Rhode Island MMJ Bill Passes Through to Senate
April 28th, 2009 by Rick
With a unanimous vote on Wednesday, the Rhode Island state Senate committee on Health & Human Services approved a medical marijuana bill for the second year that would allow designated dispensaries known as Compassion Centers to grow and sell marijuana to the state medical marijuana patients.
In certain circles it’s a mixed blessing. Bobbi Brady, 42, of North Providence, said:
Just because you are able to have it doesn’t mean that you can get it.
Kirk Manter, 53, of Warwick an opponent of the bill said:
I will fight to defeat the bill, rather than have it pass just for the sake of something passing, because I believe it is in the wrong direction.
A medical marijuana patient himself, he believes that patients should be able to turn to clubs like his, where they give their excess marijuana away to medical marijuana patients for ‘donations’. He told reporters:
No one gets turned away when they contact us the first time and they are in need. [...] Then, we will help people with plants [to] get them started, teach them how to do a garden, grow it themselves.
Rep. Thomas Slater, sponsor of a similar House bill says:
Licensing a nonprofit compassion center would solve the problems by allowing a safe, state-regulated place for patients to get their medicine.
However, Rhode Island’s own Governor Carcieri, may be an opposition to the bill. Earlier before, Governor Carcieri vetoed a compromise plan to study the Compassion Centers. Carcieri said the study would:
Move Rhode Island further down the path of weakening the laws governing — and public perception of — illicit drugs [...] that it is Congress’ constitutional responsibility to regulate the interstate drug market, whether legal or not. [...] I will not stand idly by as the state flagrantly violates federal law for the promotion of an illegal controlled substance.
This year’s bill may stand a chance though, especially since the Obama Administration signaled that the federal raids on dispensaries would end on those dispansaries that abide by their state law.
