San Diego County Supervisors Vote To Send Letter in Opposition to City Medical Marijuana Program
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted 4-1 to send a letter to the city of San Diego in opposition to a proposed program that would distribute identification cards to registered medical marijuana patients, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports (Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/2). Last year, a San Diego City Council committee voted 4-1 to endorse a proposal to provide medical marijuana patients with the identification cards to protect them from arrest by city police. San Francisco has a similar program that allows medical marijuana patients to pay a $25 fee to receive a city identification card (California Healthline, 11/09/01). Although San Diego County has no jurisdiction over the city program, Supervisor Bill Horn said that the letter will express the "emotional" opposition held by many county residents. "I think this is bad public policy, and I think we ought to go on the record with that," Horn said. Opponents of the program said that medical marijuana has "not been proven to help people" and that the program would "worsen the problem" of illicit drug use. Supporters of the program included members of a city task force established to develop the program and medical marijuana patients who said that they no longer have pain as a result of the treatment. The board defeated a second measure that would have delayed the letter until the conclusion of medical studies on medical marijuana and "until there is a resolution in the legal conflict" between state and federal marijuana laws, the Union-Tribune reports. San Diego Mayor Richard Murphy (R) said he had not seen the letter and could not comment (San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/2).
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