August 2, 2002

Editorial

Star-Bulletin

Police on the Big Island apparently don't care much for a new state law allowing the cultivation and use of marijuana for medical use. Patients have been subjected to raids in the past month resulting in confiscation of plants and dried marijuana on the basis that they exceeded, if only slightly, the law's limits. Police should lighten up and grasp the spirit of the law.

On July 8, police seized 20 marijuana plants and 1.5 ounces of processed marijuana from the North Kona home of two people who suffer from leukemia and a third who has muscular dystrophy.

All three had received permission from the state to use marijuana to alleviate their ailments. Later in the month, police arrived by helicopter at a Hilo area patient's home, seizing two of seven plants and destroying a third.

More than 80 patients have registered with the state to use marijuana as medicine since the law took effect seven months ago. The rules allow a patient to possess seven marijuana plants, three of which are mature, and an ounce of processed marijuana. Police said the plants at North Kona were not labeled to indicate the owner of each; the processed marijuana was returned to the owners. Officers claimed that too many of the Hilo man's plants were mature, defined by state rules as having flowered and showing buds.

The four patients complain that the presence of buds doesn't mean a plant is mature enough to be usable as medicine. After the raids, Big Island Mayor Harry Kim signed county rules that cite the state definitions and appeared to endorse the heavy-handed tactics of police in dealing with technical violations of the law, if that.

County authorities on the Big Island and in other counties need to accept the idea that patients registered with the state to use marijuana are not criminals. At most, police should have issued warnings to the North Kona and Hilo area patients and advised them about how to comply with the state -- and now county -- rules.

Marijuana can legally be used for medical purposes in Hawaii and eight other states. The California Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that medical reasons not only can be used as a defense at trial but can be cited in asking a judge to dismiss the charges without trial. Such dismissals, along with the civil lawsuit filed last week by the North Kona trio, may be needed to dampen the zeal of Big Island officers.

The Issue: Big Island police have seized marijuana plants from patients using marijuana for medical purposes.