Caregivers needed ADVERTISING Caregivers needed There is a lot not to like about the medical cannabis dispensary law, but the most egregious part is that primary caregivers are to be eliminated when dispensaries finally open (“State: Tag your marijuana plants,”
Caregivers needed
There is a lot not to like about the medical cannabis dispensary law, but the most egregious part is that primary caregivers are to be eliminated when dispensaries finally open (“State: Tag your marijuana plants,” Tribune-Herald, Oct. 16).
At that point, state-registered caregivers no longer will be allowed to cultivate low-cost medical cannabis for qualifying patients.
The Legislature wrongly judged that caregivers no longer will be needed, as patients will be able to buy their medicine at the dispensary.
Nothing can be further from the truth. What sadly was overlooked is nearly a third of low-income patients rely on their caregivers for inexpensive or free legal medicine. Hawaii Island has the largest number of patients in this category. The medicine provided by caregivers is far cheaper than dispensaries ever could provide because, again unwisely, legislators chose a big corporate dispensary monopoly model for the state’s cannabis distribution program.
Most likely, only tourists are going to be able to afford buying in them — not at all what locals envisioned for a dispensary law. Ultimately, this will lead to patients, who once obtained medicine from their caregivers, turning to the black market, thus making them criminals.
One major goal of creating dispensaries was to set the black market back. The way this law was written will do absolutely the opposite.
We need to expand the program to provide less hardship and greater patient access to low-cost medical cannabis, not shrink it.
For certain in the coming 2016 legislative session, patients must rally to restore the primary caregiver component and allow a primary caregiver to grow for more than one patient.
Most patients need an alternative to the high prices they soon will see in a dispensary. Legislators must follow through to make this happen.
Andrea Tischler
Chairwoman, Big Island Chapter, Americans for Safe Access
Lesson in behavior
Regarding “Six players sidelined,” Tribune-Herald, Oct. 15: These students apparently never were taught the importance of integrity in their lives.
Integrity is defined as “doing what is correct and moral, regardless of who is watching.”
That is the responsibility of their parents. A child who is taught the value of integrity would never behave in this manner.
Those parents failed their children, as evidenced by their comments in defense of the students’ behavior. Teachers only can do so much for the six hours they have the students under their care.
When the school bell rings, it then becomes the parents’ duty to accept and teach them about the meaning and importance of integrity.
Please let this be a lesson in appropriate behavior for all students.
Ranalee A. Perreira
Honokaa
