Should Inmates Have Access to Their Medical Cannabis Medication?

It appears that Washington state has found itself in a bind. Not only has it been caught with it's pants down trying to charge a retail sales tax on medical dispensaries, but now they are trying to figure out how to ignore our states medicinal cannabis laws.

Folks like Kathy Parkins and Doug Hyatt have put Washington state Department of Corrections (DOC) in such a situation, that if it were a painting, it would be of our legislature and DOC all doing the sit and spin on each others thumbs. The reason they have been able to do this, is because many patients in the midst of trying to do nothing other than safely obtain their meds, have been locked up. Now... here's the tricky part. Washington state laws say that an inmate, regardless of their crime, is entitled to receive their medication while they serve their time.

Since Washington state also allows for medicinal marijuana for qualified patients, it's found itself in a precarious situation when arresting mmj patients. For the most part, those that have been arrested (usually for marijuana related crimes) have been denied their right to their medicine. Though with the help of the media, cannabis advocates and Seattle's own cannabis advocating lawyer; Doug Hyatt, many patients are hoping they will get equal treatment like any other inmate.

I agree, personally (who could've guess that?). If inmates are allowed their narcotic pain killers, psychotropic sedatives and psychological pharmaceuticals, then they should also be allowed to follow their choice of a safer alternative.

The DOC doesn't agree though, suggesting that they fear what would happen if an mmj patient inmate where to use their meds and then become violent.

WAIT-A-MINUTE!

They are worried about mmj patients becoming violent after using cannabis? REALLY?

I have a few questions for the DOC.... Such as...:

Does the DOC require any of their staff to have an I.Q. over 10? How about reading or being social with real people in the world? Are all DOC staff and workers so cut off from the world that they have neither read about, nor talked to any friends or family about the scientific findings on cannabis? For that matter, has anyone who works for the DOC, ever been a teenager? Or did they just skip that life stage?

I would be willing to bet that most of those who control and whom work for the DOC, have no true fears about cannabis causing violent inmates, mostly because I would bet my value that they have all tried cannabis. Or at very least, living in Washington state, that they know several people whom use or have used cannabis.

Their other excuse for denying mmj patients the same rights as their fellow inmates, is that the DOC upholds that it is a "drug free" zone that enforces it's inmates to be clean. Of course, that logic is fouled up when they allow any inmate to receive vicodin, oxycotin, prozac or lithium. They allow in some of the most dangerous drugs in prescription form, and yet they are "drug free"?

I think my favorite excuse by far though, is this line that I found in a Seattle Times report:

"It is a very difficult position the department is in," he said. "The public expects us to help these folks return to the community, and to protect the public. It is just incongruent for us to allow some to use marijuana when it led to the criminality in the first place."

Most of those people involved in "criminality" that was caused by cannabis in the first place, were either trying to get their meds, or to help others get their meds. They were not gang lord criminals trying push pot on highschoolers. They were not pharma pushers trying to entice people into new synthetic addictions. For that matter, even if they were found to having sold another adult some recreational cannabis, was there really any victim involved in that?

In that same article, the DOC suggests that it has not heard enough from taxpayers about changing the way they are handling things, and until then, they are going to keep denying most patients from receiving their mmj unless they have an extremely urgent need, and sometimes not even then.

You might want to read that again, because it appears that the DOC is daring the cannabis community in our state to shout out to them and make it clear that mmj patient inmates should have the same rights as other inmates, to access their meds.

Check out more info about the story at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013810004_marijuana03m.html

This will definitely be an interesting story to follow as demand for relegalization increases.