E.L. marijuana policy punishes illegal use only

Despite a legal development last week that gives police the power to seize medical marijuana from registered patients, MSU and East Lansing police said they have not ramped up efforts to shut down the herbal alternative on campus.

Last week, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette issued an opinion that effectively allows police officers to confiscate medical marijuana from patients . If a patient is stopped for another reason, such as a traffic stop, an officer can take away any amount of the substance in their possession and cannot return it.

But on campus, police policy has not changed as a result of the ruling — patients who legally are allowed to have marijuana will not see their medicine taken, MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said.

“We don’t confiscate as long as the individual is in compliance with the law,” Taylor said.

University policy prohibits marijuana use on campus, meaning students are subject to university punishment. Students, however, can break their housing contract with no penalty if they are a medical marijuana patient.

East Lansing police also said they don’t take away marijuana from medical marijuana patients unless a patient has it confiscated for using legal marijuana in an illegal way, East Lansing police Capt. Kim Johnson said.

“Even the people with the cards can’t do certain things with it,” Johnson said. “(But) if they fall within the law, we wouldn’t be taking it.”

The opinion was issued on the grounds that forcing officers to return the drug is a conflict of state and federal laws and therefore would be forcing them to commit a federal crime.

“The people of this state, even in the exercise of their constitutional right to initiate legislation, cannot require law enforcement officers to violate federal law,” Schuette wrote in the opinion.

But Brian Fenech, an Ann Arbor defense attorney who specializes in medical marijuana, said the ruling is a blatant distortion of the act passed by voters.

“It’s clear from the law that’s not how it was intended to be handled,” Fenech said. “It’s another one of Schuette’s attempts … to try and usurp the will of the people by creating law out of whole cloth.”

The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act passed with a ballot initiative in 2008. Since then, about 119,000 residents have become registered as medical marijuana patients, according to numbers from the state of Michigan.

“I think it’s hypocritical if it’s a medicine,” English sophomore Colin Konkel said. “If a person has permission to use that substance, they should be allowed to have it on them without it being confiscated.”