Guest AuthorEarly this month Ben Pollara, campaign manager for United for Care, wrote a column for Context Florida challenging some of my arguments opposing Amendment 2, the medical marijuana measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.
Some of Ben’s answers were just plain wrong and some were misleading, so let’s look at his attempts to answer my concerns.
In addressing my concern that the amendment allows “pot for any purpose,” he says that the Florida Supreme Court addressed the issue because it’s “only for diseases and conditions that are debilitating.” Who are you kidding, Ben?
After listing eight debilitating illnesses, your own amendment then says “or other conditions.” It doesn’t say “or other debilitating conditions.” So your answer is still wrong.
It can be for anything and your attorney said so before the Supreme Court when he said it could even be for a sore throat, loss of appetite or an inability to sleep. Worse, there is no definition for a debilitating disease in the amendment or in law.
Next you said that minors won’t get medical pot because doctors won’t treat minors without consent and Amendment 2 doesn’t change that. Hey, you finally got one right.
But you’re misleading voters because y’all also created “personal caregivers” and they can give the pot to ANYONE they want, including children and teens.
In fact, the very first version of your amendment (when you got only about 30,000 signatures) had a specific prohibition of pot for children. Why did y’all take that out?
Moreover, you put in a ludicrous and preposterous limitation that caregivers can give the pot to only five other people. Yeah, right. How are you going to enforce that? You won’t be able to and that’s where the abuse will occur.
Then I alleged that caregivers could be drug dealers and you say that can’t happen because the patient chooses his or her caregiver.
Ben, what planet do you live on?
You think that the Florida Department of Health’s estimate of 250,000 caregivers will all be law-abiding citizens? Sure, they’re supposed to be but show me an instance where government works perfectly — it just doesn’t happen. People scam government all the time and they get away with fraud, even in Medicare and Medicaid, and it will inevitably happen here as well.
As for your suing, you have no standing in a court of law.
You also claim that there can’t be a “pot doc” crisis like there was a pill-mill crisis. See the answer above. Either you’re the most naive person in Florida or you’re just ignoring the facts of what’s happened in the recent past when con artists abused the system.
It’s never supposed to happen, but it always does.
Your answer that no one has civil and criminal immunity under Amendment 2 is just wrong. The courts in future lawsuits, according to several former Florida Supreme Court justices, will have to rule on the interpretation of the words as written in your amendment. You could have written it better, but you didn’t.
The amendment succinctly states that there can be no criminal or civil sanctions for anyone under this amendment. That includes growers, doctors, dispensaries and the smokers themselves. Unless it involves an accident with a car, boat or plane.
Ben, you conclude by saying that you’ve addressed all of the loopholes, but your answers aren’t convincing.
Ten newspapers have so far opined against Amendment 2 and it’s because of the loopholes, poor wording and vagueness. We’ve been saying it and they agree with us.
To make matters worse for the amendment’s proponents, poll after poll is now indicating that Floridians are rejecting your amendment because it’s not what it purports to be. You’ve even fallen under the 60 percent level — to only 51 percent — in the latest WFLA/Survey USA poll.
Ben, you’re losing support. The biggest deception is that this is all about compassion and helping those with pain.
Yet how do you explain that your Pot Bus Tour went to college campuses last week? Shouldn’t you have gone to hospices, ALFs and senior citizen housing instead.
But then you’d miss the opportunity to convince young kids that they can get high legally in the future and then they might even vote for Charlie Crist for governor.
Ben, you plead for relief. The only relief Floridians are going to feel is when voters kill this amendment for the scam that it is. And that’s not a scare tactic, that’s the truth. Vote no on 2!
Barney Bishop III is the president and CEO of Barney Bishop Consulting, LLC. Barney can be reached at [email protected]. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
