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Lawmaker: End medical pot free-for-allWhite plans regulation legislationGene Davis, DDN Staff WriterMonday, November 9, 2009 | |
A Colorado Republican announced on Friday that he is seeking an end to the medical marijuana free-for-all that he believes is going on in the state.
Sen. Al White, R-Hayden, signaled that he plans to introduce legislation that would bring state rules to the currently unregulated medical marijuana industry in Colorado. White joins the ranks of Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown and Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, in trying to get a hold of what many call an out-of-control medical marijuana industry.
“What we’ve effectively got now is de facto decriminalization of marijuana,” White said in a statement. “That is not what the people of this state voted for.”
White’s draft proposal would establish a state monopoly to grow and distribute marijuana. The lawmaker believes doing so would help keep black market marijuana out of the supply chain.
Additionally, the draft proposal would require any prescription for the substance to be filled by a licensed pharmacist.
“We don’t allow unlicensed people to simply open up a shop and sell controlled substances like Valium or Oxycontin – that’s why they call them ‘controlled substances,’” said White. “So, why are we allowing that to happen with medical marijuana?”
Meanwhile, Brian Vicente of the medical marijuana advocacy group Sensible Colorado pointed out that Amendment 20 — which voters passed in 2000, legalizing the herb for select sick patients in Colorado — enshrines the right of patients to grow their own medical marijuana.
“I think it’s important for patients to maintain that right so they don’t have to go to the government to get their medicine,” he said. “Some folks end up growing their own because they can’t afford prescription medicine.”
Under White’s plan, revenue from the sale of marijuana would initially be split equally between a “rainy day fund” and a special fund for colleges and universities. After the “rainy day fund” reached $1 billion, the revenue stream would be directed entirely to higher education. Colorado is currently facing a budget gap in excess of $1 billion over the next few years.
“The legislature has an obligation to honor the will of the voters and make this work,” concluded White. “I’m looking forward to working with my colleagues across party lines next year to make that happen.”
| Comments: |
| Adam @ 2009-11-09 01:20:51 | Why not legalize it completely and drop a 100% tax on it? This is one of the few taxes that people (both those who would pay it and those who wouldn't) would welcome. Otherwise regulate intoxication like alcohol (DUI/DWI, PI, MIP, etc.) and do we have a problem? Pot is not a gateway drug, meth and cocaine are gateway drugs. Get it right! |
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| Bob @ 2009-11-09 02:23:20 | Marijuana has a toxicity level of 0.
Marijuana makes you hungry and sometimes lazy?
Alcohol kills hundreds of thousands in the United States alone a year!
No one has ever died from marijuana consumption. If you're going to keep alcohol(a hardcore drug compared to marijuana legal), you need to give people the choice to use a safer alternative.
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| Jimmy @ 2009-11-09 02:24:42 | Why don't "we" legalize it and put the money grubbers all out of business. That is the only reason that it is so popular - because people need to escape from the society that has been built. It is all a bunch of money grubbing people that have no concern about anything else. That is also true for all the other drugs, both legal and illegal. Since when did people need the governments permission to put something in their own body. Did God give them permission. Where did all the natural God given rights that the US constitution go? I guess that now we are all a slave of the rich that caused this mess in the first place. Maybe all the trouble that they caused with wall street and the banks will now come back to haunt them - literally. |
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| stein @ 2009-11-09 02:53:51 | White,Just another idiot in power.
The World's going to end 2012 anyway so I've been told, so why does all this really matter?
There is nothing worse than someone imposing their views upon someone else, because who REALLY KNOWS.....What is going on.
Spend your time councilmen,and senators on figuring the square route of 2, that should keep you busy for awhile and out of everyone else's hair. |
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| stein @ 2009-11-09 02:54:44 | White,Just another idiot in power.
The World's going to end 2012 anyway so I've been told, so why does all this really matter?
There is nothing worse than someone imposing their views upon someone else, because who REALLY KNOWS.....What is going on.
Spend your time councilmen,and senators on figuring the square route of 2, that should keep you busy for awhile and out of everyone else's hair. |
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| Crazy Mao @ 2009-11-09 02:56:24 | "Additionally, the draft proposal would require any prescription for the substance to be filled by a licensed pharmacist"
Say goodbye to your clinics, this business is well-underway to becoming a controlled market by the three tobacco majors and Johnson + Johnson. Oh yeah, don't forget BAT- British American Tobacco's soon-to-be-revealed bid to offer the highest potency and lowest priced marijuana grown today, courtesy of compassionate Afghanis caregiver/growers.
Now you will have cheap pot and even tougher marijuana laws with new felonies added to old marijuana crimes like growing and distributing.
Idiot potheads have given the entire market away to wealthy aristocracy and publicly traded companies.
How much you wanna bet that they will establish a driver's license verification and identification system requirement for medical marijuana prescriptions? How much you wanna bet that you will be waiving your rights to search and seizure by signing it? |
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| Richard Steeb @ 2009-11-09 09:01:34 | Keeping cannabis illegal while tobacco and alcohol are dispensed freely is *MURDEROUSLY STUPID*.
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| Robert Chase @ 2009-11-09 09:53:27 | White is an idiot and a liar. He is claiming that Colorado has "de facto decriminalization" -- this is not true. Colorado has ~10,000 medicinal cannabis patients out of a population of ~5,000,000 (only two tenths of one percent). Unless you are a registered patient you cannot obtain cannabis from a dispensary.
White has also insinuated that Colorado's dispensaries sell cartels' cannabis. Colorado's dispensaries do not sell Mexican cannabis, they are not owned or run by cartels, they have nothing to do with cartels whatsoever! Medicinal cannabis has cut into the cartels' profits because people who formerly bought cannabis on the black market now do so legally at dispensaries. White is part of a rebellion against Article XVIII, Section 14 of our Constitution, and he is more than willing to try to mislead the voters. Both progressives and true conservatives in northwest Colorado should elect a better replacement -- White's ignorance and dishonesty disqualify him from office. |
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| workingman1 @ 2009-11-09 11:22:40 | Sen. White are you scared you can't control a controlled substance? It's OK. Keep it illegal if you're so scared about it. People will use the distribution system currently in place. No problem! The government can still control it by...what??? Catching about 5 to 10 percent of the product distributed? That's how it's currently 'controlled'. BTW, If you can't keep it out of a prison, what makes you think you control anything. Either way, people will still get anything they want within a couple of hours. Period. No questions asked. No one carded. No ID's presented. No taxes collected. And all proceeds go into the drug gang's or Mexican cartel’s till. It's OK. That’s your way to handle it right? Business as usual. Sen. Grassley you act like it's going away. It's not going anywhere, you just drove it back underground. Oh, by the way, China called and they want you to quit spending their borrowed money on your stupid prohibition. They're nervous and might call in their loans to us. Business as usual.
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| workingman1 @ 2009-11-09 11:25:29 | Sen. White medical marijuana isn't a trick and it's pathetic to pretend that the people trying to legalize marijuana are behaving surreptitiously when smart people have been screaming "legalize marijuana" at the top of their lungs for a damn long time now. The fact is that the medical marijuana debate serves to illustrate so much about the absurdity of marijuana prohibition as a whole. Critics of medical marijuana advocacy often complain that it hasn’t been approved by the FDA and that the whole concept of medicine by referendum is absurd, as though there exists any other path for advocates to take. It really shouldn’t be necessary to explain all the ways in which endemic and entrenched anti-pot prejudice across numerous government agencies renders preposterous any notion that people could just play this out by the usual rules. Marijuana can't be treated like other medicines, because it's nothing like them. It was here first and it's vastly cheaper, safer, and more versatile than its modern pharmaceutical counterparts. It's a bush that just grows out of the ground and what we want is for the government to stop arresting people who've found ways to use it. There's nothing even the least bit complicated or disingenuous about that. Those who now lament the cascading political momentum of medical marijuana as some sort of grand conspiracy have it exactly backwards. Marijuana was prohibited through a vicious series of outrageous lies and perversions of science. We all know the history of racism, demagoguery, and blind hysteria that somehow turned a helpful plant into a scary satanic death bush. From the very beginning, there has never been a time when any of this made sense while tobacco and alcohol use goes on its merry way. Yes, there is a massive lie at the center of this debate, but advocates for medical marijuana are NOT the ones telling it. The crux of it all is the billions of taxpayer dollars WASTED to fund narco enforcement, lawyers, judges and jails. The drug war itself is the true Trojan Horse that masquerades as a symbol of health and safety, while harboring destruction within its folds.
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| RevRayGreen @ 2009-11-09 13:03:12 | is not a drug. |
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| Arijuan @ 2009-11-09 13:18:25 | test.......... |
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| Arijuan @ 2009-11-09 13:22:52 | Our Government is for the people by the people yet Politicians think it is their job to fight against what the general public as voted for.
If you really want to make a difference then EMAIL YOUR POLITICIANS.
It takes 5 minutes to google the email address of politicians and send them your opinion.
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| scottportraits @ 2009-11-09 18:03:41 | Al White is trying to make some political capital from a new industry that is still finding it's own way. His real agenda is to keep us in the 19th century.
Colorado: Wake up to politicians like this, and vote them out.....lest you wake up broke and hungry. |
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| scottportraits @ 2009-11-09 18:04:15 | Al White is trying to make some political capital from a new industry that is still finding it's own way. His real agenda is to keep us in the 19th century.
Colorado: Wake up to politicians like this, and vote them out.....lest you wake up broke and hungry. |
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| brad @ 2009-11-09 18:17:20 | why dont the non patients stay out of it. as a patient i find it a joke that any of you non patients and other non patients like yourself have any idea or clue as to what any patient out there needs in the means of medical marijuana. i do not need the state to tell me who i need to get my meds from. pot isnt a pharmacutical drug in need to be monitored by big brother, it is a plant, that can help with a bunch of ailments. pot isnt coming from cartels or mexican drug lords, its coming from coloradoans, patients and caregivers are making this work, because you dont like seeing a store open in your town, because you still have fears, dont make this out to be something bigger than it really is, leave my meds alone!!! |
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| Dave Jones @ 2009-11-09 19:04:13 | He quotes 600 per day for applications. That's 18000 a month. If your medical card is not issued in the allotted time you are a legal med user until you are rejected. He is running out of voters pretty quickly at that rate. He is an idiot. Vote him out! |
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| Arijuan @ 2009-11-10 08:19:05 | Tomorrow, If marijuana was legalized across the nation, by the end of next week there would be 1,000,000 new jobs created within the cannabis industry simply from the start up of coffee shops and dispenseries across the nation. I do not understand why politicians do not see this vision and see how cannabis could help our country.
Heres the vision. President Barack Obama Legalizes Marijuana. We have 50 states. Lets say on avg 1,000 new small businesses* (the #1 most healthiest way to improve the country*) would open in each state. Each store would average 25 employees. Thats 1.25 million jobs created.
Those business's would only be the start of a domino effect that would start creating jobs and pumping health back into our economy. |
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