Editorial:
New
Hope
in
California
1/8/99
Adam J. Smith, DRCNet Associate Director In California this week, Bill Lockyer, the state's new Attorney General, will begin the process of trying to figure out how to implement Proposition 215. Prop. 215 was passed by the voters of California in 1996, and was supposed legalize the possession and use of marijuana by patients in need. The intent of the law has been frustrated, however, by a combination of the federal government and the former Attorney General of California, Dan Lungren. Lungren was an opponent of Prop. 215 even before its passage. At one point during the campaign, when the popular comic strip Doonesbury ran a week-long series in support of the initiative, Lungren used state money to hold a press conference denouncing the comic and its creator, and urging the state's newspapers to refuse to run the strip. In the two years that he held his post after the initiative was passed, Lungren showed himself willing to go back on his oath to "uphold the laws of the State of California" by openly proclaiming and acting upon his intent to interpret the law "as narrowly as possible." This led to numerous arrests of legitimate patients and the seizure of their medicine. The federal government, for its part, having been thwarted in its efforts in urging the initiative's defeat, opened hostilities on December 30, 1996, with a press conference at which Attorney General Janet Reno threatened to prosecute and or rescind the prescription privileges of any doctor who so much as discussed the use of marijuana with his or her patients. When that threat was deemed to be in violation of the First Amendment in federal court, a legal assault was undertaken by the federal government against various dispensaries of medical marijuana throughout the state. But now there is Bill Lockyer. Lockyer has been an open proponent of the right of Californians to access marijuana for medicinal use. He made no secret of this during his campaign, and has since reiterated his desire to oversee the creation and implementation of a system of distribution, most likely in cooperation with local governments, which will finally give life to the initiative's 1996 victory. Whatever the ultimate plan, it is likely to face federal opposition, and it could very well get ugly. Keep in mind that the federal government came into Oakland last year and shut down that city's Cannabis Buyers' Club over the strong objections of the Mayor and the city council, who had gone so far as to deputize the club's employees in an effort to fit them into a loophole in the federal Controlled Substances Act. Bill Lockyer most assuredly has his work cut out for him. One can hope that the victories this past November of medical marijuana on the ballots of four other states might temper the feds' enthusiasm for arresting the sick and the dying, their doctors and their caretakers. But don't bet on it. The federal government has a lot invested in its unyielding stance on medicinal marijuana, and it openly fears that capitulation on this issue will open the door to reforms in other areas of its cash cow drug war. What we can legitimately hope is that Bill Lockyer is a man who will not be easily intimidated, and that California's new governor, Gray Davis, will stand behind him. We can also hope that local governments across the state, as well as the state's legislators, have the stomach to stand up to an overbearing and overzealous federal government on behalf of California's voters, or at least for those whose suffering the federal government would have them ignore.
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