Drug War Issues
Politics & Advocacy
In a bellwether case, the Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that cities and counties cannot pass ordinances that conflict with the state's five-year-old Medical Marihuana Act. The ruling came in Ter Beek v. the City of Wyoming.
"The fact is medical marijuana helps people; it's helped me," said Ter Beek, a retired attorney who suffers from diabetes and a neurological disorder that causes neuropathy and severe pain. "I've tried narcotic-based drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin and nothing worked like medical marijuana. I have more freedom than ever before and I couldn't just sit by as our elected officials try to take that away from me and thousands of others."
Ter Beek, represented by the ACLU of Michigan, argued that the ordinance made him fear arrest and prosecution for activities explicitly protected by the medical marijuana law, and that the state law should preempt the local ordinance. The city, on the other hand, argued that its ordinance sought to uphold federal as well as state law, and that the federal Controlled Substances Act preempted the state law.
Ter Beek lost in district court, but won on appeal. Now, the state's highest court has upheld that decision.
Wyoming's ordinance "directly conflicts" with the state's medical marijuana because it allows what the law "expressly prohibits: the imposition of any penalty, including a civil one, on a registered qualifying patient whose medical use of marijuana falls with... the immunity" granted under state law, Justice Bridget McCormack wrote for a unanimous court.
Federal laws prohibiting marijuana do not preempt the state Medical Marihuana Act because it "doesn't interfere with or undermine federal enforcement of that prohibition," McCormack wrote. That doesn't mean people protected under the state law are immune from federal arrest or prosecution, the court was quick to note.
The Supreme Court decision also invalidates similar ordinances in other Michigan cities that attempted to use them to block medical marijuana activities, including Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, and Livonia. The ACLU of Michigan had challenged ordinances in all three of those cities as well.
Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Comments
State vs. Fed. law
Some folks have not realized that it is 2014 . Some folks are still trying to fight the last perceived and imaginary battle of the Civil War . Some are clinging to "Jim Crow era crap " with what might they have left . Cannabis prohibition has its obvious roots . Cannabis cures , needles kill . Are you smart enough to do the math ?
We need someone in California
We need someone in California to take up this torch as well. We have a state medical law (Still called Pro 215 even thought it passed in 1996 and is no longer a Proposition) and yet various cities and counties have banned and implemented various restrictions that differ from county to county and city to city. It is impossible for the average citizen to know what laws are in place where as he/she travels with in the state. And therefore impossible for the average citizen to even know if he/she is breaking a law. A persons medical need does not change as he leaves one county and enters another. There needs to be consistency in the governing of dispensaries, cultivation and use. We need someone to be proactive here and not wait until countles people are busted before these inconsistencies are challenged. Who will take up this torch. This should be done in every state where medical or legal use is in place at the state level and it should be written in to every new medical or legal state as well. Whoever does this will be responsible for changing history and saving the lives of countless people who do not need to be processed by the system. Please someone take up this torch and run with it before any one else gets burned.
Sean
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