Yolo County: Send LTEs to Woodland Daily Democrat

Feel free to use SAN's talking points
(http://www.aaronsmith.org/MMIC_Talking_Points.pdf) to help
in your letter writing efforts.

Letters should be sent to the Woodland Daily Democrat
at news [at] dailydemocrat.com and must be no more than 300
words in length. Only letters including the author's
first and last name, phone number and address will be
considered for publication (only the name will be
printed).

Please feel free to contact me for letter writing
advice or any other inquiries. My guest editorial
column is posted below. By the way, I had nothing to
do with that typo in the headline!

Thank you,
Aaron S.
Safe Access Now


http://www.dailydemocrat.com/guestopinions/ci_5118222


Yolo: Issue medial marijuana IDs
By F. AARON SMITH

When voters approved the landmark initiative that made
possession, cultivation and use of medical marijuana
legal under California law, the directive was clear:
Ensure patients' safe and legal access to their
medicine.

A decade has now passed since the enactment of
Proposition 215 - and support for the law among
California voters has swelled to 73 percent, while ten
other states have approved their own medical marijuana
laws.

However, implementation of the state's Compassionate
Use Act still poses a challenge to both patients and
law enforcement officers alike.

Every day, seriously ill patients in our community
risk unnecessary detainment, arrest or seizure of
their medicine by state and local law enforcement.
Cases involving legitimate medical marijuana patients
are consistently tossed out of court; however, this
situation jeopardizes the health and safety of some of
our most vulnerable citizens and wastes scarce public
safety resources.

To address concerns surrounding the uneven enforcement
of the state's medical marijuana law, in 2003 the
Governor approved guidelines establishing a statewide
identification card program for qualified patients and
their caregivers.

Once Yolo County makes the ID card available,
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local peace officers will able to verify a patient's
legal status in minutes by utilizing a 24-hour
statewide database. This program not only protects
legitimate patients from arrest - it also frees up the
valuable time of law enforcement officers serving the
community. It is for these reasons that
law-enforcement and patients are generally supportive
of the ID card in the 24 counties with operating
programs.

Even those who may have originally held reservations
about medical marijuana should support this registry
program. In no way does it liberalize our current
laws; in fact the ID cards are a tool for law
enforcement and a mechanism to curb abuse of the law.

California's medical marijuana laws have been
challenged in the courts many times and have never
been overturned - in fact, most judicial rulings have
only strengthened patients' rights.

Just last month, a San Diego County Superior Court
ruled that California's medical marijuana laws are not
trumped by federal law.

In a futile attempt to escape their statutory
obligation to implement the ID program, San Diego
County sued the state's Department of Health Services.
The lawsuit, later enjoined by two other rogue
counties - San Bernardino and Merced - argued that the
program somehow violated federal drug laws.

Judge William R. Nevitt rejected the counties' claim
in the court's Dec. 6 decision, reaffirming the basic
tenets of American federalism by upholding
California's right to set its own marijuana policy.

The intent of the law was clear from the beginning and
now that it has been tested in the courts, there is no
reason for Yolo County to wait any longer before
making this important program available to its
residents.

People treating the symptoms of multiple sclerosis or
enduring chemotherapy shouldn't have to worry about
legal hassles for merely using the medicine their
doctor recommends. Unfortunately, until the medical
marijuana ID card is available everywhere in
California, many patients will not have the treatment
that they deserve.

Fortunately, Yolo County's Department of Health will
be bringing this issue before the Board of Supervisors
shortly.

Hopefully the county's elected officials will make the
only reasonable choice and vote to begin issuing the
ID cards as soon as possible.

Voters have demanded it, and the health and safety of
local patients depends on it.

------
Aaron Smith is a statewide coordinator with Safe
Access Now, an organization dedicated to the
implementation of fair and consistent guidelines in
all California counties as a safe harbor from arrest
under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996.



F. Aaron Smith
Safe Access Now
phone: (707) 575-9870
fax: (866) 204-1341
e-mail: fa_smith [at] yahoo.com