Medical marijuana: Government must stop fighting will of voters

The Arkansas Supreme Court last week refused to strike down a ballot question that, if successful, would make the state the first in the South to legalize medical marijuana. The measure would allow patients with qualifying conditions to buy marijuana from nonprofit dispensaries with a doctor’s recommendation.

Seventeen states, including Nevada, and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical purposes.

The federal government, of course, does not approve.

In California, federal prosecutors looking to shut down the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana shops have set their sights on Los Angeles. Last week the U.S. attorney’s office sued three property owners who house pot collectives in that city, and it sent warning letters to 68 others as prosecutors move to enforce a federal law that doesn’t recognize the 1996 California initiative that re-legalized the plant for medicinal use.

Tuesday the Los Angeles City Council backed out of fray, repealing its own ban on local medical marijuana dispensaries in evident concern that a threatened voter initiative on the matter could endanger their own re-election prospects.

President Obama, who has acknowledged his own history with illegal recreational drugs, promised four years ago to respect state laws on medical marijuana and allow ailing patients who have a doctor’s prescription to use the substance. Yet the drug war continues.

Here in Nevada, voters in 2000 ratified an amendment to the state constitution legalizing marijuana for medical use and instructing the Legislature to "provide by law for … appropriate methods for supply of the plant to patients authorized to use it."

To date, the Legislature has failed to heed that clear directive from voters, leaving the legal status of medical marijuana in such limbo that District Judge Donald Mosley – on his last day on the bench, earlier this year – condemned as "ridiculous" and "absurd" the current state of Nevada law.

As it stands, one Nevada law allows medical marijuana cardholders to possess, deliver or produce minute amounts of marijuana. But other state laws make it illegal to buy or sell marijuana, leaving no way for patients to obtain it.

"It is apparent to the Court that the statutory scheme set out for the lawful distribution of medical marijuana is either poorly contemplated or purposely constructed to frustrate the implementation of constitutionally mandated access to the substance," Judge Mosley wrote in a decision throwing out a drug trafficking charge against two men who had supplied the herb to patients unable to grow it themselves.

Government must stop fighting the will of voters. Las Vegas Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, running for state Senate, backs legislation to remedy this policy problem. If the Democrat can’t win support for his bill, the Nevada Supreme Court should order the Legislature to revamp the law in sensible accordance with the wishes of Nevada voters – albeit 12 years late.