TheHollandCompassionClub: Sloppy law snags another medical pot user

Sloppy law snags another medical pot user

1:29 PM |

Posted by TheHollandCompassionClub |

One of this column's cardinal principles is that the people who make Michigan's laws should be held accountable when their work is substandard -- even when the lawmakers in question are the people themselves. And so, on behalf of the 3 million other voters who joined with me to adopt the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act of 2008, I'd like to apologize to medical marijuana users who mistakenly believed the law would protect them from criminal prosecution. In practice, of course, it has done nothing of the sort. And while a good deal of the blame lies with sanctimonious politicians who were determined from the get-go to undermine the medical marijuana law, those of us who supported this sloppily drafted public initiative also bear a share of the responsibility. The latest medical marijuana user to learn firsthand just how badly those who wrote the MMMA botched the job is one Rodney Lee Koon. The 50-year-old Koon was doing 83 m.p.h. in a 55-m.p.h. zone when police in Grand Traverse County pulled him over and discovered, via a blood test, that he had THC -- the chemical compound found in marijuana -- in his system. Although no one contended that Koon was discernibly impaired, Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Alan Schneider charged him under the zero-tolerance provision of Michigan's impaired driving statute, which forbids motorists with even a trace amount of THC in their bloodstreams from operating a motor vehicle. The 0% test Koon, a registered medical marijuana user whose physician had prescribed therapeutic doses of the drug to alleviate pain and nausea arising from a closed head injury, seemed exactly the sort of patient Michigan voters had sought to immunize from prosecution when they approved the MMMA by a lopsided margin. A district court judge dismissed the charge against him, arguing that his registration as a medical marijuana patient precluded his prosecution unless prosecutors could prove that he was actually affected by the amount of marijuana he admitted to smoking five or six hours before his traffic stop. But this week, in a unanimous decision reinstating the criminal charge against Koon, three Michigan Court of Appeals judges noted that the MMMA explicitly allows for prosecution of medical marijuana users who drive "under the influence" of the drug. If voters intended "under the influence" to mean something more lenient than the zero-tolerance standard prescribed by state legislators, the judges agreed, they should have adopted a law that explicitly said so. So shame on us for approving language that afforded opponents of medical marijuana --including Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, whose office submitted a brief supporting the reinstatement of criminal charges against Koon -- such an irresistible opening to subvert our good intentions. A public safety issue? Of course, the Court of Appeals' conclusion that nothing in the MMMA specifically forbids Koon's prosecution doesn't make that prosecution good public policy. If police who interrogated Koon observed nothing to indicate he was impaired, I asked prosecutor Schneider on Wednesday, why throw the book at him? "To me, it's a public safety issue," the prosecutor replied. Determining when a person is medically impaired by marijuana is tricky, he conceded; "there just isn't a lot of good scientific literature." But he said that Michigan is among a majority of states that make driving with any trace of THC in one's bloodstream a crime, and that's good enough for him. "The limit for alcohol is .08," he noted. "A seasoned alcoholic with a high tolerance may not really be impaired at 1.0 -- but I'm still going to charge him." But people who drink know that, as a rule, they can metabolize one serving of alcohol in about an hour. How long after using medical marijuana, I asked Schneider, should a registered user wait before getting behind the wheel? "I don't know what the time period is," the prosecutor conceded. "People are going to have to figure that out for themselves." Contact Brian Dickerson: 313-222-6584 or bdickerson@freepress.com

Sloppy law snags another medical pot user

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