Rhode Island

[budman]

Interview: Carl Sheeler, Democratic Candidate For Senate In Rhode Island

August 09, 2006
Dave Nalle
Blogcritics.org

I was recently approached by a representative of the Carl Sheeler campaign about possibly interviewing the candidate. Sheeler is in a hotly contested primary with Sheldon Whitehouse over the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Lincoln Chafee. He was taking a shot in the dark to see if I'd be interested in interviewing the candidate before the upcoming Democratic Primary on September 12th.

Given the short notice and the fact that I'm not particularly tied-in to Rhode Island politics, I hesitated to do the interview even though they wanted all the publicity they could get. My knowledge of Rhode Island mainly comes from visiting with my sister who lives in Naragansett. But certain aspects of the Sheeler campaign compelled my interest, particularly because he is one of the 'Fighting Dem' veterans who are running in primaries all around the nation and challenging the Democratic Party status-quo.

Since I'm working on other articles on the campaign, including one on the 'Fighting Dems', finding out more about Sheeler first hand seemed like a great opportunity. Plus he's interesting. He's a veteran and a successful businessman, yet his viewpoint is pretty far to the left of insider Democrats like his primary opponent Sheldon Whitehouse. And boy is he to the left. He's got links to Democratic Underground and DailyKos on his site, and is promoting Sen. John Conyers' efforts to impeach President Bush. He also has some unusual and even innovative ideas. His underdog campaign has attracted some notice and gained some steam in the last few weeks, but it's particularly notable for the way that it has been overlooked by the media, written-off by insiders and even ignored by the pollsters. The question is whether he'll have better luck attracting the attention of voters and stage a surprising upset on the 12th.

For those not familiar with the other players in this race, Lincoln Chafee is the incumbent Republican. He's relatively young and running for what would be his second term in a seat which was previously held by his father. He's about as Liberal as a Republican can get, earning considerable ire in his own party for some of his positions, such as his strong pro-choice stance and being the only Republican Senator to vote against the War in Iraq. Some Republicans have even suggested supporting a more conservative Democrat challenger just to get Chafee out of office. Chafee actually faces a stiff primary challenge himself from Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey.

Sheeler's opponent in the primary is Sheldon Whitehouse, former Rhode Island Attorney General and Democratic candidate for governor. Whitehouse is a political insider whose platform is pretty much the straight Democratic party line. He's got the party machine and party money behind him. He actually comes off as a bit more conservative than Chafee, and the most recent Rasmussen Poll shows him potentially beating Chafee by 5 points in the general election.

I have to admit upfront that I think Sheeler remains a longshot, though the primary is still very much up in the air with a lot of undecided voters. But regardless of whether he wins or loses, he's an articulate voice for a strong and growing element of the Democratic Party which ought to be heard. So I did a little research and put together a set of questions covering the major issues, and got these interesting and sometimes surprising answers:

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: A recent Rasmussen poll shows your primary opponent beating either Lincoln Chafee or Steve Laffey in the general election, and although you've made impressive strides in catching up, you still have to be considered a long shot. Why should dedicated Democrats vote for you instead of Sheldon Whitehouse if he can deliver victory in November and you're an unknown quantity? You've commented "If Lincoln Chafee had run as a Democrat or Independent, I might not be running for U.S. Senate." Will you be able to run effectively against him if you get the nomination?</span>

CS: Ninety days before the 2002 gubernatorial elections few people knew who Don Carcieri was, as he had not previously held elected office...however, between Sheldon Whitehouse not lending support after his defeat to his primary opponent, Myrth York, and despite York's two prior runs, Carcieri became our Republican governor.

This event speaks volumes. Likeability is a key attribute in RI's retail politics and Sheldon does not have that "mojo". Paul Wellstone was also an unknown quantity and he defeated four primary candidates and a two-term GOP incumbent because of his populist support and views.

RI Democrats fall into two distinct categories - "anybody but Sheldon" and those who support the establishment "machine" candidate. Then there is the significant number of Independents who who are less concerned about the ruling party and more so interested in what the candidate and his/her campaign offer.

I offer a background as a middle class father of five, business owner, and a court appointed financial expert with the ability to listen, think and act - not carefully scripted sound bites with very little substance. People are smart and empty promises don't resonate. My time as a Marine Combat and Staff Officer taught me to stay focused on taking care of people and that is exactly what public service is supposed to be.

It's not a legacy. It's leadership. It's building bridges and making concessions among groups with disparate agendas. This is why even Sheldon finds me "very likable". Great ideas, passion and connecting with a wide range of people are key to winning the primary and general elections. These are offered by my campaign.

I have very strong support from local and national Veterans and peace groups, which is why both Chafee and Sheldon are spending over a million in ad buys targeting these groups. Sheldon is running on "he's a Republican" therefore vote for me. Leadership is "we can pull together and get our country back." When you strip the "R" and "D" away from the candidates, Sheldon fails to offer a real compelling difference.

The Latino and minority communities support my campaign because they've been ignored and the immigration issue is a tipping point putting many into primary elections this year. Small business owners and social activists are very supportive. They are a critical component to our campaign. The one area of strong dominance is our carefully nurtured outreach to faith-based leadership that includes over 200 parishes.

Sheldon's special interests money machine is formidable... but he simply can't dance and whining over $350 an hour boredom as an "of counsel" attorney at a prestigious law firm while looking out his window and "it's my legacy" with some skeleton's in his A/G closet are not ways to win the hearts and minds of Rhode Islanders.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: You have said of the Whitehouse campaign:
<blockquote>
<i>"I'm running because his campaign has repeatedly merely attacked Chafee and the Republican Party instead of offering real solutions to our bread and butter issues that we working families experience."</i>
</blockquote>
Yet you've put up a billboard just outside Providence which reads "Be Patriotic, Impeach Bush" on one side and "Fund Our Future, Not Bush's War" on the other. Doesn't that amount to very much the same thing – running against Bush and his policies rather than running against Sheldon Whitehouse?</span>

CS: On the contrary, do Americans expect if they work hard and play by the rules will have meaning if their leaders are not going to adhere to the fundamental principles of our Constitution? They know tax cuts for the top 1% earning $750,000+ annually; especially, during time of war is not fair. They know they're down $3500 in discretionary pay just since 2001 due to high energy costs that can be associated with big energy lobbyists and this war. They know Halliburton and big special interests are eroding their lives' pursuit of the American dream and that of their kids. They know they've been lied to and are as disenfranchised with many of our democratic leaders as they are with Republican elected.

Finally, they know if we don't put leadership into our Congress great hopes of domestic security, single payer national healthcare, high quality education K - College and ebergy independence are just "me too" claims with no substance of being realized. They want accountability and this cannot happen with our presence in Iraq and few willing to fight for checks and balances that preserve our Constitutional rights.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: You're one of the 'Fighting Dems', with a background of military service the Marines in the first Iraq War. There has been some concern that Democratic Party leadership hasn't supported the Fighting-Dems as wholeheartedly as they might have, throwing more money and support behind more conventional, 'insider' candidates who don't challenge the status quo in the party. This certainly seems to have been a problem in your campaign where Whitehouse has gotten all the attention and you've been virtually ignored. How big a mistake is the party making by shying away from more progressive candidates and failing to support the 'Fighting Dems’?</span>

CS: "Can do!" It's a simple phrase, but means a great deal. Military service is about more than strong patriotism and national pride. It is about getting the job done and minimizing partisanship. We used to have a Congress that would cross aisles on most major life altering legislation. Since many among the establishment Democratic leadership have moved to the right and feed from the same trough as their GOP counterparts, they've broken their social contract with our country's middle class that includes "Family. Faith. Flag." They have minimized the very serious nature of putting lives in harm's way. They are shells and not leaders who make command decisions based on the right thing to do and not what is politically expedient.

There's over 30 days until our primary and Sheldon's polls aren't really budging. He lacks the needed gravitas that money can't buy. Earning it does not mean spending 15 minutes at a gathering, but hours. Seems to me we're getting a lot more attention because of the netroots and populist support that the high paid DC advisors can't adequately respond to other than the self-serving media buys that can't buy love.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: You have some innovative ideas on education, including providing additional support for public education through a charitable fund and the creation of a national lottery to raise education money without raising taxes. State lotteries which fund education have come under fire as being like a tax on the poor and uneducated disproportionately to pay for schools. Wouldn't this also be the case with a national lottery?</span>

CS: Thank you. Our global competitiveness and ensuring good paying jobs will always be well rooted in quality education initiatives; especially, in the Maths and Sciences. Las Vegas would never be the same again and I think you'll find that not only the poor enjoy gaming. In fact, an argument could be made that when the poor folks do buy lottery tickets for education it relieves the tax burden on other social programs thay have to compete for allocation.

People want to have the hope of the big money and when it's their choice to pay to play versus to be taxed, they'll always gravitate to choice.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: Former Providence School Board member Julia Steiny had an editorial in the Providence Journal last week which made a very strong argument for the expansion of school choice in Rhode Island, following the example set by nearby Boston. Her ideas are echoed by parents and inner-city and minority activist groups which are crying out for school choice as a solution to the chronic problems in education all over the country. The current administration seems to have gone down the wrong path with its "No Child Left Behind" plan. Would you, as a Senator, consider participation in a federal effort to promote innovative education solutions like charter schools, multi-district choice and even educational vouchers?</span>

CS: The Bill Gates Foundation is spot on. It's not leave no child behind, it's leave no school behind. The bar has to be raised for expectation of the role of the community on our parents, unions and teachers that involves both during- and after-school programs supported by big and small businesses as well as civic and faith based organizations. No plan works without having local community involvement and high expectations. An absence of funding will cripple a school system as will chronic spending with no clear performance milestones.

The choices above address the symptoms and don't fix the root cause of failure to adequately prepare our kids for further learning, life and work following graduation. What will and has worked is more than lipservice is ensuring our at risk kids' educational investment is made.

Otherwise, more funds will be expended in law enforcement and judicial process than in ensuring an adequate environment exists to learn. I'd welcome the federal government's commitment to an investment in our kid's future no matter what form it may take if it can be shown to work.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: One of the most important questions facing our legislators in the next few years is the issue of our ongoing dependence on foreign oil, which makes us vulnerable to manipulation by foreign powers, weakens our economy and even drags us into war. What measures would you take to establish energy independence for the United States? Would you consider methods to increase domestic production such as drilling in ANWR and off the coast of Florida? Would you support government programs to encourage construction of new Nuclear power plants? How would you reduce demand for oil for automobiles and accelerate a shift to alternative fuel vehicles?</span>

CS: Industry experts state the amount of energy needed to drill in ANWR and the level of proven reserves are inadequate to provide more than a year's worth of oil for US consumption. Technology advances have changed considerably since the last construction of American based nuclear power plants. France has 30% of it's power use from nuclear, so this ought not to be removed from our options to fuel our residential and commercial electric grid use.

I've shared two examples of not just thinking out of the box, but getting rid of the box entirely. First, instead of giving the glutinous oil companies any further tax subsidies ($12.5 Billion this year), we could apply these funds towards an immediate mandate that all state and local vehicles (from trucks to school buses) are hybrid, hydrogen and/or biodiesel compatible in three years.

This would cut pollution and consumption dramatically as well as lower petroleum prices, but is only the first stage in demonstrating energy independence that could transition to the public to purchase this ability at lower cost as the demand increases. It produces jobs because of the new technology manufacture to create such durable products.

The second stage is to have federally funded investment in the many patents already existing similar to the billions of taxpayers funds spent annually by DARPA for defense and military R&D. In fact, our military benefits because fuel consumption is a major logistical hurdle for combat operational planning and our military is the single largest consumer of petroleum products in the world. This investment would require the same Manhattan Project mandate and collaboration using our best and brightest in academia and private industry that would be comparable to Kennedy's quest to put a man on the moon.

It could and should revise our lives and rewrite history.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: The Iraq War, the situation in the Middle East and the continuing threat of terrorism will also loom large for legislators in the immediate future. Clearly you oppose the War in Iraq, but do you have any ideas on how we could effectively withdraw and leave behind a functioning nation? How do you suggest that we deal with the rise of sectarian violence and terrorism in the region and the possibility that it might very well spill over to the United States again as it did on 9/11?</span>

CS: I answer this question in a recent blog. I will summarize here. First, 9/11 and Iraq have NOTHING to do with each other. Second, the US military is not a police force and not in the business of nation building. Our energy and foreign policy have been short sighted and debilitating then as well as now in our relations in the Middle East. My exit strategy had a precise how and when and was published at my website and shared with 7,000 RI veterans.

We should have been out after their drafting of their Constitution. Over 80% of VFW members oppose this war and call for the immediate withdrawal. How many lives are lost in 6 days, weeks, months or years... so we somehow feel we can save face. Your military readers will know what FUBAR and Cluster F**k mean. You don't put good young men and women in harm's way without a good plan getting in and coming out. You certainly don't politicize the decision and change the rules to fit the current assessment.

National security has been a buzzword, but Bush looking to contract with Arab nations to protect our ports; an absence of adequate funds and guard to have a real domestic security program; withdrawing from Afghanistan and foregoing the search for Osama bin Laden have done nothing to make our citizens safer, but it sure as hell made a lot of large contractors wealthier. It is unpatriotic to use fear the way this administration has done. No president has done less even when the "threat" of China and the USSR and their military and nuclear capability was always more dramatic and risky.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: Our prisons are bursting at the seams, much of that overcrowding caused by huge numbers of harmless citizens sent there as a result of the War on , a war which costs us tens of billions of dollars every year, makes organized crime more widespread and more profitable, and has led to government abuse of the rights of citizens under the 4th Amendment to the Constitution. The leading edge of the fight to bring and end to decades disastrous drug policy is the effort to legalize medical marijuana. If you were elected would you support legislation like the Hinchey-Rohrbacher Amendment to protect the rights of medical marijuana users?</span>

CS: Your question is a canard. Legalizing marijuana for medical use is not the same thing as widespread use of other illegal drugs causing incarceration for possession or distribution. I do believe that the underlying premise is correct. I'd support proven medical use to be legalized.

We expend the wrong amount of resources on apprehending, arresting, processing, trying and incarcerating those whose crime it is to have small quantities of marijuana. Prevention and offering life changing alternatives are simply less costly. What the former does is provides training to become more experienced and hardened criminals that also has a higher social cost.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: As it currently exists Social Security is not doing a great job of serving the needs of the public for a decent retirement system. Those who do not pension plans or investments are depending on it, and the system is inefficient, structurally unsound and has been described as a 'ponzi scheme' with good reason. A shrinking workforce cannot continue to provide for the needs of an ever growing population of the elderly indefinitely. The system has to be changed or readjusted in some way. At current rates, investing a worker's Social Security contributions in the safest possible investment - like Treasury Bills - over the course of his lifetime, would provide more than 50% greater income in retirement than the current system. Would you consider supporting at least a partial transition of younger workers or those who are willing to give up any prior claim on the current system, into a government insured and structured retirement investment plan?</span>

CS: Actually, there is a real debate about two issues. First, should our government be using the surplus the SS fund has produced for years for other than retirement purposes? Our elected have abused this piggy bank for other expenditures. Companies are not allowed to use pension funds for operations; however, our elected don't feel such rules apply to them. This is wrong and privatization is not the answer.

The second issue is are the rates of return and withdrawals are as depicted and is the "risk" of social security a strawman, so the investment industry can make billions of dollars by privatizing? In fact, these funds are backed by federal instruments (IOU's) with much of the debt ironicaly funded by China. It's ironic because more could and should be done to turn the tide of lost jobs to the Far East. This has also depressed wages, which, in turn, provides lower retirment accounts. Increasing pay to living wage would also create higher withholdings.

I'd also not agree that our population is growing smaller. The increase in immigrants and their tendency to have more children will expand the work force as will investment in alternative energy and biotechnology seeking better quality of life drug therapies for our seniors.

Should there be a legitimate risk of underfunded Social Security, then the first measure ought to be revising the system to a "needs based". It was not intended as a full retirement program, but a supplement. If one has saved well and is wealthy with 7% return on say $1 million saved in marketable securities is the $70,000 adequate to live on and should the amount of entitlement be the same as a less fortunate individual?

Also, I'd argue that the cap be removed and a donut hole be created for those earning between $50,000 and $100,000. After the withholdings are paid below $50,000 no more is withheld until after $100,000. It is a fair way to earmark funds for society by those who have the greatest benefit from it as FDR had intended. It would also allow for a lower withholding due to number and level of incomes over $100,000.

<span class=postbold><b>DN</b>: The question of illegal immigration has become one of the most hotly contested policy issues of the new millennium. Do you have any novel ideas how to reform our immigration system so that it protects our borders our economy and addresses the obvious desire of so many immigrants, especially from Mexico, to come to America and pursue the American dream > just as our immigrant ancestors did before them?</span>

CS: Immigration is a real issue, but it's a wedge one initiated just like flag-burning, choice and marriage equality to divide Democrats who are establishment and those who are progressive.

Since the Carter/Reagan era amnesty there has been no direct correlation demonstrated that undocumented workers who became citizens did not produce a net benefit to our economy. What is factual is that since 9/11, 60% of the estimated 12 million entered into our country, which says much for Bush's real agenda and desire for national security. Let's start by making sure those hiring undocumented workers are fined... not just lipservice. Strengthen our borders with manpower and technology, but not with walls. Reagan and prior administrations tried and succeeded in bringing down the Berlin Wall and our legacy is above creating new one on our Southern border. The symbolism and reality are at odds.

The elements, after some further refining, are solid and non-discriminatory in the Kennedy-McCain bill. It's not practical to expend tens of billions of dollars in identifying, locating, apprehending, arresting, incarcerating, processing, adjudicating and deporting millions of people. Laws were broken, fines paid, felons deported, tax evasion not permitted, language skills and employment required before citizenship being considered. It has teeth and ought to be achieved when we know we have the security in place to reduce further illegal entry.

Second, create a Coalition of Americas that builds a bridge between Latin America and the US, like the European Union. That strengthens our security and provides greater incentive for our nation and corporations to develop middle class economies in these countries to purchase our goods, which in turn stimulates increased production and more jobs here in the U.S.

This also reduces the economic need for people not wishing to leave their communities and families to come to our country. What is a real problem is we have bottled necked highly skilled and educated labor wanting to come to the US and instead going to Europe and other countries where their abilities will give them an additional global competitive edge. It's shortsighted on our part.

Thanks for the opportunity.

[Midnight toker]

SSDP mobilizes against Higher Education Act

<table class=posttable align=right width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img src=bin/leaf_large.jpg width=300></td></tr></table>Written by Josh Tobias
Brown Daily Herald(Brown U.)
September 14, 2006


(U-WIRE) PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Students might expect smoking marijuana to make them a little red-eyed or necessitate a late night excursion to Josiah's. What students might not know, however, is that lighting up a joint can also lead to something more ominous -- the loss of federal financial aid.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy, a national organization with a Brown University chapter that was founded in 2003, has been working to promote awareness about the drug provision of the Higher Education Act. The act was passed in 1965 to provide federal financial aid to low-income students, and the provision was added when the act was renewed in 1998. The provision prevents students who have been convicted of drug charges from receiving any federal financial aid.

If a Brown student were to lose federal financial aid, the Office of Financial Aid would not compensate students for lost federal funds, said Susan Farnum, interim director of financial aid. But Farnum said the drug provision has not yet affected potential financial aid applicants.

"It hasn't been a situation that we've encountered yet," Farnum said.

SSDP has worked on reforming the act in the past. In order to raise awareness about the drug provision, SSDP has organized demonstrations on the Main Green and lobbied local politicians to oppose the provision. A recent piece of legislation proposed by District 12 State Rep. Joseph Almeida, a Democrat, has called for Rhode Island to separate state aid from federal financial aid.

"If you don't have the money to go to college and you are caught with drugs, instead of providing you with an education, (the provision) demonizes people who have taken a drug even though that's 50 percent of America," said Matt Palevsky '07, a former vice president of SSDP. Palevsky added that approximately 150,000 students nationwide have been disqualified from financial aid because of prior drug convictions.

Palevsky claimed the provision unfairly targets low-income and minority students because they are statistically more likely to be arrested for drug charges. As a result, students who most need federal financial aid face the greatest obstacles in attaining it, he said.

"(Former American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Ira Glasser) has said that the movement to reform drug policy is the new civil rights movement," Palevsky said. "It disproportionately affects poor people, people of color, people in cities."

SSDP members also argue the drug provision takes opportunities away from people who might be trying to break a drug habit.

"People who have drug problems, who want to get out of that life, are not given the chance to do that," said Nureen Ghuznavi '08, also a former vice president of SSDP.

The law also does not deter students from using drugs, members of SSDP said, because the drug provision is not well publicized. Even most Brown students are not aware of how many people are affected by the drug provision, they said.

Some progress has been made recently in reforming the drug provision of the Higher Education Act, Ghuznavi said. Last spring, Congress amended the bill limiting the provision to drug offenses committed during college.

The organization has recently focused on other drug policy issues, according to its members. Two major issues for this semester are medical marijuana and voting rights for incarcerated felons. Still, the drug provision remains a concern for SSDP.

"The war on drugs isn't going to help our drug problem -- it is discriminatory against people of color and people of low income," Ghuznavi said.

[budman]

131 now have marijuana cards
<blockquote>
In addition to those patients, 129 "caregivers" have obtained state cards that allow them to supply up to five patients each with marijuana for medical purposes.
</blockquote>

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 19, 2006

BY FELICE J. FREYER
Journal Medical Writer
The Providence Journal


When Rhonda O'Donnell took her first puff of marijuana -- her first, that is, since her teen years -- the effect was immediate.

"I'm a nurse," said O'Donnell, 43, of Warwick. "I was shocked."

Her legs often burn with pain from multiple sclerosis, an illness that also forced her out of her beloved job at Rhode Island Hospital. But when she took that first hit of marijuana, she felt a cooling sensation moving up her legs. In seconds, her legs "felt like normal legs just sitting there."

She was still disabled by MS, of course, but for a time, the pain was gone.

O'Donnell waited a long time for that relief -- because she didn't want to break the law. She was among the people who fought to make Rhode Island the 11th state to legalize marijuana for medical purposes, with a law that took effect Jan. 3.

In April, she was the first person to apply to the Health Department for the card that will protect her from prosecution by state and local authorities, as long as she doesn't have more than 2.5 ounces or 12 plants.

And today, nearly seven months later, she is one of 131 people who have obtained such cards. Applicants had to get written certification from their doctor saying they have one of the illnesses specified in the law (including cancer, glaucoma, hepatitis C, chronic pain or AIDS) and that the potential benefits of marijuana outweigh the risks. Eighty-nine different doctors have signed such certificates, putting to rest fears that patients would flock to one or two "pot docs."

The 131 patients are a much lower number than health officials expected, but then they didn't know what to expect. The $75 fee for the card was based on an estimate -- a wild guess, really -- that 1,500 people would sign up. "We had no idea, to be perfectly honest with you," said Charles Alexandre, chief of health professions regulation. "We were shooting in the dark."

But Karen O'Keefe, assistant director of state policies with the Marijuana Policy Project, a California-based group that is working to legalize medical marijuana around the country, said that the 131 sounded about right to her. It's similar to the number in Montana, where more than 100 signed up in the first year and 238 now have cards, she said.

In addition to the 131 patients, 129 "caregivers" have obtained Rhode Island marijuana cards. Under the law, these caregivers provide marijuana to registered patients who can't or don't want to grow it on their own. They're allowed to supply up to five patients each, and to possess up 12 plants and 2.5 ounces per patient.

Where do patients and caregivers get the plants? The law's sponsors and advocates assumed that the seeds would be purchased from illegal sources. Additionally, possessing marijuana remains illegal under federal law; federal drug agents could prosecute growers and users, regardless of their state marijuana cards.

It's emblematic of the situation's ambiguity that, despite her strong desire to be law-abiding, O'Donnell did end up breaking the law for a little while. Shortly before the medical marijuana law passed, she accepted a gift of a small amount of marijuana. She kept it in her possession, but says that she didn't touch it till she had her card. She's using marijuana so infrequently, and needs so little, that her initial supply has not yet been depleted.

O'Donnell says she's very active with her family and her MS support group, so she's going out often; she won't smoke unless she plans to stay home -- and her legs are hurting at the time. "I didn't want the high effect," she said. "Two hits and I'm done."

O'Donnell says people come to her for referrals to doctors who will sign the marijuana certificate. She advises them to simply ask their own doctors. The Rhode Island Medical Society supported the legalization of medical marijuana, and many doctors are willing to help their patients in this way, O'Donnell said.

She tells the story of a friend, also with MS, who hesitated to ask her neurologist about medical marijuana. When the friend finally raised the issue, the doctor didn't bat an eye -- he had the necessary forms right in his drawer.

O'Donnell also encourages people not to be intimidated by the Health Department application. "It's so simple," she says. "It's just one sheet." The law requires the Health Department to protect the confidentiality of those who apply for or receive marijuana cards.

Additionally, although the standard fee is $75, people who are on Medicaid, SSI or SSDI pay only $10. (The Health Department's Alexandre said that half the people who obtained cards qualified for the discounted rate.)

As for procuring the drug, O'Donnell says that marijuana has been "around" for so long that people can find it. She advises her friends to ask people in their support groups.

Some people ask at the Health Department. They don't get answers, says Alexandre, nor do they get questions about where they plan to obtain the drug.

"I don't ask," Alexandre says. "They frequently ask me where to get it. We have to do a bit of explaining."

Warren Dolbashian, 35, of Cranston, another advocate for the medical marijuana law, says he'd been smoking marijuana illegally for many years to treat his chronic pain from injuries in motorcycle accidents and his Tourette's syndrome. He even was arrested for possession in 2000.

He prefers marijuana to narcotic painkillers, which can be sedating or addictive. The pill form of marijuana worked inconsistently. By smoking a joint, he can choose the exact dosage he needs. "I'm not looking to get high," Dolbashian says. "I just want to be comfortable."

He gets his marijuana from the same young man who has always supplied him -- only this person now has a state marijuana caregiver card.

Now, Dolbashian says, "I don't have to be afraid. I don't have a fear of the police busting down my door."

For more information about the state's medical marijuana program, go to www.health.state.ri.us/hsr/mmp/

ffreyer@projo.com / (401) 277-7397

[palmspringsbum]

Like it or not, this will probably be a major story.

Man accused of smoking pot with girls he met on Internet

The Boston Globe
October 11, 2006

SCITUATE, R.I. --An Exeter man who is permitted by the state to use medical marijuana is accused of meeting teenage girls through his MySpace Web site and giving them pot.

Steven Trimarco, 48, faces 19 misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and is also charged with cultivation of marijuana and various drugs and firearms violations, the State Police announced Wednesday.

Trimarco was arrested at his home Friday after refusing for several hours to surrender.

Trimarco was permitted under the state Medical Marijuana Act to possess 12 marijuana plants, but girls who visited his trailer reported seeing upward of 80, authorities said.

North Kingstown police say Trimarco used his page on the social networking Web site to arrange meetings with teenage girls. His MySpace page contains images of him, marijuana plants and young girls, according to the State Police.

Police have identified at least five girls between the ages of 13 and 15 who say they smoked marijuana with Trimarco.

"After reading about it in the paper, we might hear of others," said North Kingstown Police Captain Charles Brennan, who said there was no indication that Trimarco had sexual relations with any of the girls.

A police officer at North Kingstown High School observed Trimarco drop two girls off at the school Friday. Those girls later admitted to smoking marijuana with Trimarco on their way to school.

While searching his trailer, police say they found 72 marijuana plants in various stages of growth, a Chinese assault rifle with a scope, a silencer, pills and methadone and other firearms.

Trimarco was arraigned Monday and ordered held without bail at the state prison in Cranston pending a court hearing next week.

Brennan said he did not know what illness Trimarco suffers from that granted him access to medical marijuana.

[palmspringsbum]

Gubernatorial candidates differ on growth strategies, education

Anne Wootton
Posted: 11/7/06
The Brown Daily Herald

Only 18 states in the country elect the offices of lieutenant governor and governor separately. Of these, Rhode Island is one of just a few states in which the current lieutenant governor and governor do not belong to the same political party.

"I have a respect for the office of governor … (but) quite frankly, I have an independent office," said Lieutenant Governor Charles Fogarty. "My boss is not Don Carcieri, it's the people of Rhode Island."

Fogarty, a Democrat, has proved a serious challenge to incumbent Republican Gov. Don Carcieri '65 in this fall's gubernatorial contest.

<span class=postbigbold>Thinking business</span>

Supporters have praised the governor for attracting new business to the state, balancing its budget and controlling government growth, and he touts business savvy as the greatest asset he brings to Rhode Island. Carcieri worked for Providence-based metals company Cookson America for 14 years - six as chief executive officer - before he entered politics.

"There's no such thing as steady state in human nature. Either you're moving ahead, or you're going backwards," Carcieri told The Herald. "When I was at Cookson we had as many employees and a budget just as big (as Rhode Island's)."

He continued: "I was used to managing a large enterprise complex with a big budget, so I'm not intimidated by that. … I understand how business people think."

His goal for the state is an "innovation and technology economy" - the development of which is inextricably linked to higher education, Carcieri said, in part because the vast majority of students educated in the Ocean State are not native Rhode Islanders.

"A state's role is to create an environment where people are willing to come here and invest, build businesses, hire young people getting out of Brown and other (schools)… and where the university feels confident in investing," Carcieri said.

He called himself a "big supporter" of Brown's expansion to the Jewelry District and increased focus on the life sciences.

"We want to be a place where … (young people's) creativity and ingenuity can fuel things, be tapped into," Carcieri said. "At the end of the day, the biggest asset other than that we're a pretty state … is our brainpower. …We need to harness that in an economic development strategy."

He cited biotechnology and financial services as two "big industries for (Rhode Island)." The latter is a particularly important field since branches of Fidelity Investments, Citizens Bank, Bank of America and Sovereign Bank provide a substantial employment base for the state and Fidelity has a "very strong working relationship" with the management and finance programs at Bryant College.

"There is a very symbiotic relationship between higher education and industry, particularly the more progressive people, because they know they need to tap into the brainpower, the research, all the things happening at the university level," Carcieri said.

"I think Brown, with its strengths - particularly in the life sciences, the Medical School, engineering - all of those things (have) a potential to be a big impact on (the Rhode Island economy)," he said.

"Carcieri needs four more years to fix (Rhode Island)," said former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at an October benefit held in the governor's honor. "From the outside it looks like you've got something really good going here, and I think you're going to want to continue it."

<span class=postbigbold>Jobs, health care and property taxes</span>

Fogarty sees things differently. He has criticized Carcieri for failing to create jobs, provide affordable health care and education or reduce property taxes over the course of his tenure as governor.

"I'm not satisfied with the state of our economy and I don't think the people are either," Fogarty told The Herald. He cited recent studies that have found Rhode Island's unemployment rate to be the highest in New England and its job growth rate to be the second lowest in the nation.

"For the governor to tout that we have low unemployment makes a mockery of the 342,000 Rhode Islanders who want to work and can't find a job here," Fogarty said.

Lowering property taxes is one of Fogarty's most frequently mentioned priorities. "Rhode Island spends twice as much on property tax as (it spends on) income tax," Fogarty said, criticizing income tax cuts made under Carcieri's watch for the several hundred highest-earning people in the state.

Carcieri has joked that the new state bird of Rhode Island is the crane and credits himself with brokering the deal to bring the new GTECH headquarters to Providence. According to Fogarty, the governor is taking credit where credit is not due.

For the economic revitalization downtown Providence has seen in recent years, "we can thank the person whose initials are D.C. - but it's David Cicilline ('83)," Fogarty said. He credits the city's mayor for its economic successes.

"As a result of (Cicilline's) hard work, open government, transparency … there's been a vote of confidence from the business community," Fogarty said. "The governor loves to take credit for what other people do … but he had no involvement," he added, citing Carcieri's opposition to the Westin hotel expansion as an example of his failure to promote development downtown.

Though Carcieri supporters have praised the governor for bringing accountability to all aspects of government, including spending, Fogarty criticized the governor's handling of the budget.

"(Carcieri) said he would get (spending) under control … he ended up spending every dime the legislature gave him, and each year he's come back and asked for more. He has not been a good steward of our state budget," Fogarty said.

"There's been no accountability for (Carcieri) or his department directors," Fogarty added, highlighting his own experience "taking on even the leaders of my own party" in the General Assembly to fight for pension reform, campaign finance reform and changes to the way judges are appointed.

"(The governor's) mantra is simply, 'Stay the course,'" Fogarty said. "The course we're on right now is one that isn't possible for this state in the future."

Carcieri credits himself with a new initiative to offer lower-cost health insurance policies to small businesses but has been criticized by many, including his opponent, for ending state-paid health insurance for non-citizen children during his tenure as governor.

Fogarty emphasized making health insurance affordable "in a way that partners with the business sector and the individual - it's not only important for the families, but for the economy and our competitiveness," he said.

Equally important, Fogarty added, is the affordability of higher education for middle class families in Rhode Island. He blamed the governor for tuition costs at public institutions, which have increased statewide by 35 percent in the last four years.

Fogarty has proposed freezing tuition costs for students who maintain a B average at public higher education institutions.

<span class=postbigbold>Standards and leadership in education</span>

According to Carcieri, education has been his "driving focus" for the last three years. When he became governor, there was no standard assessment test in place for Rhode Island students from kindergarten through 12th grade, nor was there any established graduation standard.

Since then, Rhode Island has partnered with Vermont and New Hampshire to devise an assessment test for reading, writing and math, which is currently being administered to students from kindergarten through eighth grade. An assessment test for students in ninth through 12th grade is being developed, as is a science assessment test for all grades.

Starting with the high school class of 2008, a "diploma efficiency standard" will be in place, based in part on test scores and in part on a "demonstrated efficiency," Carcieri said.

Carcieri acknowledged the overwhelming failure of urban Rhode Island schools to meet national standards, calling it a "huge, huge problem." He has targeted English language proficiency as the first step toward improved performance at urban public schools and emphasized the importance of coming up with a single strategy for English language learning at schools statewide - into which the state's department of education can feed resources uniformly.

"It's critical - it's underpinning most of the failures right now," Carcieri said.

Carcieri is a strong supporter of charter schools, and he expressed disappointment at what he perceives as "misguided" pressure from the teacher's unions on the General Assembly to maintain its current cap on the number of charter schools allowed in urban areas.

"For some reason the teacher's union leadership seems to think (charter schools are) taking money away from the public schools, but (they're) not - we're funding both right now. We put the biggest increase in local aid from the state to the school districts in six years in the budget this past year," Carcieri said.

The governor has also designated substantially more funding in recent years to teacher and administrator training.

"If (a school has) a good principal, a good team and a good spirit about the school, teachers are happy to go there," Carcieri said.

<span class=postbigbold>Taking care of teachers</span>

"We've got to do our part to attract the best and brightest of the teaching profession, and the one thing you don't do is what Governor Carcieri has done: beat them over the head and make them the enemy," Fogarty said.

The lieutenant governor has criticized Carcieri for making changes to union agreements that strip teachers of job security and privileges associated with seniority.

"If you talk to any teacher that you know in the workforce today, (they) will say that the governor has made them a public enemy, that he's undermined their support in the community, and that's very discouraging," Fogarty said. "(Carcieri) doesn't understand the challenges of teachers in the classroom today, where you have single families, poverty, the challenges of drugs and things that didn't exist 40 or 50 years ago. … Simple solutions from the Beaver Cleaver era aren't (going to cut it)," he added.

Carcieri does not realize that "we can't afford to waste the talent or potential of a single person," Fogarty said. Though the lieutenant governor supported charter schools when they first came to Rhode Island, he said Carcieri has overemphasized their role.

"96 percent of students are going to public (non-charter) schools. Charter schools have a … small role, and it makes a nice sound bite, but it doesn't really improve educational quality," he said.

<span class=postbigbold>The casino question, stem cell research and medical marijuana</span>

Fogarty and Carcieri have both expressed strong opposition to Ballot Question 1, the proposed Narragansett Indian tribe casino in West Warwick.

During a portion of a Nov. 2 debate in which the two candidates were allowed to pose questions to each other, Fogarty asked Carcieri about embryonic stem-cell research, which the lieutenant governor supports. The governor said he would only support such research if it could be done without destroying embryos.

As governor, Carcieri vetoed a bill that would legalize the use of medical marijuana. The General Assembly voted to override his veto and passed the bill in January.

A September Brown University poll conducted after the primary found the incumbent Carcieri leading Fogarty by 12 percentage points, with 12 percent of those polled undecided.

<hr class=postrule>
© Copyright 2006 Brown Daily Herald

[palmspringsbum]

12/27/2006

Pot law in peril

By: Jim Baron
The Pawtucket Times

PROVIDENCE - Rhode Island's medical marijuana law, which allows people with debilitating medical conditions such as cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis to possess small amounts of the otherwise illegal substance without fear of arrest or prosecution will expire this year unless the General Assembly votes to reauthorize it.

Providence Rep. Thomas Slater, who, with Providence Sen. Rhoda Perry, championed the bill through its first passage, is working on making the law permanent.

The current law contains a "sunset provision" that will in effect erase it from the books on June 30 unless the legislature takes further action. That was done as a safeguard in case the law was abused or turned out to have unanticipated consequences. Slater said there has been only one incident linked to the measure since it became law and he intends to introduce an amendment that would eliminate the sunset clause as soon as the General Assembly returns to session next week. He said he would like to see the amendment pass early in the session, rather than waiting for the last-minute crush of legislation that comes at the end of every session, usually in mid-to-late June.

Slater's effort has the backing of House Majority Leader Gordon Fox.

"The sunset clause was placed into the medical marijuana legislation to be certain that no major problems occurred upon implementation, Fox said. "My understanding from the Department of Health is that all the related issues have been handled very smoothly. Given that fact, I will support Representative Slater's effort to repeal the sunset clause during the upcoming session."

"I want to get it on a fast track," Slater said Tuesday. "If we don't get it done by June and it gets vetoed, we could have a problem."

Gov. Donald Carcieri vetoed the measure when it passed during the 2005 session, but the House voted to override that veto when it returned from recess last January as its last order of business before adjourning and immediately starting the 2006 session. The senate had voted its override months earlier.

Carcieri spokesman Michael Maynard said Tuesday that the governor has not changed his negative view of medical marijuana, but added the administration wants to see the specific legislation before commenting on what the governor would do about a veto.

"The health department is receiving data and will make a recommendation to the governor," Maynard said.

The law allows an individual certified by a physician as having a debilitating illness to register with the health department so that person and two caregivers can possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana or 12 marijuana plants without facing arrest or prosecution by the state. The drug is still illegal to possess under federal law, but those on all sides of the debate agree it is unlikely the federal government would come after an individual patient under most circumstances.

Also, patients are on their own to obtain the marijuana, which is not available anywhere legally and must be bought though street dealers or other means.

Health Department spokeswoman Maria Wah-Fitta said that as of last week, 193 patients have registered for a medical marijuana card and 19 applications are pending. Also, 173 caregivers have been registered, with two more pending.

At this point, Wah-Fitta said, "we don't have a specific recommendation" about whether the sunset provision should be repealed.

Only one medical marijuana card has been revoked because of abuse since the law took effect a year ago, she noted.

A 48-year-old man from Exeter, Steven Trimarco, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly meeting with teenage girls online and offering to smoke marijuana with them.

The Trimarco arrest is just one incident among the nearly 200 patients who have registered, Slater noted, adding, "we're not even sure he had a medical marijuana card. That is confidential information. If Trimarco was a registered patient, the police gave out that information improperly, Slater said.

Slater told The Times there may be a couple of other "tweaks" to the law recommended by the health department.

He said the department suggested that criminal background checks be conducted on caregivers, to make sure none of them have a felony record. Slater says he does not think that would be a problem and is willing to work with the health department, which although it opposed passage of the law "has been pretty good about" executing it.

Slater said he is also looking at some of the things being done in California as far as establishing dispensaries where the drug can be obtained legally, but he is afraid "the federal government will jump right on that" to shut it down and arrest people. "That would get their attention quickly."

Bruce Mirkin with the Washington D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project said his group will work in Rhode Island to support the renewal of the legislation, as it pushed to get the original law passed.

Mirkin said he believes "there is a pretty broad understanding within the legislature that this law has worked pretty well and helped a lot of people." He added "we have no reason to believe the governor's attitude has changed, but we hope that it will."

Rhode Island is one of 11 states with a law permitting the medical use of marijuana, and he expects more bills will be introduced in state legislatures this year, including efforts in Illinois and Minnesota. He said no state that has passed a medical marijuana law has subsequently repealed or weakened it. "What tweaking has been done has sometimes expanded it," Mirkin said, explaining that Maine subsequently increased the amount of the drug a patient could possess after the law was first passed.

The law has been effective, Slater said, to the extent that it has "given peace of mind" to patients who use the drug to relieve pain, nausea and other symptoms. "I don't think anyone argues that it is a cure-all."

The medical marijuana law lost one of its most zealous advocates with the death this month of 35-year-old Warren Dolbashian, a Tourette's syndrome patient who testified before legislative committees and played a prominent role in rallies and press conferences in support of the bill.

[palmspringsbum]

Man accused of offering pot to girls pleads not guilty

The Providence Journal
January 17, 2007

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. --An Exeter man accused of offering pot to teenage girls he met on the Internet pleads not guilty.

Steven Trimarco pleaded not guilty in Washington County Superior Court yesterday to 19 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, plus various drug and weapons charges.

Police say the 48-year-old man smoked pot on multiple occasions with at least four area girls ages 13 to 15.

Trimarco is allowed to possess marijuana under the state's medical marijuana law.

Police say he met the girls on the Myspace-dot-com social networking Web site.

Authorities say their is NO evidence of sexual contact between Trimarco and any of the girls, but the incidents are still under investigation.

He is being held without bail and is scheduled to return to court on February 12th.

------

Information from: The Providence Journal, http://www.projo.com/

[palmspringsbum]

Medical Marijuana Act up for review

Thi Ho
The Brown Daily Herald
Posted: 2/6/07

Since the implementation of the Medical Marijuana Act last spring, Rhonda O'Donnell, a 44-year-old former registered nurse with multiple sclerosis, has used marijuana to alleviate her pain without fear of breaking the law.

O'Donnell, the first person in Rhode Island to apply for the Medical Marijuana Program, praised the therapeutic effects of marijuana. "It's instantaneous cooling of the burning," she said. "I don't need it that often, but when I do, it works for me."

O'Donnell is one among nearly 200 individuals who currently qualify to use medical marijuana in Rhode Island. The Medical Marijuana Act, which allows individuals suffering from chronic or debilitating conditions to use marijuana with their physicians' certification, will be evaluated this spring as legislators decide whether to renew the act. The act, which was passed last January, includes a sunset provision mandating its repeal on June 30.

The Medical Marijuana Program began issuing registration cards last May, and 192 registration cards were issued by December, according to a report by the Rhode Island Department of Health. The report shows that nearly 57 percent of registered patients are suffering from a "chronic or debilitating disease or condition," with the remaining patients suffering from Hepatitis C, cancer, HIV, AIDS or glaucoma.

The major concern the report raises is the availability of marijuana for registered patients. "The most frequent request to the department is for information regarding the purchase of marijuana," the report stated.

The act does not specify where patients can get access to marijuana. Patients can grow marijuana themselves, have caretakers grow it for them or buy it from the black market.

O'Donnell said she gets marijuana for her pain from a friend who got it from a source unknown to O'Donnell. "I don't know anyone who grows it," she said.

Jesse Stout '06, the founder of Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, a network of Rhode Island groups supporting medical marijuana, said the proposed 2007 renewal should include a clause on the availability of marijuana, but he doesn't think it will happen. "Ideally, there should be state-funded programs to get marijuana," Stout said.

Trevor Stutz '07, former president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, also believes a government-controlled source of marijuana isn't a realistic goal right now. "Dispensaries were definitely considered but at this point don't look like the best model given the nature and size of Rhode Island and the active patient groups," he said. "It seems like organizing through the patient groups informally and through RIPAC may be the best model," Stutz added.

Although she doesn't need to obtain marijuana often, O'Donnell said it would be "nice for safety and consistency's sake" if there were regulated dispensaries.

The report listed only one incident of abuse of marijuana by a registered patient. Steven Trimarco of Exeter was arrested last October and charged with 19 counts of delinquency with a minor, three counts of possession of narcotics with intent to deliver and two counts of possession of firearms or armor-piercing bullets. Though patients are allowed only 12 plants under the act, police took 72 marijuana plants from his home.

The Providence Journal reported Jan. 17 that Trimarco had two Myspace.com pages showing him posing amid marijuana plants. The article cited police reports stating that Trimarco smoked marijuana on multiple occasions with at least four teenage girls, ages 13 to 15.

Aside from inquiries over access to marijuana, the report stated there has been "minimal community response to the implementation of the medical marijuana program."

An Oct. 2006 poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research of Washington, D.C., showed that 79 percent of Rhode Islanders support the legislation. The poll had a 4 percent margin of error.

"Passage (of the act) is itself a big success. Nothing's really gone wrong," Stout said. "Inclusion of the sunset clause is the biggest failure of the law."

Stutz also called the legislation a relative success so far. "There have been no problems with the legislation itself. The cost of implementing it has been very low. Patients are being protected from arrest, which is the ultimate goal," Stutz said.

O'Donnell called the bill "compassionate."

"It's a relief for people who are suffering already from pain. It's just one less thing they have to worry about. They're suffering enough," she said.

The new medical marijuana act will go to the floor of the General Assembly this spring, according to Stout. Currently, the patient advocacy coalition is building support for the passage of the bill. "We're building a grassroots network of people who are interested in supporting the bill, including patients, doctors and nurses," Stout said.

"Given the 79 percent of public support and the success of the program, it was a good idea then and a good idea now," Stutz said.

Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, a national marijuana policy reform organization, said although overall response to the bill has been positive, some people still have reservations. "People just aren't over their fears yet. This is something that will happen over time as this becomes more a part of people's daily lives," Mirken said. But the bill will likely pass because of support in the legislature, he added.

For her part, O'Donnell said it would be unfortunate if the bill does not pass again because lobbyists for the legislation would have to start over.

"I'm hopeful. I think it should fly no problem because it had so much support last year in both the House and the Senate," she said.

Jeff Neal, press secretary for Gov. Donald Carcieri '65, did not return calls for comment. Carcieri vetoed the initial legislation but was overridden by the General Assembly in January 2006.

[palmspringsbum]

For more than 300 Rhode Islanders, marijuana provides legal relief

08:11 AM EDT on Sunday, September 9, 2007

The Providence Journal
By Amanda Milkovits
Journal Staff Writer

<table class=posttable align=right width=360><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=360 src=bin/powers_kelley.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcell>Kelly helps get her son ready for the first day of school.</td></tr></table>The old life of Kelly Powers began to slip away two years ago.

Her husband had bought her a new motorcycle for her 31st birthday, but during the vision test for her license, Powers realized something was wrong.

She’d been getting chronic headaches and was clumsy at times. She had trouble holding a bottle for her infant daughter. Then her hands couldn’t seem to hold her baby.

It was multiple sclerosis. Within a year, the disease was claiming enough of her body that she had to give up her daycare business and retreat to her bed.

The doctors increased her medication to between 20 and 30 pills a day, drugs that left the Warwick mother feeling like a zombie. She stopped driving her son to elementary school. She couldn’t talk on the phone without losing her thoughts and drifting off. She rarely left the house. She barely left her bedroom.

Her husband, Bob, an electrician, took over the housework. Her mother and mother-in-law came over to help. Her sister came by at night to put the couple’s two young children to bed. “I felt like a bad mom. I couldn’t take care of my kids,” Powers says. “Here I am, this is my life, and everyone else is doing all the things I love.”

Her husband, whom she’d met while singing karaoke at the old Venetian Gardens in Oakland Beach, crooned the Guns N’ Roses ballad “Patience” to her on days when she struggled.

“My husband was crying because he couldn’t help me,” says Powers. “He was afraid to touch me, because I was in so much pain. I wasn’t me. I was in so much pain, overmedicated, and I was withdrawing from everybody.”

There was one woman who understood, a friend whom Powers met in a multiple-sclerosis support group. Rhonda O’Donnell was also 31 when she was diagnosed, and she had to give up her nursing career when the disease blurred her vision and eventually left her hobbled. She’d tell Powers, You can have a pity party, but you don’t have to stay there.

<table class=posttable align=right width=360><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=360 src=bin/o-donnel_rhonda.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcell>Rhonda O Donnel,l who suffers from MS, lobbied lawmakers to pass the state medical marijuana law.</td></tr></table>O’Donnell, now 44, was a dynamo in a wheelchair, lobbying at the State House for marijuana to be made legal for the chronically ill in Rhode Island. Her son Tom Angell had brainstormed the idea with a friend in his dorm room at the University of Rhode Island. Angell, who was president of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy at the time, had heard a speaker hosted by the group whose wife used marijuana to relieve her pain. He thought about his mother.

Angell and his mother lobbied for the medical-marijuana legislation, which became law in January 2006 on a one-year trial after the General Assembly overrode Governor Carcieri’s veto. The law became permanent this summer.

Powers accompanied O’Donnell when the former nurse obtained her medical marijuana card on May 1, 2006, the first day patients could be approved for the program. But Powers hadn’t been ready.

She’d seen some of her relatives struggle with drug addiction, and she didn’t want drugs in her life. Would using marijuana make her a hypocrite? Her daughter was a toddler, but her son was just starting elementary school and was old enough to know what was going on. How could she explain to him that she was using an illegal drug? What would his teachers think? Or members of her church?

THE NEW STATE LAW, called the Edward O. Hawkins and Thomas C. Slater Medical Marijuana Act, allows patients with debilitating medical conditions, such as cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis, to possess up to 12 marijuana plants and 2.5 ounces of marijuana.

An adult without any felony drug convictions may serve as a “caregiver” for a patient, providing him or her with marijuana. A caregiver can have up to five patients, and up to 24 plants and 5 ounces of usable marijuana if they have more than one patient. A caregiver with one patient can have up to 12 plants and 2.5 ounces of marijuana.

As of early last month, 302 patients and 316 caregivers were enrolled in the program, according to the state Department of Health. A total of 149 physicians in Rhode Island have referred patients to the program. The Health Department has rejected 10 applicants as caregivers because of felony drug convictions, and a caregiver and patient have had their medical-marijuana identity cards revoked after being arrested for having dozens more plants than allowed.

The new law left some gray areas that don’t come up for patients using other prescribed medications.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law. Rhode Island doesn’t advise patients how to get marijuana, how to grow it or how to use it. So patients must grow it themselves, find a caregiver approved to grow it, or buy it off the street from drug dealers. Growers say they spend about a year cultivating the plants before they can be harvested — battling the usual gardener’s woes of pests and plants that can’t be harvested.

In his opposition to medical marijuana, Carcieri, who twice saw his vetoes of medical-marijuana legislation overridden, cited problems with legally obtaining marijuana, and law-enforcement officials and others called marijuana a “gateway drug.” Supporters of the legislation said marijuana provides immediate relief from pain without the side effects caused by prescription pain medication.

Some Rhode Island patients say they worry that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration may target them. Some worry about losing their jobs or their federally subsidized housing. The DEA has raided dozens of dispensaries in California, outlets that sell marijuana products to people with marijuana identity cards, and warned landlords in Los Angeles that they could face conviction and seizure of their property for renting to the dispensaries. And in Oregon, the agency subpoenaed the medical records of patients in the state’s medical-marijuana program for an investigation into marijuana growers.

But Anthony Pettigrew, agent for the New England field office of the DEA, said that while marijuana possession is against federal law, “the DEA never targets the sick and dying.” The agency is more interested in organized drug traffickers, Pettigrew said. “I’ve been here for 22 years,” he said, and “realistically, I’ve never seen anyone go to federal jail for possessing a joint.”

O’Donnell said she knew the legislation left some issues unresolved, but she believed the state needed to start somewhere. “People say, ‘Why don’t you wait?’ ” O’Donnell said. “That’s stupid to wait. We’d be waiting 25 years.”

The work of O’Donnell and other patients helped make Rhode Island the 11th state in the country to legalize marijuana for medical use. But the very public battle overshadows the very private decisions of hundreds of people using the drug to deal with the ravages of cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis and other debilitating diseases.

<table class=posttable align=right width=360><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=360 src=bin/ebert_bobby.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcell>Bobby is HIV positive and has two discs missing from his lower back. He says that smoking marijuana helps ease the pain in his skin.</td></tr></table>THERE WAS NO medical-marijuana law the day Bobby Ebert drove down to Kennedy Plaza in Providence looking for someone to give him “the nod.”

Shingles, an acute viral infection, wracked his body, escorted in by complications from AIDS. He’d been diagnosed several years ago, and his life of working as a roadie in the local rock ’n’ roll scene had ended. His body burned. He couldn’t eat. When he did, he vomited. He was taking dozens of pills, but they only dulled the pain, leaving him angry and isolated in his small apartment in Warwick. He felt like he was waiting to die.

Ebert had read online that smoking marijuana could ease the pain of AIDS. He decided to try it on his own. It didn’t take long to find a dealer. And once he smoked, he says, it didn’t take long for the illegal drug to mute his pain.

His search for marijuana became routine. He was beaten and robbed once. He saw the same thing happen to other people. He saw the police driving around. Although he was risking arrest by buying marijuana, he empathized with the officers. They had a job to do. But for him, marijuana was returning him to life, he says.

As Ebert smoked the drug, his pain eased. His appetite returned. He decided to wean himself off his pain medications — Vicodin, morphine, fentanyl — and told his doctors why: he was smoking marijuana. When the state program became law, his doctors referred him.

His family saw the changes in him. “He was miserable, constantly angry at everyone and in a lot of pain,” Ebert’s 76-year-old mother, Dolores Bishop, said last week. “I see a totally new boy. You know, he’s quite a gentleman now.”

Ebert, 48, named his new Fender Stratocaster guitar “Heather” after his former caseworker at AIDS Project Rhode Island, and he feels well enough to play sometimes. The photos and artwork from his music days are hung on the living room wall and scattered across a shelf where his pain medication used to be. He can appreciate the wild turkeys that feed on the cracked corn he scatters outside his door, and the chipmunk that comes up to drink from a bowl of water he leaves outside.

Ebert now gets his marijuana from a caregiver, but he’s afraid about what the federal government could do to patients like him who live in federally subsidized housing. In June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people who use or grow marijuana for medical reasons can still face federal charges even if state law allows it.

Ebert wrote this summer to Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Rep. James Langevin, who both wrote back their support. “I believe that patients seeking the palliative benefits of marijuana, while abiding by legal regulations governing state-sponsored medical-marijuana use, should not have to fear federal prosecution,” Whitehouse said in a letter Ebert received last month.

Langevin had voted for an amendment that would have prohibited federal money from being used to override state medical-marijuana laws. Langevin’s letter came this week, as Ebert was battling another round of shingles. His illness scares him. “I know what I’m going to die of,” he says.

But while he has time, Ebert says he wants to convince other people with HIV how medical marijuana can help them.

“Before this, I was angry. I hated life,” Ebert said. “Now, I love life, and I love to help people — to show them what I’ve gone through and say ‘don’t take the same roads.’ There are a lot of people who are afraid to come forward, so I’ll speak for them.”

<table class=posttable align=right width=360><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=360 src=bin/dubois_dennis.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcell>Dennis Dubois says that if he was unable to use marijuana and had to take other painkillers like oxycontin for his pain, he would not be able to perform in a band. Here, he waits to go with his band Rat Poison at a bar called Bastas in Weymouth, Mass. He has been singing with the band since January.</td></tr></table>DENIS DUBOIS WAS in his court-ordered rehab program when he got his medical-marijuana identity card last year. That made for some interesting conversations with his counselor.

“They didn’t know what to do with me, because I’m there for substance abuse, but what I’m abusing is my medication,” Dubois said.

He’d been arrested twice by Woonsocket police for growing marijuana, in 2000 and 2005, before the state legalized medical marijuana. He’d even spent two weeks in jail. Dubois, 35, the lead singer for a heavy-metal rock band, says he risked breaking the law because marijuana was the only thing that relieved his back pain.

He was born with a hairline fracture in his lower spine, a problem that went undetected until 1999, a month before his wedding. He was getting ready for work at his parent’s travel agency and collapsed in pain. The doctors told him he had severe degenerative disc disease, and Dubois says, “it was made clear to me that it will get worse as I get older.”

After surgeries and the insertion of titanium rods in his spine, the pain became so debilitating that Dubois was ruled disabled in 2000, he says. His prescription painkillers only dulled the stabbing pain and left him so exhausted he could barely move. It was around that time, he says, he began smoking marijuana for relief.

One hot afternoon, Dubois stood in a small bedroom of his caregiver’s large Colonial in Woonsocket and checked the homemade growing system for his indoor marijuana garden. Small marijuana plants peeked up over pots. An enclosed area had taller plants growing under high-pressure sodium lights meant to simulate 18 hours of sunlight.

His caregiver, Emelie Archibald, 51, picked up Marijuana Horticulture, a how-to book they’ve been using. Dubois is a friend of the family, and when he needed a place to live, Archibald welcomed him in.

She calls him “the son I never had,” and having seen his suffering, she has become an advocate for medical marijuana. At a meeting for the American Association of Retired Persons, one of the members asked Archibald how she knew that Dubois wasn’t just selling pot on the street. Archibald said she shot back, “Would you sell your high-blood pressure medication on the street?”

Dubois touched the leaves like a careful gardener and talked about the methods he’s read about. Other marijuana growers were giving him advice on how to increase the health and potency of his plants.

Dubois says he wants to share seeds and cuttings and extra harvest with other patients. “There are many patients who can’t grow and don’t even have a caregiver,” he says. “You need to know somebody who can do this, who has the time and the money.”

Medical marijuana, he says, has helped him regain his old life. The band he sings with, Rat Poison, recently was booked for regular gigs at a bar in Weymouth, Mass. He also credits marijuana with getting him off “heavy-hitting” pain medications, such as Oxycodone.

He says his drug arrests made him feel like a low-life criminal. His illnesses cost him his marriage, his home and his ability to work, Dubois says. Now, marijuana is giving him a sense of purpose, of being able to help others.

He cited the Declaration of Independence’s reference to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

“To me, happiness is living without pain,” Dubois says. “And if marijuana can do that, then who the hell are they to say no?”

THE SUN WAS just a pale glimmer in the sky when Kelly Powers walked gingerly up the attic stairs to her corner by the windows. Her husband had left for work. The children were still sleeping. The early morning was hers.

She picked up a glass jar of marijuana and loaded a small amount into a glass pipe that she’d been given for her 33rd birthday. She flicked a lighter and lit the bowl, inhaling. She held her breath for a few beats and exhaled, sending small plumes of smoke into the attic air.

The attic, with its bare boards and exposed walls, has become her sanctuary. She used to be afraid to come up here because it is dark and empty and made her think about spirits in the old house. Now, she comes up here in the early morning to smoke, write poetry and think.

She watched the birds land on the telephone wires. She sipped coffee from an Oakland Raiders mug and picked up a red notebook. She penciled drawings of an angel and the Virgin Mary, ideas for a tattoo. “I relate to her. She was so strong to deal with what she had to deal with,” Powers said.

On July 7, 2006, with support from her team of doctors, Powers decided to get her medical-marijuana identity card. Only three weeks before, she had been writing poems about pain and loss:

I am scared of my future. How can I be a good wife?

Before getting her card, she’d tried marijuana during a camping trip with her husband. Her muscles had relaxed and the pain had receded. Bob Powers and O’Donnell urged her to join the program. After she did, Powers says she was able to give up much of her dependence on the painkillers that were leaving her groggy and exhausted. Even when she became legal in the eyes of the state, Powers needed the reassurance of her faith. She had talked with her pastor at the First Lutheran Church in East Greenwich about having multiple sclerosis and about her anger at God. Powers trusted her enough to tell her she was smoking marijuana to ease the pain from the disease. Her pastor understood and supported her, Powers says.

When Powers got up the courage to testify at the State House that the law should be permanent, her church held a prayer circle for her. After her testimony appeared on TV news, churchgoers thanked her for her courage, she says. Some of them have cancer and they may end up benefiting from the law, she says.

“I felt like maybe that’s my purpose,” Powers says. “I got involved in this to help people. I found the strength through God to fight for what I believe in.”

The drug won’t stop the onset of her disease. She’s also been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a chronic illness with symptoms of widespread musculoskeletal pain. Her memory is slipping, she says, which frightens her. She takes hundreds of pictures of everyday moments to help her remember. She plays memory games and trivia with her son, who told her one day, “You’re lucky I’m very smart, because when you forget things, I can teach you.”

On other days, she feels almost like her old self. Bob bought a karaoke system, which they take with them on getaways organized by the multiple sclerosis support group, and the family bought a new motor home for camping.

During one get-away, Powers took a short walk and just sat for a while, breathing in the quiet of the trees. “When you’re so drugged up on things, you can’t think. And when you can’t think about where your life is going, you give up hope,” she says. “I’ve got my hope back.”

<table class=posttable align=right width=360><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=360 src=bin/archibald_emily.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcell>Dennis Dubois with his caregiver Emilie Archibald at Emilies home in Woonsocket where he rents a room.</td></tr></table>THE MIDSUMMER afternoon was heating up out at the pool behind Emelie Archibald’s house. The Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition was throwing a celebration for getting a permanent law passed. Archibald had made marijuana brownies for the occasion. A sign next the brownies said “Medical Marijuana Patients Only.”

Kelly Powers took photographs of people at the party — Bobby Ebert, looking frail but happy, a smiling Rhonda O’Donnell, co-sponsor of the law Rep. Thomas Slater, D-Providence, giving a speech, Denis Dubois jamming on a guitar at the end of the pool. Powers noticed a tattoo of a face in a cloud on Dubois’ right bicep, and she told him that it reminded her of a cloud she’d seen one morning while praying for a sign that things would be OK. To her, the cloud looked like the face of Jesus.

As one patient passed a joint to another, Dubois couldn’t help smiling — he’d gone to jail for this, he recalled later. Archibald called it “the first legal pot party in the state.”

The woman who’d started it all had made her way up the stairs to the backyard. O’Donnell will never be able to return to nursing, a job she loved. But she says her efforts for medical marijuana will help hundreds of people with multiple sclerosis, cancer, HIV and other chronic debilitating diseases live with less pain — and without the lethargy and exhaustion caused by prescription medication.

She had been the first to apply for the medical-marijuana identity card. She and her 76-year-old former mother-in-law went to a head shop in Warwick to buy a glass pipe, where a clerk had to show O’Donnell how to use it. Two puffs on a pipe were all it took to relieve the burning pain in her limbs.

She wished her father could have found the same relief before he died.

Walter O’Leary had been diagnosed with melanoma when he was just a few years older than she is now. He died in 1980 when he was 50, and she was only 18. She learned recently that her father had tried marijuana to help relieve his pain.

“My dad was the greatest guy, law-abiding, a father, and he had to sneak this because what if he got arrested,” O’Donnell said. “How many people in these last 27 years have had to sneak this because they could get arrested? How many have wanted to do it, but it was illegal?”

The law was too late for her beloved father. “All these people had to worry about being illegal,” she said. “And now, they don’t.”

amilkovi@projo.com

[palmspringsbum]

State may take over dealers' game

The Brown Daily Herald
By: Rachel Arndt
Posted: 3/20/08

Like most people looking for marijuana, Bobby Ebert used to turn to a drug dealer. But unlike those who use the plant for recreation, Ebert relies on it for medication and needs a safe supply he can count on. And though he's registered with the state as a legal medical marijuana user, he still struggles with finding a trustworthy source for his medication.

Ebert, who is 48, smokes marijuana to help with pain caused by neuropathy and a bad back and to help lessen the nausea caused by his AIDS medication. He now relies on appointed caregivers for marijuana, but sometimes they don't come through, and the variability among the plants can be tricky to navigate.

But soon Ebert may no longer have to worry about tracking down his medicine from these sometimes unreliable sources.

Almost two years after Rhode Island began allowing medical marijuana, the state legislature is looking for a way to get marijuana to patients without relying on the illegal drug trade.

On Feb. 26, State Sen. Rhoda Perry P'91 and State Rep. Thomas Slater, both Democrats, introduced a bill that would give the state's 357 medical marijuana patients legal access to their medication. The new bill - essentially an amendment to the Edward O. Hawkins and Thomas C. Slater Medical Marijuana Act of 2006 - calls for the creation of a nonprofit, Department of Health-controlled "compassion center."

The compassion center would be able to "acquire, possess, cultivate, manufacture, deliver, transfer, transport, supply, or dispense marijuana, or related supplies and educational materials" to patients and caregivers, according to the bill.

To receive a license for medical marijuana today, a patient must have a doctor sign a Department of Health form stating "that medical marijuana will do more good than harm," says Jesse Stout '06, executive director of the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, known as "Rhode Island's non-profit grassroots medical marijuana community," according to the group's Web site.

"We register patients who have specific qualifying diagnoses, and they have to be certified by their physician," says Charles Alexandre, chief of Health Professions Regulation at the Health Department.

There is no provision on how to get the marijuana, Alexandre says, so patients must use their caregivers to obtain the marijuana. A person with a license for medical marijuana can appoint two caregivers. But these caregivers can be unreliable, and the strains of marijuana can vary, Stout says.

The bill was referred to the Rhode Island Senate Health and Human Services committee and the House Health, Education and Welfare committee, and hearings are set to take place within the next couple weeks, according to Perry.

"We're giving patients somewhere to go" by creating "this safe-access mechanism," Stout says. A compassion center would give patients a "store to go to" like they would for any other medicine. They would "also have the benefit of reliability and consistency," he says.

"A lot of people end up going to street dealers," Stout says. "We're trying to address this by making it so sick people have a safe and regulated place to access this medicine."

Finding a source for his medical marijuana was sometimes "scary," says Ebert, who used to work for rock bands in New England, especially when "your own caregiver is threatening to take something from you." One of Ebert's caregivers was acting more like a street dealer, he says, threatening him and trying to take money from him. "He was just thinking about money."

The new legislation would also allow patients to legally give marijuana to one another and give them the option of having the Department of Health tell them about any clinical medical marijuana studies.

Stout says he "envision(s) a compassion center that is able to offer reduced price or even free marijuana for patients who are poor."

RIPAC faces opposition from the governor, and Stout expects the legislation to run into a veto eventually. "Hopefully we'll have enough time for an override," he says.

Though some may worry that medical marijuana will be approved for those who don't really need it, "experience so far … tells me that we're actually having the reverse problem," Stout wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "Some doctors have not read the law yet and won't recommend marijuana because they still think it's illegal."

The state police opposed the legalization of medical marijuana in 2006, Stout says. "They didn't want to see patients go to drug dealers," he says.

Now that the legislation includes state regulation of medical marijuana, Stout expects the police to be more supportive.

The history of marijuana as medicine can be traced back over 4,000 years, Stout says. "People were using marijuana as medicine … way before we had governments," he says. But marijuana's role in medicine didn't fully reemerge until the 1990s when "states started passing new laws allowing medical marijuana research and use."

But Peter Friedmann, an associate professor of medicine who studies substance abuse, is not convinced of the drug's medicinal usefulness. "I'm not sure that its benefits for pain are known even now," he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

"I'm one of those folks who believes we need more studies to really know what the long-term effects are," Friedmann says. In general, the medical community agrees with this, he says.

"Within the medical community, there probably is consensus that we need more information in terms of the types of conditions for which it might be useful," Friedman says. "But there probably are some conditions it will prove to be useful for."

Still, Friedmann worries about the potential for abuse. "For the various indications for which we would use medical marijuana, there are other compounds that are less abusive," he says. There are "plenty of good medications" for glaucoma other than marijuana, he says.

"The fact that it has psychoactive effects makes it potentially abusable, and I have concerns whether we need to make commercially available another potentially abusable substance," Friedmann says.

Stout admits that there is some possibility for addiction, but he says marijuana is only psychologically, not physically, addictive.

"(It's) true that there is some dependence potential, like any other substance," Stout says. But he thinks getting patients effective medicine for "severe, debilitating, chronic symptoms" is more important than whether they're using more of the drug than necessary.

"It's helped me a lot," Ebert says. Before he started using medical marijuana, Ebert took opiate painkillers. But they "made me so sick," he says.

"Those things will mess up your life so bad - it's phenomenal," Ebert says. But medical marijuana is different."It's natural - if it's grown right."

"It's totally different from being addicted to those other drugs where I didn't know where I was and I didn't like myself," Ebert says. "It's a shame to see all these people messed up on drugs ... and it's legal."

Now, Ebert is trying to build support for the new legislation.

"I've got a lot of support behind me ... and I'm helping other people before I go."

[palmspringsbum]

Rhode Island wants to be second in nation to license compassion center

The San Francisco Examiner
March 11, 10:33 AM

Rhode Island has a new bill that would allow for state-licensed medical marijuana compassion centers. It is currently in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee in the Rhode Island Senate.

Passage of this measure would mandate the Department of Health of Rhode Island establish rules governing the licensing of non-profit compassion centers "to acquire, possess, cultivate, manufacture, deliver, transfer, transport, supply, or dispense marijuana, or related supplies and educational materials, to registered qualifying patients."

Senate Bill 185, related to compassion centers has a companion bill as well, HB 5359, which is currently in the House of Health, Education and Welfare Committee.

New Mexico became the first state government to license non-profit facilities to grow and distribute medical cannabis. Rhode Island is slated to become the second.

[palmspringsbum]

Pot decriminalization vote put on hold

The Providence Journal
02:41 PM EDT on Wednesday, March 18, 2009
By John Hill
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Sending people to jail for possessing a tiny amount of marijuana is excessive, wastes resources and goes against public opinion, supporters of a bill to decriminalize possession of less than an ounce of the drug told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

<table class="posttable" align="right" width="200"><tr><td class="postcell"><span class="postcap">Related links</span>

Extra: Full text of Senator Blais's bill
</td></tr></table>Rhode Island has legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. The decriminalization bill proposed by Sen. Leo R. Blais, D-Coventry, would not make marijuana legal, but it would reduce possession of an ounce or less from a crime that carries a potential year of jail time to a civil violation with a maximum penalty of a $100 fine and forfeiture of the marijuana.

“This is far cry from complete legalization,” said Nick Horton of the Family Life Center, a social service organization that helps people with criminal records rebuild their lives. He called the Blais bill “measured reform, not legalization.”

No one spoke against the bill. The committee — as it did with nearly all bills it heard testimony on last night — voted to hold it for further study.

Horton said Rhode Island police agencies arrest about 2,500 people a year for marijuana possession and a recent study by his group showed 600 people were being held in the Adult Correctional Institutions last year for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. At an average cost of $40,000 per inmate per year, he said, that costs the state about $24 million.

Under Rhode Island law, possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum of one year in jail and a fine of between $200 and $500. Besides a lesser penalty, Blais’ bill would make possession a civil violation, which would not go on an individual’s criminal record.

Jack A. Cole, a former New Jersey State Police detective, who said he helped put as many as 1,000 people in jail for marijuana offenses, said reducing the charge to a civil penalty was one of the most important benefits of the bill. When someone gets a marijuana conviction on their record, he said, it jeopardizes their ability to get financial aid for education or a job.

“You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction,” Cole said. “A conviction will track you every day of your life because it is on a computer. Every time you apply for a job, it is over your head like an ugly cloud. … The only place these people find acceptance is right back in the drug culture, the very group from whom we say we are trying to save them.”

Cole is the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization of former police officers, prosecutors and other justice system officials whom he said feel the nation’s marijuana laws are self-defeating.

Also supporting the bill was Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Blais said his bill was patterned after the law that was approved by referendum in Massachusetts last fall. Voters there passed decriminalization with 65 percent of the vote. Cole said 12 states have decriminalized possession of an ounce or less of marijuana.

He cited the 65-percent yes vote over the state border as a reason to support the legislation in Rhode Island, though it prompted another observation from committee Vice Chairman Charles J. Levesque, D-Portsmouth.

“Most decriminalization has been by referendum,” he said.

[palmspringsbum]

Little opposition seen to decriminalization of marijuana

06:57 AM EDT on Tuesday, March 24, 2009

By John Hill
The Providence Journal
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — No one seems to be getting worked up about a bill before the General Assembly that would decriminalize possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, making it a civil violation punishable by fine rather than jail time.


At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, only three people — a former New Jersey police detective, a spokesman for a convict assistance agency and a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union — testified about the bill. All were in favor of it.

No one from the attorney general’s office, the governor’s office or any other state agency appeared to oppose it. Nor was there anyone from the state’s law enforcement agencies to speak a negative word.

Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for Governor Carcieri, said it would be premature for the governor to comment on a bill that has not been voted on by either the House or the Senate, since it could change in any number of ways during that process. If it’s approved, she said, the governor would take a position on the bill as passed. The state Health Department, which had opposed last year’s medical marijuana bill, had no position and the state’s drug court officials declined to comment as well.

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch’s spokesman, Michael Healey, said with literally hundreds and hundreds of bills introduced each session, Lynch had to pick the ones that most closely affected his office’s operations or legislative priorities. He said the marijuana decriminalization bill was not one of them. Healey added Lynch had supported the medical marijuana law.

Pawtucket Police Chief George L. Kelley III, president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association, also declined to comment, either personally or on his organization’s behalf, saying the bill “is not on our radar.”

The Assembly last year overrode a Carcieri veto to legalize marijuana for medical uses. A new bill sponsored by Sen. Leo R. Blais, R-Coventry, would not make possession of an ounce or less of marijuana legal, but it would reduce penalty for such possession from up to a year of jail time to a civil violation with a maximum $100 fine and forfeiture of the marijuana. The laws concerning possession with intent to sell would not be changed.

Sen. Charles J. Levesque, D-Portsmouth, vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he thought that with the state facing such a difficult time with its budget, fiscal issues might shunt the Blais bill aside, at least this year.

Blais said he thought his bill had a 60-percent chance of passing this session. He attributed the lack of vocal opposition to last year’s passage of the medical marijuana law, saying it showed support for easing the penalties concerning a small amount of the drug.

“We approved medical marijuana,” Blais said. “That was the fight. That horse is already out of the barn and in the next field.”

jhill@projo.com

[palmspringsbum]

Rhode Island Will License Medical Marijuana Shops

By Ryan Grim, Huffington Post
Posted on June 22, 2009, Printed on July 2, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140764/

The Rhode Island legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto of a medical marijuana law Tuesday afternoon by an overwhelming margin, paving the way for state-licensed medical marijuana shops to begin operating. The House voted 68-0 for the pot measure and the senate moved it minutes later by a 35-3 count.

Once the law takes effect, the state will be the first in the nation to have one officially licensed nonprofit center selling marijuana. Over time, the state will license further nonprofit dispensaries.

The bill got a boost in the state after a much publicized incident in which a pot dealer beat up a medical marijuana patient. Proponents of the bill argued that patients shouldn't have to deal with unregulated, unlicensed drug dealers, but deserved a more orderly system.

In March, New Mexico became the first state to grant a state license to a medical marijuana producer.

"We are seeing a historic shift to allowing state-licensed, regulated medical marijuana production and distribution," said Karen O'Keefe of the Marijuana Policy Project after the vote.

Legislators in Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are considering similar legislation. Arizona and Maine voters may soon vote on similar initiatives.

The Rhode Island bill's passage was only made possible by President Obama's announcement that his Justice Department would not raid medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they were following the law.

California's dispensaries operate legally in the state but don't have the kind of exclusive state license that the new Rhode Island shop will have.

Jesse Stout, executive director of the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, which led the charge on the bill, said that state Rep. Tom Slater's announcement Saturday that he would himself begin using medical marijuana to treat his rapidly advancing cancer swayed the General Assembly. Slater, a Democrat, is the bill's sponsor.

The Rhode Island Department of Health will license one nonprofit "compassion center" in 2010 and two more in 2011. They will grow and distribute marijuana and provide it to an unlimited number of patients.

My book, This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America, is now out.



Ryan Grim is an editorial intern at Washington City Paper.