Marijuana advocates differ on how best to cultivate policy
Three months ago, Laura Kriho stood before a roomful of fellow medical-marijuana advocates and urged them to get involved with the political process to create regulations for the state's legal-marijuana industry.
"I know our standards are way higher than the government's standards," she said then.
Now, as the medical-marijuana community prepares for a rally today that it hopes will grab the attention of state lawmakers, Kriho is among a number of cannabis advocates who have soured on what the community can accomplish by working with politicians.
Frustrated by what she says are overly harsh regulatory proposals from state and local governments and believing the marijuana community's input has largely been ignored, Kriho said she is increasingly inclined to bypass policymakers altogether and instead use ballot initiatives and the courts to bring legal clarity to the state's medical-marijuana policy.
"There's only a few ways you can control your government," Kriho, of the Cannabis Therapy Institute, said Wednesday. "One of them is through the ballot box. One of them is through the jury box."
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