On Thursday, May 20, the Coalition for Patients Rights 2010 turned in another batch of signatures, bringing their total to over 112,000 signatures for the dispensary measure, Initiative 28. The initiative requires 82,769 valid signatures by July 2, in order to make it to the November ballot. The Secretary of State will verify the signatures within the next week, and inform the Coalition for Patients Rights 2010 of the total valid signatures and whether or not more are necessary before July 2.
John Sajo was quoted by Koin News Channel 6: “When you go to a pharmacy you know that it's safe and the dose is exactly what it's reported to be. We would like to have the same kind of system for medical marijuana, so that the patients and their doctors can know the strength of the medicine that they are using.”
In an exclusive Examiner interview with John Sajo, he explained, "Even patients with their own successful gardens are likely to buy starts at dispensaries or to obtain cannabis medicine preparations they can't make themselves such as hash, tinctures, lozenges, sublingual sprays etc." He also stated that patients would be likely to "sample new strains" from dispensaries and to "try products labeled for potency to use as a benchmark in evaluating their own medicine."
He further explained that the "purpose of I 28 is to make sure that every patient qualifying for medical marijuana can obtain the medicine safely and conveniently." He feels that the status quo currently encourages patients to use pharmaceuticals, which he says have "a huge competitive edge over medical marijuana" because of the prohibition of marijuana, and that "even though they [pharmaceuticals] are more dangerous" than medical marijuana, "patients are going to use medicines they can easily and conveniently obtain."
He foresees the possibility that "several hundred" medical marijuana dispensaries could open in the first year. He suggests the potential for a variety of different takes on the dispensary model, from retail store-fronts to those that serve only as a "delivery service." He also suggests that some dispensaries could play a middle role, converting marijuana from a producer into edibles or other medical products, and reselling them to dispensaries for retail.
Read the full text of Initiative 28.
Comments
Secretary of States office said yesterday they only have a little over 87,000 unverified so where do these numbers come from? False press releases?
@lollipop: The Secretary of State was originally only reporting the paid-petitioner signatures (87,000ish), and the initiative turned in some volunteer petitioner sheets as well. The total turned in was stated to be "over 110,000" in a few sources and 112,000 in a few others - but the short answer is that some signatures were disqualified - and now they move on to the verification process.
After disqualification, they had a total of 108,051 according to the Secretary of State - I called them back to confirm the discrepancy - and they confirmed this number (108,051) was accurate and unverified. They said it should be verified in the next 1-2 weeks. :) I hope that clears up the confusion - I was confused for a moment there myself because there were a few different numbers circulating :) But this is the "firm" number, unverified.
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