OUR VIEW: City targets cancer patients, glaucoma sufferers

The Colorado Springs City Council, which insists City Hall cannot afford to maintain the most fundamental services of local government, embarked upon a grand and bizarre new mission Monday. The council told city employees to make the elimination of medical marijuana dispensaries a priority. Not a low priority, mind you, but a high priority.

This isn’t a decision to go after drug smugglers, street junkies, and pothead teens. This is a mean-spirited decision to go after cancer patients and others with prescriptions who believe they need the drug tetrahydrocannabinol, derived from the cannabis plant.

It sounds like a joke, but it is not. In a society where almost anyone is able to buy recreational marijuana on the street or from a neighbor almost any time, the City Council has decided to direct city resources toward tripping up the handful of buyers and sellers who comply with state law.

Is there some abuse? Of course, just as there is rampant abuse of hard prescription narcotics such as Vicodin, which are far more harmful than THC. But the city isn’t going after pockets of medical marijuana abuse. The same city officials who say they can’t maintain parks have embarked upon a plan to close down the entire medical marijuana trade in Colorado Springs, which is home to Colorado’s largest marijuana store.

The city will use complaints and its land use code to accomplish this important goal, despite the decision of Colorado voters 10 years ago to legalize medical marijuana. The council made this decision after Deputy City Attorney Wynetta Massey explained how the city code doesn’t allow businesses that are in violation of the law, and marijuana growing is against federal law.

Of course, the federal law against growing marijuana is illegal. Laws pertaining to drugs grown or produced entirely within a state’s borders should be determined by each state. Nothing in the Constitution grants the federal government authority to regulate the growth and sale of a drug within the borders of a sovereign state, and the 10th Amendment to the Constitution preserves for each state the right to regulate anything that isn’t expressly delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. Federal authorities have consistently used the interstate commerce clause as a loophole around the 10th Amendment. This case, however, does not involve interstate commerce. Grow it here; sell it here. Where is the interstate commerce in that arrangement?

The council decided to fret about medical marijuana because the United States Justice Department declared it would stop enforcing the illegal prohibition of medical marijuana in states, such as Colorado, that allow it. The Obama administration has explained that federal enforcement of marijuana laws, in violation of state medical marijuana laws, violates states’ rights. In other words, the city is going to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries because city officials erroneously believe they violate federal law, and they’ll do so in response to a federal declaration that says the faulty federal law will no longer be enforced. Talk about looking for a fight. Is it any wonder City Hall can’t function?

It gets worse. Dick Anderwald, the city’s land use review manager who will be responsible for shutting down the trade, said his office hasn’t received a single complaint about medical marijuana dispensaries. He expects complaints, now that city officials have essentially solicited them. A team of three code enforcement officers will carry out this new plan to save us from medical patients who wish to avoid hard drugs such as morphine and Percocet. That team of three may become one, in the likely event the city’s 2C tax increase fails.

The City Council doesn’t use common sense. It wouldn’t have been hard for one or a few council members to tell their employees that it’s unwise for the city to fix that which isn’t broken. Common sense should tell city officials to avoid needless mew tasks while claiming they can’t continue basic services.

When they close your child’s swimming pool, and lay off firefighters and cops, just remember this: City Hall works hard to save us from people with cancer, glaucoma, chronic pain and prescriptions from their doctors for THC. Gee, thanks. What a great use of limited resources.