I am getting tired of the complaints about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ involvement in the Prop 2 initiative and the Legislature’s modifying the approved initiative. In the first place, had the church not gotten involved in the negotiations, and been willing to work with others to make the initiative more acceptable instead of working hard to make the initiative fail, it is very likely that medical marijuana would not now be legal in Utah. My guess is that because of the promise of a revised bill, many people voted for the bill who would not have voted for it without that promise.
In the second place, I am not our Legislature’s biggest supporter. Quite the contrary, I have been quite critical of that body’s actions over the years. But, in this case, I feel it was definitely in the right.
The normal legislative process requires a bill to be written and presented to committee to see if it is worth considering. Once a bill is determined to be worth considering, it is sent to the Legislature for further consideration. Seldom is a bill passed without modifications to improve it.
The initiative process simply presents a proposed bill to the public for approval, but the public does not have the ability to make modifications to the proposed initiative. So our Legislature has reserved its right and responsibility to do that, which it did for Prop 2. And now we have an approved, updated, improved bill allowing the use of medical marijuana in our state. A perfect bill? No. But one that, through public input and further experience with the effectiveness of the approved bill, can be further modified and improved over the years.
So instead of crying foul, these crybabies need to be thankful for what they have and now work through normal legislative processes to make improvements (?) they feel are necessary.
Fred Ash, Sandy