This November’s Initiative 28 Measure 74 will seek to set up medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon. One of its provisions—and a foil to those who say that the dispensary business will attract profiteers—calls for “a program to assist low-income and needy… cardholders in obtaining medical marijuana.”
A program like that already exists in Washington, DC, according to this AP story. Legislators in the capital are trying to figure out how to give a discount to people who need it, though medical marijuana won’t be for sale in DC until next year.
Who will get the reduced-price marijuana and how much it will cost, however, is still being worked out.
“Obviously because there’s no roadmap on how to do this, it may require some tweaking over time,” said David Catania, a D.C., councilman and the chairman of the city health committee that drafted the law. “We may, in fact, set an example for other states.”
The article notes that an ounce of pot in a dispensary will cost $350—much higher than the price the article quotes for an ounce on the illegal market, at $100-$140. A paragraph later, it quotes NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre saying that illegal pot costs $200 to $500 an ounce. Hey, at least the program should save poor people from the apparently confusing street market.
Yes councilor, the plan to take away turf from drug cartels may at some point require ‘tweaking’
Medical users can now grow or get it for free. In fact, it’s illegal to charge for it. I’m still trying to figure out how a new system which charges for pot will be a boon to patients.
This is about legalizing marijuana. Every intelligent adult knows that. You may think that’s a great idea, you may think it’s a terrible idea, but let’s not pretend like we don’t know what this is about.
Medical users will still be able to grow it or get it for free. Nothing about the current Medical Marijuana program will have to change, except for the addition of dispensaries. It will only be those patients who choose to utilize a dispensary that will have to pay. Patients getting a card right now, for example, are too late to get plants into the ground for the fall harvest. So they are dependent on those who grow indoor (and will still have to wait until their plants mature), or on patients who have enough left from last year’s pound and a half to be able to share. Without dispensaries, those patients are suffering.
Marijuana takes a while to grow. Patients could use the services of the dispensary until their own plants are harvested. Patients are only allowed a pound and a half at any one time, and if one ingests the cannabis, instead of smoking it, that allowance does not last until the following year’s harvest. An indoor grow is very expensive to set up and maintain. Dispensaries are the missing piece, the answer to the supply problem faced by many patients.
This is not about legalizing marijuana. That may come later, after people get even more comfortable with the idea of marijuana in the mainstream, but it is not the focus of this Measure. Measure 74 was written to allow people to get their medicine who cannot obtain it from a grower – for whatever reason.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Measure 74 is about providing medicine to patients, creating new jobs and generating revenue for the state. It is not legalization nor does it take away a patient’s right to have their own garden. Measure 74 merely provides additional choices for patients while funding medical research, establishing a program to assist low-income patients and helping finance Oregon health programs.
I am glad that Washington, D.C., is implementing a program to assist low-income patients and I look forward to Oregon doing the same. It is simply common sense that patients should have safe, reliable access and just unconscionable to force patients to go without or turn to the black market.
In Oregon, patients can reimburse their volunteer caregiver or grower for equipment and supplies for growing their medicine. Patients state their medicine costs are $40. To $60. an ounce. So why does anyone think medical marijuana should be out of the reach of affordability for patients?
God Bless, Stormy Ray
Stormy Ray does not speak for Oregon Medical Marijuana Patients or the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP)
http://stormyraydoesnotspeakforme.com
Measure 74 would give Oregon the most sophisticated, regulated and advanced medical marijuana supply system in the United States, if not the world.