Responsible users still unprotected by the law
Kudos to Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Wells and The Times for accurately insisting Washington’s medical-marijuana law falls short of fulfilling the voters’ intentions when they approved the measure in 1998
The law does not protect legal patients from home invasion and arrest by police. Flaws in the law make medical-marijuana producers criminals. If the grower reports theft to police, that grower often gets treated as a criminal.
A California initiative to legalize marijuana was funded by a medical-marijuana millionaire who personally picked up the tab to the tune of more than a million dollars. There are no Washington state medical-marijuana millionaires; our medical-marijuana community is neither high profile nor focused on huge profits.
Other than a few recent newsworthy incidents of violence, there has been little controversy surrounding our state’s medical marijuana during all these years of operation.
Patients and providers have already shown we are evenhanded and responsible; now all we want is to be protected by law. That’s what Washington voters wanted in 1998, and 12 years later, it just isn’t so.
— Vivian McPeak, Seattle