To paraphrase former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the moral test of government is how it treats the most vulnerable among us.
Based on the events of the past several weeks, I’m afraid that the Town of North Hempstead’s board has failed that moral test.
Specifically, in a transparent attempt to mollify a shrill, right-wing minority, North Hempstead Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth and every member of the town council have sacrificed the health and dignity of seriously ill and injured residents who depend on medical marijuana to improve their quality of life.
Take the amendment to town code that was passed during the Nov. 20 board meeting that prohibits the sale of medical and recreational marijuana in the same location.
Did the board stop to think of how such a restriction might discourage medical marijuana dispensaries from operating anywhere within town limits?
If recreational marijuana were legalized, firms, like MedMen, might choose to operate in another area of Nassau County, where both products could be sold.
While this might not seem like more than a minor inconvenience to those without life-altering medical conditions, forcing patients or caregivers to travel even a few extra miles could be a serious barrier to access. And, what if neighboring towns, like Hempstead or Oyster Bay, were to pass similar restrictions?
There is no legitimate reason why patients or caregivers shouldn’t be able to pick up their state-sanctioned medications nearby their homes, like any other member of the community.
The next amendment to town code, which the board plans to vote into law on Dec. 18, is a collection of arbitrary rules that further restricts access to medical marijuana within town limits.
Not only will this amendment severely reduce the number of potential sites where a medical marijuana dispensary could operate, but it will also require that a dispensary be located in a building with at least one medical office.
This hypothetical medical office need not be licensed to prescribe marijuana or work with the dispensary in any way. Technically, operating in the same building as a dentist’s office or podiatrist’s office would fulfill this requirement.
Why would operating in an otherwise empty building or a building with only non-medical tenants even be an issue? This rule seems to be in response to proponents’ baseless claims that it’s safer or more appropriate to dispense medical marijuana in a “medical” setting.
We don’t insist that patients or caregivers filling opioid prescriptions do so in a “medical” setting. They can walk into any CVS or Rite Aid and fill their prescriptions. Why should only medical marijuana patients or caregivers be singled out in this way?
Another particularly egregious restriction prohibits patients or caregivers from taking or administering medical marijuana inside of a dispensary. If a patient has a seizure or sudden bout of intense pain, should that patient be told, “Take it outside?”
This specific restriction treats patients like drug addicts and dispensaries like drug dens, where people will hang out and get high if given the opportunity. This is ludicrous.
The amendment also includes a word-for-word copy of medical-marijuana-related advertising rules set by the state. The only purpose of this section appears to be to pad out the length of the bill and impress its proponents.
One can tell how hastily this particular amendment was written, given the fact that the terms “marijuana” and “medical marijuana” were not consistently spelled or capitalized throughout the document. In fact, in Section 70-201.13(A)(1), “marijuana” was spelled and capitalized inconsistently within the same sentence.
On Jan. 8, the board intends on passing yet another amendment, this time to ban the sale of recreational marijuana anywhere within town limits (not just within a medical marijuana dispensary).
It is abundantly clear that the board did not consult medical marijuana patients, caregivers, doctors or legal experts while drafting these amendments and that they were written solely in response to the complaints of well-heeled residents of Manhasset, Plandome and other nearby areas who don’t think medical marijuana should have been legalized in New York and look upon this as an opportunity to chase it out of their town entirely.
Conveniently for them, the social stigma associated with medical marijuana (and the fact that it is still illegal on the federal level) deters patients and caregivers from coming forward and publicly advocating for themselves.
I imagine it would be much more difficult for members of the board to look patients suffering from cancer, AIDS, PTSD or any number of other serious conditions in the eyes and tell them that this is all for their own good.
I also imagine that, if the proponents of these amendments snickered and jeered at such patients in the same manner they snickered and jeered at MedMen’s legal counsel at the Nov. 20 board meeting, they wouldn’t come off in quite as righteous a light.
Hopefully, the board will have some time to reflect before the Dec. 18 vote and decide if they really want to go forward with the remainder of this farce.
If they do proceed, I sincerely hope both medical marijuana firms currently operating with the Town of North Hempstead sue to invalidate these poorly written and cruel amendments.
Matthew Zeidman
New Hyde Park
