Illinois Valley News

Advocates of a ballot measure aimed at expanding Oregon“s medical marijuana laws presented their case during a Grants Pass-based KAJO Radio talk show, on Wednesday, Aug. 25.

Measure 74 will appear on the ballot for the Nov. 2 general election. If approved, that measure would allow for the establishment of dispensaries to provide marijuana to patients.

Williams resident Laird Funk, a longtime medical marijuana advocate, said that his efforts to de-criminalize the substance began in the early 1990s. Funk was the chief petitioner for measures 86, 88 and 90, which would have legalized marijuana.

Through his work on those measures, Funk said, he encountered people who wanted marijuana to be legal so they could use it as medicine to combat their various illnesses.

“The people who were sick and dying needed medicine,“ Funk said.

Funk said he helped draft Senate Bill 865 during the 1993 legislative session. That medical marijuana legislation passed its first hearing that session but not its second. Funk said he introduced similar legislation during the subsequent two sessions, in which the bill was “slowly modified over time.“

That legislation became the basis of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA), Funk said, which was approved by voters in the November 1998 general election.

John Sajo, the executive director of Voter Power, said that organization was formed to help pass the OMMA and has been involved in its implementation ever since.

OMMA has prevented patients from being arrested for possessing marijuana, Sajo said, but for many supply issues remain. As such, Sajo said, Voter Power spent a couple of years drafting Measure 74 to mitigate those issues.

The original OMMA has been modified three times by the Legislature, Sajo said. In 2005, the limit on how much pot a patient could possess was raised to 24 ounces, he said. A new category of license was established that year, Sajo said, to enable patients to designate third parties to grow marijuana for them.

But some patients are incapable of growing their own marijuana and don“t know how to find a grower, Sajo said, adding that it still is a felony to pay that person for their labor.

“We wrote Measure 74 to fix the current system that leaves many patients behind,“ Sajo said.

Measure 74 would create two new categories of licenses, if passed into law. One set would be for non-profit dispensaries to sell medical marijuana to qualified patients. The other would be for individuals or non-profit organizations to grow and sell the substance to the dispensaries.

Sajo said that the dispensaries would be in competition with each other, which would result in lower prices and higher quality medicine for patients. Measure 74 also would generate revenue to fund other functions in the state health department, he said.

“We are adding regulation to the system,“ Sajo said. “Really, what we are doing is replacing prohibition with regulation.“

The best way to eliminate marijuana grows on federal land is to have a regulated system where patients can obtain their medicine through legitimate channels, Sajo said.

For more information, visit voterpower.org or regulatemedicalmarijuana.org.

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