Ottawa Compassionate Care

LANSING — Sen. Wayne Kuipers introduced legislation Wednesday that would develop necessary regulations for medical marijuana use in Michigan, to protect the public and ensure the drug is not abused.

Use of medical marijuana was approved by Michigan voters in November 2008 through a statewide ballot initiative.

“This legislation is not meant to condone medical marijuana or undermine the will of the public that overwhelmingly voted to allow marijuana usage for medical purposes,” said Kuipers, R-Holland.  “While I did not vote for the ballot initiative in November, my focus now is to establish a set of regulations to help ensure that medical marijuana is not abused.”

Senate Bill 618, sponsored by Kuipers, would require pharmacists to purchase medical marijuana from licensed growers and provide for the licensure of 10 growers statewide who would be subject to annual inspections.

Other measures in the package would:

• Treat medical marijuana the same as other schedule two narcotics by restricting a user’s ability to obtain the drug;
• Require the drug to be purchased only through a pharmacist with a prescription from a doctor; and
• Create sentencing guidelines of up to two years in prison for violators.

“The purpose of these bills is to protect the public by putting in place common sense safeguards and oversight necessary to make sure medical marijuana is safe and used appropriately,” Kuipers said.

Senate Bills 616-618 have been sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration.

Well it looks like we have seen the first of the lobby attempts by the pharmacists of the State to gain control of this industry and gain a huge profit. One problem Sen. Kuipers is missing is that none of scenarios in his plan can work under the current federally regulated system. And everyone knows we don’t need anymore sentencing guidelines.

By giving full control of this system to the pharmacists he is in effect eliminating the bill we Michiganders voted for in majority in EVERY district. He is doing this because the pharmacists, once given control, will be hand tied by federal regulation that gives them no ability to distribute medical cannabis legally. Doctors also cannot prescribe cannabis in Michigan since it is illegal. Right now they offer a recommendation. So Sen Kuipers law would be forcing doctors to write and illegal prescription, and making pharmacists unable to distribute the medicine legally will nullify the current law.

Sen. Kuipers either does not have a very good grasp of the federal laws, or is planning a backdoor nullification of our current medical cannabis legislation, or he just decide to throw some poorly researched legislation out there for whatever reason. Sen. Kuipers, you need to wake up and do your research, this will not work. By the way I am not sure if he has read the current law as it stands right now but it was developed directly from Orgeon’s law that is working splendidly. The law already has plenty of safeguards to protect patients and doctors and provides for a regulated delivery system with State approved caregivers. Doctors are the gatekeepers to the medical cannabis right now and that is how it should be.

Contact him and let him know what you think of this legislation.
senwkuipers@senate.michigan.gov