana themselves.

Committee members raised several questions and objections, including concerns that confiscated marijuana could be contaminated or laced with harder drugs, and the state would thus find itself in the position of distributing harmful substances to vulnerable patients.

They also worried that such a distribution system might incur the wrath of the federal government, which might then cut off millions of dollars in grants to Maine.

"I do have a real fear of the feds coming down on us and mucking up the works," Representative Lois A. Snowe-Mello said.

Sheriff Dion said that he worried about the federal authorities too but that he believed retaliation was unlikely, and, in any case, he added, "Shall we as a sovereign state be held hostage by the federal government simply because we intend to treat our sick and afflicted?"

In addition, supporters of the bill said, other states that have begun implementing medical marijuana laws have not incurred retaliatory cuts from federal authorities, though none have the kind of distribution system Maine is proposing.

As for the possibility of contamination, supporters of the bill said buyers faced that threat now, and the new arrangement would not increase it.

Sheriff Dion also suggested that the supply for patients could come from confiscated plants rather than dried stashes of marijuana, thus ensuring that it had not been laced with any harder drug.

"The law is only as complex and out of reach as we make it," he said. "This is not really rocket science."

But legal questions do remain. An assistant attorney general, James M. Cameron, said his office supported the plan to register patients, but opposed a distribution system that would "make dedicated police officers criminals under federal law."

The committee is scheduled to discuss the bill further on Thursday, and could choose to vote then. Representative Thomas J. Kane, a committee co-chairman, said that given the voters' clear will as expressed in the initiative, "we can't let it die."

Sheriff Dion's support for the bill -- and his support for last year's medical marijuana initiative -- put him in what he cheerily called a "pretty small fraternity," with two or three California colleagues, of law-enforcement officials who publicly support such a change in laws.

No other Maine law-enforcement official is supporting the bill or supported the initiative, he said.

But Sheriff Dion said he believed that being a "police service professional" means more than enforcing the law; it means, too, that he should "advocate for social justice when the law fails to meet the needs of its citizens."