Petition Signatures Needed for Knox Marijuana Referendum

In Perspectives by Joe Sullivanleave a COMMENT

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Steve Cooper suffers from a degenerative disc in his back that’s caused him no end of pain. After trying numerous drugs and other therapies, the remedy he’s found that gives him the most relief is marijuana. “It works a lot better and easier for me than anything prescribed by doctors,” Cooper says.

Spurred by his own experience, the Knoxville accountant is now devoting himself to getting marijuana legalized for medical use in Tennessee. Twenty-three other states have already done so, and several more are heading in that direction.

In many of them, it was done by the state’s voters in a referendum. But Tennessee doesn’t allow for this. So it will take an act of the Legislature to remove the state’s prohibition on the use or even the possession of pot for any purpose. And Cooper has been frustrated by the inaction he’s encountered from legislators thus far.

A “Medical Cannabis Access Act” sponsored by Democrat Rep. Sherry Jones of Nashville and patterned after the laws of many other states got short shrift again this year. And a more limited measure sponsored by Republican Sen. Steve Dickerson of Nashville didn’t gain any traction either.

So Cooper is now endeavoring to give the electorate a voice, albeit a symbolic one, in a place where voter-initiated referendums are permitted: namely, Knox County. Actually, he’s got two separate propositions that he’s seeking to get on this coming November’s ballot. One would be for medicinal marijuana; the other would be for recreational use.

To get them on the ballot, Cooper needs about 17,000 signatures on petitions from registered voters equaling 10 percent of the votes cast in the state’s last gubernatorial election. And he’s only got until June to get them signed, sealed, and delivered to the Knox County Election Commission.

Petitions can be obtained from the website tennesseemarijuana.org, which contains instructions for mailing them to Cooper, who must then hand-deliver a sufficient number to the Election Commission. While Cooper claims to have a number of volunteers working with him, his outreach efforts at this point seem limited relative to the magnitude of the undertaking. A booth on Market Square last Saturday collected signatures, and another will be stationed near the UT Student Union this coming Saturday. Cooper has also been a featured guest on WBIR’s Inside Tennessee program, with other television and radio talk show appearances to follow, along with a social media presence.

The ballot propositions are cast in terms of amendments to the Knox County Charter, but this is really just a contrivance to make them eligible for the one type of citizen-initiated referendum the charter authorizes. The two propositions are:

• Shall the Knox County Charter be amended to allow the medical use of marijuana?

• Shall the Knox County Charter be amended to allow the legal use of marijuana for recreational purposes by persons 21 years of age or older?

No actual amendment to the charter has been framed and none would allow for any marijuana use anyhow, since Knox County has no authority to do so. But a sizable majority in support could have a significant impact on state legislators when marijuana bills come before them again next year as they most certainly will.

For my own part, I’m more partial to the medicinal proposition than the recreational one. Only four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) allow the latter, and the perception that it’s a hazardous drug is probably still too prevalent for a conservative state like Tennessee to allow its unfettered use anytime soon.

On the other hand, there’s now widespread recognition that the cannabis plant contains therapeutic value, just as aspirin was derived the bark of a willow tree.

Rep. Sherry Jones’ bill is fairly typical in its enumeration of “qualifying medical conditions” for which a  “practitioner” could recommend marijuana to be dispensed to a “qualifying patient” by a “participating pharmacy.”

The list of qualifying conditions includes cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, ALS, hepatitis C, Crohn’s disease, and Alzheimer’s. It would also encompass any “chronic or debilitating disease” that produces one or more of: severe debilitating pain, severe nausea, seizures, severe and persistent muscle spasms, or any medical condition for which a patient is receiving hospice services.

In order to qualify to purchase marijuana, an individual would have to obtain an identification card from a participating pharmacy. In addition to specifying the condition for which the card was being issued, the pharmacy would also have to obtain a “full assessment of the qualifying patient’s medical history furnished by a practitioner with whom the patient has a bona fide patient relationship.” The legislation also provides for licensing producers and processors of marijuana who would be regulated by the state Department of Agriculture.

To be sure, marijuana is not widely considered to be the drug of choice for treating any particular disease or condition. A big reason is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even consider it to be a drug; therefore, doctors can only recommend but not prescribe it. However, the FDA, which had long opposed its use, has come around to the point of issuing a statement that “[t]he FDA is aware that caregivers and patients are looking for treatment options for unmet medical needs. In some instances patients or their caregivers are turning to marijuana in an attempt to treat conditions such as seizures and chemotherapy induced nausea.”

And the FDA now professes to “support research into the medical use of marijuana.”

Marijuana may not be as potent as an opioid painkiller, but it is far less dangerous. Hardly any deaths have been attributed to marijuana overdose, whereas opioid-induced fatalities have become a scourge. While marijuana has effects similar to alcohol and is similarly subject to abuse, a study conducted by the medical arm of the National Academies of Science concluded that “many of the drug’s ill effects are false or unsubstantiated by scientific evidence.” These include suppositions that “legalizing medical use of marijuana will increase overall use of the drug, that the drug is more addictive than other drugs available for prescription and that its side effects are more harmful than those of other drugs.”

I hope Mercury readers will sign Cooper’s petition and seek others to do so as I have.

Joe Sullivan is the former owner and publisher of Metro Pulse (1992-2003) as well as a longtime columnist covering local politics, education, development, business, and tennis. His new column, Perspectives, covers much of the same terrain.

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