Police on Kauai are fighting to stop disabled people from having access to Medicine which works better than anything available by doctors. Their public argument has been that they are trying to protect children. But there is a bigger issue that should be looked at first.
Police have a much higher Domestic Violence rate, 24% according to this study. Regardless of the excuses why, domestic abuse not only harms children, it harms society as those children living in abusive lives grow up to cause abuse. Since alcohol seems to be related in over 90% of the situations, it seems a better way to stop harm to our children, and what we should focus on first, is to make it ILLEGAL in hawaii for any police officer to have any alchohol, beer, wine, hards, even of duty. THey have already said that what someone does when they arn't at work DOES matter, so they can't argue as long as they are off duty, since thats when the most harm comes to children. If the politicians really want to protect kids like they say, they should have immediate federal imprisonment for any officer who ever handles alchohol. Here are the links that prove a police officer with a beer does more harm to children and society then disabled people with marijuana.
http://www.womenandpolicing.org/violenceFS.asp
http://alcolim.com/Alcohol-Treatment-News/19387924_Police-identify-link-between-alcohol-and-domestic-violence.html
Do I really think they should not have the right to a beer? No. Neither do I think someone with severe pain should be forced to go on oxycotton and have their kidneys shut down. Alcohol has caused more harm to teens then marijuana possibly could, with many deaths (no teen who ever did only marijuana and stayed away from alcohol ever died from it, not even in car accident statitstics). SO, to quote the bible, Mathew 7.5 "Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye."
If you want to punish MMJ patients, do so after you punish alcohol drinkers in the police department, it just makes more sense for society
(that being said the majority of police officers are in fact good people who work hard for our community. Good police officers should be hailed as heroes of our society, however corrupt police are more damaging to innocent people than even terrorists, and should be treated as such.)