There was an interesting paradox in the news about the Arizona
Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA) this week. As Arizoneout
reported in a
June 7, 2012 post, Tuesday, August 7, 2012 was the day
the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) conducted a
lottery to determine who would get the chance to open dispensaries
in areas where there were multiple qualified applicants.
The Arizona Republic ran a piece on August 7 under the
headline, "
Big day for medical pot," featuring a photo of a
30-year-old Qualified Patient (QP), Scott, hanging long stems of
cannabis on a line like laundry. Scott and his girlfriend,
Jody, 44, also a QP, invested $5,000 to turn a spare bedroom of
their "nondescript, tan stucco home in a booming Maricopa
neighborhood" into a grow-room for marijuana.
Scott and Jody smoke marijuana throughout the day to ease chronic
pain caused by vehicle and other accidents. Scott apparently
is employed as an ironworker. (Sounds safety-sensitive,
donʼt you think?) He and Jody were complaining to the
Republic that the opening of dispensaries would be a financial
hardship to them, because then they would lose their cultivation
privileges when they next renewed their QP ID cards.
Thatʼs because the AMMA was designed to restrict
dispersed urban cultivation of the kind that is going on all over
Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale, Tucson, Flagstaff, and Prescott
today. The drafters of the AMMA crafted it so that QPs who
live within 25 miles of a dispensary must buy their pot from
a dispensary. The folks who put the AMMA on the ballot
thought it was better to have the cultivation and sale of marijuana
tightly controlled and strictly regulated.
Governor Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne delayed the
implementation of the dispensaries envisioned by the act for a year
by suing on the eve of the original "go" date, and
ultimately had their lawsuit dismissed. On Monday, August 6,
2012, the eve of the dispensary lottery, Horne issued a formal
"
Attorney Generalʼs Opinion," declaring that the
AMMA provisions authorizing dispensaries were preempted by federal
law. The other parts of the AMMA, such as those giving QPs
and their caregivers the right to possess and use marijuana and
making it a violation of Arizona law for employers to hold that
against them, are not preempted, however, according to
Horneʼs formal opinion.
The dispensary lottery went forward as scheduled, with AG
Horneʼs blessing, because having a dispensary registration
certificate is not state permission to open and start selling
pot. There are other steps that have to be completed,
including a state inspection, and dispensaries must have an
operating certificate to open.
So now there are 68 folks who are the proud holders of dispensary
certificates, thanks to the bounce of the bingo ball. Another
29 have certificates because they were the only qualified
applicants in the areas. (Two areas have would-be
dispensaries, but the issue is tied up in litigation.
Naturally.)
ADHS Director Will Humble at one point was predicting there could
be dispensaries open by September. But who knows now how long
the legal wrangling will block them. Horne ended his
press release about the formal legal opinion by advising
dispensary certificate holders "that it would be prudent to
delay additional work and expenditures pending resolution of the
preemption issue by a court."
So once again the stateʼs top lawyer has moved to block
the full implementation of the AMMA and put the dispensaries in
limbo. And all the while, ADHS will continue to license QPs,
and they will be working for you and buying from criminal drug
dealers or growing their own in homes scattered across the
state. Because Horne thinks thatʼs better?
Originally published in Arizonaout
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