Thursday, May 14, 2009
Calistoga Council considers pot ordinance, more
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The Calistoga City Council will consider a number of city issues at its regular meeting next Tuseday. Meetings are held at 7 p.m. at 1307 Washington St., or may be watched live on Comcast channel 28.
This week the council will consider an ordinance to amend the Growth Management System to clarify, streamline and improve program implementation.
It will also take another look at an interim urgency ordinance extending the 45-day urgency ordinance adopted on April 21 — which established a temporary moratorium on the establishment and operation of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city for the immediate preservation of the public health, safety and welfare — for an additional 10 months and 15 days.
Under General Government, the council will also consider creating an ad-hoc council subcommittee to explore the merits of developing a Memorandum of Understanding related to the development of the Bounsall property.
Finally, they'll take a look at the city budgets for 2008-09 and 2009-10.
http://www.weeklycalistogan.com/articles/2009/05/14/news/local/doc4a0b9109dad39462488139.txt
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US drug enforcement agent indicted in Ohio
Posted 5/13/2009 6:45 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print
By M.R. Kropko, Associated Press Writer
CLEVELAND — A federal drug enforcement agent pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a federal indictment that accuses him of framing 17 people in controlled drug buys made by an informant.
Lee Michael Lucas, 41, of Cleveland appeared before U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver on the 18-count indictment that includes counts of obstruction of justice, making false statements in official reports, perjury and violating civil rights.
He was given a Jan. 6 trial date and released on a personal bond. His lawyer, Thomas Roth, did not immediately return a telephone message. The prosecutor said Lucas was on administrative leave from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Lucas allegedly used an informant for the DEA during September through November 2005 to make 13 controlled buys of cocaine in Mansfield, then put false information in his reports about the transactions.
The informant, Jerrell Bray, 36, formerly of Mansfield and Cleveland, pleaded guilty in 2007 to five counts of violating civil rights and two counts of perjury. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Charges eventually were dropped against those wrongly accused as a result of the controlled buys, said U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan at Pittsburgh, Pa., a special prosecutor in the case. Before then, one person was convicted and served about 16 months of a 10-year sentence; some served pretrial detention or no time in jail, she said.
Buchanan said an arrest warrant was issued for Lucas on Tuesday evening and he appeared Wednesday with his lawyer to turn himself in. She wouldn't comment on a possible motive for the crimes.
Buchanan said the evidence includes the misidentification of a person who had provided drugs to the informant and recorded conversations that were scripted or prearranged.
The prosecutor said she was appointed by the Justice Department to avoid an appearance of the conflict of interest among her counterpart in Ohio. She said the case should not hurt the credibility of other DEA cases.
"This is an unusual set of circumstances. This incident is not consistent with the general practice of investigators," she said.
By M.R. Kropko, Associated Press Writer
CLEVELAND — A federal drug enforcement agent pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a federal indictment that accuses him of framing 17 people in controlled drug buys made by an informant.
Lee Michael Lucas, 41, of Cleveland appeared before U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver on the 18-count indictment that includes counts of obstruction of justice, making false statements in official reports, perjury and violating civil rights.
He was given a Jan. 6 trial date and released on a personal bond. His lawyer, Thomas Roth, did not immediately return a telephone message. The prosecutor said Lucas was on administrative leave from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Lucas allegedly used an informant for the DEA during September through November 2005 to make 13 controlled buys of cocaine in Mansfield, then put false information in his reports about the transactions.
The informant, Jerrell Bray, 36, formerly of Mansfield and Cleveland, pleaded guilty in 2007 to five counts of violating civil rights and two counts of perjury. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Charges eventually were dropped against those wrongly accused as a result of the controlled buys, said U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan at Pittsburgh, Pa., a special prosecutor in the case. Before then, one person was convicted and served about 16 months of a 10-year sentence; some served pretrial detention or no time in jail, she said.
Buchanan said an arrest warrant was issued for Lucas on Tuesday evening and he appeared Wednesday with his lawyer to turn himself in. She wouldn't comment on a possible motive for the crimes.
Buchanan said the evidence includes the misidentification of a person who had provided drugs to the informant and recorded conversations that were scripted or prearranged.
The prosecutor said she was appointed by the Justice Department to avoid an appearance of the conflict of interest among her counterpart in Ohio. She said the case should not hurt the credibility of other DEA cases.
"This is an unusual set of circumstances. This incident is not consistent with the general practice of investigators," she said.
OCEANSIDE: Moratorium approved for medical pot dispensaries
Ban could be extended up to two years
By CRAIG TENBROECK - ctenbroeck@nctimes.com
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 9:50 PM PDT
OCEANSIDE ---- Medical marijuana dispensaries won't be setting up shop in Oceanside, at least not for now.
The City Council adopted a so-called urgency ordinance Wednesday imposing a moratorium on dispensaries. The ban will expire in 45 days, but the council can extend it for nearly two years.
City Attorney John Mullen said someone recently inquired about opening a dispensary in Oceanside.
"He does not have a specific location, but he indicated at our meeting that he wanted to be the first," Mullen said. "That is one of the factors that was adding to the urgency of the adoption of this ordinance."
California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996. While the drug is illegal under federal statutes, the Obama administration has signaled it won't prosecute dispensaries that operate under state law.
California's cities and counties have approached dispensaries differently. Thirty-two cities have regulations that allow them, while 111 ---- including San Marcos, Murrieta and Temecula ---- have bans, according to Americans for Safe Access, a medical cannabis advocacy group.
Oceanside has no rules governing medical marijuana dispensaries, which may lead to their proliferation, said associate planner Juliana von Hacht. She said they've been linked in some cities to increased crime, traffic and noise.
City staff will use the moratorium to study its regulatory options and meet with interested parties, including patients and law enforcement representatives, she said.
About half of the 17 people who addressed the council were medical marijuana advocates. One wore a shirt that said "Medicating is not a crime."
The rest were drug prevention workers seeking an eventual ban.
The council approved the moratorium 4-0, with Councilwoman Esther Sanchez absent. An urgency ordinance takes effect immediately.
"This is kind of new territory for us," Councilman Jerry Kern said.
In a letter, the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego urged the city this week to complete its study "as quickly as possible, to avoid infringement of the rights of qualified patients and their caregivers."
City staff said it would probably take longer than 45 days.
Contact staff writer Craig TenBroeck at 760-901-4062.
http://www.northcountytimes.com/articles/2009/05/13/news/coastal/oceanside/z00fa48af53aa341c882575b60010935e.txt
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Confusion abounds over medical marijuana
Comments 1 | Recommend 0
May 12, 2009 12:37:00 AM
By Thomas D. Elias
There is silence now where once loud huzzahs erupted from medical marijuana advocates in California after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled this spring that federal authorities will no longer raid or interfere with medipot dispensaries in states where it is legal, so long as users abide by state law.
That's because no big change has occurred since then in this state, whose voters via the 1996 Proposition 215 became the first in the nation to pass a state law legalizing medical use of marijuana.
Federal prosecutions of medipot providers arrested while George W. Bush was president continue. Inconsistencies in what's legal persist from one county to the next. While some officials in big cities and urban counties advocate municipal sales of pot to keep prices down and make sure clinics operate within the law, their counterparts in other places continue banning medipot altogether.
Los Angeles County, for the biggest example, has more than 100 medical cannabis clubs, storefronts and delivery services, but nearby cities like Anaheim and Pasadena ban them. While some medipot supply outlets feature smoking lounges and marijuana brownies, counties like Amador, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Merced, Riverside, Stanislaus and Sutter ban all sales, according to the pro-pot group Americans for Safe Access.
Then there are the abiding inconsistencies between state and federal law. Where the state says anyone can smoke or otherwise take marijuana for medical reasons with a mere recommendation from a doctor, federal law recognizes no medical effects at all from the weed, despite Holder's stated new policy.
That's how a federal appeals court the other day could uphold a 10-year prison term for a Chico medipot patient convicted in 2002 of conspiring to grow more than 1,000 marijuana plants, even though he had a doctor's recommendation and testified he was growing the plants for himself and four other patients who shared expenses.
That's why, if you use medical marijuana and live in housing subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, you can be evicted anytime - even if you're in complete compliance with every state and local law. As a result, Americans for Safe Access recommends on its Website that such patients not smoke pot in their apartments, but try to use only edible pot concoctions or vaporizers.
For while the California Supreme Court has upheld Proposition 215 and counties are required to issue ID cards to medipot patients who register, plenty of county officials refuse to comply. San Diego County, for one, has not issued cards, instead suing the state in an action that now awaits review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the nation's highest court upholds the San Diego County stance, there's a strong possibility several counties that reluctantly began issuing IDs last year will stop doing it or rescind the cards they're already given out.
That's because plenty of local officials believe medipot is a scam, a get-rich scheme by growers who somehow conned the majority of state voters.
An example is Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, who told a reporter the Holder position doesn't matter to him. "I will do my job irrespective of what the Drug Enforcement Administration (which answers to Holder) does or does not do," he said.
Adding to the welter of confusion is the fact that despite Holder's policy change, Justice Department lawyers nominally working for him argued before a federal appeals court a month later that marijuana "currently has no accepted medical use."
At the same time, some politicians argue that California should just forget about both federal law and all disputes over the medical merits of pot, and simply legalize the weed in order to tax it, which might help balance the constantly strapped state budget. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking a cue from Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, who last winter proposed full legalization, argued this month that California should consider just that.
Some estimates claim marijuana is the largest cash crop along California's North Coast and in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with estimates of the total street value of California-grown pot ranging up to $14 billion per year. A 10 percent sales tax on that amount would contribute more than $1.4 billion to the state's coffers.
But there's confusion here, too, since no one can say how much prices might drop if pot became legal.
This all creates a legal maze of almost unprecedented complexity that probably won't be resolved until or unless Congress legalizes marijuana, or at least its use for legitimate medical reasons. No one should expect that to happen anytime soon.
Thomas D. Elias writes on California politics and other issues. His column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail him at tdelias@aol.com.
May 12, 2009 12:37:00 AM
By Thomas D. Elias
There is silence now where once loud huzzahs erupted from medical marijuana advocates in California after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled this spring that federal authorities will no longer raid or interfere with medipot dispensaries in states where it is legal, so long as users abide by state law.
That's because no big change has occurred since then in this state, whose voters via the 1996 Proposition 215 became the first in the nation to pass a state law legalizing medical use of marijuana.
Federal prosecutions of medipot providers arrested while George W. Bush was president continue. Inconsistencies in what's legal persist from one county to the next. While some officials in big cities and urban counties advocate municipal sales of pot to keep prices down and make sure clinics operate within the law, their counterparts in other places continue banning medipot altogether.
Los Angeles County, for the biggest example, has more than 100 medical cannabis clubs, storefronts and delivery services, but nearby cities like Anaheim and Pasadena ban them. While some medipot supply outlets feature smoking lounges and marijuana brownies, counties like Amador, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Merced, Riverside, Stanislaus and Sutter ban all sales, according to the pro-pot group Americans for Safe Access.
Then there are the abiding inconsistencies between state and federal law. Where the state says anyone can smoke or otherwise take marijuana for medical reasons with a mere recommendation from a doctor, federal law recognizes no medical effects at all from the weed, despite Holder's stated new policy.
That's how a federal appeals court the other day could uphold a 10-year prison term for a Chico medipot patient convicted in 2002 of conspiring to grow more than 1,000 marijuana plants, even though he had a doctor's recommendation and testified he was growing the plants for himself and four other patients who shared expenses.
That's why, if you use medical marijuana and live in housing subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, you can be evicted anytime - even if you're in complete compliance with every state and local law. As a result, Americans for Safe Access recommends on its Website that such patients not smoke pot in their apartments, but try to use only edible pot concoctions or vaporizers.
For while the California Supreme Court has upheld Proposition 215 and counties are required to issue ID cards to medipot patients who register, plenty of county officials refuse to comply. San Diego County, for one, has not issued cards, instead suing the state in an action that now awaits review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the nation's highest court upholds the San Diego County stance, there's a strong possibility several counties that reluctantly began issuing IDs last year will stop doing it or rescind the cards they're already given out.
That's because plenty of local officials believe medipot is a scam, a get-rich scheme by growers who somehow conned the majority of state voters.
An example is Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, who told a reporter the Holder position doesn't matter to him. "I will do my job irrespective of what the Drug Enforcement Administration (which answers to Holder) does or does not do," he said.
Adding to the welter of confusion is the fact that despite Holder's policy change, Justice Department lawyers nominally working for him argued before a federal appeals court a month later that marijuana "currently has no accepted medical use."
At the same time, some politicians argue that California should just forget about both federal law and all disputes over the medical merits of pot, and simply legalize the weed in order to tax it, which might help balance the constantly strapped state budget. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking a cue from Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, who last winter proposed full legalization, argued this month that California should consider just that.
Some estimates claim marijuana is the largest cash crop along California's North Coast and in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with estimates of the total street value of California-grown pot ranging up to $14 billion per year. A 10 percent sales tax on that amount would contribute more than $1.4 billion to the state's coffers.
But there's confusion here, too, since no one can say how much prices might drop if pot became legal.
This all creates a legal maze of almost unprecedented complexity that probably won't be resolved until or unless Congress legalizes marijuana, or at least its use for legitimate medical reasons. No one should expect that to happen anytime soon.
Thomas D. Elias writes on California politics and other issues. His column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. E-mail him at tdelias@aol.com.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Marijuana Tax As The New Revenue?
Polls Suggest Increased Support for Decriminalizing and Taxing the
Drug, but Policy May Not Change Soon.
San Francisco - Are Americans really ready to consider legalizing
marijuana? This week, California's governor said it was time to
debate the issue, and a new nationwide poll suggests a majority of
voters favor decriminalizing the drug.
While legalization advocates say they've never seen such widespread
public support for reforming marijuana laws, they still don't expect
drug policy to change overnight. But, they say, the country appears
to be at tipping point in how it views recreational use of marijuana,
which is now legal in 13 states for medically-approved use.
"We are actually talking about historic highs when it comes to public
support of taxing and regulating marijuana for adult consumption,"
says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). But, he adds, "the most
difficult task is how you convert public sentiment into public policy."
In Washington, Mr. Armentano says, politicians are still not ready to
rethink US drug policy.
In a poll released Wednesday by Zogby International, 52 percent of
voters said they would support legalizing, taxing, and regulating
marijuana use.
The survey asked voters if they would "favor or oppose the
government's effort to legalize marijuana?"
That question may be a bit misleading, suggests Reason Online blogger
Jacob Sullum. "The phrase 'the government's effort to legalize
marijuana' makes it sound as if this is something that's already
happening, which makes the idea seem more realistic and credible."
Also, the poll surveyed 3,937 voters whose political identities
followed the outcome of the last presidential election - 54 percent
were President Obama supporters and 46 percent voted for Sen. John
McCain. "This sample may be skewed in a pro-reform direction if, as
seems plausible, left-leaning Americans were especially motivated to
vote in the last presidential election, while conservatives were
dispirited," he wrote.
Nonetheless, "It's in line with building support for marijuana
legalization in other surveys," Mr. Sullum acknowledged.
The Zogby findings follow last month's ABC News/Washington Post
survey that found 46 percent support for decriminalizing marijuana.
And a California Field Poll published April 30 said that 56 percent
of state residents were OK with marijuana becoming a taxed and
regulated commodity.
California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, (D) from San Francisco, has
proposed legislation to begin treating marijuana like alcohol -
giving anyone over 21 the right to use it but taxing it heavily.
Taxing marijuana, supporters of Mr. Ammiano's bill say, could bring
the cash-strapped state $1.3 billion annually. Already the state
collects about $18 million annually from medical marijuana.
Massachusetts state legislature is also set to consider a bill to tax
and regulate the sale and trade of marijuana. Last year, voters there
approved an initiative to reduce the punishment for possession of
small amounts of marijuana to a $100 civil citation.
On Tuesday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was responding to a
question about the potential statewide boon from taxing marijuana
when he said: "It's time for debate.... I'm always for an open debate on it."
Still, he says he does not currently support the idea.
Neither does Mr. Obama. In late March, at a virtual town hall meeting
in which viewers voted online for questions that Obama would take,
the most popular question was: "With over 1 out of 30 Americans
controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax
marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making,
money saving boost to the economy?"
Obama answered, to much applause: "I don't think that is a good
strategy to grow our economy."
In response to the president's reply, Jack Cole, executive director
of the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a drug-policy reform
group comprised of current and former law enforcement officers, said:
"It would be an enormous economic stimulus if we stopped wasting so
much money arresting and locking people up for nonviolent drug
offenses and instead brought new tax revenue from legal sales."
But many other police groups are steadfastly against any form of
legalization. The California Police Chiefs Association said that
marijuana dispensaries in the state are "a clear violation of federal
and state law; they invite more crime; and they compromise the health
and welfare of law-abiding citizens."
Californians approved the medical use of marijuana in 1996, the first
state to do so. Today, marijuana is available over the counter
throughout the state for anyone with a doctor's permission. In
February, US Attorney General Eric Holder said the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) would no longer raid medical marijuana
dispensaries, which marijuana advocates saw as a sign of growing
federal acceptance of state-specific pot laws. Under the Bush
administration, the DEA shuttered at least 40 marijuana dispensers.
On its website, the DEA maintains: "Smoked marijuana has not
withstood the rigors of science - it is not medicine and it is not
safe. DEA targets criminals engaged in cultivation and trafficking,
not the sick and dying."
Armentano questions whether the spread of medical marijuana laws is
really connected with support for legalization.
He traces the changing stance to three developments: the economic
downturn, which is forcing people to consider new sources of revenue;
the violent Mexican drug war, which he says many Americans see as the
result of prohibition of the drug trade and not directly linked to
personal usage; and lastly, more experience with the drug.
According to the DEA, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit
drug in the country. "It's hard to say that using marijuana will ruin
your life when the last three American presidents are admitted
marijuana users," Armentano says.
Oceanside to consider marijuana moritorium
By CRAIG TENBROECK - ctenbroeck@nctimes.com |
Saturday, May 9, 2009 5:07 PM PDT ƒ
Oceanside may impose a temporary ban on medical
marijuana dispensaries until city officials
decide how to regulate them.
The City Council will consider an "urgency
ordinance" Wednesday that would immediately
prohibit dispensaries from opening and operating.
The moratorium would last 45 days, with optional
extensions of nearly two years.
George Buell, Oceanside's development services
director, said nobody has applied to open a
dispensary, but "there have been inquiries," and
a moratorium would "provide us an opportunity to
study the issue."
There are no storefront dispensaries in the city.
California voters passed a medical marijuana law,
Prop. 215, more than 12 years ago.
While the federal government prohibits pot, the
Obama administration announced this year that it
would halt federal raids on dispensaries
established under state law.
Even so, cities and counties vary in their attitudes toward medical cannabis.
About 30 California cities have regulations that
allow dispensaries, according to Americans for
Safe Access, a medical cannabis advocacy group.
More than 110 ---- including San Marcos, Murrieta and Temecula ---- have bans.
Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe
Access, said a moratorium is "not necessarily a
bad thing" if Oceanside is working in good faith
on regulations.
But "if they institute a temporary moratorium to
eventually ban the conduct outright in the city
of Oceanside, then I would say they're taking the
wrong approach," Hermes said.
In a report to the council, City Planner Juliana
von Hacht said marijuana dispensaries pose a
"threat to public health, safety and welfare,"
since the city has no rules to govern them. She
said they've been linked to increased crime,
traffic and noise.
David Blair-Loy, legal director with the San
Diego chapter of the American Civil Liberties
Union, worried that the city's definition of
"dispensary" was so broad it could affect "a
single caregiver providing medical marijuana to a
single patient in the privacy of the home."
Adoption of the moratorium requires a four-fifths vote.
The council meets at 5 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall, 300 N. Coast Highway.
Contact staff writer Craig TenBroeck at (760) 901-4062.
Marijuana Law not worth cost of enforcing
It makes far more sense to raise taxes from pot sales than to waste
our shrinking resources in a futile effort to stop them.
Trying to twist a tourniquet on the state of California's still-
bleeding finances, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration last
week reportedly floated a plan to commute the sentences of 38,000
"low-level" inmates and possibly close state prisons and send the
convicts to county jails.
Which must sound like a bit of black humor to Shasta County Sheriff
Tom Bosenko. The jail is already routinely full, and early releases
are a chronic problem. And on top of that, Bosenko is suggesting that
he might have to close a floor or two of the eight-story jail as part
of county budget cuts. That will leave local criminals less
accountable for their actions even as local police agencies are
cutting their staffs.
A recipe for a crime wave? Perhaps, but the looming crisis should
also prompt a hard look at what we consider crimes. In particular,
let's take up Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent call for a debate
on legalizing and taxing marijuana.
In 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available,
police in California made 65,000 felony and misdemeanor arrests for
marijuana. Relatively few of those lawbreakers ended up doing hard
time in state prison, but the endless pursuit of marijuana smokers
and suppliers is a substantial drain on increasingly scarce law-
enforcement resources at every level, from police to courts to
probation offices.
And for what? Marijuana use remains common, even among the teenagers
whose well-being is the most common rationale for our current drug laws.
Indeed, among teenagers pot smoking appears to be at least as
prevalent as tobacco use. A 2006 survey by the California Tobacco
Control Program found that about 15.4 percent of high schoolers had
smoked a cigarette within the past 30 days, but the state Justice
Department's most recent survey of youth drug use found 15 percent of
ninth-graders - and 24 percent of 11th-graders - had used marijuana
in the past 30 days.
So the ban isn't keeping our children safe, even as the profits of an
illicit business drive pot growers to take over our backcountry and
fuel drug wars that make the headlines from Mexico scarier than those
out of Iraq.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco, has
introduced a bill to legalize marijuana, treating it essentially the
same as alcohol. Users would have to be 21 years old. Smoking would
still be banned in public, much as liquor is barred in parks. Driving
under the influence would still be a crime.
Oh, and dealers would be licensed and taxed, raising an estimated
$1.3 billion a year. Heaven knows the state could use the extra
money. The budget crisis is forcing massive school cutbacks, dramatic
reductions in health services for the poor, the sacking of police and
firefighters.
Let's save a few cops' and teachers' jobs by raising money from
marijuana sales instead of spending money in a vain attempt to stamp
them out. Let's keep embezzlers and car thieves and repeat DUI
drivers locked up over pot dealers whose only crime is supplying
consenting adults.
We don't want to see more marijuana use, especially among young
people. But higher taxes and education have steadily cut tobacco use
over the years - to trust the numbers, far more effectively than the
outright ban on marijuana. Isn't it time we try what's worked instead
of what's proven to be a dismal failure?
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Drug Warriors
Meet Paul Chabot and Lanny Swerdlow, enemy combatants in the battle
over medical marijuana-and the war just got personal
By:David Silva
In war, the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys often
depends on which side of the battle lines you happen to be standing.
But with the war on drugs, fought everywhere-on the borders and in
the streets, in the courts and playgrounds, in schools and
legislatures and often even in the home-figuring out where the battle
lines lay is difficult at best. And nowhere are the battle lines
blurrier as in the fight over the medical use of marijuana.
Inland Empire residents Paul Chabot and Lanny Swerdlow are foot
soldiers in that battle: Their individual missions perfectly
encapsulate the scope of the medical-marijuana dispute.
Swerdlow, founder of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project and
operator of the THCF Medical Clinic in Riverside, has dedicated his
life toward lifting the legal and cultural barriers against the use
of pot for medicinal purposes. He firmly believes marijuana to be a
remarkably beneficial herb, cheap and easy to cultivate and benign on
the system, criminalized for no other reason than to line the pockets
of law-enforcement types like Chabot.
Chabot, co-founder of the Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition
in Riverside, has similarly dedicated himself to fighting people like
Swerdlow. Chabot believes that Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot
measure that legalized medical marijuana in California, is a bad law
and bad public policy, that pot is a gateway drug responsible for the
ruination of far too many of the nation's youth, and that people like
Swerdlow are little more than glorified drug pushers.
Were they born in a different time, it's possible the two men might
actually enjoy the other's company. Both are intelligent, informed
and affable. Both are passionate about what they do, and consider
themselves dedicated servants to the public good. But in the here and
now, 13 years after the passage of Prop. 215, Chabot and Swerdlow are
sworn enemies.
Part of the reason for that is political.
"More and more people are starting to see the problems that 215 have
brought to our state," Chabot, 35, says, "Especially when very
healthy people can get marijuana for any condition whatsoever,
including hair loss, itchy skin and high-heel pain. What does that
tell young kids, growing up looking at these healthy adults smoking
marijuana? We think this experiment that's been going on has really
been exposed lately as largely a Trojan horse to legalize and tax
marijuana in our state."
But even if that were true, asks Swerdlow, so what?
"If marijuana were legalized, we'd see an increase in people using
it-people like to lift their moods a bit. They just wouldn't be doing
it with alcohol," says Swerdlow, 63. "With cannabis, people don't
have to worry about destroying their liver, as happens with alcohol
and many prescription medicines. We see a lot of people with
illnesses related to their alcohol or cigarette use. We never see
anyone with illnesses from marijuana use. No one dies from smoking
cannabis."
But with Swerdlow and Chabot, their animosities run deeper than just
policy differences: They despise one another. Chabot had Swerdlow
arrested for battery in October 2007, claiming Swerdlow shoved him
after being denied entry to a coalition meeting. Acquitted of the
charge, Swerdlow says he plans to sue Chabot-and possibly the city of
Rancho Cucamonga and the county of San Bernardino-over the episode.
**
As is the case with most bitter enemies, Swerdlow and Chabot's
animosities are informed by bitter personal experiences.
Chabot says he came from a broken home and that, as a child, he
experienced first-hand the destructive nature of marijuana.
"I went through drug rehab when I was 12 years old," he says. "I used
to be a pothead wanting to legalize pot when I was a kid. I now have
over 22 years of sobriety. I've kind of 'been there/done that' and
have been on the other side of the tracks."
Once freeing himself from drug addiction, Chabot says, everything
changed for the better. His biography on his website, paulchabot.com,
lists an impressive resume of accomplishments for someone only 35
years old.
"Dr. Paul Chabot recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq where
he served with U.S. Special Operations Forces as an Intelligence
Officer," the website states. "Previously he was a Senior Advisor
within the White House and worked for two U.S. Presidents. He began
in 1999 as a Presidential Management Fellow. He has a B.A. in
Administration from California State University at San Bernardino, a
Masters of Public Administration from the University of Southern
California and has a doctorate (Ed. D) in Executive Leadership from
the George Washington University."
Chabot, who says he plans to run for the state Assembly, founded the
Inland Valley Drug Free Coalition with his wife Brenda in 2005.
Brenda Chabot serves as the group's executive director, with Paul in
an advisory role.
Patterned after similar coalitions in cities across the country, the
group uses various strategies to influence public drug policy and
perception. Its primary tactic is the media campaign: Coalition
members write and submit op-ed articles-typically using
highly-charged rhetoric and evoking perceived threats to children- on
various drug-related concerns.
The coalition addresses all drugs-including heroin, methamphetamine,
prescription pills, alcohol and tobacco-identified by members as
threats to the community. But of particular concern to the group is
medical marijuana, given its legal status in California. In an op-ed
published Sept. 3 in the The Press-Enterprise, coalition member Roger
Anderson warns of a powerful and amoral pot industry behind Prop. 215:
"[Medical-marijuana supporters] couldn't care less that many high
school students might gather that it is OK for them to smoke
marijuana," Anderson writes. "For the drug legalization movement,
these youths are their next generation of legal drug advocates. Never
mind that these kids risk falling down the slippery slope of drug
use, abuse and addiction."
The coalition has nonprofit status under a 501(3) (c) umbrella group,
Paul Chabot's pro-clean-living Freestyle Foundation. Both
organizations solicit donations to a common mailing address, a PO box
in Rancho Cucamonga. Chabot says coalition members meet on an
irregular basis at various members' homes to discuss issues as they
come up-a common arrangement for nonprofit activist groups. He says
the coalition has more than 100 members from all walks of the IE,
including off-duty police officers, parents, teachers, doctors and
government officials.
"We do have city council members, and government officials at all
levels of government," he says. "We also have community heroes: war
vets, retired police officers, reformed drug addicts and ordinary
moms and dads who are in the trenches across the community trying to
keep their own kids off drugs."
Asked to identify some of the government officials involved, Chabot
declined, citing safety concerns. Coalition members, he says, have in
the past received death threats from anonymous callers. Two days
after being interviewed, he emailed me an audio clip of a voicemail
in which the caller raged for nearly five minutes against Chabot,
member Tom Beard and their wives.
"You people are evil!" the caller shouts. "When you use the federal
government against me as a weapon, that's no different than me using
a gun against you!"
**
Swerdlow, 63, also admits to smoking pot as a youth, but his was a
much more positive experience than Chabot's. Further, he says, he
never stopped.
"I've been smoking cannabis all my life," he says. "My friends and I
would kick back after class and roll five or six joints while
listening to [1950s television drama series] Firesign Theater. I
didn't think much about the medical effects of it until '95, when I
had a friend with AIDS."
Swerdlow describes watching his friend wither from being heavy-set
to positively skeletal. The only thing that seemed to help the friend
with loss of appetite, he said, was weed.
"I thought to myself, 'My god, this stuff really helps him,'"
Swerdlow recalls. "Remember, this was '95, when AIDS was a death
sentence. But the problem with marijuana at the time was we had to go
on the streets and deal with criminals to get it."
But he says he didn't become "radicalized" on the issue of medical
marijuana until he became a registered nurse. It wasn't just that he
noticed pot seemed to help sick people regain their appetites. He
says he also encountered, again and again, desperately ill patients
for whom a joint or a brownie provided relief where FDA-approved
drugs had failed: heart patients who found pot calmed their nerves
better than sedatives, multiple sclerosis patients whose livers were
shot by pain pills and could no longer take them, terminal cancer
patients whose nausea was eased and spirits lifted by marijuana highs.
"The California Nurses Association supports the medical use of
cannabis, as does the American Nurses Association," he says. "I've
never encountered a nurse who opposes medical marijuana. They know it
makes patients feel better, plus they know it doesn't hurt patients."
Swerdlow says he researched the history of cannabis as a medicinal
herb, and was astonished at what he found.
"Seventy years ago, your grandparents could go to a drugstore and get
it," he says. "It was prescribed all the time for women, and was
considered the best thing to ever happen when it came to women's
complaints. There are records of cannabis being used 5,000 years ago
as a medicine. After 5,000 years of use for almost everything, it's
suddenly looked upon as so dangerous that you can't even study it at
a university."
San Bernardino County-like other counties-does not officially
recognize the legitimacy of 215.
When asked his opinion on why the medical use of cannabis is so
anathema to law enforcement agencies, Swerdlow says, "Money.
Authorities arrest 870,000 people a year for cannabis-related
offenses. Police can seize your home if you're caught growing
marijuana. They can seize your car if you're caught buying it. That
money goes straight to law enforcement in seizure-asset-forfeiture
funds.
"Think about that," he adds. "If police catch a murderer, they can't
seize the home. If they catch a bank robber, they can't seize the
car. But they can seize your home or your car if you're caught with
marijuana."
In 2007, Swerdlow was asked by Paul Stanford, founder of The Hemp and
Cannabis Foundation (THCF), if he'd be interested in running a
medical-marijuana clinic Stanford was considering opening in Palm
Springs. Swerdlow suggested a clinic in Riverside instead, since Palm
Springs already had such an operation. From that conversation sprang
The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation Clinic at 647 Main St., Riverside,
one of eight THCF facilities across the western U.S. and Michigan.
Located in an office park down the street from the Riverside Golf
Course, the clinic evaluates and advises patients seeking medical
pot. It has four paid staffers, including a medical physician-Dr.
Paul Ironside. Swerdlow, who serves as medical director, says
patients provide the clinic with their medical records, are evaluated
for need, and-if they qualify-are provided the necessary
documentation to obtain a medical-marijuana ID card from a county
agency. For this service they're charged a flat fee of $125 (less,
with Medi-Cal or Medicare), refundable if they're found unqualified.
While patient records are strictly confidential, Swerdlow says the
clinic processed 500 patients in its first year of operation.
"The reason we [write recommendations] is because most doctors
won't," he says. "Physicians are threatened by the DEA that they
could have their license to write prescriptions revoked if they do.
There's a court case challenging that right now, but most doctors
won't risk it-losing their license would put them out of business.
Instead, a number of doctors refer patients to us."
The clinic is also one of four meeting places for the Marijuana
Anti-Prohibition Project, a group Swerdlow started in 1999 to educate
the public on cannabis-related issues. The Project holds monthly
seminars and discussion groups in Joshua Tree, Landers, Palm Springs
and Riverside.
**
The close proximity of two such disparate organizations-Swerdlow's
clinic in Riverside and Chabot's coalition in Rancho Cucamonga-was
bound to result in a collision. Swerdlow says he first learned of the
coalition in an August 2007 newspaper article.
"I found it incredible that this anti-drug group was so focused on
medical marijuana," he says. "Wouldn't meth be considered a bigger
problem? I learned that the group was having a meeting in
Rancho-advertised as a public meeting-so I decided to attend."
Chabot declined to discuss anything about the ensuing incident for
this article, saying it had already been hashed out in the press.
Swerdlow says he was recognized by one of Chabot's associates as soon
as he entered the James T. Brulte Senior Center in Rancho Cucamonga,
and that Chabot demanded he leave. What happened next is a matter of
great dispute, but at some point San Bernardino Sheriff's deputies
arrived, told Swerdlow that Chabot had accused him of shoving him,
and arrested him for battery. He was acquitted of the charge a year
later following a four-day jury trial.
"My attorney talked to the jury foreman afterward, who said that he
and the other jurors felt this case never should have gone to trial,"
Swerdlow says. "They couldn't believe they spent all this time on
whether a 62-year-old man had pushed a 33-year-old special-forces
guy."
Swerdlow says his attorney, David Nick, has filed claims with the
city of Rancho Cucamonga and county of San Bernardino alleging false
arrest and malicious arrest, and that a lawsuit against Chabot will
be filed "very shortly." He's convinced Chabot colluded with
likeminded friends in the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department and
D.A.'s office and orchestrated the arrest and trial in order to rid
the community of an "undesirable"-Swerdlow.
"The coalition," says Swerdlow, "is nothing more than a mouthpiece
for the law-enforcement community."
**
For their part, coalition members like Rancho Cucamonga resident Ed
Hill say the group has provided them a united voice in speaking out
against what they see as threats marijuana poses to their
communities. Hill says he joined the coalition after being told by
sheriff's officials that there was nothing they could do about a
neighbor he suspected of dealing pot. He says officers told them that
since the neighbor had a medical-marijuana card, they couldn't arrest
him unless they caught him dealing.
"I had forgotten about Prop. 215," he says. "I started doing a lot of
research into it and found it to be a very bad policy."
Hill says he worked with Rancho Cucamonga City Councilman Rex
Gutierrez to help enact an ordinance prohibiting pot dispensaries
within the city's borders. Eight months later, the Claremont City
Council passed a similar prohibition, with then-mayor Ellen Taylor
the only member to vote against the ban.
"I feel that medical marijuana is not a bad thing," says Taylor, who
decided not to run for re-election. "I just thought we could make it
work. I had gone to San Francisco and Hollywood and visited the
dispensaries, and didn't see anything wrong with them. I don't know
if there's support on the council to change, but at some point this
is not going to be an issue. Taxing marijuana the way we tax liquor
or cigarettes would be boon to local government."
More than a dozen IE cities have passed similar prohibitions
against dispensaries: In nearly every case, city officials cited
both law-enforcement opposition to dispensaries and the sticky fact
that Proposition 215 conflicts with federal drug law.
This, perhaps, is the biggest reason why intelligent people of good
will can't agree on the legitimacy of medical marijuana. Lanny
Swerdlow and Paul Chabot, representing polar opposites in the legal
and social battles over cannabis, both claim the law is on their side
on the issue-and they're both right.
over medical marijuana-and the war just got personal
By:
In war, the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys often
depends on which side of the battle lines you happen to be standing.
But with the war on drugs, fought everywhere-on the borders and in
the streets, in the courts and playgrounds, in schools and
legislatures and often even in the home-figuring out where the battle
lines lay is difficult at best. And nowhere are the battle lines
blurrier as in the fight over the medical use of marijuana.
Inland Empire residents Paul Chabot and Lanny Swerdlow are foot
soldiers in that battle: Their individual missions perfectly
encapsulate the scope of the medical-marijuana dispute.
Swerdlow, founder of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project and
operator of the THCF Medical Clinic in Riverside, has dedicated his
life toward lifting the legal and cultural barriers against the use
of pot for medicinal purposes. He firmly believes marijuana to be a
remarkably beneficial herb, cheap and easy to cultivate and benign on
the system, criminalized for no other reason than to line the pockets
of law-enforcement types like Chabot.
Chabot, co-founder of the Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition
in Riverside, has similarly dedicated himself to fighting people like
Swerdlow. Chabot believes that Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot
measure that legalized medical marijuana in California, is a bad law
and bad public policy, that pot is a gateway drug responsible for the
ruination of far too many of the nation's youth, and that people like
Swerdlow are little more than glorified drug pushers.
Were they born in a different time, it's possible the two men might
actually enjoy the other's company. Both are intelligent, informed
and affable. Both are passionate about what they do, and consider
themselves dedicated servants to the public good. But in the here and
now, 13 years after the passage of Prop. 215, Chabot and Swerdlow are
sworn enemies.
Part of the reason for that is political.
"More and more people are starting to see the problems that 215 have
brought to our state," Chabot, 35, says, "Especially when very
healthy people can get marijuana for any condition whatsoever,
including hair loss, itchy skin and high-heel pain. What does that
tell young kids, growing up looking at these healthy adults smoking
marijuana? We think this experiment that's been going on has really
been exposed lately as largely a Trojan horse to legalize and tax
marijuana in our state."
But even if that were true, asks Swerdlow, so what?
"If marijuana were legalized, we'd see an increase in people using
it-people like to lift their moods a bit. They just wouldn't be doing
it with alcohol," says Swerdlow, 63. "With cannabis, people don't
have to worry about destroying their liver, as happens with alcohol
and many prescription medicines. We see a lot of people with
illnesses related to their alcohol or cigarette use. We never see
anyone with illnesses from marijuana use. No one dies from smoking
cannabis."
But with Swerdlow and Chabot, their animosities run deeper than just
policy differences: They despise one another. Chabot had Swerdlow
arrested for battery in October 2007, claiming Swerdlow shoved him
after being denied entry to a coalition meeting. Acquitted of the
charge, Swerdlow says he plans to sue Chabot-and possibly the city of
Rancho Cucamonga and the county of San Bernardino-over the episode.
**
As is the case with most bitter enemies, Swerdlow and Chabot's
animosities are informed by bitter personal experiences.
Chabot says he came from a broken home and that, as a child, he
experienced first-hand the destructive nature of marijuana.
"I went through drug rehab when I was 12 years old," he says. "I used
to be a pothead wanting to legalize pot when I was a kid. I now have
over 22 years of sobriety. I've kind of 'been there/done that' and
have been on the other side of the tracks."
Once freeing himself from drug addiction, Chabot says, everything
changed for the better. His biography on his website, paulchabot.com,
lists an impressive resume of accomplishments for someone only 35
years old.
"Dr. Paul Chabot recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq where
he served with U.S. Special Operations Forces as an Intelligence
Officer," the website states. "Previously he was a Senior Advisor
within the White House and worked for two U.S. Presidents. He began
in 1999 as a Presidential Management Fellow. He has a B.A. in
Administration from California State University at San Bernardino, a
Masters of Public Administration from the University of Southern
California and has a doctorate (Ed. D) in Executive Leadership from
the George Washington University."
Chabot, who says he plans to run for the state Assembly, founded the
Inland Valley Drug Free Coalition with his wife Brenda in 2005.
Brenda Chabot serves as the group's executive director, with Paul in
an advisory role.
Patterned after similar coalitions in cities across the country, the
group uses various strategies to influence public drug policy and
perception. Its primary tactic is the media campaign: Coalition
members write and submit op-ed articles-typically using
highly-charged rhetoric and evoking perceived threats to children- on
various drug-related concerns.
The coalition addresses all drugs-including heroin, methamphetamine,
prescription pills, alcohol and tobacco-identified by members as
threats to the community. But of particular concern to the group is
medical marijuana, given its legal status in California. In an op-ed
published Sept. 3 in the The Press-Enterprise, coalition member Roger
Anderson warns of a powerful and amoral pot industry behind Prop. 215:
"[Medical-marijuana supporters] couldn't care less that many high
school students might gather that it is OK for them to smoke
marijuana," Anderson writes. "For the drug legalization movement,
these youths are their next generation of legal drug advocates. Never
mind that these kids risk falling down the slippery slope of drug
use, abuse and addiction."
The coalition has nonprofit status under a 501(3) (c) umbrella group,
Paul Chabot's pro-clean-living Freestyle Foundation. Both
organizations solicit donations to a common mailing address, a PO box
in Rancho Cucamonga. Chabot says coalition members meet on an
irregular basis at various members' homes to discuss issues as they
come up-a common arrangement for nonprofit activist groups. He says
the coalition has more than 100 members from all walks of the IE,
including off-duty police officers, parents, teachers, doctors and
government officials.
"We do have city council members, and government officials at all
levels of government," he says. "We also have community heroes: war
vets, retired police officers, reformed drug addicts and ordinary
moms and dads who are in the trenches across the community trying to
keep their own kids off drugs."
Asked to identify some of the government officials involved, Chabot
declined, citing safety concerns. Coalition members, he says, have in
the past received death threats from anonymous callers. Two days
after being interviewed, he emailed me an audio clip of a voicemail
in which the caller raged for nearly five minutes against Chabot,
member Tom Beard and their wives.
"You people are evil!" the caller shouts. "When you use the federal
government against me as a weapon, that's no different than me using
a gun against you!"
**
Swerdlow, 63, also admits to smoking pot as a youth, but his was a
much more positive experience than Chabot's. Further, he says, he
never stopped.
"I've been smoking cannabis all my life," he says. "My friends and I
would kick back after class and roll five or six joints while
listening to [1950s television drama series] Firesign Theater. I
didn't think much about the medical effects of it until '95, when I
had a friend with AIDS."
Swerdlow describes watching his friend wither from being heavy-set
to positively skeletal. The only thing that seemed to help the friend
with loss of appetite, he said, was weed.
"I thought to myself, 'My god, this stuff really helps him,'"
Swerdlow recalls. "Remember, this was '95, when AIDS was a death
sentence. But the problem with marijuana at the time was we had to go
on the streets and deal with criminals to get it."
But he says he didn't become "radicalized" on the issue of medical
marijuana until he became a registered nurse. It wasn't just that he
noticed pot seemed to help sick people regain their appetites. He
says he also encountered, again and again, desperately ill patients
for whom a joint or a brownie provided relief where FDA-approved
drugs had failed: heart patients who found pot calmed their nerves
better than sedatives, multiple sclerosis patients whose livers were
shot by pain pills and could no longer take them, terminal cancer
patients whose nausea was eased and spirits lifted by marijuana highs.
"The California Nurses Association supports the medical use of
cannabis, as does the American Nurses Association," he says. "I've
never encountered a nurse who opposes medical marijuana. They know it
makes patients feel better, plus they know it doesn't hurt patients."
Swerdlow says he researched the history of cannabis as a medicinal
herb, and was astonished at what he found.
"Seventy years ago, your grandparents could go to a drugstore and get
it," he says. "It was prescribed all the time for women, and was
considered the best thing to ever happen when it came to women's
complaints. There are records of cannabis being used 5,000 years ago
as a medicine. After 5,000 years of use for almost everything, it's
suddenly looked upon as so dangerous that you can't even study it at
a university."
San Bernardino County-like other counties-does not officially
recognize the legitimacy of 215.
When asked his opinion on why the medical use of cannabis is so
anathema to law enforcement agencies, Swerdlow says, "Money.
Authorities arrest 870,000 people a year for cannabis-related
offenses. Police can seize your home if you're caught growing
marijuana. They can seize your car if you're caught buying it. That
money goes straight to law enforcement in seizure-asset-forfeiture
funds.
"Think about that," he adds. "If police catch a murderer, they can't
seize the home. If they catch a bank robber, they can't seize the
car. But they can seize your home or your car if you're caught with
marijuana."
In 2007, Swerdlow was asked by Paul Stanford, founder of The Hemp and
Cannabis Foundation (THCF), if he'd be interested in running a
medical-marijuana clinic Stanford was considering opening in Palm
Springs. Swerdlow suggested a clinic in Riverside instead, since Palm
Springs already had such an operation. From that conversation sprang
The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation Clinic at 647 Main St., Riverside,
one of eight THCF facilities across the western U.S. and Michigan.
Located in an office park down the street from the Riverside Golf
Course, the clinic evaluates and advises patients seeking medical
pot. It has four paid staffers, including a medical physician-Dr.
Paul Ironside. Swerdlow, who serves as medical director, says
patients provide the clinic with their medical records, are evaluated
for need, and-if they qualify-are provided the necessary
documentation to obtain a medical-marijuana ID card from a county
agency. For this service they're charged a flat fee of $125 (less,
with Medi-Cal or Medicare), refundable if they're found unqualified.
While patient records are strictly confidential, Swerdlow says the
clinic processed 500 patients in its first year of operation.
"The reason we [write recommendations] is because most doctors
won't," he says. "Physicians are threatened by the DEA that they
could have their license to write prescriptions revoked if they do.
There's a court case challenging that right now, but most doctors
won't risk it-losing their license would put them out of business.
Instead, a number of doctors refer patients to us."
The clinic is also one of four meeting places for the Marijuana
Anti-Prohibition Project, a group Swerdlow started in 1999 to educate
the public on cannabis-related issues. The Project holds monthly
seminars and discussion groups in Joshua Tree, Landers, Palm Springs
and Riverside.
**
The close proximity of two such disparate organizations-Swerdlow's
clinic in Riverside and Chabot's coalition in Rancho Cucamonga-was
bound to result in a collision. Swerdlow says he first learned of the
coalition in an August 2007 newspaper article.
"I found it incredible that this anti-drug group was so focused on
medical marijuana," he says. "Wouldn't meth be considered a bigger
problem? I learned that the group was having a meeting in
Rancho-advertised as a public meeting-so I decided to attend."
Chabot declined to discuss anything about the ensuing incident for
this article, saying it had already been hashed out in the press.
Swerdlow says he was recognized by one of Chabot's associates as soon
as he entered the James T. Brulte Senior Center in Rancho Cucamonga,
and that Chabot demanded he leave. What happened next is a matter of
great dispute, but at some point San Bernardino Sheriff's deputies
arrived, told Swerdlow that Chabot had accused him of shoving him,
and arrested him for battery. He was acquitted of the charge a year
later following a four-day jury trial.
"My attorney talked to the jury foreman afterward, who said that he
and the other jurors felt this case never should have gone to trial,"
Swerdlow says. "They couldn't believe they spent all this time on
whether a 62-year-old man had pushed a 33-year-old special-forces
guy."
Swerdlow says his attorney, David Nick, has filed claims with the
city of Rancho Cucamonga and county of San Bernardino alleging false
arrest and malicious arrest, and that a lawsuit against Chabot will
be filed "very shortly." He's convinced Chabot colluded with
likeminded friends in the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department and
D.A.'s office and orchestrated the arrest and trial in order to rid
the community of an "undesirable"-Swerdlow.
"The coalition," says Swerdlow, "is nothing more than a mouthpiece
for the law-enforcement community."
**
For their part, coalition members like Rancho Cucamonga resident Ed
Hill say the group has provided them a united voice in speaking out
against what they see as threats marijuana poses to their
communities. Hill says he joined the coalition after being told by
sheriff's officials that there was nothing they could do about a
neighbor he suspected of dealing pot. He says officers told them that
since the neighbor had a medical-marijuana card, they couldn't arrest
him unless they caught him dealing.
"I had forgotten about Prop. 215," he says. "I started doing a lot of
research into it and found it to be a very bad policy."
Hill says he worked with Rancho Cucamonga City Councilman Rex
Gutierrez to help enact an ordinance prohibiting pot dispensaries
within the city's borders. Eight months later, the Claremont City
Council passed a similar prohibition, with then-mayor Ellen Taylor
the only member to vote against the ban.
"I feel that medical marijuana is not a bad thing," says Taylor, who
decided not to run for re-election. "I just thought we could make it
work. I had gone to San Francisco and Hollywood and visited the
dispensaries, and didn't see anything wrong with them. I don't know
if there's support on the council to change, but at some point this
is not going to be an issue. Taxing marijuana the way we tax liquor
or cigarettes would be boon to local government."
More than a dozen IE cities have passed similar prohibitions
against dispensaries: In nearly every case, city officials cited
both law-enforcement opposition to dispensaries and the sticky fact
that Proposition 215 conflicts with federal drug law.
This, perhaps, is the biggest reason why intelligent people of good
will can't agree on the legitimacy of medical marijuana. Lanny
Swerdlow and Paul Chabot, representing polar opposites in the legal
and social battles over cannabis, both claim the law is on their side
on the issue-and they're both right.
Drug Warriors
Meet Paul Chabot and Lanny Swerdlow, enemy combatants in the battle
over medical marijuana-and the war just got personal
By:David Silva
In war, the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys often
depends on which side of the battle lines you happen to be standing.
But with the war on drugs, fought everywhere-on the borders and in
the streets, in the courts and playgrounds, in schools and
legislatures and often even in the home-figuring out where the battle
lines lay is difficult at best. And nowhere are the battle lines
blurrier as in the fight over the medical use of marijuana.
Inland Empire residents Paul Chabot and Lanny Swerdlow are foot
soldiers in that battle: Their individual missions perfectly
encapsulate the scope of the medical-marijuana dispute.
Swerdlow, founder of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project and
operator of the THCF Medical Clinic in Riverside, has dedicated his
life toward lifting the legal and cultural barriers against the use
of pot for medicinal purposes. He firmly believes marijuana to be a
remarkably beneficial herb, cheap and easy to cultivate and benign on
the system, criminalized for no other reason than to line the pockets
of law-enforcement types like Chabot.
Chabot, co-founder of the Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition
in Riverside, has similarly dedicated himself to fighting people like
Swerdlow. Chabot believes that Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot
measure that legalized medical marijuana in California, is a bad law
and bad public policy, that pot is a gateway drug responsible for the
ruination of far too many of the nation's youth, and that people like
Swerdlow are little more than glorified drug pushers.
Were they born in a different time, it's possible the two men might
actually enjoy the other's company. Both are intelligent, informed
and affable. Both are passionate about what they do, and consider
themselves dedicated servants to the public good. But in the here and
now, 13 years after the passage of Prop. 215, Chabot and Swerdlow are
sworn enemies.
Part of the reason for that is political.
"More and more people are starting to see the problems that 215 have
brought to our state," Chabot, 35, says, "Especially when very
healthy people can get marijuana for any condition whatsoever,
including hair loss, itchy skin and high-heel pain. What does that
tell young kids, growing up looking at these healthy adults smoking
marijuana? We think this experiment that's been going on has really
been exposed lately as largely a Trojan horse to legalize and tax
marijuana in our state."
But even if that were true, asks Swerdlow, so what?
"If marijuana were legalized, we'd see an increase in people using
it-people like to lift their moods a bit. They just wouldn't be doing
it with alcohol," says Swerdlow, 63. "With cannabis, people don't
have to worry about destroying their liver, as happens with alcohol
and many prescription medicines. We see a lot of people with
illnesses related to their alcohol or cigarette use. We never see
anyone with illnesses from marijuana use. No one dies from smoking
cannabis."
But with Swerdlow and Chabot, their animosities run deeper than just
policy differences: They despise one another. Chabot had Swerdlow
arrested for battery in October 2007, claiming Swerdlow shoved him
after being denied entry to a coalition meeting. Acquitted of the
charge, Swerdlow says he plans to sue Chabot-and possibly the city of
Rancho Cucamonga and the county of San Bernardino-over the episode.
**
As is the case with most bitter enemies, Swerdlow and Chabot's
animosities are informed by bitter personal experiences.
Chabot says he came from a broken home and that, as a child, he
experienced first-hand the destructive nature of marijuana.
"I went through drug rehab when I was 12 years old," he says. "I used
to be a pothead wanting to legalize pot when I was a kid. I now have
over 22 years of sobriety. I've kind of 'been there/done that' and
have been on the other side of the tracks."
Once freeing himself from drug addiction, Chabot says, everything
changed for the better. His biography on his website, paulchabot.com,
lists an impressive resume of accomplishments for someone only 35
years old.
"Dr. Paul Chabot recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq where
he served with U.S. Special Operations Forces as an Intelligence
Officer," the website states. "Previously he was a Senior Advisor
within the White House and worked for two U.S. Presidents. He began
in 1999 as a Presidential Management Fellow. He has a B.A. in
Administration from California State University at San Bernardino, a
Masters of Public Administration from the University of Southern
California and has a doctorate (Ed. D) in Executive Leadership from
the George Washington University."
Chabot, who says he plans to run for the state Assembly, founded the
Inland Valley Drug Free Coalition with his wife Brenda in 2005.
Brenda Chabot serves as the group's executive director, with Paul in
an advisory role.
Patterned after similar coalitions in cities across the country, the
group uses various strategies to influence public drug policy and
perception. Its primary tactic is the media campaign: Coalition
members write and submit op-ed articles-typically using
highly-charged rhetoric and evoking perceived threats to children- on
various drug-related concerns.
The coalition addresses all drugs-including heroin, methamphetamine,
prescription pills, alcohol and tobacco-identified by members as
threats to the community. But of particular concern to the group is
medical marijuana, given its legal status in California. In an op-ed
published Sept. 3 in the The Press-Enterprise, coalition member Roger
Anderson warns of a powerful and amoral pot industry behind Prop. 215:
"[Medical-marijuana supporters] couldn't care less that many high
school students might gather that it is OK for them to smoke
marijuana," Anderson writes. "For the drug legalization movement,
these youths are their next generation of legal drug advocates. Never
mind that these kids risk falling down the slippery slope of drug
use, abuse and addiction."
The coalition has nonprofit status under a 501(3) (c) umbrella group,
Paul Chabot's pro-clean-living Freestyle Foundation. Both
organizations solicit donations to a common mailing address, a PO box
in Rancho Cucamonga. Chabot says coalition members meet on an
irregular basis at various members' homes to discuss issues as they
come up-a common arrangement for nonprofit activist groups. He says
the coalition has more than 100 members from all walks of the IE,
including off-duty police officers, parents, teachers, doctors and
government officials.
"We do have city council members, and government officials at all
levels of government," he says. "We also have community heroes: war
vets, retired police officers, reformed drug addicts and ordinary
moms and dads who are in the trenches across the community trying to
keep their own kids off drugs."
Asked to identify some of the government officials involved, Chabot
declined, citing safety concerns. Coalition members, he says, have in
the past received death threats from anonymous callers. Two days
after being interviewed, he emailed me an audio clip of a voicemail
in which the caller raged for nearly five minutes against Chabot,
member Tom Beard and their wives.
"You people are evil!" the caller shouts. "When you use the federal
government against me as a weapon, that's no different than me using
a gun against you!"
**
Swerdlow, 63, also admits to smoking pot as a youth, but his was a
much more positive experience than Chabot's. Further, he says, he
never stopped.
"I've been smoking cannabis all my life," he says. "My friends and I
would kick back after class and roll five or six joints while
listening to [1950s television drama series] Firesign Theater. I
didn't think much about the medical effects of it until '95, when I
had a friend with AIDS."
Swerdlow describes watching his friend wither from being heavy-set
to positively skeletal. The only thing that seemed to help the friend
with loss of appetite, he said, was weed.
"I thought to myself, 'My god, this stuff really helps him,'"
Swerdlow recalls. "Remember, this was '95, when AIDS was a death
sentence. But the problem with marijuana at the time was we had to go
on the streets and deal with criminals to get it."
But he says he didn't become "radicalized" on the issue of medical
marijuana until he became a registered nurse. It wasn't just that he
noticed pot seemed to help sick people regain their appetites. He
says he also encountered, again and again, desperately ill patients
for whom a joint or a brownie provided relief where FDA-approved
drugs had failed: heart patients who found pot calmed their nerves
better than sedatives, multiple sclerosis patients whose livers were
shot by pain pills and could no longer take them, terminal cancer
patients whose nausea was eased and spirits lifted by marijuana highs.
"The California Nurses Association supports the medical use of
cannabis, as does the American Nurses Association," he says. "I've
never encountered a nurse who opposes medical marijuana. They know it
makes patients feel better, plus they know it doesn't hurt patients."
Swerdlow says he researched the history of cannabis as a medicinal
herb, and was astonished at what he found.
"Seventy years ago, your grandparents could go to a drugstore and get
it," he says. "It was prescribed all the time for women, and was
considered the best thing to ever happen when it came to women's
complaints. There are records of cannabis being used 5,000 years ago
as a medicine. After 5,000 years of use for almost everything, it's
suddenly looked upon as so dangerous that you can't even study it at
a university."
San Bernardino County-like other counties-does not officially
recognize the legitimacy of 215.
When asked his opinion on why the medical use of cannabis is so
anathema to law enforcement agencies, Swerdlow says, "Money.
Authorities arrest 870,000 people a year for cannabis-related
offenses. Police can seize your home if you're caught growing
marijuana. They can seize your car if you're caught buying it. That
money goes straight to law enforcement in seizure-asset-forfeiture
funds.
"Think about that," he adds. "If police catch a murderer, they can't
seize the home. If they catch a bank robber, they can't seize the
car. But they can seize your home or your car if you're caught with
marijuana."
In 2007, Swerdlow was asked by Paul Stanford, founder of The Hemp and
Cannabis Foundation (THCF), if he'd be interested in running a
medical-marijuana clinic Stanford was considering opening in Palm
Springs. Swerdlow suggested a clinic in Riverside instead, since Palm
Springs already had such an operation. From that conversation sprang
The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation Clinic at 647 Main St., Riverside,
one of eight THCF facilities across the western U.S. and Michigan.
Located in an office park down the street from the Riverside Golf
Course, the clinic evaluates and advises patients seeking medical
pot. It has four paid staffers, including a medical physician-Dr.
Paul Ironside. Swerdlow, who serves as medical director, says
patients provide the clinic with their medical records, are evaluated
for need, and-if they qualify-are provided the necessary
documentation to obtain a medical-marijuana ID card from a county
agency. For this service they're charged a flat fee of $125 (less,
with Medi-Cal or Medicare), refundable if they're found unqualified.
While patient records are strictly confidential, Swerdlow says the
clinic processed 500 patients in its first year of operation.
"The reason we [write recommendations] is because most doctors
won't," he says. "Physicians are threatened by the DEA that they
could have their license to write prescriptions revoked if they do.
There's a court case challenging that right now, but most doctors
won't risk it-losing their license would put them out of business.
Instead, a number of doctors refer patients to us."
The clinic is also one of four meeting places for the Marijuana
Anti-Prohibition Project, a group Swerdlow started in 1999 to educate
the public on cannabis-related issues. The Project holds monthly
seminars and discussion groups in Joshua Tree, Landers, Palm Springs
and Riverside.
**
The close proximity of two such disparate organizations-Swerdlow's
clinic in Riverside and Chabot's coalition in Rancho Cucamonga-was
bound to result in a collision. Swerdlow says he first learned of the
coalition in an August 2007 newspaper article.
"I found it incredible that this anti-drug group was so focused on
medical marijuana," he says. "Wouldn't meth be considered a bigger
problem? I learned that the group was having a meeting in
Rancho-advertised as a public meeting-so I decided to attend."
Chabot declined to discuss anything about the ensuing incident for
this article, saying it had already been hashed out in the press.
Swerdlow says he was recognized by one of Chabot's associates as soon
as he entered the James T. Brulte Senior Center in Rancho Cucamonga,
and that Chabot demanded he leave. What happened next is a matter of
great dispute, but at some point San Bernardino Sheriff's deputies
arrived, told Swerdlow that Chabot had accused him of shoving him,
and arrested him for battery. He was acquitted of the charge a year
later following a four-day jury trial.
"My attorney talked to the jury foreman afterward, who said that he
and the other jurors felt this case never should have gone to trial,"
Swerdlow says. "They couldn't believe they spent all this time on
whether a 62-year-old man had pushed a 33-year-old special-forces
guy."
Swerdlow says his attorney, David Nick, has filed claims with the
city of Rancho Cucamonga and county of San Bernardino alleging false
arrest and malicious arrest, and that a lawsuit against Chabot will
be filed "very shortly." He's convinced Chabot colluded with
likeminded friends in the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department and
D.A.'s office and orchestrated the arrest and trial in order to rid
the community of an "undesirable"-Swerdlow.
"The coalition," says Swerdlow, "is nothing more than a mouthpiece
for the law-enforcement community."
**
For their part, coalition members like Rancho Cucamonga resident Ed
Hill say the group has provided them a united voice in speaking out
against what they see as threats marijuana poses to their
communities. Hill says he joined the coalition after being told by
sheriff's officials that there was nothing they could do about a
neighbor he suspected of dealing pot. He says officers told them that
since the neighbor had a medical-marijuana card, they couldn't arrest
him unless they caught him dealing.
"I had forgotten about Prop. 215," he says. "I started doing a lot of
research into it and found it to be a very bad policy."
Hill says he worked with Rancho Cucamonga City Councilman Rex
Gutierrez to help enact an ordinance prohibiting pot dispensaries
within the city's borders. Eight months later, the Claremont City
Council passed a similar prohibition, with then-mayor Ellen Taylor
the only member to vote against the ban.
"I feel that medical marijuana is not a bad thing," says Taylor, who
decided not to run for re-election. "I just thought we could make it
work. I had gone to San Francisco and Hollywood and visited the
dispensaries, and didn't see anything wrong with them. I don't know
if there's support on the council to change, but at some point this
is not going to be an issue. Taxing marijuana the way we tax liquor
or cigarettes would be boon to local government."
More than a dozen IE cities have passed similar prohibitions
against dispensaries: In nearly every case, city officials cited
both law-enforcement opposition to dispensaries and the sticky fact
that Proposition 215 conflicts with federal drug law.
This, perhaps, is the biggest reason why intelligent people of good
will can't agree on the legitimacy of medical marijuana. Lanny
Swerdlow and Paul Chabot, representing polar opposites in the legal
and social battles over cannabis, both claim the law is on their side
on the issue-and they're both right.
over medical marijuana-and the war just got personal
By:
In war, the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys often
depends on which side of the battle lines you happen to be standing.
But with the war on drugs, fought everywhere-on the borders and in
the streets, in the courts and playgrounds, in schools and
legislatures and often even in the home-figuring out where the battle
lines lay is difficult at best. And nowhere are the battle lines
blurrier as in the fight over the medical use of marijuana.
Inland Empire residents Paul Chabot and Lanny Swerdlow are foot
soldiers in that battle: Their individual missions perfectly
encapsulate the scope of the medical-marijuana dispute.
Swerdlow, founder of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project and
operator of the THCF Medical Clinic in Riverside, has dedicated his
life toward lifting the legal and cultural barriers against the use
of pot for medicinal purposes. He firmly believes marijuana to be a
remarkably beneficial herb, cheap and easy to cultivate and benign on
the system, criminalized for no other reason than to line the pockets
of law-enforcement types like Chabot.
Chabot, co-founder of the Inland Valley Drug Free Community Coalition
in Riverside, has similarly dedicated himself to fighting people like
Swerdlow. Chabot believes that Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot
measure that legalized medical marijuana in California, is a bad law
and bad public policy, that pot is a gateway drug responsible for the
ruination of far too many of the nation's youth, and that people like
Swerdlow are little more than glorified drug pushers.
Were they born in a different time, it's possible the two men might
actually enjoy the other's company. Both are intelligent, informed
and affable. Both are passionate about what they do, and consider
themselves dedicated servants to the public good. But in the here and
now, 13 years after the passage of Prop. 215, Chabot and Swerdlow are
sworn enemies.
Part of the reason for that is political.
"More and more people are starting to see the problems that 215 have
brought to our state," Chabot, 35, says, "Especially when very
healthy people can get marijuana for any condition whatsoever,
including hair loss, itchy skin and high-heel pain. What does that
tell young kids, growing up looking at these healthy adults smoking
marijuana? We think this experiment that's been going on has really
been exposed lately as largely a Trojan horse to legalize and tax
marijuana in our state."
But even if that were true, asks Swerdlow, so what?
"If marijuana were legalized, we'd see an increase in people using
it-people like to lift their moods a bit. They just wouldn't be doing
it with alcohol," says Swerdlow, 63. "With cannabis, people don't
have to worry about destroying their liver, as happens with alcohol
and many prescription medicines. We see a lot of people with
illnesses related to their alcohol or cigarette use. We never see
anyone with illnesses from marijuana use. No one dies from smoking
cannabis."
But with Swerdlow and Chabot, their animosities run deeper than just
policy differences: They despise one another. Chabot had Swerdlow
arrested for battery in October 2007, claiming Swerdlow shoved him
after being denied entry to a coalition meeting. Acquitted of the
charge, Swerdlow says he plans to sue Chabot-and possibly the city of
Rancho Cucamonga and the county of San Bernardino-over the episode.
**
As is the case with most bitter enemies, Swerdlow and Chabot's
animosities are informed by bitter personal experiences.
Chabot says he came from a broken home and that, as a child, he
experienced first-hand the destructive nature of marijuana.
"I went through drug rehab when I was 12 years old," he says. "I used
to be a pothead wanting to legalize pot when I was a kid. I now have
over 22 years of sobriety. I've kind of 'been there/done that' and
have been on the other side of the tracks."
Once freeing himself from drug addiction, Chabot says, everything
changed for the better. His biography on his website, paulchabot.com,
lists an impressive resume of accomplishments for someone only 35
years old.
"Dr. Paul Chabot recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq where
he served with U.S. Special Operations Forces as an Intelligence
Officer," the website states. "Previously he was a Senior Advisor
within the White House and worked for two U.S. Presidents. He began
in 1999 as a Presidential Management Fellow. He has a B.A. in
Administration from California State University at San Bernardino, a
Masters of Public Administration from the University of Southern
California and has a doctorate (Ed. D) in Executive Leadership from
the George Washington University."
Chabot, who says he plans to run for the state Assembly, founded the
Inland Valley Drug Free Coalition with his wife Brenda in 2005.
Brenda Chabot serves as the group's executive director, with Paul in
an advisory role.
Patterned after similar coalitions in cities across the country, the
group uses various strategies to influence public drug policy and
perception. Its primary tactic is the media campaign: Coalition
members write and submit op-ed articles-typically using
highly-charged rhetoric and evoking perceived threats to children- on
various drug-related concerns.
The coalition addresses all drugs-including heroin, methamphetamine,
prescription pills, alcohol and tobacco-identified by members as
threats to the community. But of particular concern to the group is
medical marijuana, given its legal status in California. In an op-ed
published Sept. 3 in the The Press-Enterprise, coalition member Roger
Anderson warns of a powerful and amoral pot industry behind Prop. 215:
"[Medical-marijuana supporters] couldn't care less that many high
school students might gather that it is OK for them to smoke
marijuana," Anderson writes. "For the drug legalization movement,
these youths are their next generation of legal drug advocates. Never
mind that these kids risk falling down the slippery slope of drug
use, abuse and addiction."
The coalition has nonprofit status under a 501(3) (c) umbrella group,
Paul Chabot's pro-clean-living Freestyle Foundation. Both
organizations solicit donations to a common mailing address, a PO box
in Rancho Cucamonga. Chabot says coalition members meet on an
irregular basis at various members' homes to discuss issues as they
come up-a common arrangement for nonprofit activist groups. He says
the coalition has more than 100 members from all walks of the IE,
including off-duty police officers, parents, teachers, doctors and
government officials.
"We do have city council members, and government officials at all
levels of government," he says. "We also have community heroes: war
vets, retired police officers, reformed drug addicts and ordinary
moms and dads who are in the trenches across the community trying to
keep their own kids off drugs."
Asked to identify some of the government officials involved, Chabot
declined, citing safety concerns. Coalition members, he says, have in
the past received death threats from anonymous callers. Two days
after being interviewed, he emailed me an audio clip of a voicemail
in which the caller raged for nearly five minutes against Chabot,
member Tom Beard and their wives.
"You people are evil!" the caller shouts. "When you use the federal
government against me as a weapon, that's no different than me using
a gun against you!"
**
Swerdlow, 63, also admits to smoking pot as a youth, but his was a
much more positive experience than Chabot's. Further, he says, he
never stopped.
"I've been smoking cannabis all my life," he says. "My friends and I
would kick back after class and roll five or six joints while
listening to [1950s television drama series] Firesign Theater. I
didn't think much about the medical effects of it until '95, when I
had a friend with AIDS."
Swerdlow describes watching his friend wither from being heavy-set
to positively skeletal. The only thing that seemed to help the friend
with loss of appetite, he said, was weed.
"I thought to myself, 'My god, this stuff really helps him,'"
Swerdlow recalls. "Remember, this was '95, when AIDS was a death
sentence. But the problem with marijuana at the time was we had to go
on the streets and deal with criminals to get it."
But he says he didn't become "radicalized" on the issue of medical
marijuana until he became a registered nurse. It wasn't just that he
noticed pot seemed to help sick people regain their appetites. He
says he also encountered, again and again, desperately ill patients
for whom a joint or a brownie provided relief where FDA-approved
drugs had failed: heart patients who found pot calmed their nerves
better than sedatives, multiple sclerosis patients whose livers were
shot by pain pills and could no longer take them, terminal cancer
patients whose nausea was eased and spirits lifted by marijuana highs.
"The California Nurses Association supports the medical use of
cannabis, as does the American Nurses Association," he says. "I've
never encountered a nurse who opposes medical marijuana. They know it
makes patients feel better, plus they know it doesn't hurt patients."
Swerdlow says he researched the history of cannabis as a medicinal
herb, and was astonished at what he found.
"Seventy years ago, your grandparents could go to a drugstore and get
it," he says. "It was prescribed all the time for women, and was
considered the best thing to ever happen when it came to women's
complaints. There are records of cannabis being used 5,000 years ago
as a medicine. After 5,000 years of use for almost everything, it's
suddenly looked upon as so dangerous that you can't even study it at
a university."
San Bernardino County-like other counties-does not officially
recognize the legitimacy of 215.
When asked his opinion on why the medical use of cannabis is so
anathema to law enforcement agencies, Swerdlow says, "Money.
Authorities arrest 870,000 people a year for cannabis-related
offenses. Police can seize your home if you're caught growing
marijuana. They can seize your car if you're caught buying it. That
money goes straight to law enforcement in seizure-asset-forfeiture
funds.
"Think about that," he adds. "If police catch a murderer, they can't
seize the home. If they catch a bank robber, they can't seize the
car. But they can seize your home or your car if you're caught with
marijuana."
In 2007, Swerdlow was asked by Paul Stanford, founder of The Hemp and
Cannabis Foundation (THCF), if he'd be interested in running a
medical-marijuana clinic Stanford was considering opening in Palm
Springs. Swerdlow suggested a clinic in Riverside instead, since Palm
Springs already had such an operation. From that conversation sprang
The Hemp and Cannabis Foundation Clinic at 647 Main St., Riverside,
one of eight THCF facilities across the western U.S. and Michigan.
Located in an office park down the street from the Riverside Golf
Course, the clinic evaluates and advises patients seeking medical
pot. It has four paid staffers, including a medical physician-Dr.
Paul Ironside. Swerdlow, who serves as medical director, says
patients provide the clinic with their medical records, are evaluated
for need, and-if they qualify-are provided the necessary
documentation to obtain a medical-marijuana ID card from a county
agency. For this service they're charged a flat fee of $125 (less,
with Medi-Cal or Medicare), refundable if they're found unqualified.
While patient records are strictly confidential, Swerdlow says the
clinic processed 500 patients in its first year of operation.
"The reason we [write recommendations] is because most doctors
won't," he says. "Physicians are threatened by the DEA that they
could have their license to write prescriptions revoked if they do.
There's a court case challenging that right now, but most doctors
won't risk it-losing their license would put them out of business.
Instead, a number of doctors refer patients to us."
The clinic is also one of four meeting places for the Marijuana
Anti-Prohibition Project, a group Swerdlow started in 1999 to educate
the public on cannabis-related issues. The Project holds monthly
seminars and discussion groups in Joshua Tree, Landers, Palm Springs
and Riverside.
**
The close proximity of two such disparate organizations-Swerdlow's
clinic in Riverside and Chabot's coalition in Rancho Cucamonga-was
bound to result in a collision. Swerdlow says he first learned of the
coalition in an August 2007 newspaper article.
"I found it incredible that this anti-drug group was so focused on
medical marijuana," he says. "Wouldn't meth be considered a bigger
problem? I learned that the group was having a meeting in
Rancho-advertised as a public meeting-so I decided to attend."
Chabot declined to discuss anything about the ensuing incident for
this article, saying it had already been hashed out in the press.
Swerdlow says he was recognized by one of Chabot's associates as soon
as he entered the James T. Brulte Senior Center in Rancho Cucamonga,
and that Chabot demanded he leave. What happened next is a matter of
great dispute, but at some point San Bernardino Sheriff's deputies
arrived, told Swerdlow that Chabot had accused him of shoving him,
and arrested him for battery. He was acquitted of the charge a year
later following a four-day jury trial.
"My attorney talked to the jury foreman afterward, who said that he
and the other jurors felt this case never should have gone to trial,"
Swerdlow says. "They couldn't believe they spent all this time on
whether a 62-year-old man had pushed a 33-year-old special-forces
guy."
Swerdlow says his attorney, David Nick, has filed claims with the
city of Rancho Cucamonga and county of San Bernardino alleging false
arrest and malicious arrest, and that a lawsuit against Chabot will
be filed "very shortly." He's convinced Chabot colluded with
likeminded friends in the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department and
D.A.'s office and orchestrated the arrest and trial in order to rid
the community of an "undesirable"-Swerdlow.
"The coalition," says Swerdlow, "is nothing more than a mouthpiece
for the law-enforcement community."
**
For their part, coalition members like Rancho Cucamonga resident Ed
Hill say the group has provided them a united voice in speaking out
against what they see as threats marijuana poses to their
communities. Hill says he joined the coalition after being told by
sheriff's officials that there was nothing they could do about a
neighbor he suspected of dealing pot. He says officers told them that
since the neighbor had a medical-marijuana card, they couldn't arrest
him unless they caught him dealing.
"I had forgotten about Prop. 215," he says. "I started doing a lot of
research into it and found it to be a very bad policy."
Hill says he worked with Rancho Cucamonga City Councilman Rex
Gutierrez to help enact an ordinance prohibiting pot dispensaries
within the city's borders. Eight months later, the Claremont City
Council passed a similar prohibition, with then-mayor Ellen Taylor
the only member to vote against the ban.
"I feel that medical marijuana is not a bad thing," says Taylor, who
decided not to run for re-election. "I just thought we could make it
work. I had gone to San Francisco and Hollywood and visited the
dispensaries, and didn't see anything wrong with them. I don't know
if there's support on the council to change, but at some point this
is not going to be an issue. Taxing marijuana the way we tax liquor
or cigarettes would be boon to local government."
More than a dozen IE cities have passed similar prohibitions
against dispensaries: In nearly every case, city officials cited
both law-enforcement opposition to dispensaries and the sticky fact
that Proposition 215 conflicts with federal drug law.
This, perhaps, is the biggest reason why intelligent people of good
will can't agree on the legitimacy of medical marijuana. Lanny
Swerdlow and Paul Chabot, representing polar opposites in the legal
and social battles over cannabis, both claim the law is on their side
on the issue-and they're both right.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Court of Appeals reaffirmed the 10-year mandatory minimum sentence of Bryan Epis
Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the 10-year mandatory minimum
sentence of Bryan Epis on charges of conspiracy to manufacture
marijuana. Epis' attorney, Brenda Grantland, says she will appeal
for an en banc rehearing of the ruling by the full Ninth Circuit.
Epis was the first California medical marijuana patient to be
prosecuted on federal charges. He was arrested in 1997, shortly
after the passage of Prop. 215, while growing for a Chico patients'
group. He was sentenced to 10 years for conspiring to grow over
1,000 plants - over a period of several harvests - in his Chico home.
Epis's attorney, Brenda Grantland, appealed his sentence to the
Ninth Circuit on various grounds, including egregious prosecutorial
misconduct, improper cross examination, improper denial of
safety-valve relief from the mandatory minimum, and the unclarity of
the law at the time of his arrest. The panel did not bother to hold
an oral hearing, but issued an 11-page ruling denying the appeal.
The panel included the infamous Judge Jay Bybee, recently
indicted as an international war criminal by Spain for having
authored the DOJ's notorious torture memos. Bybee was appointed
before knowledge of his advocacy of illegal conduct by government
agents became public. A petition to impeach Judge Bybee is being
circulated by MoveOn.org:
http://pol.moveon.org/bybee/?id=16033-4717547-XTBfMsx&t=4
Other judges on the panel were Hawkins ( a former federal
prosecutor), and Rawlinson.
Epis' supporters expressed shock at the opinion. California
NORML denounced the decision as "an egregious miscarriage of justice
with no conceivable benefit to the public."
sentence of Bryan Epis on charges of conspiracy to manufacture
marijuana. Epis' attorney, Brenda Grantland, says she will appeal
for an en banc rehearing of the ruling by the full Ninth Circuit.
Epis was the first California medical marijuana patient to be
prosecuted on federal charges. He was arrested in 1997, shortly
after the passage of Prop. 215, while growing for a Chico patients'
group. He was sentenced to 10 years for conspiring to grow over
1,000 plants - over a period of several harvests - in his Chico home.
Epis's attorney, Brenda Grantland, appealed his sentence to the
Ninth Circuit on various grounds, including egregious prosecutorial
misconduct, improper cross examination, improper denial of
safety-valve relief from the mandatory minimum, and the unclarity of
the law at the time of his arrest. The panel did not bother to hold
an oral hearing, but issued an 11-page ruling denying the appeal.
The panel included the infamous Judge Jay Bybee, recently
indicted as an international war criminal by Spain for having
authored the DOJ's notorious torture memos. Bybee was appointed
before knowledge of his advocacy of illegal conduct by government
agents became public. A petition to impeach Judge Bybee is being
circulated by MoveOn.org:
http://pol.moveon.org/bybee/?id=16033-4717547-XTBfMsx&t=4
Other judges on the panel were Hawkins ( a former federal
prosecutor), and Rawlinson.
Epis' supporters expressed shock at the opinion. California
NORML denounced the decision as "an egregious miscarriage of justice
with no conceivable benefit to the public."
Mexico Reefer Madness
In the Face of a Crisis in Drug-Related Violence, Mexico Should
Reconsider Its Policy Criminalizing Marijuana.
Last month, Mexico's Congress convened a special forum to consider
marijuana policy reform as a remedy for that country's current crisis
of violence. The forum bucked a century of staunch prohibitionist
history in Mexico, a history that has contributed to the continued
criminalization of marijuana use throughout North America.
From early on, marijuana was portrayed in Mexico as a frightening
substance that produced madness in its users. In 1897, Revista
Medica, one of Mexico's leading scientific journals, reported that
marijuana produced "pleasant visions and hallucinations," an
"expansion of the spirit that leads to exaltation" but also an
"impulsive delirium" with often fatal consequences: "It is true that
in other regions the delirium that is produced by marijuana is a
turbulent one, but in our country it reaches the point of furor,
terrible and blind impulse, and leads to murder."
Although use of the drug was not widespread at the time, the plant
was increasingly seen as a national menace and, in 1920, was banned.
Gradually, the idea that marijuana was dangerous seeped into the
United States, fostering American notions of "reefer madness" and
eventually helping to inspire marijuana prohibition here as well (in 1937).
Since then, Mexico has continued to be tough on marijuana, even in
the face of softening U.S. attitudes toward the drug. The last time
widespread sentiment for marijuana policy reform emerged in the U.S.,
it was Mexico that leveled some of the harshest criticism against the
trend. "We don't accept that marijuana is less important than
heroin," Mexican Atty. Gen. Pedro Ojeda Paullada declared in 1974.
A few years later, a scandal over use of the herbicide paraquat on
Mexican marijuana fields produced a similar response from Ojeda's
successor, Oscar Flores Sanchez. Paraquat spraying, which often
failed to completely destroy the targeted crops, led to the sale of
poison-soaked pot to unknowing consumers in both countries.
Public outcry in the U.S. inspired congressional action that
threatened to eliminate funding for the program if the paraquat
spraying continued. Behind closed doors, Flores went ballistic,
warning that if the United States refused to back Mexico's war on
marijuana, Mexico might go soft on heroin, the major U.S. priority of that era.
Mexico is now being forced to reevaluate these policies. Ironically,
decades of being "tough" on drugs has produced a new link between
marijuana and violence, but of a different kind. Indeed, the nation's
"drug-related" violence today might more accurately be termed
"drug-policy-related" violence.
The mafias behind the current tsunami of killings -- more than 6,000
last year -- are a product of the extraordinary black-market profits
that drug prohibition generates. And because 60% of the profits
earned by Mexican traffickers come from marijuana sales, legalization
in both Mexico and the U.S. would deliver a potentially debilitating
blow to these powerful gangs.
Unfortunately, the Mexican public remains overwhelmingly opposed to
marijuana legalization, with only 14% in favor, according to a
February poll by Parametria, a public opinion research firm based in
Mexico City. According to CBS News, by contrast, nearly 40% of
Americans say they would favor legalization if the drug could be
taxed and proceeds used to fund state budgets. Given those numbers,
it is hardly surprising that many Mexican legislators chose not to
attend last month's forum.
Indeed, full legalization apparently had few supporters at the forum
in April. Instead, many delegates backed half-measures, such as the
formal decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana for personal
use. Such measures, though a significant departure from the past,
nevertheless promise to do very little to alleviate Mexico's current
crisis of violence.
Although decriminalization would free up law enforcement to
concentrate on trafficking, this would merely exacerbate the
fundamental paradox at the heart of drug policy -- that by raising
prices, law enforcement increases the economic incentive to traffic in drugs.
Thus, unless decriminalization is accompanied by a successful program
of "education" that persuades people to abstain from using a drug
that is relatively innocuous in comparison with, say, alcohol or
tobacco, it won't do much to stem the violence. Education efforts
should instead focus on undermining old prejudices that prevent
meaningful reform in Mexico and the United States.
Last month's forum at least opened a dialogue among Mexicans. That is
certainly a step in the right direction. But if we hope to use
legislative reform to reduce Mexico's drug-policy-related violence,
Mexico and the United States need to go all the way on marijuana legalization.
Bull Dog LA has neighbor peoblems
A new marijuana dispensary, Bull Dog Café Collective, has opened half a block from John C. Fremont Public Library, infuriating some area residents. Its proximity to a library and surrounding residential neighborhood is a lethal mix, according to Cindy Chvatal, president of the Hancock Park Homeowners Association.
The site, at 6105 Melrose Ave., is also operating illegally. “They’ve apparently jumped the gun,” and opened without an interim control ordinance exemption, said Doug Mensman, planning deputy for Councilman Tom LaBonge.
Bulldog Café owner Anthony Folsom applied for the hardship exemption with the city clerk’s office in February. But, apparently he has not followed up on the matter since opening the store in March, after moving from a Cahuenga location. “Either they don’t know or don’t care that they have to get permission via a vote of the City Council to grant the hardship,” Mensman said.
Folsom was not available for comment. Store manager Mathew, (he refused to give his last name), disputed the charge. The store has 24-hour security, is licensed, and because it has operated since 2006 is not restricted by the ICO, he said.
“We have a right to be here. We’re helping people out, who have AIDS, are in chronic pain.”
Meanwhile, Councilmember Tom LaBonge. has directed the city Dept. of Building and Safety to investigate the operation.“They have ordered the business to discontinue operation by May 17,” LaBonge noted.
Several medical marijuana outlets have surfaced near both Fairfax and Melrose avenue schools prompting Mid City West Community Council Public Safety Committee to urge city officials to deny 45 hardship exemption applications for dispensaries in Council Districts Four and Five.
Committee members claim the dispensaries have opened illegally and seek exemptions to bypass oversight. Some sites operate less than 1,000 feet from Fairfax High School and 1,000 feet from Melrose Avenue Elementary School.
About 160 dispensaries applied lawfully before the ICO moratorium went into effect in September 2007.
The ICO is in effect until Sept. 14, 2009, by which time the Council is expected
Friday, May 1, 2009
Grass valley Top Cop wants to ban Pot.
Rising crime statistics surrounding metropolitan medical marijuana dispensaries have prompted Grass Valley police Chief John Foster to ask for an emergency moratorium on pot shop operations in town.
No one is currently trying to open a dispensary, but we want to be proactive and not run into problems that have occurred throughout the state," Foster said Monday. "The problem now is that the city has no regulations in place."
The city's top law officer will ask for an ordinance at 7 p.m. today at the Grass Valley City Council meeting at City Hall, 125 E. Main St.
I've heard of people wanting to open dispensaries here but I've told them to be very careful," said Nevada County District Attorney Cliff Newell. California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sent out guidelines for medical marijuana dispensaries, and "It's awfully restrictive," Newell said. "It has to be an absolute nonprofit."
Last week, Foster was at a California Police Chiefs Association meeting on medical marijuana and was given statistics from the San Francisco and Los Angeles police that showed crime increased around dispensaries there.
Los Angeles neighborhoods saw a 200 percent rise in robberies and a more than 50 percent hike in burglaries and assaults after dispensaries opened there.
Both major cites have tied several homicides or attempted murders to the shops where marijuana is sold legally under Proposition 215 -- the medical pot law passed in 1996 -- according to the statistics Foster supplied The Union.
Nevada County has no known medical pot dispensaries, according to James Henry, who opened one in Colfax five years ago.
The Golden State Patient Care Collective sells medical marijuana to those with legitimate recommenations for anywhere from zero to $400 per one-eighth ounce, Henry said. Patients are screened and get nowhere near the product unless they have a legitimate doctor's prescription, Henry said.
The dispensary owner said he has no problems with Colfax area police, and no violent incidents have occured since he opened, Henry said.
I don't want gangsters peddling pot in town anywhere, either," Henry said. "I think we do a good job here, and the patients are grateful. We help them eat and sleep."
Calls to the Placer County Sheriff's Department for comment about Henry's business were not returned.
Nevada County has had voluntary medical marijuana identification available this year because of state mandates, said Jeff Brown, director of Health and Human Services.
The two ( people ) who have registered feel the card gives them a feeling of security in case they get stopped when transporting it," Brown said. "It's not the county's intent to make it mandatory."
No one is currently trying to open a dispensary, but we want to be proactive and not run into problems that have occurred throughout the state," Foster said Monday. "The problem now is that the city has no regulations in place."
The city's top law officer will ask for an ordinance at 7 p.m. today at the Grass Valley City Council meeting at City Hall, 125 E. Main St.
I've heard of people wanting to open dispensaries here but I've told them to be very careful," said Nevada County District Attorney Cliff Newell. California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sent out guidelines for medical marijuana dispensaries, and "It's awfully restrictive," Newell said. "It has to be an absolute nonprofit."
Last week, Foster was at a California Police Chiefs Association meeting on medical marijuana and was given statistics from the San Francisco and Los Angeles police that showed crime increased around dispensaries there.
Los Angeles neighborhoods saw a 200 percent rise in robberies and a more than 50 percent hike in burglaries and assaults after dispensaries opened there.
Both major cites have tied several homicides or attempted murders to the shops where marijuana is sold legally under Proposition 215 -- the medical pot law passed in 1996 -- according to the statistics Foster supplied The Union.
Nevada County has no known medical pot dispensaries, according to James Henry, who opened one in Colfax five years ago.
The Golden State Patient Care Collective sells medical marijuana to those with legitimate recommenations for anywhere from zero to $400 per one-eighth ounce, Henry said. Patients are screened and get nowhere near the product unless they have a legitimate doctor's prescription, Henry said.
The dispensary owner said he has no problems with Colfax area police, and no violent incidents have occured since he opened, Henry said.
I don't want gangsters peddling pot in town anywhere, either," Henry said. "I think we do a good job here, and the patients are grateful. We help them eat and sleep."
Calls to the Placer County Sheriff's Department for comment about Henry's business were not returned.
Nevada County has had voluntary medical marijuana identification available this year because of state mandates, said Jeff Brown, director of Health and Human Services.
The two ( people ) who have registered feel the card gives them a feeling of security in case they get stopped when transporting it," Brown said. "It's not the county's intent to make it mandatory."
security guard has changed his plea to no contest
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.-A former Central Coast California medical
marijuana dispensary security guard has changed his plea to no
contest for felony counts of selling marijuana and possession of
marijuana for sale.
Abe Baxter had pleaded not guilty in May but prosecutors say he now
faces up to 120 days in jail after changing his plea this week.
Baxter was a security guard at a Morro Bay dispensary owned by
Charles Lynch, who was convicted in August of distributing marijuana.
Baxter was charged in 2007 with selling marijuana outside the
dispensary.
Lynch's case is a monumental one for the medical marijuana community
because state laws allow for medical marijuana while federal law does
not.
Lynch's attorneys have sought lenience since the U.S. Attorney
announced that agents will target distributors when they also violate
state laws.
Baxter will be sentenced June 23.
marijuana dispensary security guard has changed his plea to no
contest for felony counts of selling marijuana and possession of
marijuana for sale.
Abe Baxter had pleaded not guilty in May but prosecutors say he now
faces up to 120 days in jail after changing his plea this week.
Baxter was a security guard at a Morro Bay dispensary owned by
Charles Lynch, who was convicted in August of distributing marijuana.
Baxter was charged in 2007 with selling marijuana outside the
dispensary.
Lynch's case is a monumental one for the medical marijuana community
because state laws allow for medical marijuana while federal law does
not.
Lynch's attorneys have sought lenience since the U.S. Attorney
announced that agents will target distributors when they also violate
state laws.
Baxter will be sentenced June 23.
Is Mendocino County About To Tax Marijuana
By Michael O'Faolain
http://www.coastalpost.com/09/05/04.html
Perhaps embracing the national general discussion on the wasteful War
on Drugs, marijuana, and the need for tax revenue, on Monday the
Mendocino County Board of Supervisors took up a "zip tie" proposal at
a special meeting but put off action until May 5.
In Mendocino County the traditional start of the marijuana outdoor
growing season begins in April. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman
is reprising a program tested in 2007 - medical marijuana zip ties.
Allman's office distributed 1,500 test zip ties in 2007 test.
Under the new proposal the zip ties would be sold by the Public
Health Department in order to assure compliance with the privacy
provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA).
Applicants would be required to present their California Medical
Marijuana Card. They will be issued six zip ties unless their doctor
recommends more. Allman is proposing that the charge be $25 per tie
with a 50% discount for Medicare patients. The ties would be wrapped
around the base of the plant and would be imprinted with "Mendocino
County MMP" and a serial number.
In an interview with Ukiah Daily Journal reporter Rob Burgess, Allman
said: "A zip tie acts like a prescription bottle. Whereas before
deputies would spend three hours investigating a marijuana garden,
now they'll be able to do that in five minutes. Before legal patients
were concerned that, What if I'm gone? Will the cops take my
marijuana?' With this they don't have to worry about that. This
serial number will speak for them. This is the identification mark
for this."
Allman said they would be monitoring for counterfeit ties. While some
see this as a taxation program, in fact the proposal is that half the
money collected would go to fund a half-time employee in the Public
Health Department and half would go to the County General Fund which
does support the Sheriff's Office.
The goal is to begin to create a clearly separate identity for legal
growing in order to identify illegal commercial growing.
The commercial growing of marijuana has become an identifiable
problem for law enforcement in California's North Coast. In
discussions with a member of the cooperative drug enforcement task
force of federal, state, and local personnel, this writer learned
that in the past few years' raids of several large gardens in
National Forests and other state and local forest lands have resulted
in the arrest of Mexican citizens with apparent ties to the infamous
Mexican drug cartel.
In 2000 Mendocino County voters approved Measure G, which called for
the decriminalization of marijuana when used and cultivated for
personal use, making it the first county in the nation to do so. In
2008 County voters approved Measure B, which repealed portions of
Measure G making local regulations conform to state law implementing
the provisions of the statewide voter approved Compassionate Use Act
of 1996 (Proposition 215).
Under guidelines issued by the California Attorney General's office,
persons who have qualified as patients or primary caregivers may grow
no more than six mature or twelve immature plants per patient.
Counties and cities are allowed regulations that would permit
qualified persons to possess more.
The narrow passage of Measure B was not a rejection of the concept of
decriminalization of marijuana. The most significant problem while
Measure G was in effect was that gardens within urban and suburban
neighborhoods gave off fumes and odor from growing plants.
This writer can speak from personal experience that at certain times
during growing season, his yard became unusable because a neighbor's
garden gave off fumes so strong that your eyes and sinuses would
burn. And the odor is not similar to the not-so-offensive smell of
smoking marijuana as it is like living adjacent to a chemical
processing plant. This is a land use issue, which, if marijuana were
legalized, could be regulated by zoning in a manner that all
commercial agriculture is regulated.
Given the general discussion around the nation about
legalization/taxation of marijuana, it is not a surprise that some
outside Mendocino County believe this is an attempt to tax the large
annual marijuana crop grown within the County. While the zip tie
proposal certainly creates a system of fees that theoretically could
expand to a significant revenue producing mechanism much like the
"tax stamps" placed on liquor bottles, at this point in time it only
applies to medical marijuana growing for patients who live in
Mendocino County. No significant revenue is represented by the
proposal.
However, one cannot ignore the "winds of change" within the state.
The San Francisco Chronicle Political Writer Carla Marinucci recently
reported that for the first time the since EMC Research began
tracking attitudes about legalization of marijuana a clear majority
of voters say marijuana use should be generally legalized with 54% in
favor and 39% against.
Prominent conservatives and liberals have long advocated legalization
of marijuana as part of a change in the approach to the war on drugs.
Even Fox News' weird right-wing talking head Glenn Beck blurted out
on February 25: "...Look, I'm a libertarian. You want to legalize
marijuana; you want to legalize drugs - that's fine."
But Monday's Mendocino County Supervisors' discussion was much more
mundane. It was about procedures and processes to help law
enforcement distinguish between lawful medical marijuana plants and
illegal plants. And as one might expect, the draft ordinance was
introduced by a vote of 3 to 2, but sent back to County Counsel for
further revision.
A tax measure it is not, though it likely would generate enough
revenue to fund personnel to administer the rules. As Allman noted:
"Three years ago when we first offered this some of the other
sheriff's snickered, But now, zip ties are going to be something
other counties are going to look at. If this is successful, other
counties could view this as a model."
http://www.coastalpost.com/09/05/04.html
Perhaps embracing the national general discussion on the wasteful War
on Drugs, marijuana, and the need for tax revenue, on Monday the
Mendocino County Board of Supervisors took up a "zip tie" proposal at
a special meeting but put off action until May 5.
In Mendocino County the traditional start of the marijuana outdoor
growing season begins in April. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman
is reprising a program tested in 2007 - medical marijuana zip ties.
Allman's office distributed 1,500 test zip ties in 2007 test.
Under the new proposal the zip ties would be sold by the Public
Health Department in order to assure compliance with the privacy
provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA).
Applicants would be required to present their California Medical
Marijuana Card. They will be issued six zip ties unless their doctor
recommends more. Allman is proposing that the charge be $25 per tie
with a 50% discount for Medicare patients. The ties would be wrapped
around the base of the plant and would be imprinted with "Mendocino
County MMP" and a serial number.
In an interview with Ukiah Daily Journal reporter Rob Burgess, Allman
said: "A zip tie acts like a prescription bottle. Whereas before
deputies would spend three hours investigating a marijuana garden,
now they'll be able to do that in five minutes. Before legal patients
were concerned that, What if I'm gone? Will the cops take my
marijuana?' With this they don't have to worry about that. This
serial number will speak for them. This is the identification mark
for this."
Allman said they would be monitoring for counterfeit ties. While some
see this as a taxation program, in fact the proposal is that half the
money collected would go to fund a half-time employee in the Public
Health Department and half would go to the County General Fund which
does support the Sheriff's Office.
The goal is to begin to create a clearly separate identity for legal
growing in order to identify illegal commercial growing.
The commercial growing of marijuana has become an identifiable
problem for law enforcement in California's North Coast. In
discussions with a member of the cooperative drug enforcement task
force of federal, state, and local personnel, this writer learned
that in the past few years' raids of several large gardens in
National Forests and other state and local forest lands have resulted
in the arrest of Mexican citizens with apparent ties to the infamous
Mexican drug cartel.
In 2000 Mendocino County voters approved Measure G, which called for
the decriminalization of marijuana when used and cultivated for
personal use, making it the first county in the nation to do so. In
2008 County voters approved Measure B, which repealed portions of
Measure G making local regulations conform to state law implementing
the provisions of the statewide voter approved Compassionate Use Act
of 1996 (Proposition 215).
Under guidelines issued by the California Attorney General's office,
persons who have qualified as patients or primary caregivers may grow
no more than six mature or twelve immature plants per patient.
Counties and cities are allowed regulations that would permit
qualified persons to possess more.
The narrow passage of Measure B was not a rejection of the concept of
decriminalization of marijuana. The most significant problem while
Measure G was in effect was that gardens within urban and suburban
neighborhoods gave off fumes and odor from growing plants.
This writer can speak from personal experience that at certain times
during growing season, his yard became unusable because a neighbor's
garden gave off fumes so strong that your eyes and sinuses would
burn. And the odor is not similar to the not-so-offensive smell of
smoking marijuana as it is like living adjacent to a chemical
processing plant. This is a land use issue, which, if marijuana were
legalized, could be regulated by zoning in a manner that all
commercial agriculture is regulated.
Given the general discussion around the nation about
legalization/taxation of marijuana, it is not a surprise that some
outside Mendocino County believe this is an attempt to tax the large
annual marijuana crop grown within the County. While the zip tie
proposal certainly creates a system of fees that theoretically could
expand to a significant revenue producing mechanism much like the
"tax stamps" placed on liquor bottles, at this point in time it only
applies to medical marijuana growing for patients who live in
Mendocino County. No significant revenue is represented by the
proposal.
However, one cannot ignore the "winds of change" within the state.
The San Francisco Chronicle Political Writer Carla Marinucci recently
reported that for the first time the since EMC Research began
tracking attitudes about legalization of marijuana a clear majority
of voters say marijuana use should be generally legalized with 54% in
favor and 39% against.
Prominent conservatives and liberals have long advocated legalization
of marijuana as part of a change in the approach to the war on drugs.
Even Fox News' weird right-wing talking head Glenn Beck blurted out
on February 25: "...Look, I'm a libertarian. You want to legalize
marijuana; you want to legalize drugs - that's fine."
But Monday's Mendocino County Supervisors' discussion was much more
mundane. It was about procedures and processes to help law
enforcement distinguish between lawful medical marijuana plants and
illegal plants. And as one might expect, the draft ordinance was
introduced by a vote of 3 to 2, but sent back to County Counsel for
further revision.
A tax measure it is not, though it likely would generate enough
revenue to fund personnel to administer the rules. As Allman noted:
"Three years ago when we first offered this some of the other
sheriff's snickered, But now, zip ties are going to be something
other counties are going to look at. If this is successful, other
counties could view this as a model."
46 percent of Americans favor legalizing small amounts of marijuana
46 percent of Americans now favor legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use, the most in data back to the mid-1980s and more than double its level 12 years ago. While 52 percent remain opposed, that’s down from 75 percent in the late 1990s and 78 percent in 1986.
See poll here: http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1089a6HotButtonIssues.pdf
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