[ OUR OPINION ]
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. Medical marijuana raids
amount to harassment
THE ISSUE Big Island police have seized marijuana plants from patients using marijuana for medical purposes.
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.
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Money talks loudly in politics, so the clamor about Republican Linda Lingle having raised the most in campaign contributions reverberates through the political arena as an indication that she leads the pack in the gubernatorial race. Look at the message
-- not the money
THE ISSUE Republican Linda Lingle has outdone other candidates in drawing contributions.
The amount of money candidates can draw to finance their campaigns does signal their political potency. Candidates say they need the money to get their messages across, but the content of those messages should be the determining factor for voters.
Modern political campaigns rely heavily on creation of images, name recognition, snappy slogans and sound bites. Campaign gurus and spin doctors hope that slick ads and generic position papers printed on artful brochures will be enough to convince people. Unfortunately, they are often right. Although many voters say they make their choices on the issues, more often than not they are too busy or too lazy to examine each candidate carefully.
Lingle's campaign has accumulated three times as much in contributions as the combined total of the three major Democratic candidates for governor, raising $1.5 million in the first six months of the year. The Republican knows well the importance of money. In her run against Governor Cayetano four years ago, Lingle's funds fell short in the final weeks before the election, which she lost by a mere 5,000 votes. There's little chance of that happening again. With only token opposition in the GOP primary, Lingle can salt away her money for use in the general election.
Not so for the Democratic candidates. The meager funds they've raised must be spent between now and September. Whoever wins the primary, however, may see more dollars come their way from contributors who are waiting to see which candidate emerges as the victor.
Money doesn't necessarily render a win. Millionaires Ross Perot and Steve Forbes are perfect examples of well-financed candidates who failed to gain public office. At the same time, financial assets have become a necessity for most campaigns to succeed.
This doesn't mean that voters have to buy into the money game. They should instead invest time and energy in examining the candidates, study what they propose, question them on issues and look past the flash and rhetoric. Otherwise, no one really wins.
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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, Editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
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