Medical Marijuana BLUNDER: New York's Ridiculous Legislation

This Reefer Madness is a plan to fail, and the arrests will continue.

Prepared by Harry Levine, Loren Siegel, and Gabriel Sayegh for the Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, March 2013. Source: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services

(PORTLAND, Ore.) - Many years ago I visited Manhattan and read the NYT magazine section. It said that 50% of its citizens should see a psychiatrist. How about them? It must be so.

Police in New York City alone spent a million hours making 440,000 marijuana arrests from 2002-2012. That’s crazy.

These numbers do not lie.

In January of 2013, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “These arrests stigmatize, they criminalize, they create a permanent record. It's not fair, it’s not right, it must end, and it must end now.”

New York legislature and Governor Cuomo have now legalized medical marijuana. It hit the media and newspapers like a tsunami because New York has had the most restrictive laws and arrests. The current restrictions on both patients and physicians are extreme.

The law is so restrictive that I cannot imagine anyone complying with it. The pseudo-pacification of citizens while creating a base of sustained criminality is shameful. That’s what this looks to be.

By spending considerable amount of time researching via my computer, I was able to garner a scoop for what has been planned. It’s a disaster!

The new rules are almost punitive:

1. The doctors must take a medical marijuana course and be certified by New York State. (It won’t happen much.)
2. Patients must be certified by their doctor.
3. Specially-approved organizations (numbering 5) with 4 stores each will be dispensing the medications. (See also number 7, below)
4. Patients must have a severely-debilitating or life-threatening disease. These are Cancer, HIV/AIDs, Lou Garigs disease, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, damage to spinal nerves, epilepsy, inflammatory disease, neuropathies, and Huntington’s disease. (No mention of PTSD, pain, nausea or vomiting, or spasm diseases such as Crohn’s or Asthma).
5. Patients may have a care giver at least 20 years old. The care giver can have up to 5 certified patients.
6. Doctors and others must report patients to Dept of Health.
7. Dept of Health issues registry identification cards and regulates all involved in the marijuana use. Many organizations such as pharmacies, hospitals, nursing homes, health centers, hospices etc may dispense the marijuana.
8. Marijuana, as such, may NOT BE SMOKED, but extracts may be used in vaporizers or in edibles.
9. Patients and caregivers may have 2.5 ounces of marijuana at any given time.
10. Patients may NOT GROW THEIR OWN.
11. Marijuana must be grown only in the State of New York by licensed and certified growers.
12. Felons may get permits.
13. The marijuana law protects all certified individuals.
14. Certified patients, doctors and others may not be discriminated against by almost anybody.
15. No home deliveries, even for blind or quadriplegic patients.
16. Medical Marijuana may not be sold for about 18 months.

That you cannot smoke marijuana is really a killer. Well, folks ~ it looks like Reefer Madness is real!

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