On Monday, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty announced his decision to run for President of the United States. This should have been cause for concern for marijuana reformers and medical marijuana patients, and today that concern was justified.

Gov. Pawlenty has been no friend to marijuana reform in the past. In 2009, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed only terminally ill Minnesotans to use marijuana to ease their pain in their final days. Even though this bill was narrowly tailored to address the concerns of law enforcement, Pawlenty vetoed it regardless, citing… further law enforcement concerns.

This is the same guy who supported a court decision that could have made possession of bong water a felony.

Given this disturbing behavior, and the damage that an anti-marijuana zealot in the White House could do to all the progress we have made in the last few years, we decided to find out if T-Paw still feels the same about the issue.

He does.

After speaking today at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. on such subjects as limited government, federal interference in health care, and saving taxpayer money, MPP’s Bob Capecchi asked the former governor how he could justify vetoing the Minnesota medical marijuana bill, given his stances on these issues.

Pawlenty dodged these obvious inconsistencies completely, and deferred to his standard rhetoric.

“Marijuana? Yeah,” Pawlenty said. “Well… I stood with law enforcement on this issue. We just have a respectful difference on this issue.”

He also mentioned that law enforcement have pretty serious concerns about medical marijuana. Is one of those concerns losing the ability to waste taxpayer money arresting sick people? This difference of opinion doesn’t seem respectful to seriously ill people, let alone to ideological consistency or integrity.

Marijuana reform could become a huge issue during the next presidential election. It is important that we keep putting pressure on candidates to clearly state their position on the issue, and to hold them accountable for that stance in the polls. We need to confront every candidate at every opportunity! Some of us are sure to get chances to question the candidates prior to the election, so let’s use them!

Please send any video of candidates answering such questions to outreach@mpp.org.

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Today, the court ruled unanimously that being a medical marijuana patient does not strip a person of his or her constitutional rights, at least as far as state law is concerned. From the court’s opinion:

Congress did not directly require the states to use their gun licensing mechanisms for the purpose of keeping guns out of the hands of marijuana users, and we conclude that Congress did not intend to achieve that same result by making it illegal for medical marijuana users to possess guns. The state’s decision not to use its gun licensing mechanism as a means of enforcing federal law does not pose an obstacle to the enforcement of that law. Federal officials can effectively enforce the federal prohibition on gun possession by marijuana users by arresting and turning over for prosecution those who violate it.

Ultimately, then, we reject the sheriffs’ contention that, to the extent that ORS 166.291 requires county sheriffs to issue CHLs to qualified applicants without regard to their use of medical marijuana, the statute is preempted by the federal prohibition on gun possession by marijuana users at 18 USC section 922(g)(3). The sheriffs cannot justify their denial of the applications at issue on that ground.

Basically, this means that because the Oregon gun licensing law does not substantially interfere with the ability of federal officials to enforce their gun control law, Oregon’s law is not pre-empted and is valid. The sheriff, being a state law enforcement official, must abide by state law and issue canceled handgun licenses to anyone who qualifies under Oregon law, even if that individual wouldn’t qualify under the federal scheme. Because being a medical marijuana patient is not grounds for refusal of a permit in Oregon, the sheriff must grant Ms. Willis’s concealed handgun permit even though she would still be liable under federal law for having a gun while using “illicit narcotics.”

Sound familiar?

It should. Check out the case of Gonzalez v. Raich (2005), which established that the federal government is free to enforce their marijuana laws despite California’s right to exempt medical marijuana users and caregivers from state criminal liability.

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That’s the question raised by a pair of articles in Colorado today that lay out the precarious work situation many medical marijuana patients find themselves in.

While the constitutional amendment that established medical marijuana in Colorado says that nothing “shall require any employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any work place,” the state also has a “Lawful Off-Duty Activities Statute” that protects employees from being penalized for something they do outside of work that is legal. (Much of the problem arises from the fact that marijuana stays in people’s systems longer than other drugs, so even if patients aren’t using marijuana during work hours, they could still test positive.) Legal experts have disagreed as to which measure takes precedent.

Against this legal gray area, many medical marijuana patients—teachers, sports coaches, government employees, and nonprofit workers among them—have been faced with the very real prospect of losing their jobs, simply for taking a legitimate medicine that is legal under their own state law.

To add to the confusion, court decisions in other states, including California, have found that employers can fire workers who fail mandatory drug tests. If that same logic were applied in Colorado, any number of the estimated 30,000 medical marijuana patients in the state would have a real cause for concern.

“[The law has] been deciphered to mean that employers can fire a medical-marijuana patient for just about anything,” Brian Vicente, the executive director of Sensible Colorado, told the Denver Post. “Basically, it’s a form of legalized discrimination against sick people who choose to use medical marijuana.”

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The ruling stemmed from a 2007 home search in which authorities seized, among other items, a glass bong containing about two-and-a-half tablespoons of water that tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine.

So what does this mean? According to Judge Paul Anderson, who authored the dissenting opinion, if the bong water is considered a drug mixture, the crime is a first-degree drug offense, and a first-time offender could serve seven years and two months in prison. If the bong water were considered paraphernalia, the same offender would be given a $300 fine for a petty misdemeanor conviction that would not go on their record.

Seven years and two months. For bong water.

Read the decision here.

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