January 6, 2024
The Newport Daily News
http://www.newportdailynews.com/articles/2006/01/06/editorial/edit0105.txt
Cannabis law leaves open key question
Now that the General Assembly has said it's legal for some people to smoke marijuana, we would like to know one thing: Where are they supposed to get it from?
The answer, in most cases, will be: an illegal drug dealer. It blows our minds that the legislature supports such a thing.
The law also allows medical-marijuana users to designate two people as "caregivers," who can also legally obtain or grow the same amounts of weed.
The problem is there is no one who can legally sell it to them. There are no "cannabis clubs" or growers' supply shops in Rhode Island, as there are in California (where the clubs have been declared illegal by federal courts and still are routinely shut down by law enforcement). There are no regulated outlets such as pharmacies that can provide the drug and guarantee its purity.
There are, however, people who sell it - and who can be arrested for selling it. They get it from unidentified sources that may be as innocent as a hippie farmer in Vermont or as nefarious as a Mexican drug lord. Their product may be good, it may not be. And the profits from its sale may be the cause of robbery and violence.
As we wrote in April, it just makes no sense that something can be legal to buy, but not legal to sell, nor for the state to encourage people to give their medicine money to illicit pot dealers.
Yes, some of these sick people have been doing that all along. It's supposed to be compassionate to free them from the worry of getting busted. What the state should have done instead is free them from having to associate with illegal dealers in the first place.
Medical marijuana has been approved only for people with some serious diseases, including AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, hepatitis C and multiple sclerosis. It's ridiculous to assume that everyone afflicted by such an illness will have the ability or willingness to find and patronize an illegal marijuana dealer, or find a "caregiver" who can.
And growing marijuana is no simple solution. Few people have the knowledge, equipment, space and - above all - security to raise and mature the plants. Plus, the seeds they would use would, again, come from marijuana sold illegally.
Before the law can be put into effect, the state must come up with a system for designating legal marijuana users and caregivers. Before that happens, the General Assembly needs to take up this issue again and find some way to allow everyone who needs this drug to obtain it safely and with dignity, as with any other medication.