Groups oppose pot distribution plan

AUGUSTA – Top health and law enforcement officials have come out against a plan to distribute medical marijuana to people permitted to have it under a law approved by state voters.

Dr. Dora Ann Mills, director of the Maine Bureau of Health, told a special legislative hearing Wednesday that the proposal would create an opportunity for illegal distribution of marijuana.

More research – not the compelling personal stories of medical marijuana users – is needed before the drug can be considered a medicine, Mills said.

A task force set up by the attorney general convened last summer and a majority of the members supported creating distribution centers to grow and distribute marijuana to people qualified to have it.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Anne Rand, D-Portland, would create a single nonprofit center as a pilot program. The center would be managed by a community board and would be self-supporting.

The center would also keep a registry of people receiving marijuana and the doctors who recommended it to them, Rand said.

Mike Lindey, a retired veterinarian in his 60s, never thought he would break the law. But when his chemotherapy treatments for bladder cancer made him too sick to eat, he was desperate enough to try, said his daughter, Becky Sentementis.

“We watched him lose his hair, his weight and his strength,” Sentementis said. “It was really hard to watch him go through this long painful process.”

Lindey found that when he smoked marijuana his appetite returned. He regained his strength, survived chemotherapy and defeated his cancer. “When he was cured, he never smoked it again,” Sentementis said.

Lindey became a leading advocate for legalized medical marijuana during the 1998 referendum campaign. His cancer came back last year, and he died in February.

Others told the special committee that growing high-quality marijuana is hard work that involves expensive equipment. They also pointed out that the six plants allowed under state law would produce far more that the 11/4 ounce allowed under state law.

Several lawmakers expressed frustration with the King administration for not moving more quickly to provide the drug to qualified people.

“The voters of the state of Maine passed the bill and we have had to come up with some enforceable rule to handle it. I can’t remember a time when the voters have spoken so clearly and we have responded so slowly,” said Rep. Patricia Blanchette, D-Bangor, a member of the Criminal Justice Committee.

While the issue has been popular with voters, it has not been with Gov. Angus King.

He spoke out against the medical marijuana question in 1998, and this year cited it as an example of abuse of the citizen-initiated referendum process, because most of the funding for the campaign came from out of state.

In addition to Mills, Roy McKinney, director of the Bureau of Drug Enforcement, opposed the bill because he thought it would result in legal marijuana falling into the wrong hands.

“This would invite more health and safety problems than it would solve,” he said.