Utah patients won’t qualify for medical access because our state doesn’t issue patient cards, but we’re happy to see increasing access for all of Nevada’s patients, a West Wendover dispensary will begin serving this area within about 6 months.
Some time after that, the same dispensary will begin selling cannabis for personal use, and any adult passing through the state will be able to access cannabis (if with higher taxes than for medical, at least if NV’s law resembles CO’s).
Even though a) transport across state lines remains federally prohibited, and b) products purchased legally in Nevada will still be illegal to own in Utah, and c) black market cannabis has found its way here for decades, inevitably some of Utah’s patients – and others – will take those risks and travel to this new distribution point so close to the state’s major population centers.
From a social policy sense, this makes the Utah Ballot Initiative more sensible than ever. Medical cannabis has been proven to be safe and effective beyond a doubt for numerous conditions. It makes no sense to keep turning Utah’s patients into smugglers and criminals simply for wanting help with their medical conditions, especially with legal MC soon on the state’s Eastern, Western and Southern borders, but prohibited here.
So establishing safe, legal access for Utah patients will neutralize at least this part of the possible “diversion” problem and conserve legal system resources.
It further makes no sense for initiative opponents to argue (as some have publicly been doing) that the Utah medical initiative should be defeated because it will be quickly followed by legal “recreational” use here. That is, opponents who otherwise support medical use needn’t fear legal personal cannabis becoming Utah law ANY time soon – for these three reasons alone (and others as well):
1. There is no caucus of elected politicians at any level supporting personal use.
2. There are no groups anywhere near the size of TRUCE, Utah Patients Coalition and others working on legislation or an initiative.
3. Unlike most of the country where increasing majorities favor both legal medical and personal use cannabis, in Utah, a large majority does favor medical, while an equally large majority opposes personal use legalization.
In other words, whatever one’s opinion on the matter is, personal use legalization is not on the near horizon here, and so simply not an issue.
#MMJ #NVpol #Wendover #PersonalUse #Initiative18 #TRUCE
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See full article – West Wendover readies for marijuana dispensary, just 90-minutes’ drive from Salt Lake City
