Washington State passed its medical marijuna law in 1998, shortly after California passed its law.  Washington's law permits patients to have a sixty-day supply of marijuna.  But unlike other states that define how much marijuana a patient may keep or grow, neither the legislature nor the courts in Washington have set such limits. Law enforcement is now pushing the legislature to set a specific limit.  Presumably anyone having more than the allowable limit could be sentenced for possession with an intent to distribute-- a charge that often involves lengthy potential jail time.

And as with so much of the discussion of medical marijuana, politics and ignorance tend to trump science and a patient's well being.  When one county in Washington State was asked how many plants a medical marijuana patient could grow, it responded by saying zero. 

One medical study cited in the Associated Press article suggests that a reasonable two-month supply might range from 3/4 of a pound to 2 1/2 pounds. The range is quite large because different kinds of marijuna have different levels of potency, the same kind of marijuna impacts different patients differently, and patients need different amounts of marijuana depending on how their pain and other symptoms vary over time.

In light of thse variables, it would be wiser and more humane to leave the determination of how much marijuna a person needs largely in the hands of patients and their doctors.  But in today's political climate, that is unlikely to happen.

Lawyers in Washington State have already threatened to challenge any statute that sets limits that are inconsistent with the medical and scientific evidence regarding marijuana.  It would be better if we didn't have to resort to such efforts to permit patients to get releif from pain and address their other symptoms.

For the foreseeable future, however, lawsuits will continue to be an indispensable tool for protecting patients. 

That's just the situation we're in.