On the eve of its 10th anniversary, the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act is facing a determined attack by a coalition of business and other interests.
In November 1998, a voter-approved initiative made Oregon the second state, after California, to allow medicinal use of marijuana to help people deal with pain and side effects of treatment of certain conditions including cancer, AIDS and glaucoma. But the drug remains illegal under state and especially federal law, an inconvenient fact that has led to numerous difficulties in implementing the medical marijuana act.
Nevertheless, participation in the state's medical marijuana program has grown steadily, with more than 20,000 people currently holding cards authorizing them to use the drug.
Some employers have never been comfortable with the program, and now a coalition called the Drugfree Workplace Legislative Work Group is mounting a concerted effort to keep medical marijuana out of the job site and roll back major portions of the act.
"We are going to push hard this next session," Dan Harmon, the work group's chairman, told Albany Area Chamber of Commerce members Thursday. "We've told the legislative officers, 'You'd better tape your socks on, because we're going to come hard.'"
The executive vice president of Hoffman Corp., a large Portland construction firm, Harmon is also co-chairman of Associated Oregon Industries. The Drugfree Workplace Legislative Work Group is an offshoot of Workdrugfree, a program of the Oregon Nurses Foundation whose backers include 10 chambers of commerce and several regional business organizations.
When the Legislature convenes in January, the work group plans to reintroduce Senate Bill 465, which would exempt employers from having to accommodate medical marijuana users, no matter when or where they use the drug. The bill cleared the Oregon Senate in 2007 but died in a House committee.
In addition, the group intends to introduce legislation that would amend the act in a number of ways, including:
* eliminating some conditions currently approved for treatment with marijuana;
* restricting the approval of new conditions;
* reducing the amount of marijuana patients can have;
* making it a crime "with substantial jail time and fines" to violate the act; and
* requiring employer notification when a worker applies for a card.
For more than a year now, Harmon has been touring the state giving similar presentations to chambers of commerce and organizations such as Associated Oregon Industries, trying to build support for his cause.
Speaking to the Albany chamber last week, he said Hoffman Corp. won't hire anyone with a medical marijuana card and cited several reasons why other employers might want to take the same approach, including concerns about workplace safety, legal liability and the potential loss of federal contracts.
But he also claimed Oregon's medical marijuana law is being widely abused, and he framed the effort to scale back the law as a moral crusade.
The OMMA "says something about permissiveness in this state, and we've got to stop this permissiveness," he told business people gathered at the Central Willamette Community Credit Union headquarters. "It's a very symbolic issue."
Harmon claimed his proposed legislative package has strong backing in Salem, and three mid-valley lawmakers were on hand at Thursday's forum to back him up. Sen. Frank Morse, R-Albany; Rep. Andy Olson, R-Albany; and Rep. Sherrie Sprenger, R-Scio, all voiced support for Harmon's program.
But there is opposition as well.
A handful of medical marijuana advocates have attended or tried to attend several of Harmon's presentations to challenge what they say are distorted claims about medicinal pot. On Thursday, a half-dozen activists who tried to attend for the Albany forum were turned away at the door by Chamber of Commerce members.
"We've been haunting these people for a while now, and I'm sure they wish we'd go away," said Sandee Burbank, one of the people excluded from the Albany event. "They get real loose with the facts when nobody's around to call them on it."
Burbank is the executive director of Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse, a 26-year-old organization that lobbies for more liberal drug laws and operates a medical marijuana clinic in Portland. She also chairs the Advisory Committee on Medical Marijuana in the state Department of Human Services.
She said it's unfair to lump people who use marijuana for medical reasons in with those who abuse the drug to get high.
"I'm a patient as well," she said. "I use a tincture for my arthritis. I put it on topically and there's no intoxication at all."
Employers could readily accommodate medical users, she argued, if they tested workers for impairment rather than for metabolic traces of pot, which can stay in the urine for weeks after use.
In his Albany presentation, Harmon argued that there are no practical impairment tests available to employers. But he also characterized the push to accommodate pharmaceutical pot users on the job as part of a larger campaign to undermine drug laws in Oregon.
"It's not about sick people," Harmon said. "It's about legalizing marijuana."
But Dr. Grant Higginson, who oversees Oregon's medical marijuana program, said employers ought to be able to accommodate workers who properly use the drug as allowed under the 10-year-old state law.
"The intent of the law is to try to make medical marijuana more like other medicines," Higginson said. "As long as medical marijuana is treated like other drugs, I would think they'd be on fairly solid ground."
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BUSINESS GROUP TAKES AIM AT POT LAW 
WHO THE HELL DO THESE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE!! THESE ARE THE AMERICANS IM ASHAMED TO BE SHOULDER TO SHOULDER WITH!!
Hey Colorado
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