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Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, speaks on House floor Wednesday. Clem helped negotiate a compromise bill that would allow cities and counties to ban medical marijuana dispensaries until May 1, 2015. The House passed it.

(Chad Garland/Associated Press)

By Roy Kaufmann

This week, the Oregon House of Representatives passed

, which now goes back to the Senate. What began as a framework to allow reasonable local restrictions on medical marijuana facilities became, in the throes of “short-session madness,” a free pass for Oregon cities and counties to ban those facilities. In their quest for a compromise, the lower chamber voted to directly discriminate against tens of thousands of legal medical patients in Oregon.

A bit of history: In 1998, Oregon voters approved the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act. The first finding of the act became the basis, in principle, for the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program:

“Patients and doctors have found marijuana to be an effective treatment for suffering caused by debilitating medical conditions, and therefore, marijuana should

be treated like other medicines…“

Like other medicines. That was 14 years ago.

The science of medical cannabis is now as irrefutable as the science of climate change. Elected officials and regulators still opposing the data at this point are only minimizing their own credibility. (When Dr. Sanjay Gupta, “America’s Doctor,” says as he did this week that he’s not backing down on medical cannabis, he’s “doubling down,” the issue has tipped.)

To put it into context: It’s hard to imagine Marion County getting the state’s blessing to ban Walgreen’s from operating their “pharmaceutical dispensaries” within county lines. Or Josephine County banning acupuncturists from practicing within their jurisdiction, because it was not a form of medicine the County Commission understood or supported.

SB1531, as amended, would, if passed and signed by the governor, allow cities and counties the power to deny law-abiding Oregon medical-marijuana patients safe, regulated, accessible and convenient access to their legal medicine.

What can explain this disdain for medical-marijuana patients and their rights? Here’s a hypothesis.

Pot policy is tough because cannabis is unlike almost any other adult-use controlled substance. From a policy point of view, our society has a framework, albeit an evolving one, for regulating a therapeutic or pharmaceutical product with a clear medical use but also a high rate of illicit use and abuse. Take Oxycontin, for example (though I wouldn’t). Or Adderall. Tightly regulated. Still abused.

We also have a framework for regulating substances -- like alcohol and tobacco -- that have established recreational use and also known, proven negative health impacts.

But we, as a society, have no framework for regulating a substance that is legitimately, medically therapeutic for many, recreationally enjoyable for many and demonstrably safer than all the above substances.

This inability to draw on a parallel issue is a chronic source of pain as states like Oregon try and figure out how to fairly regulate both medical marijuana and retail marijuana.

To our north, the Evergreen State is sorting through that very issue now, and thousands of medical-marijuana patients and providers in Washington are watching – and fighting -- the total dismantling of medical cannabis in the name of limited, legal retail pot. In Oregon, that tension will come next year, in the 2015 legislative session.

In the meantime, Oregon’s medical-marijuana patients and providers will not go quietly into the night. No, they will do what is entitled to any American citizen whose rights have been infringed: They will seek legal recourse.

Should SB1531 become law, the courts will likely side with patients, and the Legislature will have to come back to this issue again, this time with some humility, empathy and wisdom.

Or, the Senate could save everyone involved the time, money and aggravation, and table SB1531 until next year. Then, it can be part of the broader discussion of regulating and taxing all marijuana facilities in Oregon, medical included.

At a time of unprecedented momentum and progress in marijuana policy – with states across the union decriminalizing, medically allowing or fully regulating cannabis – Oregon’s Legislature is poised to take a big step. Backwards. Here’s hoping – and urging – our elected leaders to not trample on the rights of patients in the name of getting something done.



Roy Kaufmann is president of The Kaufmann Group and an incoming board member of the National Cannabis Coalition.