With the passage of Issue 6 during the November election, medical marijuana is coming to Arkansas. What the process for cultivating, dispensing and prescribing will look like is still to be determined.
What is clear is that at least some law enforcement officials see potential problems coming with medical marijuana.
Mountain Home Police Chief Carry Manuel said both as chief and a citizen, he is against medical marijuana. Manuel said he believes most police chiefs across the state share the same opinion.
“In looking at the law that was passed, it’s going to be somewhere down the road, one to three years down the road, as to what effect it’s going to have on local staffing and budgeting,” Manuel said. “As a taxpayer, my thought would be, what percentage of these fees are going to be used to cover the true costs associated with this law and to enforce the law. Historically, I think you can look, we’re going to come up short and the taxpayers are going to be supplementing the effort in some way.”
On a local level, Manuel said he’s uncertain how much extra work medical marijuana will cause for officers of his department.
“It’s really depends on the enforcement effort that’s put forth by the Alcoholic Beverage Control and the health department putting forth the regulations,” the chief said. “They’ll both be involved to some degree. To what degree, we’ll have to wait and see.”
The more responsibility the two other agencies bear for enforcement, the less impact it will have on his department’s resources, Manuel noted.
“I think the problem with the enforcement of medical marijuana is that there’s a lot more aspects that we’ll have to take a look at,” Manuel said. “It will take more labor hours to investigate a complaint involving medical marijuana misuse.”
Currently, the law regarding marijuana means if a person is in possession of it, they’ve committed the crime of possession of marijuana.
“As long as we can prove the person had possession, that’s pretty much all we have to do,” said the chief. “With medical marijuana, that changes. We have to determine if they have a prescription, if they have a registry card, so there’s a lot of leg work I can see the potential for that we’re going to have to perform on each investigation of a complaint.”
The increased work his department will have to perform is something Manuel says is beyond predicting at this point. It will simply be determined by how many complaints the department receives.
“We don’t know how many people are going to get access to medical marijuana,” said Manuel. “And then, we don’t know how many people are going to try to abuse the system. That’s just an unknown.”
Another problem Manuel sees heading towards his officers is stolen prescriptions. Or, in some cases, people claiming their medical marijuana was stolen when in reality the patient has sold it to others who do not have a prescription and are using the drug recreationally, much as is done now with opioid-based painkillers such as hydrocodone.
“Are you going to have people who have a medical marijuana prescription who then claim their marijuana was stolen? That will probably happen and when it does, we will have to investigate the complaint,” the chief said. “At the end of the investigation, however long it takes, will we know for certain a theft truly occurred?”
There’s also the potential for people to drive while intoxicated on the drug. And, when it comes time for a law enforcement officer to make a determination if a driver is impaired by marijuana, it takes an officer with special training.
To determine if a person is impaired by drugs, an officer goes through training to become what is known as a drug recognition expert, or as such an officer with the training is commonly referred to, a DRE. To gain certification as a DRE, an officer must undergo lengthy training.
“We have some of our officers who are DRE certified,” said Manuel. “Because of the costs associated with the training, not all of our officers are DRE certified.”
If a patrol officer suspects a driver is impaired by drugs, the patrol officer requests a DRE officer. If one is not on duty, an off duty DRE officer is called out to the scene.
A driver suspected of being drunk is put through a series of field sobriety tests and devices are used to measure their blood alcohol content. The process for determining if a person is impaired by drugs can take up to two hours, according to Manuel.
“Rather than rely on a device like they do for alcohol, they do a kind of field examination. They check your pupils, your breathing, your heart rate,” Manuel said. “They’re looking for different behaviors that you display that are caused by certain drugs. It can be a battery of tests that can last up to about two hours.”
In the end, Manuel said state officials will have to put in place regulations over the coming months and the entire system must be up and running for some time before he feels his department will truly know what impact the law will have on their resources.
“This is one of those things you kind of just have to see it working before you know what it’s really going to mean as far as the impact on citizens and law enforcement,” Manuel said.
Sheriff weighs in
Prior to the election, Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery wrote a Letter to the Editor opposing Issue 6 and an opposing measure that was later stricken from the ballot.
In the letter, Montgomery said he was concerned medical marijuana could used by people with jobs that could impact the safety of others, such as police officers, school bus drivers, heavy equipment operators and health care professionals.
Montgomery noted the language of Issue 6 means employers cannot sanction employees who use medical marijuana, leaving the door open for people in critical positions to use the drug. The sheriff said while he was “certainly not” in favor of legalizing marijuana, he would rather have seen the state legalize marijuana than pass Issue 6 due to the flaws he saw in the ballot issue.
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Full Article: Medical Marijuana – Problems And Questions For Law Enforcment
Author: Josh Dooley
Contact: The Baxter Bulletin
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