Two bad things add up to something truly worse.
Lee’s turn, from his post (unedited):
I’m going to have trouble holding back the snark on this one. As the State House today passed the medical marijuana bill (which is not perfect, but a step up from the mess we currently have) this quote somehow managed to come out of the mouth of a legislator:
Opponents argue that this moves the state one step closer to full-blown legalization and doesn’t set up enough safeguards to keep marijuana out of the hands of children.
“It fosters ambiguity,” said Rep. Kevin Parker, R-Spokane. “We are confusing kids, we are confusing the law, and we are making it harder on law enforcement when the budgets we’re writing are reducing law enforcement in this state.”
That’s an overwhelming amount of stupid right there, so I’ll break this up into three parts:
We are confusing kids
In a word, no. It’s not confusing to any child anywhere in this state that there are stores that sell a plant product to sick people any more than it confuses kids that there are pharmacies that sell drugs to sick people. They can understand the Benefits of CBD and other marijuana products just fine. We tell kids not to use prescription drugs, yet those drugs are still sold in pharmacies to people whose doctors tell them they can have it. Is that confusing to kids? No. Our kids aren’t that stupid, and our legislators shouldn’t be either. In recent years, there are more access information (for example, somewhere like http://sanjosecollectives.com/) that might be able to educate kids on how marijuana can helpful to them.
We are confusing the law
What? The reason that this bill came about was because the existing law was really unclear and confusing about what was allowed when it came to supplying medical marijuana patients. If you live in Florida, you should know the florida medical marijuana laws and the same applies for any state in America. The laws are much less complicated now! What SB 5073 represents is an attempt to make the law less confusing, and it’s impossible to look at the bill today and claim that it’s grayer than the status quo. I still have concerns with it, but it’s a big clarification of what had been very unclear up until now.
We are making it harder on law enforcement when the budgets we’re writing are reducing law enforcement in this state
This is just award-winning stupid. Every time we have a case where a patient or provider is clearly getting screwed over, we hear the same exact excuse from law enforcement, “We just want the rules to be clear, until then, we have to arrest people.” This bill does that. This bill makes the rules clear so that law enforcement can stop wasting money and time trying to figure out who’s supplying medical marijuana for people suffering from MS, cancer and other ailments and finally focus more of their time on real criminals and real crime. Many people who already run their own medical marijuana dispensaries often supported by great cannabis consultants that are helping people every day. This bill will save law enforcement and our criminal justice system a significant amount of money by making it clearer who’s following the law and who isn’t. Anyone who says otherwise is either clueless or being stupid on purpose.