The controversy over a proposed medical marijuana dispensary in Riverhead is a mess created by our federal government.
If Washington would do the right thing and legalize medical marijuana, states wouldn’t be forced to legislate distribution of the drug at specially designated dispensaries. Cannabis pills, liquids and oils could be dispensed to patients with prescriptions by licensed pharmacies, just like the other narcotic drugs dispensed there.
But under federal law, it’s illegal to prescribe marijuana and it’s illegal to distribute it. A pharmacy could lose the right to distribute legal controlled substances if it sells medical marijuana — even if it does so pursuant to state law.
Licensed pharmacies can dispense dozens of other controlled substances with a high potential for abuse, including methadone, Demerol, Oxycontin, morphine, opium, codeine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and pentobarbital.
Not that long ago that there was a pharmacy in the Route 58 shopping center located between the former Blockbuster Video store, where the controversial marijuana dispensary is proposed, and the high school. The pharmacy occupied the store where West Marine is today and, like all pharmacies, sold and dispensed all kinds of narcotics.
Can any of us honestly imagine arguing that the location of a pharmacy in that center would encourage youth to experiment with the controlled substances dispensed there? Of course not. And that argument wouldn’t be taking place over dispensing medical marijuana now if the substance were being dispensed at a pharmacy.
But because it’s a federal crime to prescribe or distribute marijuana, the 23 states and the District of Columbia, that have so legalized the substance for medical use, adopt elaborate statutory schemes for its production and distribution. They generally allow distribution only at sole-purpose dispensaries like the one proposed for Route 58.
A dispensary dedicated to the sale of marijuana raises the specter of a storefront with large signs and banners advertising marijuana for sale within. We’ve all seen pictures of the shops selling the stuff for recreational use in the four states where that’s possible. But that’s not what’s being discussed in NY, where dispensaries don’t serve “walk-ins” without written pre-certification by health care providers. Don’t expect big “Get your Weed Here” neon signs on Route 58 if the dispensary is allowed to open there. In fact, many other state-approved locations, including the only other Long Island dispensary, in Lake Success, are in office buildings.
There are other ramifications of the poor federal policy concerning medical marijuana — even more important ones. Its federal criminality has impacts on the number and quality of scientific studies on its use. It is not being tested and controlled by the Federal Drug Administration.
Congress could change all this if it would change marijuana from a “Schedule I” controlled substance, which is illegal to possess or prescribe to a “Schedule II” controlled substance. Schedule I controlled substances have
“no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse,” according to federal law. Schedule I substances include, in addition to marijuana, heroin, LSD and Ecstacy.
Marijuana was added to the schedule I list in 1970, when the Controlled Substances Act first became law. At that time, assistant secretary of health Roger Egeberg recommended that marijuana be placed on Schedule I temporarily until the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (known as the Shafer Commission) reported its findings on the drug. The Commission in its 1972 report recommended decriminalizing the drug. That recommendation was never acted upon.
Recent efforts to shift the drug to Schedule II, including a bipartisan bill: H.R.1538:introduced in the House this spring, have not gotten out of committee review.
And that’s the set-up the situation we have today, where a drug recognized to have medicinal benefits can’t be adequately researched, regulated or legally prescribed. Since pharmacies can’t legally dispense the drug, sole-purpose dispensaries muse distribute the drug in states that choose to decriminalize medical marijuana.
Unfortunately, a dispensary is an easy target — especially if it’s in a visible location, like the one proposed for Route 58 in Riverhead.
The Riverhead Town Board has proposed a one-year moratorium that is really nothing more than a thinly disguised attempt to make the state-registered medical marijuana producer Columbia Care and its dispensary just go away. Put the brakes on this so the town can revisit its master plan to study the establishment of what is essentially a retail use within an existing retail zoning use district? That’s nothing short of preposterous.
Denise Civiletti is an owner of East End Local Media Corp., publishers of RiverheadLOCAL.com and SoutholdLOCAL.com. An award-winning reporter, she is an attorney and former Riverhead Town councilwoman (1988-1991); she lives in Riverhead with her husband and business partner, Peter Blasl. The views expressed in her column are hers alone.
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