> By DERRICK DePLEDGE
> Advertiser Government Writer

> Angry telephone calls started coming in to the state Department of Public
> Safety almost as soon as the June 27 issue of the Hawai'i Tribune-Herald hit
> the streets.

> A front-page article on medical marijuana mentioned that the department had
> provided a database with patient names and addresses, the locations of their
> plants, their certificate numbers, and their prescribing doctors.

> The breach of privacy was an inadvertent mistake, and the newspaper did not
> name any of the patients, but many were alarmed because the information is
> like providing a roadmap for a stash of legal pot.

> "Nobody here was a very happy camper," said James Propotnick, the
> department's deputy director for law enforcement. "People started calling.
> ... We were notified immediately. I don't think the paper was hot off the
> press 15 minutes and we started getting calls."

> On Monday, Clayton Frank, the department's director, sent letters of apology
> to the 4,200 medical marijuana patients statewide, informing many who had
> not read the article that their confidential information had been
> compromised.

> The letter explained the information had been forwarded by e-mail to a
> Tribune-Herald reporter who had asked for statistics on medical marijuana
> users. The department's information technology personnel have since isolated
> the list and added other internal controls to prevent it from being
> mistakenly released in the future.

> David Bock, the newspaper's editor, said the newspaper complied with the
> department's request to destroy the information.

> "We just wanted to know the number of people in Hawai'i County who were
> currently receiving medical marijuana," Bock said. "And they erroneously
> sent us the list with the actual names."

> Hawai'i is one of 12 states that allow marijuana to be used to help treat
> debilitating medical conditions such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and
> chronic back or neck pain. The law, approved by the state Legislature and
> signed by then-Gov. Ben Cayetano in 2000, allows patients or their primary
> caregivers to grow plants at their homes.

> Patients are limited to three mature plants, four immature plants, and up to
> three ounces of marijuana. Under the law's administrative rules, patient
> names and other information is confidential and can only be disclosed to law
> enforcement as verification that patients are in the program.

> Patients on the registry are exempt from state law prohibiting marijuana
> possession but not federal laws against the drug.

> Some in the medical marijuana community distrust the department's narcotics
> enforcement division, which oversees the program, and are disappointed with
> law enforcement's opposition to its expansion.

> Dennis Shields, an ordained minister who lives in Captain Cook on the Big
> Island and has one of the first registry cards, said he was extremely
> distressed when he read the newspaper article. He said he does not believe
> the information that was released has been destroyed.

> "Right now, it's sitting on some server somewhere," Shields said, doubting
> the information was erased. "I don't believe that, no. It's unverifiable.
> And I'm traumatized by that. I've been damaged."

> Propotnick said the department would never knowingly release the information
> publicly and responded quickly after discovering what happened.

> "It has to do with safety," he said. "Let's say that there's a whole lot of
> people who want to steal marijuana and you publish the list with the names
> and addresses. Now what have we done?

> "We simply wouldn't do it as a matter of safety and as a matter of privacy.
> They have a right to their privacy."

> The privacy breach is another wound for activists who watched as a proposal
> at the state Legislature to expand the program was reduced to a task force
> and then vetoed by Gov. Linda Lingle on Tuesday. The state Senate voted in a
> one-day special session to override the veto, but the state House did not
> take up the bill, so the veto stands.

> State Rep. Joe Bertram III, D-11th (Makena, Wailea, Kihei), wanted to create
> a secure growing facility on Maui and expand the amount of marijuana
> patients can legally possess but settled for a task force at the University
> of Hawai'i that would study cultivation and other issues surrounding the
> law.

> Gov. Linda Lingle, in her veto message, said the bill was "objectionable
> because it is an exercise aimed at finding ways to circumvent federal law.
> The use of marijuana, even medical marijuana, is illegal under federal law."

> Bertram said the privacy breach, combined with the veto of the bill and the
> lack of a House override, shows a disregard for patients.

> "It's a travesty," he said.