[420 Girl]

Though Michigan voters approved a referendum legalizing the medical use of marijuana by a wide margin in 2008, the administrative and legal rules developed to implement that referendum have left a great many questions unanswered and put many medical marijuana users in legal jeopardy. The Kalamazoo Gazette reports:

Some of Michigan’s more than 10,000 patients and caregivers registered under the months-old law are ending up in court. Their cases, according to local attorneys, could help to clarify gray areas in the new law.

“It would really be helpful to everyone involved — to patients, to caregivers, to prosecutors, and to defense attorneys — if we had more clarity on the law,” said Carrie Klein, Kalamazoo County’s chief assistant prosecutor. “But that’s why we have higher courts, so those type of questions can be flushed out.”

Here’s the particular section causing most of the problems:

Much of the confusion over the medical marijuana act comes from a section on so-called affirmative defenses.

The act clearly states that a patient or caregiver in possession of a state-issued card will not be arrested or prosecuted for drug crimes. It spells out exactly how much usable marijuana a person can possess — 2.5 ounces — and how many plants — 12 per patient — a person may grow.

A later section, however, broadens the definition of a patient to anyone with a medical condition covered under the act or one for which a doctor recommends marijuana for treatment — whether the patient has a card or not. It allows any the amount of marijuana and plants needed to maintain a constant supply of medicine.

“That’s a difficult one,” Klein said of those later provisions. “Whomever came up with that portion of the law wasn’t thinking through the consequences.”

As long as a person is not violating the law directly — like smoking in a public place or possessing marijuana on a school bus, in a prison, at a school or without having a serious or debilitating medical condition — the law can be used as a defense to dismiss drug charges. The person, however, still has to endure arrest and face court hearings.

We can expect the courts to be handling such cases for many years until there is a settled set of precedents to deal with all the questions that may arise.


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