Finally a Bill Signing

At long last at around four o’clock last Monday afternoon I got an e-mail from Sen. Raskin’s chief-of-staff. Governor O’Malley would be signing SB 308 on Tuesday. Finally a small amount of progress, but there is still more to do. Delaware’s medical marijuana law was signed yesterday by Gov. Jack Markell (D). Not surprising it looks very much like the bill that failed passage this year and last in Maryland. The bill has the support Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) as it did here in Maryland. It would seem they have found the legislative formula for a palatable medical marijuana law for legislatures to pass. They tout on their website a goal of 27 medical marijuana states by 2014. I’m sure this includes Maryland since their bill is so close to passing here as well.


While I applaud any progress on this issue I do not like codifying into law the only place I can get my medicine is through these heavily state regulated cultivation and distribution centers. From the very beginning this has been about marijuana as an alternative medicine, one that you can grow in your own home. Maryland's proposed law of the last two years includes language limiting the number of cultivation and distribution centers to as few as needed to supply the need. From the discussions I have heard this could be as few as three for Maryland. In contrast Delaware will have three, one for each of its counties. A formula which if enacted would make Maryland’s law better providing for twenty-four cultivation and distribution centers.

I have had discussions with MPP’s legislative analyst Dan Riffle and I know as an organization they support personal cultivation. Their legislative strategy doesn’t seem to currently reflect this. The game plan has always been get medical marijuana legislation passed in as many states as possible and Congress will follow. Sen. Brinkley and Del. Morhaim both spoke of attempting to write model legislation that the federal government could follow. I fear if heavily regulated cultivation and distribution centers are what we are going to get from Congress than personal cultivation will die as an issue. This would be a mistake.

Too often what I hear is more about the potential of the plant for Big Pharma, to use to make more pills. This is not what I want. I am tired of the medicines that they already tout as coming from plants. I don’t know if any of my meds are derived from plants but I do know that some of them have caused me great harm. I for one will not give up the fight for any medical marijuana law, state or federal, to include personal cultivation provisions.

If we agree that marijuana is medicine and every dog in this fight does, than why abandon personal cultivation. MPP has not given up on personal cultivation however their support of the New Jersey model puts the issue on a back burner. As a former chef I can tell you, it is the stuff on the back burner that ends up getting destroyed. We can’t let personal cultivation be pushed to the back burner.

In the near future Gov. O’Malley will announce the names of who will be serving on the Medical Marijuana Model Program Work Group. Once those names are known I will post them here along with any contact information I can find. Hopefully this list will include my contact information since I have applied for appointment to that work group. Rest assured if I am appointed that personal cultivation will have a strong voice in the discussion. I may very well end up supporting something less, but not without making strong arguments in support of personal cultivation and small non-profit co-ops.

An approach that is less government might be easier to pass on a federal level than one that sets up another governmental bureaucracy. Maryland’s bill in 2010 was touted as being revenue neutral. What is more revenue neutral, you issue us an ID card and we pay you a fee? Your only cost is to maintain a data base which you can probably do on an IPhone 4 at this point.

I have yet to have someone tell me I’m wrong about this. Doctors can already write prescriptions for marijuana on their prescription pads. The reason being is that until someone fills that prescription no law is being broken. Why is this important? It means that all the state has to do is verify doctor’s prescription number and then scan it into the database. The per patient cost, unless the government tries to turn this into a jobs program, should be very reasonable, akin to a fishing license. This is a case where government needs to follow the business adage keep it simple s*****.

On a happier note, I hope to tract down a picture of me at the bill signing which I will add to this post.

OK here is the picture from the bill signing courtsey of Gov. O'Malley's press office: