Law enforcement officials this week have made an 11th-hour push against

.

House Bill 3460 narrowly passed the Oregon House and is headed to the senate. The bill got a significant political boost when it was

. It also won endorsements from the League of Oregon Cities and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who this week urged the state senate to pass it.

The Oregon District Attorney’s Association opposes the bill. Rob Bovett, the Lincoln County district attorney and one of the state’s leading prosecutors on drug policy, said he’s voiced his concerns in emails and in one-on-one meetings with senators this week.

He said he represents prosecutors in a handful of “smaller, rural counties” who want to fix problems with the bill before it gets a senate vote.

“If they are going to pass this, fine,” Bovett said. “But pass a good clean bill that doesn’t create more problems than it solves.”

Medical Marijuana

The bill would create a statewide registry of medical marijuana retailers. Business owners would have to pass criminal background checks, document the amount of marijuana coming into their establishments and verify that it's from state-registered growers. Operators of these establishments would set their own prices for cannabis.

Bovett said medical marijuana dispensary legislation has been considered by Oregon lawmakers before, though none gained the political traction of HB 3460. Bovett said prosecutors’ key problems with the bill include:

– It allows people convicted of certain drug felonies outside of Oregon to operate a medical marijuana facility. The same restriction is in place for state-registered medical marijuana growers. The limitation doesn’t apply to people with convictions from other states.

“That has to be fixed otherwise we are going to be a magnet for organized crime and drug dealers from other states,” he said.

– Though rules won’t be in place until 2014, the bill includes a provision for existing medical marijuana outlets that potentially limits their criminal liability if prosecuted before rules are in place.

“The bill gives everybody a free-for-all to operate these dispensaries without rules,” Bovett said. “That doesn’t make any sense. We shouldn’t be starting these until we have rules in place.”

Bovett said he’s concerned the bill, if passed, will apply retroactively to dispensary-related prosecutions statewide. In one dispensary-related case in eastern Oregon case, a defense attorney has already cited the bill in court.

“It’s already come up and the bill hasn’t even passed!” Bovett said.

Geoff Sugerman, a medical marijuana advocate who helped draft the bill on behalf of

, said advocates are willing to look at amendments to the bill, but time is running out.

“We are more than willing to work with them on the issues they are bringing forward,” said Sugerman. “The challenge we face right now is we are at the tail end of the session.”

-- Noelle Crombie