Oregon legalizes medical marijuana dispensaries

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber signed a bill Wednesday legalizing medical marijuana dispensaries, setting the stage for the state to regulate and inspect businesses that have operated for years in a legal gray area.

Oregon was one of the first states to allow the legal use of marijuana after voters approved Ballot Measure 67 in 1998, which authorized the use of medical marijuana provisional on a doctor’s prescription.

Medical marijuana patients currently are required to grow the drug themselves or designate someone to grow it for them, and while dozens of dispensaries have popped up around the state, they're not explicitly authorized. In some areas, authorities have moved to shut them down, but elsewhere police have left them alone.

Oregon joins a growing list of states resisting federal restrictions on marijuana. Earlier this month, Illinois became the 20^th state to legalize medical marijuana, with the state House approving a four year pilot program. And last November, Washington and Colorado voters approved ballot initiatives to legalize, regulate and tax recreational marijuana. 

Proponents of the Oregon law say existing marijuana businesses should be brought under state scrutiny to protect patients, while critics say the dispensaries will make it easier for criminals to abuse the medical marijuana program.

Governor Kitzhaber stressed in a letter to Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown (pdf) on Wednesday that while the law would establish procedures to license and regulate medical marijuana dispensaries, “nothing in this law protects the dispensaries, growers, caregivers or patients from federal prosecution.”

He also wrote that the marijuana dispensaries would be required to pay fees “that will provide significant funding to [the Oregon Health Authority] so that they can be extremely vigorous in their enforcement of the rules that are developed.”

In 1999, Oregon’s Department of Health Services set up a state registry system for medical marijuana patients, and approximately 600 patients registered that year; by July 2010, the program had ballooned to more than 45,000 registered patients.

With Al Jazeera and The Associated Press