[420 Girl]

After more than 10 years in place, voter-approved revisions in November, and fine-tuning this year by a special task force, Maine's medical marijuana law still remains a blur.

Maine is one of 13 states that allows medical use of marijuana, but a legislative committee heard Thursday of several issues still clouding the issue in the state.

Tax implications, how much marijuana patients can have, and privacy rights since patients would be subject to home inspections are among the gray areas.

"Patients are not criminals," Faith Benedetti, a patients' advocate and member of a task force that reviewed the medical marijuana law this winter, told the Health and Human Services Committee.

The committee took testimony on a task force bill that summarizes the work of the 14-member Maine Medical Marijuana Task Force. The group scrutinized the initiated legislation voters authorized in November.

One of the law's most significant changes was its inclusion of dispensaries to provide the drug to ease pain in cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other diseases.

But the task force could not agree on how many dispensaries to allow or how to define growers providing plants to the dispensaries, said state Health and Human Services Department Commissioner Brenda Harvey, who also chaired the task force.

The task force bill also fails to say whether children should be excluded from medical marijuana treatment, said Maine Medical Association Executive Vice President Gordon Smith, who also is a task force member. The MMA wants to exclude minors 12 and under, he said.

Dan Walker, an attorney and task force member who drafted the bill approved by voters in November, said the law and its refinements remain silent on taxing the sale of marijuana, adding that taxing at dispensaries could provide significant revenues to the state. He recommended bringing the Taxation Committee into the discussion.

Lawmakers also need to take a longer look at the 2.5-ounce possession limit, some told the committee. That limit assumes the marijuana will only be smoked, and fails to take into consideration other ways it can be ingested, such as simmered and cooked with food, taken orally in drops, used topically as salves, or inhaled using a vaporizer, said Benedetti.

"Each of these methods requires larger amounts of the raw herb to prepare," she said. "We should allow patients to possess enough medicine to meet their particular, individual needs."

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