Up North Progressive
Politics and commentary for Northern MichiganNew Federal Spending Bill Will Make Bill Schuette Less Schuette: Medical Marijuana Sellers Rejoice!
Monday , 15, December 2014 Community, Medical Marijuana 2 Comments
Still bummed by the horrible trillion dollar spending bill the U.S. Congress passed over the weekend? Yes, it’s terrible, and it doesn’t help to know how many Democratic congressmen voted for it too. It’s not all bad news though.
Unless you’re Attorney General Bill Schuette.
Buried in that 1600 page bill is a thin silver lining for medical marijuana sellers in Michigan. When President Obama signs that crappy bill into law, Bill Schuette’s federal funding to harass and persecute medical marijuana sellers disappears. That’s right, states with medical marijuana laws can no longer be prosecuted by the Justice Department. Thank Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California for adding that spending cut to the bill. Once the funding is gone, law enforcement won’t be as enthused to bust medical marijuana producers and sellers.
In 2008 Michigan voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of allowing medical marijuana in the state. The law requires patients to apply for a medical marijuana card. Sellers also must follow specific guidelines restricting how many patients they can grow medical marijuana for and how much they can provide for each patient.
In August, 2011, Bill Schuette and the Michigan State Police launched an aggressive state-wide campaign against medical marijuana sellers operating out of storefront shops. They closed down nearly every dispensary in a matter of days. Bill Schuette argued that the law said nothing about running medical marijuana shops, so they were illegal. In February, 2013, Schuette won a case in the state Supreme Court that criminalized medical marijuana sellers. Patients were still allowed to use marijuana to medicate; it became illegal to sell marijuana to medical marijuana patients.
While a battle wages in the state legislature to reverse that decision, the federal spending bill is going to also help out medical marijuana sellers in the state.
What motivates Bill Schuette to be so, well, Schuette to medical marijuana supporters? Bill Schuette is heir to the Dow Chemical empire. He’s rich, white, well-connected and has ambitious political plans. Bill Schuette believes that in 2018 when it’s time for the rich, white privileged nerd to vacate the governor’s seat, it will be his turn to sit in it. One way to do that is appear tough on crime, so medical marijuana is easy pickings.
But now it’s about to get much harder for Bill Schuette to be Schuette to people legally providing their patients with much needed medicine. A positive light in an otherwise horrible piece of federal legislation.
JustDan says: I don’t believe this article is accurate, and worst it’s misleading, which may cause individuals to believe they’re protected when they’re really not. The bill passed by congress states:
“None of the funds made available in this act to the Department of Justice may be used……to prevent such States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana”
Before it can be protected from federal prosecution, it must first be protected under State law. Sales to patients from anyone but their registered caregiver is still illegal in Michigan. Thus the Federal government can still prosecute people. Plus, Bill Schuette can still go after people for infringing the State law itself and doesn’t even need the Feds at this point in time.
Thanks for the chance to comment here.
I’m convinced that prohibition of marijuana is a premise built on a tissue of lies: Concern For Public Safety. Our new laws save hundreds of lives every year, on our highways alone. In November of 2011 a study at the University of Colorado found that, in the thirteen states that decriminalized marijuana between 1990 and 2009, traffic fatalities have dropped by nearly nine percent—now nearly ten percent in Michigan–while sales of beer went flat by five percent. No wonder Big Alcohol opposes it. Ambitious, unprincipled, profit-driven undertakers might be tempted too.
Actually, most people–and particularly patients who medicate with marijuana–use it in place of prescription drugs or alcohol.
I recently reviewed the Federal Census stats on yearly driving fatalities state by state, from 1990 to 2009. All states, ‘legal’ or not, have seen their death rates drop, but on average, those with medical marijuana laws have posted declines 12% larger than the non-medical states. Public Safety Announcements and vehicles with airbags must have helped as well, consistently throughout the country, without affecting the disproportion between the ‘legal states’ and those ‘not yet, in 2009’.
In 2012 a study released by 4AutoinsuranceQuote cited statistics revealing that marijuana users are safer drivers than non-marijuana users, as “the only significant effect that marijuana has on operating on a motor vehicle is slower driving”, which “is arguably a positive thing”. Despite occasional accidents, eagerly reported by police-blotter ‘journalists’ as ‘marijuana-related’, a mix of substances was often involved. Alcohol, most likely, and/or prescription drugs, nicotine, caffeine, meth, cocaine, heroin, and a trace of the marijuana passed at a party last week. However, on the whole, as revealed in big-time, insurance-industry stats, within the broad swath of mature, experienced consumers, slower and more cautious driving shows up in significant numbers. Legalization should improve those numbers further.
Marijuana has many benefits, most of which are under-reported or never mentioned in American newspapers. Research at the University of Saskatchewan indicates that, unlike alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or Nancy (“Just say, ‘No!’”) Reagan’s beloved nicotine, marijuana is a neuro-protectant which actually encourages brain-cell growth. Research in Spain (the Guzman study) and other countries has discovered that it has tumor-shrinking, anti-carcinogenic properties. These were confirmed by the 30-year Tashkin population study at UCLA.
Drugs are man-made, cooked up in labs, for the sake of patents and the profits gained by them. Often useful, but typically burdened with cautionary notes and lists of side effects as long as one’s arm. ‘The works of Man are flawed.’
Marijuana is a medicinal herb, the most benign and versatile in history. “Cannabis” in Latin, and “kaneh bosm” in the old Hebrew scrolls, quite literally the Biblical Tree of Life, used by early Christians to treat everything from skin diseases to deep pain and despair. The very name, “Christ” translates as “the anointed one”. Well then, anointed with what? It’s a fair question. And it wasn’t holy water, friends. Holy water came into wide use in the Middle Ages. In Biblical times it was used by a few tribes of Greek pagans. But Christ was neither Greek nor pagan.
Medicinal oil, for the Prince of Peace. A formula from the Biblical era has been rediscovered. It specifies a strong dose of oil from kaneh bosom, ‘the fragrant cane’ of a dozen uses: ink, paper, rope, nutrition. . . . It was clothing on their backs and incense in their temples. And a ‘skinful’ of medicinal oil could certainly calm one’s nerves, imparting a sense of benevolence and connection with all living things. No wonder that the ‘anointed one’ could gain a spark, an insight, a sense of the divine, and the confidence to convey those feelings to friends and neighbors.
I am appalled at the number of ‘Christian’ politicians, prosecutors, and police who pose on church steps or kneeling in prayer on their campaign trails, but cannot or will not face the scientific or the historical truths about cannabis, Medicinal Herb Number One, safe and effective for thousands of years, and celebrated by most of the world’s major religions.