420attorney on Marijuana and recent events in the law, Brought to you by The Kroger Law Group

whats going on in this crazy world.

2011-08-20T06:19:00.000-07:00

Medical marijuana, what is it and why are the police so afraid of it? Is it really a gateway drug or is it that the large pharmaceutical drug companies don't want you to use it. Face it, they lose money every time someone inhales it. The reason is because every time some one inhales medical marijuana, they are not taking a man made toxic pharmaceutical. And, guess what, the drug companies lose a patient. This is to say the profits of the large drug companies are going down the drain.

The reason you don't see more enforcement at this point is because the government, mostly local government, is broke and they do not have the money to go after marijuana cases.

So, they want to bust more people but at this point, they can not do it because of the budget cuts.

What would you do

2011-07-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

Last week, the Obama administration sent out a letter to U.S. attorneys reminding them the cultivation and distribution of marijuana is illegal under federal law (http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/federal-officials-could-target-states-marijuana-industry-11260). The letter also stated the U.S. Department of Justice can prosecute “those who knowingly facilitate such activities,” strongly implying the government would be cracking down on states, such as California, that up until now have been skirting the law.

In a joint investigation with KQED, and in association with “FRONTLINE,” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/07/feds-remind-states-marijuana-is-illegal.html) the Center for Investigative Reporting is launching a series of reports looking at how the United States, and especially California, has gotten to this point. Today, more than a third of all states have some form of legislation allowing for medical marijuana use – in California, the city of Oakland went further than any other city by proposing to license four large pot-growing facilities.

So what is the solution? KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting want to hear from you about what measures the federal government and the states could take to deal with this billion-dollar industry. If you were in charge, how would you change the legislation? We’ve crafted a Public Insight Network query that you can fill out either online (http://www.publicinsightnetwork.org/form/cir-and-kqed/59504e7aa117/how-would-you-change-marijuana-laws) or via text and voice messages. To respond by phone, just text the word CAPOT to 30644. We look forward to reading – and hearing – your suggestions.

Marijuana Cooperatives illegal in MI

2011-06-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

Attorney general issues opinion saying medical marijuana cooperatives
are illegal in Michigan
Posted: Tue, Jun 28, 2011 : 4:38 p.m.

By Ryan J. Stanton
Political Reporter

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette issued a formal opinion today,
declaring there are only two legal ways patients can get access to
medical marijuana in the state.

They can either grow it for themselves — 12 plants at a time — or they
can get it from a registered caregiver who can grow 12 plants for each
of as many as five patients.

But not allowed under the state's medical marijuana law, Schuette
said, are cooperatives where patients and caregivers jointly
cultivate, store and share medical marijuana.

Schuette's opinion also noticeably leaves out patient-to-patient
transfers of marijuana, which is the business model many dispensaries
follow, as an acceptable practice. Schuette has said publicly he
believes the law approved by voters in 2008 did not authorize
dispensaries.

Ann Arbor officials are looking into what the opinion might mean for
marijuana dispensaries and cultivation facilities that exist locally,
but City Attorney Stephen Postema noted the attorney general's stance
ultimately could be trumped by pending court decisions.

"I knew something like this was coming out, so we'll be looking at
this," Postema said via phone today, adding the city still expects a
major decision to come down from the Michigan Court of Appeals ruling
on the legality of patient-to-patient transfers.

The Ann Arbor City Council adopted local medical marijuana regulations
last week that allow up to 72 plants to be grown in a single location,
but there is language in the ordinance saying it must be done in
compliance with the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act.

Schuette clarified in his opinion today there are strict rules around
how caregivers and patients can grow and access medical marijuana. He
said the law contemplated that permitted activities, including the
cultivation of marijuana plants, would occur on an individual basis.

Patients who wish to be self-sufficient, Schuette said, can grow up to
12 plants for their own personal medical use in an "enclosed, locked
facility" that only they can access.

If patients specify a caregiver, Schuette said, they relinquish any
right to possess and cultivate marijuana plants on their own — they
must rely on the caregiver.

And caregivers must keep each patient's plants segregated and in a
separate enclosed, locked facility that only they can access, Schuette
said. That's defined as "a closet, room, or other enclosed area
equipped with locks or other security devices that permit access only
by a registered primary caregiver or registered qualifying patient."

Schuette said questions concerning commercial enterprises that sell
medical marijuana — and whether government officials can conduct
warrantless administrative searches of registered patients or
caregivers and their properties — are under review by his office.

He noted in his opinion that marijuana remains a Schedule 1 controlled
substance, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and has no
accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. He also said
the manufacture and delivery of marijuana by anyone remains a felony
and the voter-approved medical marijuana law merely "sets forth
particular circumstances under which they will not be arrested or
otherwise prosecuted for their lawbreaking."

Ryan J. Stanton covers government and politics for AnnArbor.com. Reach
him at ryanstanton@annarbor.com or 734-623-2529. You also can follow
him on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's e-mail newsletters.

--

Oaksterdam University

2011-06-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

Oaksterdam University: Oakland’s “cannabis college”

By Steven Short on June 14, 2011 - 4:31pm

http://kalwnews.org/audio/2011/06/14/oaksterdam-university-oakland%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Ccannabis-college%E2%80%9D_1038114.html

Listen to story audio (8:30) - http://kalwnews.org/audio/popup/1038114

If you’re a proponent of legalizing marijuana, recent events may have left a bad taste in your mouth.

Back in October then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger “semi-decriminalized” the possession of small amounts of cannabis. But then in November, voters rejected Proposition 19, which would have softened certain pot-related charges. And last week, the State Assembly vetoed a bill that would have let county district attorneys decide whether growers should face misdemeanor or felony charges.

Still, the medical marijuana industry is thriving, with a couple dozen medical marijuana facilities in San Francisco and the East Bay, and many more statewide. They all require staff. And the best-known place to learn the trade is Oaksterdam University, in Oakland. We sent KALW’s Steven Short for a weekend session to see what he’d find in the halls of higher education.

CHAD GILMORE: I recommend a half a pound in a five-gallon area. Because the agitation will allow for – the surface space is, open. One pound only gives you so much surface space, but a half a pound, opened up, allows the water to go through, and get to all the crystals.

STEVEN SHORT: Come in late to Chad Gilmore’s Extraction Class, and you might mistake it for any trade school science lecture. But once focused on the instructor, you realize this is very specialized information.

GILMORE: It’s like taking, when you’re smoking, one big bud and sticking it into your pipe and trying to smoke it over and over again. It gets black; it gets charred.

Welcome to Oaksterdam University, perhaps the best-known training school for anyone interested in working in California’s medical marijuana trade.

The growing field of medical marijuana is working at correcting a lot of negative popular perception, including a long line of comedy, ranging from stoner duos like Cheech & Chong to Harold & Kumar. But more recent comics, such as Katt Williams, go the other direction, making it sound as wholesome as the Seven Dwarves.

Reality, of course, lies somewhere in between. But Williams’ comment about proper dosage – whether aspirin, marijuana, or anything else, for that matter – is part of the training here. That’s covered in Patient Relations 101 – formerly Budtending – as well as in the Methods of Ingestion classes.

DIEDRA BAGDASARIAN: Raise your hands if you currently participate in the medical marijuana marketplace, as something other than a patient, meaning that you’re, like, exchanging goods and services. Very few of you.

Oakland resident Diedra Bagdasarian has led one of those “Methods of Ingestion” classes at Oaksterdam for about a year now.

And while this class is titled Cooking with Cannabis, you won’t find any ovens or mixing bowls here. And you certainly won’t find any raw ingredients. It’s strictly a lecture class, because possession and consumption of medical cannabis, like all prescriptions, is limited to those with doctor recommendations. Oh, and it’s worth noting that it’s totally prohibited by federal law. Right now Bagdasarian is offering some history.

BAGDASARIAN: Our first – like our first knowledge of mankind using cannabis was ten thousand years ago, okay. Okay? That is longer than most of this country thinks the Earth is old. (laughter) And that’s not just me. That’s the BBC. I’m not making this stuff up. I got that from the BBC.

Bagdasarian rattles off a few more historic highlights from that ten thousand year period: Egyptian pharaohs were buried with it. Queen Victoria used it, and she was monarch of the British Empire for most of the 1800s.

BAGDASARIAN: She used cannabis, she used it for medical reasons, to treat her “lady problems.” The Queen of England! That should be like the most conservative woman on the planet, right? (laughter) Like, c’mon!

In Bagdasarian’s Cooking with Cannabis class, at least one of the students, Tim Yarbrough of Chico, already has some pretty good culinary skills.

TIM YARBROUGH: I was a Chef Instructor the last nine years, and thought maybe I should find out about using cannabis in cooking – because I see it evolving and getting bigger, you know, each year.

RICHARD LEE: There’s a lot of people being gainfully employed in the industry. I’d say, in general, the pay range is about $50,000 to $100,000.

Richard Lee is president of Oaksterdam University. He moved to Oakland in 1998 to work with the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, following the passage of Proposition 215, the first California medical marijuana initiative. But it was a trip to the Cannabis College in Amsterdam, Holland, which inspired his next move.

LEE: I thought about taking that one step farther, and making a trade school. And so we ran an ad in the back of East Bay Express to see if anyone was interested, and we had over 200 phone calls in the first couple days. And were sold out months in advance, for the first year.

SHORT: That was 2007?

LEE: Right, November, 2007 was the first class.

Many industries have taken root in California before growing throughout the country. And every new industry has start-up hassles: look at solar power. But few of those hassles include felony charges for growing or possessing your raw material.

LEE: Well, it’s true, that there’s give and take, attacks and counter-attacks. But in general, things are going our way.

That’s an audacious statement, especially in Oakland, where earlier this year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office cracked down on the Oakland City Council’s plans to operate industrial-sized cannabis greenhouses. But Lee doesn’t see it as a setback.

LEE: In general, I wouldn’t say the federal government is cracking down. As far as the Oakland commercial permits – that got a lot of media, but things are moving ahead. And if you look at California, with our medical marijuana system, some people would say that it’s already legal here. It’s fairly easy to go to a doctor, get a recommendation, and then there’s thousands of places open, selling cannabis. You can get it delivered to you, like pizza.

A growing number of states – 14 at present – now authorize some form of legal cannabis. And students from every state, with the exception of North Dakota, have come to Oakland to take classes at Oaksterdam University.

And medical cannabis, Lee points out, is only one of many uses for the plant.

LEE: Hemp is any of the industrial uses, the non-psychoactive uses. So it’s not just the fibers off the stalk, but the seed is the other big use – for the oils, food products, as well as beauty or skin products.

Students in Deidra Bagdasarian’s cooking class aren’t focused on hemp, of course. Their thoughts are elsewhere.

BAGDASARIAN: Do not make a recipe that you’ve never made before, with cannabis. Test your recipes without cannabis first. Okay? You do not want to, you know, make a $200 mistake. That’s not a good time.

Actually, student Josh Salans of San Jose, says he doesn’t know anyone interested in growing industrial hemp. And, he notes, hemp plants and cannabis plants should not be grown together.

JOSH SALANS: Where I have land in Mendocino County, I was told that if I tried to grow hemp, I’d be killed. Because hemp will pollinate the pot, right? Because they’re male. So you don’t want that. So you don’t want hemp anywhere near your pot-growing.

SHORT: Well, you learn something every day.

SALANS: Yeah! (chuckles) Under threat of duress!

It will be years before growers and government officials straighten out who can grow what, where. In the meantime, Oaksterdam University will continue to provide training in legal issues, history, ingestion, and economics.

And with hundreds of thousands of cardholders using medical cannabis for everything from AIDS to anorexia, glaucoma to chronic pain the prospects of these Oaksterdam grads finding jobs should be … high.

In Oakland, I’m Steven Short, for Crosscurrents.

It was 15 years ago that the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Co-op began, in 1996, paved the way for businesses such as Oaksterdam University.

Dispensary Ban in Glendale

2011-06-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

CITY HALL - The City Council today will consider permanently banning
marijuana dispensaries in Glendale after spending nearly two years
vetting their legal standing to do so.

Medical marijuana dispensaries are prohibited under the city's zoning
codes, but the City Council in 2009 adopted a moratorium to
completely close Glendale's borders to the shops so city attorneys
could review the legal issues associated with an all-out ban.

But that moratorium is set to expire in September and officials can
no longer extend it, prompting city attorneys and police to recommend
enacting a citywide ban similar to those in dozens of cities across
the state.

There are no dispensaries within Glendale city limits, but city
officials have said interest has increased in recent years. Glendale
is also a virtual island in the Greater Los Angeles area. In 2007,
187 pot dispensaries registered to continue operating when the Los
Angeles City Council approved a moratorium.

Glendale officials had been hoping that a decision by a state
appellate court regarding Anaheim's ban on marijuana dispensaries
would provide firm legal precedent. Instead, the 4th District Court
of Appeal in Santa Ana sent a legal challenge of the city's ban back
to a lower court for further review.

Still, city attorneys say they are confident a ban in Glendale would
be on solid legal footing.

"We know that the legal landscape is continuing to evolve; however,
review of the cases to date help support the recommendation that we
are making," said Carmen Merino, general counsel for the Police
Department.

In cities where dispensaries have been established, law enforcement
agencies have reported increased burglaries, vandalism, illegal drug
sales and other criminal behaviors, according to a report to the
California Chiefs of Police Assn.

"It is a collective opinion that this is not good for our community,"
said city spokesman Tom Lorenz. "It is a quality-of-life issue."

Advocates of medical marijuana, meanwhile, continue to challenge
outright bans as being counter to state law.

"It's illegal under state law to ban outright this kind of activity,"
said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the medical marijuana advocacy
group Americans for Safe Access. "Local governments should feel an
obligation to address the needs of patients in their community and be
able to regulate activity that is shown to be lawful under state law."

Hermes also disputed assertions that pot dispensaries contribute to
crime, citing interviews with public safety officials in cities where
the shops are regulated that show the opposite.

"These are public officials that are talking to us on the record.
They've found that crime actually decreases around these facilities,"
he said.

Erase those text messages!

2011-06-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

The contents of your cell phone can reveal a lot more about you than the naked eye can: who your friends are, what you've been saying and when, which websites you've visited, and more. There has long been debate over user privacy when it comes to various data found on a cell phone, but according to the California Supreme Court, police don't need a warrant to start digging through your phone's contents.

The ruling comes as a result of the conviction of one Gregory Diaz, who was arrested for trying to sell ecstasy to a police informant in 2007 and had his phone confiscated when he arrived at the police station. The police eventually went through Diaz's text message folder and found one that read "6 4 80." Such a message means nothing to most of us, but it was apparently enough to be used as evidence against Diaz (for those curious, it means six pills will cost $80).

Diaz had argued that the warrantless search of his phone violated his Fourth Amendment rights, but the trial court said that anything found on his person at the time of arrest was "really fair game in terms of being evidence of a crime."

In its review of the case, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment didn't apply to the text messages on Diaz's cell phone at the time of arrest. The court cited a number of previous cases wherein defendants were arrested with all manner of incriminating objects—heroin tablets hidden in a cigarette case, paint chips hidden in clothing, marijuana in the trunk of a car — which did not require a warrant to obtain. The court said that the phone was "immediately associated" with Diaz's person, and therefore the warrantless search was valid.

The decision was not unanimous, though. "The potential intrusion on informational privacy involved in a police search of a person‟s mobile phone, smartphone or handheld computer is unique among searches of an arrestee's person and effects," Justices Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Carlos Moreno wrote in dissent.

They went on to argue that the court majority's opinion would allow police "carte blanche, with no showing of exigency, to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee's person. The majority thus sanctions a highly intrusive and unjustified type of search, one meeting neither the warrant requirement nor the reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

The courts have gone back and forth in the past on how much privacy protection should be given to data that can be found on a citizen's cell phone. A Pennsylvania District Court ruled in 2008 that law enforcement must get a warrant before acquiring historical records of a cell phone user's physical movements. The same year, the 9th Circuit Court said that the text messages of a police officer had to meet the standards of a reasonable search before law enforcement could access them. In 2010, however, the US Supreme Court said that government employers have the right to read transcripts of employees' e-mails, IMs, texts, and other communications, and that the Fourth Amendment wouldn't protect them from a government search.

South Texas College of Law professor Adam Gershowitz argued in a 2008 paper that the proliferation of iPhone-like devices means that officers fishing through your pockets for weapons can suddenly access a plethora of sensitive documents, not to mention possible passwords. "[S]ince the Supreme Court has ruled that police have broad authority to arrest people for even trivial infractions, such as failure to wear a seat belt, the current rule gives law enforcement officers broad discretion to transform a routine traffic stop into a highly intrusive excavation of your digital life," Ars observed at the time.

Gershowtiz suggested a number of possibilities for how courts could distinguish between an appropriate cell phone search and an inappropriate one, but no such rules exist yet. In the meantime, California citizens may want to be extra careful about what gets stored on their devices, lest the police find a reason to dig up your sexy texts or communications with your private "dispensary."

Canada moves closer to legalization?

2011-06-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

“Communities will be safer a result, simple as that,” said association president Len Garis. “I congratulate Minister [Leona] Aglukkaq for bringing this forward and for allowing a consultation process to take place in the meantime, with community stakeholders, to help us work to solve our immediate concerns.”

Minister Aglukkaq announced Friday that the federal government will be changing laws for medical marijuana growers

The government is beginning the process immediately by launching public consultations into a list of proposed changes the department has prepared.

Aglukkaq said government is hoping the changes will “reduce the risk of abuse . . . while significantly improving the way program participants access marijuana for medical purposes.”

Among other changes, the move would eliminate individual and private growers. Under the current system, eligible people apply to Health Canada, which then issues the licence.

People in the dispensing community who have been hearing about the impending change say it’s unconstitutional, and removes the rights of medical cannabis patients to produce their own cannabis.

Health Canada’s proposal is based on recent complaints from mayors and councillors across the country who say the current system poses dangers when growers don’t follow local electrical, health and safety bylaws.

At the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference earlier this month, delegates approved a resolution to ask that Health Canada issue licences only to growers who have already received a licence from their respective municipality.

In March, the mayors of two towns in southern British Columbia wrote to Aglukkaq, saying too many licences were floating around, making it impossible for municipalities to know who is licensed and whether those growers are operating safely. The mayors of Langley, B.C., and the Township of Langley, B.C., also wrote that they knew “based on actual cases, that there is significant misuse of many licences and the volume of product produced often exceeds an individual’s personal requirement.”

Late last month, RCMP drug investigators in B.C. arrested three men and seized a helicopter after raiding a Maple Ridge property growing almost seven times more pot than its two medical marijuana licences permitted. The Federal Drug Enforcement Branch found 1,490 plants instead of the 220 permitted by two licences provided by Health Canada to grow medical pot.

— with a file from The Province

Brazil Calls for legalized marijuana

2011-06-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

SAO PAULO — Brazilian demonstrators held marches on the weekend calling for marijuana to be legalized after the country's top court ruled the gatherings could go ahead in the name of freedom of speech.

The demonstrations were held in 40 towns and cities late Saturday, according to Brazilian media.

Most were small affairs, with around 2,000 marching in the country's megapolis of Sao Paulo. Some people were seen smoking marijuana, but there were no immediate reports of arrests.

Possession and use of marijuana remains illegal in Brazil, and some commentators and social groups said they saw the marches as violating a law on justifying crimes.

But Brazil's Supreme Court last Wednesday ruled that the right to freedom of expression was more important and the marches could be held -- but that illicit drugs should not be consumed.

Last month, when protesters tried to hold a pro-marijuana rally in Sao Paulo without judicial support, the march degenerated into clashes with police who fired tear gas to disperse them.

Feds on New Medical Marijuana Offensive

2011-05-10T08:09:00.000-07:00

Rally in Sacramento Monday for Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer. Threatening letters from US attorneys have been sent to officials in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Rhode Island, and Washington. The first was in February in California; the latest came this week in Arizona.

What is worse is that the interventions by the US attorneys appear deliberately timed to intimidate elected officials as they consider regulating medical marijuana dispensaries -- and it seems to be working. Last week, Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire vetoed a bill that would have created a regulated dispensary system after requesting and receiving a threatening letter from her state's two US attorneys. This week, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee "placed a hold" on dispensaries about to open there after receiving an unsolicited threatening letter from the US attorney.

Earlier, as Montana legislators debated whether to regulate and allow dispensaries there, the feds hit them with a one-two punch of DEA raids and a US attorney letter. While Gov. Brian Schweitzer vetoed a bill that would have repealed the state's medical marijuana law, all indications are that he will not veto a bill that will effectively kill dispensaries in Big Sky Country. And in Hawaii, legislators backed away from a dispensary bill after receiving similar threats.

The medical marijuana community has responded with protests -- there were actions in cities across the country on Monday -- but appears uncertain about what to do next. There are calls to reschedule marijuana, including one by Washington Gov. Gregoire, there are calls for the Obama administration or Congress to do something, and there are calls on state elected and appointed officials to stand firm in the face of federal bullying.

A group of Washington state legislators has also responded by sending a letter asking the state's Attorney General for his legal opinion on the law. The 15 legislators, all Democrats, led by Rep. Roger Goodman (Kirkland), asked Attorney General Rob McKenna if state employees had anything to fear from federal law enforcement if the vetoed state licensing provisions of the bill were revived, according to the Kitsap Sun.

A cannabis rescheduling petition to change marijuana's status under the Controlled Substances Act has been pending since 2002. Perhaps if Gregoire can rally other governors behind her, they can light a fire under the feds.

Rally in Washington, DC Monday to demand an end to federal interfence. (Image courtesy ASA) In the meantime, the raids continue. The DEA hit a San Diego dispensary Tuesday.

"This turn of events with the US attorneys is troublesome and reactionary," said Dale Gieringer, the long-time head of California NORML, who had just returned from a Sacramento rally in support of Dr. Mollie Fry and her companion, Dale Schafer, who had that day begun serving five-year federal prison sentences for medical marijuana cultivation. "It makes your head spin about that Obama policy of low enforcement, but Obama never said he supports states having access, and the US attorneys have taken matters into their own hands. This is certainly disappointing."

"It's very disconcerting and alarming that the federal government is deciding to deal with the medical marijuana issue this way," said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the nation's largest medical marijuana defense organization. "We had been seeing progress, with states passing distribution laws, others amending their laws to include distribution, and others passing new laws to incorporate distribution into the laws they passed. It's very unsettling that the federal government is choosing to interfere in the implementation of those laws and restrict the access that patients could benefit from or are benefiting from."

ASA recently gave the Obama administration a failing grade on its approach to medical marijuana. That report card cited continuing law enforcement actions against medical marijuana providers. It is unclear whether the recent US attorney letters represent a policy shift at the Justice Department or whether individual prosecutors are taking the initiative. The Justice Department did not respond to a Chronicle call for clarification. Still, it is clear that the federal prosecutors are on a mission.

"When the Rhode Island US attorney made the threat he did, without being asked, that signified that this is more than just a defensive policy, it is an aggressive policy on the part of the US attorneys to keep medical marijuana illegal," said Gieringer.

"We'd like to know what's going on," said Hermes. "The federal government is showing its cards now. This is drawing attention to the fact that it didn't necessarily mean what it said when it said it wouldn't use Department of Justice resources to circumvent state laws. It certainly seems like there is a concerted effort in the background, but no one has come out from Justice and said that. Justice has refused to meet with patient advocates since this increased interference in the past few months, and they need to address this community and this issue. They can't say one thing in a policy statement and do the exact opposite. The spotlight is on the president at this point."

"The federal government has totally ignored us on all fronts," said Geiringer, "but we're just going to have to keep insisting that we be heard. I would like to see somebody in Congress question this on the record. It never gets mentioned in congressional hearings when DEA officials are up there; it's just totally ignored."

"The timing of these memos really smacks of intimidation and interference," said Morgan Fox, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). "Our advice for lawmakers is to stand their ground and do what's best for their states, particularly when it comes to the feds prosecuting state employees involved in registries. There has never been a prosecution; it doesn’t rise to the level of aiding and abetting."

"They've never moved against any public official for this stuff anywhere, so I think this is an empty threat," agreed Gieringer, "but public officials being what they are, they are easily cowed."

Elected and appointed officials at the state level need to stand firm against the federal threats, said Fox. "The US attorney memos are frightening and starting to get more severe in tone, but all we need to do is have the states considering dispensary regulation to continue moving ahead with that. I don't think the feds are going to push this too much. They don't have the resources, and it would be a policy disaster for the administration."

If the threats to go after state officials are over-hyped, the dangers to dispensary operators are not. One was convicted in Spokane as legislators deliberated, and more than a dozen were raided in Montana as the legislature took up medical marijuana bills. They are all looking at lengthy federal prison sentences if prosecuted and convicted.

Patients rally across the country for medical marijuana. (Image courtesy ASA)"It's not lawmakers who will be looking at five-year federal prison sentences, but dispensary operators. They have to make personal decisions about whether they want to take that risk. Opening dispensaries is not just a way to provide safe access for patients, but also an act of civil disobedience, and you could face consequences," warned MPP's Fox.

ASA is holding training sessions for dispensary operators, said Hermes. But operators also need to continue to organize and pressure their elected representatives, he said.

But if the feds are standing firm, so is the medical marijuana movement. ASA, MPP, and California NORML all pledged to continue the fight.

"This is the federal government's last shot to try to prevent something that is working well in the US and will continue to work as long as the federal government stays out of the business of implementing state laws," said Hermes. "More than that, the federal government should be working with states to design a comprehensive federal policy that includes disengagement from enforcement and investment in research and rescheduling marijuana so that patients are protected wherever they live."

"We will continue to try to shine a light on this absurd and obscene misuse of law enforcement," said Gieringer, again pointing to the case of Dr. Fry and Dale Schafer. "Dale is on anti-hemophilia drugs with one treatment costing $10,000. He's also on morphine. And they're sending him to prison for five years? That's just crazy, but the machine just keeps going."

"We are just on the cusp of being legitimate and are now being beat back," said Fox. "We have to hold our ground."

City attorney sues medical marijuana dispensaries

2011-05-05T08:07:00.000-07:00

The city plans to ask a judge for injunctions to bar the pot shops from storing, selling, distributing or giving away marijuana. It could also seek fines of up to $2,500 a day, as well as a $25,000 fine for violating state narcotics laws. The lawsuits, which name the store and building owners, also aim to force the landlords to oust their tenants.

“The city of Los Angeles is sending a clear message that we will no longer allow property owners to turn a blind eye to illegal activity,” City Atty. Carmen Trutanich said in a statement.

Trutanich’s office is battling numerous lawsuits filed by dispensaries seeking to remain open. Some dispensaries are now trying to overturn the city’s revamped medical marijuana ordinance, which would cap the number of stores at 100 and allow only those that were in business on Sept. 14, 2007, when the city passed a moratorium to make it illegal to open new stores.

The dispensaries targeted by the city are: Cancare Collective, 11120 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood; Golden Triangle Collective, 2626 S. Figueroa Blvd., University Park; Green Oasis, 11924 Jefferson Blvd., Playa Vista; Natural Ways Always, 10006½ National Blvd., Palms; Rainforest Collective, 12515 Venice Blvd., Mar Vista; The Spot, 3200 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood Hills; and Helping Hint, 13614-16 Victory Blvd., Valley Glen.

-- John Hoeffel

Venice pot doctors shut down after raid by state medical board and police

2011-05-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

Investigators carted boxes and at least two large plastic bags that appeared to contain marijuana out of the deep-blue building next to Muscle Beach that houses a doctorâ€™s office, a smoke shop and a popular dispensary called the Medical Kush Beach Club.

Jennifer Simoes, spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California, said the warrant was sealed. She declined to discuss the reason for the boardâ€™s investigation, but said the warrant was served at 1313, 1811 and 2017 Ocean Front Walk.

Attorneys for Medical Kush Doctor raced to the beach, but said they were not allowed on the premises. Graham Berry, one of the lawyers, said the warrant authorized a search of the offices, vehicles and â€œanything else that your imagination could run to.â€� He said it also allowed officials to seize records related to the unlicensed practice of medicine. â€œSince all these doctors appear to be duly licensed, I donâ€™t know what they are referring to,â€� he said.

Berry said that the raid started about 10:15 a.m. and that by the time he arrived at 11, he found a line of patrol cars, a crowd gathered outside, news cameras and a news helicopter fluttering overhead. â€œOnce I arrived, they pulled the sliding gate door down,â€� he said.

The Medical Kush Beach Club was also shut down, but Berry said, â€œIt appeared to me that the target was the doctors and the practice of writing recommendations and the collective was a collateral casualty.â€� The Medical Kush Beach Club is operated by Sean Cardillo, who is also the registered agent for Kush Dr., the limited liability corporation that runs the doctorâ€™s offices.

Cardillo could not be reached for comment.

Stewart Richlin, another attorney who represents Cardillo, said that agents seized 5 pounds of marijuana from the dispensary but that he expected it to be returned. â€œThey involved the Medical Kush Beach Club unfairly,â€� he said. He added that he did not know whether any cash or equipment was seized but said no one was arrested in the raids.

Richlin said Kush Dr. rents space and provides promotional services for medical marijuana doctors. He said he believed the doctors followed state law in issuing recommendations for marijana use.

â€œAs far as I know, itâ€™s by the book. Iâ€™m surprised that this is happening,â€� he said. â€œI have a feeling by the time the fat lady sings on this it will be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.â€�

Simoes said the operation was conducted with the Los Angeles County district attorneyâ€™s office, the Los Angeles Police Department, the county Sheriffâ€™s Department and the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which provided search dogs.

-- John Hoeffel

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/venice-pot-doctors-shut-down-after-raid-by-state-medical-board-and-police.html

U.S. attorney: Justice Department considers medical marijuana to be illegal

2011-04-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

By CHARLES S. JOHNSON
Gazette State Bureau

Posted: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 7:59 pm

Read the letter from US Attorney for Montana Michael Cotter to lawmakers @ http://billingsgazette.com/pdf_edadcde6-02c9-576f-b39a-f99e99ee483f.html

HELENA â€” The U.S. Justice Department will prosecute individuals and organizations involved in the business of any illegal drug, including marijuana used for medical purposes permitted under state law, Michael W. Cotter, U.S. attorney for Montana, said in a letter to top legislative leaders Wednesday.

In another development on marijuana Wednesday, Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he is likely to make some amendatory vetoes suggesting changes to the medical marijuana bill moving through the Legislature.

Senate Bill 423, by Sen. Jeff Essmann, R-Billings, is the last surviving bill to repeal Montana's medical marijuana law and enact a new one that would impose far stricter regulations and make it much tougher for people to obtain cards to use medical marijuana.

Earlier this week, Senate President Jim Peterson, R-Buffalo, and House Speaker Mike Milburn, R-Cascade, wrote Cotter to ask for his guidance as the Montana Legislature completes work on SB423.

In 2004, Montanans voted, 62 percent to 38 percent, to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Since the fall of 2009, the number of medical marijuana cardholders has skyrocketed to nearly 30,000 last month.

Cotter said the Justice Department has not reviewed the specific legislative bill. But he said the U.S. Justice Department "has stated on many occasions that Congress placed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and as such, growing, distributing and possessing marijuana in any capacity, other than as part of a federally authorized research program, is a violation of federal law, regardless of state laws that purport to permit such activities."

Cotter went on to say, "The prosecution of individuals and organizations involved in the trade of any illegal drugs and the disruption of drug trafficking organizations is a core priority of the department."

This core priority, he said, "includes prosecution of business enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana."

"While the department generally does not focus its limited resources on seriously ill individuals who use marijuana as part of a medically recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, as stated in the October 2009 Ogden Memorandum, we maintain the authority to enforce the CSA against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law," Cotter said.

Cotter added, "The department's investigative and prosecutorial resources will continue to be directed toward these objectives."

In mid-March, federal law enforcement authorities raided 26 medical marijuana growing and dispensary operations in 13 Montana cities. They said they had probable cause that these businesses were engaged in large-scale trafficking.

Cotter said then that the search warrants executed were the culmination of an "18-month, multi-agency investigation into the drug trafficking activities of criminal enterprises." He said civil seizure warrants also were executed for financial institutions in Bozeman, Helena and Kalispell that sought up to $4 million.

Regarding the bill before the Legislature, Schweitzer said he probably would have some amendments when SB423 reaches him after passing both legislative houses next week.

"They're moving to a 'grow-your-own' (marijuana system)," Schweitzer said. "It does concern me. I don't know if it will end up being 2,000 patients or 30,000 patients growing their own."

He said that would make it harder to regulate than having a smaller number of producers growing for more people.

"We have some ideas that we think will make it better," Schweitzer said.

Westlake Village bans medical pot dispensaries

2011-04-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

Although California passed Proposition 215 in 1996 decriminalizing the use of medical marijuana, many local cities passed ordinances outlawing cannabis clubs in support of the federal government’s anti-drug stance.

Westlake Village received inquiries from business people seeking to establish marijuana clinics in the city. In 2009, the city shut down a medical marijuana business that had opened at a La Baya Drive commercial center without permission.

Officials passed a subsequent moratoriums to evaluate the impacts of dispensary bans in other jurisdictions. They also wanted to wait for the results of a 2010 state initiative that would have legalized the use of marijuana before implementing their own prohibition.

Since the initiative failed at the polls last November, a city land use committee recommended that Westlake Village enact its own ordinance to prohibit marijuana distribution facilities throughout the city. Agoura Hills has a similar ordinance banning pot dispensaries. The Westlake Village law includes the sale of synthetic marijuana products.

Before voting, Mayor Ned Davis expressed some concerns about the proposed ban because, he said, it would forbid distribution of cannabis in pharmacies and medical offices even if the state allowed those operations in the future.

Medical marijuana should be available only to patients who truly need it, Davis said, adding, “The way California allows marijuana distribution is blatantly wrong. It just doesn’t work.”

Councilmember Mark Rutherford urged Sacramento legislators to solve the problems associated with Prop. 219. “All the city is doing is trying to work with the uncertainty in the law,” he said.

Most California voters say possessing small amount of illegal drugs should be misdemeanor, not felony

2011-04-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

April 11, 2011 | 8:20 am

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/voters-marijuana-use-felony-to-misdemeanor.html

A strong majority of California voters believe the penalty for possession of a small amount of an illegal drug for personal use should be reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, according to a poll released Monday by organizations seeking to relax drug laws.

The survey conducted by a professional polling firm found that almost 75% of California voters likely to cast ballots in 2012 believe the crime should be downgraded to a misdemeanor. And 40% went even further, saying they think it should be dropped to an infraction, which is the equivalent of a speeding ticket and carries no prison time.

The poll did not define what is considered a small amount of a drug. Possession of controlled substances, such as cocaine and heroin, is a felony, although charges are sometimes reduced. Marijuana is treated separately, and possession of an ounce or less is an infraction.

A majority of voters also said California sends too many people to prison. And almost 75% agreed that in the midst of a budget crisis, the state should instead use the millions of dollars spent to imprison drug users on schools, healthcare and law enforcement.

"The point here is that this is an overwhelming majority of California voters," said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, the deputy state director for Southern California for the Drug Policy Alliance, a national organization that supports efforts to reduce drug sentences. "Californians don't want to waste money on incarcerating people for drug possession. They'd rather see that money go for something else."

The poll was released by the Drug Policy Alliance along with the ACLU of Northern California in San Francisco and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. It was designed and administered by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm.

Support for reducing drug possession penalties crosses party lines, drawing favor from substantial majorities of Democratic, Republican and nonpartisan voters. Most voters in every region of the state also back the change. Voters also indicated they are more inclined to reelect state lawmakers who vote to reduce the penalties for drug possession.

Nearly a quarter of the voters surveyed said Californians caught with a small amount of an illegal drug for personal use should not spend any time behind bars, while 27% said they should be locked up for less than three months. Just 8% suggested incarceration for a year or more.

The statewide poll surveyed 800 voters who intend to vote in the 2012 general election. They were questioned between March 21 and 24. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The results and analysis can be viewed at www.lakeresearch.com.

-- John Hoeffel

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/04/voters-marijuana-use-felony-to-misdemeanor.html

*Five Medical Marijuana Activists Arrested Today at San Diego City Council Protest

2011-04-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

Americans for Safe Access
For Immediate Release:*April 12, 2011

*/Patients, supporters resist passage of flawed ordinance & forced
closure of all city collectives/

in the San Diego City Council chambers protesting the final vote on a
local distribution ordinance, which advocates say imposes a citywide de
facto ban on collectives. During the hearing, members of the "Stop the
Ban Campaign" -- a coalition of over 20 local, state, and national
groups spearheaded by Canvass for a Cause and the San Diego Chapter of
Americans for Safe Access (ASA) -- repeatedly chanted "We demand safe
access," disrupting the session, forcing council to clear the chambers,
and postponing a critical vote on the ordinance.

The Stop the Ban Campaign has demanded that the City Council amend its
ordinance to include a compliance period that will avoid the immediate
closure of more than 100 facilities currently serving thousands of area
patients, and to open up available space in the city so that collectives
can actually relocate. Unfortunately, despite years of study, thoughtful
recommendations from a city-appointed task force, countless letters
received from constituents, hundreds of supporters at the last public
hearing, the City Council has so far refused to acknowledge the
recommendations of experts and the will of the people.

"The patient community in San Diego will not be deterred despite the
efforts of the City Council," said ASA San Diego Chair Eugene
Davidovich, one of the protest organizers and people arrested today.
"One way or another San Diego patients will gain safe access to their
medication, but it would be much more effective for the city to work
with us instead of fighting us at every step of the way."

Prior to the bill's first reading on March 28th, the Stop the Ban
campaign organized the largest letter-writing campaign in the city's
history, during which San Diego residents wrote in opposition to the
ordinance, requesting the passage of specific amendments. The ordinance
was also opposed by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the City's Medical
Marijuana Task Force. Left with little option, activists chose
nonviolent civil disobedience to protest the council's decision to
ignore years of citizen and expert input into the development of
regulations.

Advocates are now targeting San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, urging him to
reject the bill and tell the City Council to come back with a version
that reflects the community's input. While litigation is likely to
result from the passage of the ordinance in its current form, there is
another move afoot. The San Diego chapter of ASA in collaboration with
the Stop the Ban Campaign submitted a ballot proposal to the city clerk
on Monday in an attempt to put the issue before the voters. A
little-used process involving the city's Rules Committee, could prompt a
public hearing on the proposed measure and if approved by the committee
would be sent to the council for placement on the next election's ballot.

*Further information:*
San Diego medical marijuana ordinance:
http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/City_of_San_Diego_Ordinance.pdf
Manifesto from arrested activists:
http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/San_Diego_Manifesto.pdf
San Diego ASA chapter website: http://SafeAccessSD.org

AZ: Rules about medical marijuana in Arizona released

2011-04-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

The state health department on Monday released its final version of medical-marijuana rules, which detail how dispensaries will be chosen and distributed throughout the state.

The release wraps up the state health department's four-month rule-making process. Arizona's medical-marijuana program officially begins April 14, when the Arizona Department of Health Services will begin accepting patient applications. The program should be fully functioning by the end of the year.

In November, voters passed Proposition 203, which will allow qualifying patients with certain debilitating medical conditions to receive up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from dispensaries or cultivate up to 12 marijuana plants if they live 25 miles or farther from a dispensary. There will be between 120 and 126 dispensaries throughout the state, proportionate to the number of pharmacies.

Since early February, the state health department received more than 1,450 electronic comments on the second draft of its rules. The agency held four public forums - in Flagstaff, Tempe and Tucson - where about 150 people gave input on the rules.

"Ultimately, whether it becomes recreational over time is directly related to whether physicians across the state take this seriously and really make full assessments of patients, and only write certifications for people who really do have debilitating medical conditions," said Will Humble, ADHS director.

Humble said one of the main problems he expects in the first couple of weeks of the program is patients submitting doctor certifications that are incomplete or not in the department's accepted electronic format. Several doctors have been writing medical-pot certifications before the department finalized its rules.

"(The patients have) been walking away with sheets of paper that they believe are certifications that we'll accept. The fact is, we will only accept certifications that are on the department-provided form," Humble said.

The main changes made to the final version relate to selecting and distributing dispensaries:

- Dispensary selection

The final version builds on the previous draft's proposed two-step process of approving applications. Dispensary agents will be required to first apply for a registration certificate, which would include a background check and basic information such as location. The agent then will apply for an operating license, which requires more detailed plans, such as a site plan and a certificate of occupancy.

ADHS has added more requirements to the first application step. For example, applicants must include a business plan that shows projected expenditures before and after the dispensary is operational, and the projected revenue.

The final rules make it easier for dispensary owners to change locations within their designated health area.

- Dispensary distribution

There will be one dispensary in each Community Health Analysis Area, a geographical breakdown of the state that the DHS previously used to track public-health statistics. There are 126 of these health areas in the state, close to the number of dispensaries allowed.

If there is one qualified applicant for one health area, the department will approve the dispensary. But if there is more than one qualified application for the same health area, prospective dispensaries will be evaluated on a set of standards: whether the dispensary has access to $150,000 in start-up capital; whether the applicant has been bankrupt; whether anyone with a 20 percent or more interest in the dispensary is a board member or a principal member; whether the applicant is a resident of Arizona for three years; and whether the applicant has outstanding fees, such as federal, state and local taxes and child support.

If the applicants all rank the same, the department will choose dispensaries randomly.

One of the reasons this provision was included in the final rules was to encourage applicants to set up shop in rural areas of the state, Humble said. If applicants do not meet the standards, they will have a better chance applying for a less competitive health area. After three years, dispensary owners can apply to move to a different health area, perhaps inside the Valley.

Whittier city officials consider cap of one on medical marijuana dispensaries

2011-04-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

By Mike Sprague, Staff Writer

Posted: 04/07/2011 05:39:51 PM PDT

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_17796928

WHITTIER - The city's only legal medical marijuana dispensary may become a monopoly of one.

Concerned about a potential influx of such facilities, city officials have proposed a cap of one on the number allowed in Whittier.

The amendment to the zoning ordinance - recommended Monday on a 5-0 vote by the Planning Commission - is expected to go to the City Council at its May 10 meeting.

Assistant City Manager Jeff Collier said the cap of one was based on the small number of Whittier residents holding state-authorized medical marijuana cards. It's only 22.

"We're providing the number of businesses necessary to serve that particular constituent base," Collier said.

"We don't need an influx of these throughout our city," he said. "We're accommodating the use but we're not going beyond what's is necessary to serve (Whittier) residents."

The proposed new law would allow for a second medical marijuana dispensary if the owner could demonstrate through documented evidence there is "compelling need and demand for a second facility to serve residents of the city of Whittier only."

Robert Ortiz, director of the Whittier Hope Collective, the dispensary that opened in July of 2010, said he was surprised to hear about the proposed law.

"It's obvious (city officials) feel that's what the city needs," Ortiz said. "I can't say that I'm really more excited or not excited."

Ortiz, whose group has about 2,500 patients, said he doesn't believe the law creates a monopoly.

"There are other options for patients, the most important of which is home cultivation," he said.

In addition, there are other dispensaries in nearby Santa Fe Springs, he said.

Bill Britt, executive director for the Association of Patient Advocates, criticized the potential action.

"I can't think of anything as un-American as that," Britt said.

"No other business is restricted like that. Patients will suffer," he said. "How many pharmacies are there in the city? How many liquor stores are there?"

Britt also said to base a law on the number of patient cards is misleading.

"Everybody's afraid to the get the cards," he said. "Plus it costs $75, just if you're on Medi-Cal. And that's on top of getting the doctor's letter."

Britt said he believes that 10 percent of any city most likely uses marijuana for medical reasons.

mike.sprague@sgvn.com

562-698-0955, ext. 3022

Trutanich Talks Pot Shops, Crime and Moving Billboards

2011-04-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles city attorney is also already looking for a local storefront for an office to run his district attorney campaign.

By Mike Szymanski | 4-7-11 | 4:30pm

http://studiocity.patch.com/articles/trutanich-talks-pot-shops-crime-and-moving-billboards

City Attorney Carmen Trutanich spoke to members of the Studio City Chamber of Commerce Thursday afternoon about what his offices does in fighting crime, how medical marijuana shops will soon be closed, and what is being done about moving billboards.

“I try to explain it this way: we are the guards at the bank gates of the city’s money,” Trutanich told the chamber members at a luncheon held at the Out Take Bistro. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”

The San Pedro resident, who brought up four children, and once had an office on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, said 70 percent of every crime that goes through the Los Angeles Police Department comes through his office. His staff of 300 attorneys handle about 110,000 police reports, and they take 75,000 cases a year. He credits some of his vigorous prosecutions with the lowered crime rates in the city.

On the civil site, about 2,800 cases have been filed against the city and remain open, that’s not including 7,800 worker’s comp cases. Budget cuts have hit his office, like all city offices, and he said no one has been hired, not even an office worker, and he has a $300,000 surplus so far.

Trutanich said about $60 million to $90 million of debt that people and companies owe to the city is still outstanding and needs to be collected.

In order to deal with some of the heavy workload, the former U.S. Coast Guard man patterned a program as if it were part of a military reserve detail. He has volunteer attorneys just out of law school come in to train for 30 days and then spend four-and-a-half months working in a courtroom with an attorney as an apprentice, and then they are active deputy city attorneys.

“It is like a reserve cop, you can't tell the difference,” Trutanich explained. “And by the end of it, they have more face time with judges and courtroom experience than some of the partners in the firms that they’ll eventually work for.”

The reserve program has since been adopted by San Diego and Sacramento and received national media attention as a model for cash-strapped city attorneys.

“Truly the termites are holding the house together,” Trutanich quipped about the budget crisis.

During his term, 85 civil cases have been tried, and five resulted in negative results, he said.

As far as the medical marijuana shops, he said 200 of them exist in the city borders, and 43 received letters to close down. About 50 to 60 lawsuits are still pending about the lottery system and other reasons to stay open, but Trutanich said most of the rulings in court have been on the city’s side, and the shops must close down.

About the mobile signs law that was also a pet project for City Councilman Paul Krekorian, Trutanich said, “I know there are some people who think they can get around it by saying the signs are not mobile if they are behind a bicycle or something like that.”

He is referring to signs that are driven through the streets, or left in parking spaces all day.

“I told my staff this morning in a meeting that I don’t care if the sign is behind a bicycle, a horse or a camel, if it’s movable like that then it is illegal, and we will prosecute.”

Trutanich is already making plans to run for Los Angeles County District Attorney position in 2012 and is looking for an office to run his campaign on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. He said things are not strained between him and present district attorney Steve Cooley.

“Steve and I shared a cigar last night, we’re working well together,” Trutanich said. “And we’ll probably have another cigar soon again."

San Diego to Restrict Dispensaryies

2011-03-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

City considers restrictions on medical marijuana stores

By Christopher Cadelago

Originally published March 27, 2011 at 3:45 p.m., updated March 27, 2011 at 4:38 p.m.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/mar/27/city-considers-restrictions-on-medical-marijuana/

Fifteen years after state voters approved marijuana for medical purposes, the city of San Diego stands poised to consider proposals that would dramatically pare down the number of dispensaries and force those that qualify to tighten their operations.

The City Council on Monday will look to forge the path toward legitimacy for some of the roughly 180 medical marijuana dispensaries operating in an unrestricted environment, closing a chapter in a long-running debate over how to provide access for patients while ensuring safety for neighborhood residents.

The proposed rules would limit dispensaries to some commercial and industrial zones. Cooperatives would have to be 1,000 feet from each other, schools, playgrounds, libraries, child care and youth facilities, parks and churches.

They also would have limited business hours and mandatory security guards.

Councilman Todd Gloria, who is advancing the zoning proposal, said maintaining the status quo was not acceptable to cannabis patients, collective owners or neighborhood residents pining for rules of the road.

“In my council district, which has been very favorable to cannabis as legitimate medicine, I have neighborhoods coming to me pleading for relief” from the impacts of dispensaries, Gloria said. “If the ordinance is enacted the collectives are going to have to show over time that they can be good neighbors.”

Passage of the measure is no guarantee: Opponents on one side say it will choke patient access to medical marijuana while critics on the other contend it amounts to tacit approval of a drug with no redeeming qualities.

“It’s at such opposite ends right now that nobody is reaching across the aisle to get done what needs to be done,” said Frederick Aidan Remick, former director for the Association of Clinical Dispensaries.

There are more medical marijuana collectives in the city than there are pharmacies, the Rev. John Bombaro said.

“What is the vision for San Diego?” said Bombaro, who says he’s seen an uptick in loitering, drug use and fights since four dispensaries opened in the same building next to Grace Lutheran Church. “I don’t think we want to become the Amsterdam of Southern California.”

Eugene Davidovich, local chapter coordinator of Americans for Safe Access, said the organization has studied the proposed restrictions and found just one to three parcels that could allow dispensaries. Proponents of a citywide ban estimate between 25 and 30 locations where collectives could legally open.

“This isn’t regulating access it’s simply eradicating it,” Davidovich said. “It will have a significant negative impact on the most vulnerable folks in our community.”

None of the collectives would be grandfathered in regardless of the final policy, leading supporters to contend it would amount to a de facto ban when combined with the county’s ordinance.

Only a handful of people have applied to open medical pot shops in unincorporated areas of the county since the Board of Supervisors in June approved a set of regulations establishing how and where marijuana dispensaries could operate.

Every collective currently operating in the city would have to close and apply for a permit, further limiting availability of the medication, said Rachel Scoma, a senior organizer with Stop the Ban.

“In reality, they are all going to shut down and it will take a year before any of them can open,” Scoma said.

Stop the Ban is calling for revisions that allow for all commercial and industrial areas to be included; relax distance restrictions to comply with the state law of 600 feet from schools and provide medical marijuana facilities the same requirements imposed on traditional pharmacies.

More than 3,700 residents have written letters to the council voicing their opposition to the ordinances, Davidovich said. Among them was Terrie Best, a board member of Stepping Stone of San Diego, an inpatient drug and alcohol treatment facility.

Best said she’s seen people with chronic pain begin to take pharmaceutical pills only to have their lives turned upside down by dependence. Many chose cannabis as a pain killer without the devastating consequences, she said.

“If they have a look at what we’re trying to do they would understand that we’re not wild-eyed, crazy dope heads,” said Kenneth Cole, owner of the downtown dispensary One on One. “We have the support of our landlord. That’s not what this business is about.”

Twelve of California’s 58 counties ban medical marijuana dispensaries outright, an increase of 10 in the last two years. Eleven have established regulations and eight have temporary moratoriums, according to the Coalition for a Drug Free California. Among cities, 42 have regulations, 90 have temporary moratoriums and 214 have bans, according to the coalition.

A separate survey by the safe access group found 12 counties with bans, 15 with temporary moratoriums and nine with regulations. In addition, 42 cities had regulations, 103 had moratoriums and 143 had bans. Both lists were updated last month.

Since May, the City Attorney’s Office has sent more than 40 letters to dispensary operators and property owners in cases referred by the Neighborhood Code Compliance Division. There also have been raids, arrests and ample frustration.

Councilwoman Lorie Zapf said the proposed regulations have serious flaws. She and others have called for a 1,000-foot buffer around universities and colleges amid worries that her district would become the “pot district.”

There’s no doubt that marijuana shops are commercial enterprises as evidenced by the copious amount of advertising, discount coupons and special prices, said Scott Chipman, chairman of San Diegans for Safe Neighborhoods. He believes the proliferation of storefronts is increasing recreational drug use and youth access to marijuana.

“What’s the enforcement mechanism?” he said. “Because code compliance has been borderline useless.”

Safe Neighborhoods member Marcie Beckett is among those pushing for an all-out ban on pot shops.

“It’s the only thing to end this backdoor legalization — something voters turned down in November,” said Beckett, the mother of 14- and 16-year-old boys. “And it’s the only real way to keep it out of the hands of young, healthy people.”

The meeting is 2 p.m. Monday on the 12th floor of San Diego City Hall, 202 C St.

=====
Medical marijuana rules

Among the proposals for regulating dispensaries in the city of San Diego:

• Allowed only in some commercial or industrial zones.

• Hours of operation would be limited from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week.

• A licensed security guard would have to be on the premises during business hours.

• Dispensaries would have to show proof that they are nonprofit entities.

• All permitting costs would be recovered by the city.
=====

christopher.cadelago@uniontrib.com • (619) 293-1334

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/mar/27/city-considers-restrictions-on-medical-marijuana/

Humboldt- Travel NYTimes

2011-03-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

March 25, 2011, 1:30 pm

By WELLS TOWER

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/the-high-life/?scp=1&sq=humboldt&st=cse

Humboldt’s atmospheric caprices echo the character of a county that proudly resists any consensus about what constitutes a sane or normal way of life. A five-hour drive north from San Francisco, Humboldt is a mostly rural coastal region a little less than twice the size of Delaware, inhabited by 129,000 or so artists, back-to-the-landers, outdoorsfolk, slow-food entrepreneurs and urban refugees who found the Upper Haight too staid.

The county is also home to a large community of people whose knack for growing high-quality marijuana has made “Humboldt” a sacred word to dope smokers worldwide. Cannabis cultivation is more or less rampant throughout the county, though the outdoor industrial-scale plantations lie mostly in southern Humboldt (“SoHum,” to locals), where rough-hewn settlements give off an aura of people being up to something. A fair proportion of homes visible to highway traffic have additions built of plastic sheeting. Much of SoHum’s population lives up rutted, hillside tracks where tourists, locals caution, would be most unwise to venture on their own.

An hour up Route 101 sit Eureka and Arcata, Humboldt’s largest towns (population 26,000 and 17,500, respectively), which feel more genially disposed toward outside guests. Eureka, the county seat, has yet to recover fully from its hard landing at the end of the county’s fish and timber age. Shuttered storefronts, bail-bonds operations and check-cashing establishments sit between its attractively refurbished Old Town harbor front and an arresting stock of Victorian homes.

Arcata is a town with greater appeal, helped along by the countywide disdain for outside influence. A local ordinance limits the number of franchise restaurants to nine, and no chains, save an incongruous Bank of America, mar the handsomeness of Arcata’s central plaza. I checked into the Hotel Arcata, a 96-year-old establishment in the heart of downtown. My unfussy room had a claw-foot tub and a piping hot space heater, and seemed a great bargain for $99. I went back to the desk and asked if I might stay on through the rest of the week, which, incidentally, would overlap with New Year’s Eve. The desk clerk — ground down, I imagined, by her daily dealings with local free spirits and individualists — looked at me like I’d asked to crash for free on her couch.

“O.K.,” she finally said. “But you can’t bring a bunch of crazy, noisy people back to your room.”

“I don’t know any crazy, noisy people here,” I told her.

“You’re going to meet some, believe me,” she said.

“Well, even if I do, I don’t think I’ll want to bring them home with me.”

“They can be very persuasive,” she said.

On an alpine stretch of Route 299, heading into Trinity National Forest, plumes of fog rose from the hillsides, which resembled a sodden green carpet slung over a scalding radiator. Dark, confidential groves of Douglas fir and redwood crowded the little highway, emanating a kind of Narnian ominousness. A skeptical East Coast type by nature, I started having some newfound, Californian feelings about “the energy” of the forest. So I was in an unusually open frame of mind when I stopped at the village of Willow Creek, whose China Flat Museum and Bigfoot Collection is known to sasquatch enthusiasts worldwide.

The museum was closed for the winter, but one of its volunteers, a kindly retiree named Peggy McWilliams, was good enough to give me a tour of the place. “Do I believe they’re out there? You betcha,” she offered without prompting. “We get reports all the time. For example, a little while ago, search-and-rescue came down from Oregon looking for a missing 4-year-old boy. When they finally found him, all he would talk about was the big hairy man that had picked him up and sat him alongside the road. I doubt it was a hippie. A hippie probably would have carried him off.”

The collection, housed in a windowless rear chamber, was amply stocked with physical evidence collected over the years by Bigfoot observers local and far-flung. Arrayed in glass cases were reconstructed skulls, yellowed news clippings, dioramas, footprint casts and a plastic bag containing a few strands of wiry fur alongside the query “Can you identify this hair?” The footprint casts — taken nearby at Bluff Creek, the site of Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin’s famous 1967 film, whose footage of a shaggy creature is proof to believers in Bigfoot lore — were not enormously convincing. They looked like hoagie loaves with toes.

McWilliams wanted to be clear that she herself had never seen Bigfoot, and that only one thing about the creature was absolutely certain: if you see one, you should not tell a soul. “The writers and researchers would be all over you,” she said. “They’re absolute pests, and nobody needs that kind of disruption. It’s best to keep quiet.”

I thanked McWilliams for the tip and told her I was off to the redwoods of southern Humboldt. “Keep your eyes open,” she advised. “You might see a Bigfoot.”

No offense to Peggy McWilliams or the good people at the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, but pulling into Humboldt Redwoods State Park, I wondered: who needs a mythic ape when you’ve got redwood trees around?

Perennially fattened on a diet of Pacific Ocean fogs, many of the trees in the state park (and its counterpart in northern Humboldt, Redwood National Park) casually top 300 feet, and the oldest specimens have been growing for two millenniums. In my touristic career, I’ve grown numb to the presence of hammerhead sharks, giant tortoises, grizzly bears, blue-footed boobies and pilot whales, but in the awe department, coast redwoods seemed to have no point of diminishing returns. Each tree revealed some astounding new characteristic of girth, bark tone, branch anatomy or moss couture. The forest’s crisp, misty air made breathing a thrilling novelty. It seemed to inhale itself. I tried not to think about a distressing spate of recent studies wondering how these trees will survive what looks to be a worsening, climate-change-related shortage of coastal fogs. Instead, I tried to marvel gratefully that there were still thousands of these trees standing, not just one on a museum lot enclosed by a velvet rope.

The trouble with redwood forests, though, is that they are hard on the human ego. You can’t spend much time among all of that primordial rectilinearity without starting to feel disheveled, crooked and mortal. I’d had every intention of going for a hike, but you cannot maintain a pace staggering around with your neck craned, guffawing like Jed Clampett seeing his first skyscraper. Back at the car, the dashboard clock said it had taken me two hours to walk a mile.

Of the nearly two million acres of old-growth coastal redwoods that once covered central California to southern Oregon, less than 5 percent survived the past 150 years of logging, and about 80 percent of the remaining trees stand on protected lands. This is good news for the trees and their admirers but bad news for the timber industry, whose boom years petered out in the 1980s. The depletion of the timber stock, coupled with the exhaustion of northwestern salmon fisheries, has created something of an employment crisis for Humboldt County, or legal employment, anyway. Sound statistics on the issue don’t exist, but anyone you’ll meet in Humboldt will tell you that the county’s economic backbone is unquestionably cannabis. Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as two in five Arcata homes contain a growing operation. A calculation by a Humboldt State University economist appraised the county’s marijuana industry at about a half-billion dollars a year.

These days, what worries the county’s farmers, trimmers, shippers and dealers isn’t that they make their living on the far side of the law but that legalization and a consequent price dive are probably close at hand. Tellingly, Proposition 19, a 2010 ballot measure to legalize marijuana in California, didn’t pass in Humboldt County. Already, provisions in California’s medical marijuana law that permit card-carrying patients to keep small gardens have contributed to a 25 percent price drop in the past five years and continue to erode the competitive advantage of growers in the north. “It’s a sad thing to see,” the local cannabis blogger Kym Kemp told me. “The big grower pulling in $5 million on an acre might be able to survive, but the single mom keeping a half dozen plants to make ends meet, she probably won’t make it.”

You hardly need D.E.A. training to catch on to Humboldt’s open secret. Driving along county byways with the windows down, you may suddenly pass through banks of skunk-gland miasma. Many small towns consist of little more than a grocery and a horticultural supply store, selling such products as Buddha Bloom bat guano fertilizer and Humboldt Nutrients Ginormous Bloom Enhancer. Roadside billboards advertise sales on “turkey oven bags,” preferred by contraband expediters for their odor-suppressing properties.

If Humboldt’s large-scale cannabis industry has a factory town, it’s Garberville, an unprepossessing community not far from the Mendocino County border. Garberville has zero stoplights, two gun stores, a hemp-ware boutique and several real estate agencies whose acreage listings prominently advertise “privacy” and “good water flow.” Most of the stores on Garberville’s main street are patronized by people paying in cash and about whom hang an identifiable smell. Stopping for coffee at an Internet cafe, I paused to watch a young couple with Carhartt jackets and grubby hands browsing beachfront rentals in Hawaii.

The upside of the great pools of black-market cash is a countywide surfeit of good restaurants, galleries and craft boutiques, not all of which specialize in redwood burls or drums. “We’ve got more restaurants per capita than San Francisco,” I was told by Hank Sims, the former editor of Humboldt’s biggest weekly paper, The North Coast Journal. “There are a lot of places that wouldn’t be in business if not for pot money.”

One evening, I dined at Cecil’s, the fanciest restaurant in Garberville, whose unusual market will apparently bear a steak topped with crab meat, shrimp and handpicked chanterelles for $72. I didn’t get the steak. I got fried oysters remoulade and some smoked pork spring rolls I’d have eaten my weight in. While I was making my way through a superb fried chicken salad, a group of college-age kids took a table near mine. They wore camouflage hats and long-underwear shirts and looked like they’d been working hard all day. They got the steak.

Eager to know a little more about Humboldt’s cannabis culture but somewhat spooked by Garberville’s aura of the underworld, I headed back to Arcata to pay a visit to Mariellen Jurkovich. Jurkovich, a 58-year-old grandmother with dark hair and striking blue eyes, was a school board member and former real estate agent with Coldwell Banker, though now she is the director of the Humboldt Patient Resource Center, Arcata’s oldest medical marijuana collective.

The dispensary occupies a former auto body shop two blocks from Arcata’s central plaza and resembles a community center more than a controlled-substance dealership. Beyond selling marijuana, the H.P.R.C. offers classes in yoga, massage, dance and tai chi, and invites patients to help in its garden and learn the delicate art of cannabis cultivation. Contrary to her colleagues in the south, Jurkovich looks forward to a day when marijuana is legal, hoping it might draw more visitors to the remote county. Before Proposition 19’s defeat, the H.P.R.C. and others in the cannabis sector had been looking forward to the introduction of a pot-related tourism industry. “People could visit the collective, do some trimming, take some cooking classes and then go walk around in the redwood trees,” Jurkovich said.

“It was said we were going to be the new Napa Valley of cannabis,” said Tony Smithers, executive director of the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We took it very seriously, and it was an intriguing marketing challenge: how to do cannabis tourism while preserving our core branding as the most beautiful place in the world with the world’s tallest trees. In the end, it was kind of a relief when [Proposition 19] didn’t pass.”

All of the H.P.R.C.’s cannabis is grown on-site. Kevin Jodrey, the H.P.R.C.’s cultivation director, was good enough to give me a tour of the garden, which lay in a klieg-lit room just past the reception desk. Brushing past a pungent canopy of lush, serrated leaves, Jodrey went on amiably and with eye-crossing knowledgeability about plant genetics, the analgesic properties of different “medicines” and their observed effects on such maladies as cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s and depression. As the conversation wore on, the room began to feel less like a pot farm than a research lab at Merck. “What’s this?” I asked Jodrey, pausing at a plant with sugary foxtails that smelled pleasantly of grapefruit. “Oh,” he said. “That’s Green Crack.”

That night, I gorged enjoyably at Tomo, a first-rate sushi restaurant on the ground floor of the Hotel Arcata. Because it was the last evening of the year, it seemed important to have a night on the town. Up the street, at the Arcata Theatre, a gypsy jazz band was getting under way. The band was very good, but the crowd was going in for styles of West Coast whimsy irksome to a peevish East Coaster like myself. People in the throes of air-palming jam-band dances kept revolving in my personal space. Someone dressed in a dark shroud with a spray of foam swimming-pool noodles jutting from the top exhibited his or her liberty from hangups by painfully whacking the noodles into my and everybody’s face. Soon, it was necessary to go.

Out on the crowded plaza, the ball had dropped, and the first drum circles of 2011 had formed. Youngsters in dreadlocks had scaled a statue of President McKinley, whose bronze pelvis was being ground from three sides. Describing the scene in my notebook prompted two separate people to come over and ask me if I was a cop, and that, like, according to the Constitution or something, I had to tell them if I was.

The night and I were getting old. I went to the hotel and was stopped at the door by the hotel employee who had days ago balked at extending my stay. Before she stepped aside, she examined my key, asked my name and quizzed me about which room I was staying in. It seemed to disappoint her that she couldn’t catch me out as an impostor or a noisy lunatic, but in the end, she let me back inside.March 25, 2011, 1:30 pm

By WELLS TOWER

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/the-high-life/?scp=1&sq=humboldt&st=cse

The sights of Humboldt County, Calif., can be hard for the rational mind to reconcile. Its hysterical shifts in landscape and weather conspire to make you feel, in the most pleasurable way possible, that you are going out of your head. A day’s drive in Humboldt carried me past what appeared to be: a Hawaiian beach, an Icelandic coastal flat, a swath of rustic Switzerland, an elk-thronged Montana prairie, a street in San Francisco, the Ewok moon of Endor, a prop village from a musical about the Gold Rush, and Allentown, Pa. The dawn brought blue skies, which turned to brilliant sunlit rain, then hail, then sleet, then driving snow, then back to full sun refracting into a huge rainbow that seemed like the meteorological equivalent of a crazy person’s laugh.

Humboldt’s atmospheric caprices echo the character of a county that proudly resists any consensus about what constitutes a sane or normal way of life. A five-hour drive north from San Francisco, Humboldt is a mostly rural coastal region a little less than twice the size of Delaware, inhabited by 129,000 or so artists, back-to-the-landers, outdoorsfolk, slow-food entrepreneurs and urban refugees who found the Upper Haight too staid.

The county is also home to a large community of people whose knack for growing high-quality marijuana has made “Humboldt” a sacred word to dope smokers worldwide. Cannabis cultivation is more or less rampant throughout the county, though the outdoor industrial-scale plantations lie mostly in southern Humboldt (“SoHum,” to locals), where rough-hewn settlements give off an aura of people being up to something. A fair proportion of homes visible to highway traffic have additions built of plastic sheeting. Much of SoHum’s population lives up rutted, hillside tracks where tourists, locals caution, would be most unwise to venture on their own.

An hour up Route 101 sit Eureka and Arcata, Humboldt’s largest towns (population 26,000 and 17,500, respectively), which feel more genially disposed toward outside guests. Eureka, the county seat, has yet to recover fully from its hard landing at the end of the county’s fish and timber age. Shuttered storefronts, bail-bonds operations and check-cashing establishments sit between its attractively refurbished Old Town harbor front and an arresting stock of Victorian homes.

Arcata is a town with greater appeal, helped along by the countywide disdain for outside influence. A local ordinance limits the number of franchise restaurants to nine, and no chains, save an incongruous Bank of America, mar the handsomeness of Arcata’s central plaza. I checked into the Hotel Arcata, a 96-year-old establishment in the heart of downtown. My unfussy room had a claw-foot tub and a piping hot space heater, and seemed a great bargain for $99. I went back to the desk and asked if I might stay on through the rest of the week, which, incidentally, would overlap with New Year’s Eve. The desk clerk — ground down, I imagined, by her daily dealings with local free spirits and individualists — looked at me like I’d asked to crash for free on her couch.

“O.K.,” she finally said. “But you can’t bring a bunch of crazy, noisy people back to your room.”

“I don’t know any crazy, noisy people here,” I told her.

“You’re going to meet some, believe me,” she said.

“Well, even if I do, I don’t think I’ll want to bring them home with me.”

“They can be very persuasive,” she said.

On an alpine stretch of Route 299, heading into Trinity National Forest, plumes of fog rose from the hillsides, which resembled a sodden green carpet slung over a scalding radiator. Dark, confidential groves of Douglas fir and redwood crowded the little highway, emanating a kind of Narnian ominousness. A skeptical East Coast type by nature, I started having some newfound, Californian feelings about “the energy” of the forest. So I was in an unusually open frame of mind when I stopped at the village of Willow Creek, whose China Flat Museum and Bigfoot Collection is known to sasquatch enthusiasts worldwide.

The museum was closed for the winter, but one of its volunteers, a kindly retiree named Peggy McWilliams, was good enough to give me a tour of the place. “Do I believe they’re out there? You betcha,” she offered without prompting. “We get reports all the time. For example, a little while ago, search-and-rescue came down from Oregon looking for a missing 4-year-old boy. When they finally found him, all he would talk about was the big hairy man that had picked him up and sat him alongside the road. I doubt it was a hippie. A hippie probably would have carried him off.”

The collection, housed in a windowless rear chamber, was amply stocked with physical evidence collected over the years by Bigfoot observers local and far-flung. Arrayed in glass cases were reconstructed skulls, yellowed news clippings, dioramas, footprint casts and a plastic bag containing a few strands of wiry fur alongside the query “Can you identify this hair?” The footprint casts — taken nearby at Bluff Creek, the site of Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin’s famous 1967 film, whose footage of a shaggy creature is proof to believers in Bigfoot lore — were not enormously convincing. They looked like hoagie loaves with toes.

McWilliams wanted to be clear that she herself had never seen Bigfoot, and that only one thing about the creature was absolutely certain: if you see one, you should not tell a soul. “The writers and researchers would be all over you,” she said. “They’re absolute pests, and nobody needs that kind of disruption. It’s best to keep quiet.”

I thanked McWilliams for the tip and told her I was off to the redwoods of southern Humboldt. “Keep your eyes open,” she advised. “You might see a Bigfoot.”

No offense to Peggy McWilliams or the good people at the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, but pulling into Humboldt Redwoods State Park, I wondered: who needs a mythic ape when you’ve got redwood trees around?

Perennially fattened on a diet of Pacific Ocean fogs, many of the trees in the state park (and its counterpart in northern Humboldt, Redwood National Park) casually top 300 feet, and the oldest specimens have been growing for two millenniums. In my touristic career, I’ve grown numb to the presence of hammerhead sharks, giant tortoises, grizzly bears, blue-footed boobies and pilot whales, but in the awe department, coast redwoods seemed to have no point of diminishing returns. Each tree revealed some astounding new characteristic of girth, bark tone, branch anatomy or moss couture. The forest’s crisp, misty air made breathing a thrilling novelty. It seemed to inhale itself. I tried not to think about a distressing spate of recent studies wondering how these trees will survive what looks to be a worsening, climate-change-related shortage of coastal fogs. Instead, I tried to marvel gratefully that there were still thousands of these trees standing, not just one on a museum lot enclosed by a velvet rope.

The trouble with redwood forests, though, is that they are hard on the human ego. You can’t spend much time among all of that primordial rectilinearity without starting to feel disheveled, crooked and mortal. I’d had every intention of going for a hike, but you cannot maintain a pace staggering around with your neck craned, guffawing like Jed Clampett seeing his first skyscraper. Back at the car, the dashboard clock said it had taken me two hours to walk a mile.

Of the nearly two million acres of old-growth coastal redwoods that once covered central California to southern Oregon, less than 5 percent survived the past 150 years of logging, and about 80 percent of the remaining trees stand on protected lands. This is good news for the trees and their admirers but bad news for the timber industry, whose boom years petered out in the 1980s. The depletion of the timber stock, coupled with the exhaustion of northwestern salmon fisheries, has created something of an employment crisis for Humboldt County, or legal employment, anyway. Sound statistics on the issue don’t exist, but anyone you’ll meet in Humboldt will tell you that the county’s economic backbone is unquestionably cannabis. Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as two in five Arcata homes contain a growing operation. A calculation by a Humboldt State University economist appraised the county’s marijuana industry at about a half-billion dollars a year.

These days, what worries the county’s farmers, trimmers, shippers and dealers isn’t that they make their living on the far side of the law but that legalization and a consequent price dive are probably close at hand. Tellingly, Proposition 19, a 2010 ballot measure to legalize marijuana in California, didn’t pass in Humboldt County. Already, provisions in California’s medical marijuana law that permit card-carrying patients to keep small gardens have contributed to a 25 percent price drop in the past five years and continue to erode the competitive advantage of growers in the north. “It’s a sad thing to see,” the local cannabis blogger Kym Kemp told me. “The big grower pulling in $5 million on an acre might be able to survive, but the single mom keeping a half dozen plants to make ends meet, she probably won’t make it.”

You hardly need D.E.A. training to catch on to Humboldt’s open secret. Driving along county byways with the windows down, you may suddenly pass through banks of skunk-gland miasma. Many small towns consist of little more than a grocery and a horticultural supply store, selling such products as Buddha Bloom bat guano fertilizer and Humboldt Nutrients Ginormous Bloom Enhancer. Roadside billboards advertise sales on “turkey oven bags,” preferred by contraband expediters for their odor-suppressing properties.

If Humboldt’s large-scale cannabis industry has a factory town, it’s Garberville, an unprepossessing community not far from the Mendocino County border. Garberville has zero stoplights, two gun stores, a hemp-ware boutique and several real estate agencies whose acreage listings prominently advertise “privacy” and “good water flow.” Most of the stores on Garberville’s main street are patronized by people paying in cash and about whom hang an identifiable smell. Stopping for coffee at an Internet cafe, I paused to watch a young couple with Carhartt jackets and grubby hands browsing beachfront rentals in Hawaii.

The upside of the great pools of black-market cash is a countywide surfeit of good restaurants, galleries and craft boutiques, not all of which specialize in redwood burls or drums. “We’ve got more restaurants per capita than San Francisco,” I was told by Hank Sims, the former editor of Humboldt’s biggest weekly paper, The North Coast Journal. “There are a lot of places that wouldn’t be in business if not for pot money.”

One evening, I dined at Cecil’s, the fanciest restaurant in Garberville, whose unusual market will apparently bear a steak topped with crab meat, shrimp and handpicked chanterelles for $72. I didn’t get the steak. I got fried oysters remoulade and some smoked pork spring rolls I’d have eaten my weight in. While I was making my way through a superb fried chicken salad, a group of college-age kids took a table near mine. They wore camouflage hats and long-underwear shirts and looked like they’d been working hard all day. They got the steak.

Eager to know a little more about Humboldt’s cannabis culture but somewhat spooked by Garberville’s aura of the underworld, I headed back to Arcata to pay a visit to Mariellen Jurkovich. Jurkovich, a 58-year-old grandmother with dark hair and striking blue eyes, was a school board member and former real estate agent with Coldwell Banker, though now she is the director of the Humboldt Patient Resource Center, Arcata’s oldest medical marijuana collective.

The dispensary occupies a former auto body shop two blocks from Arcata’s central plaza and resembles a community center more than a controlled-substance dealership. Beyond selling marijuana, the H.P.R.C. offers classes in yoga, massage, dance and tai chi, and invites patients to help in its garden and learn the delicate art of cannabis cultivation. Contrary to her colleagues in the south, Jurkovich looks forward to a day when marijuana is legal, hoping it might draw more visitors to the remote county. Before Proposition 19’s defeat, the H.P.R.C. and others in the cannabis sector had been looking forward to the introduction of a pot-related tourism industry. “People could visit the collective, do some trimming, take some cooking classes and then go walk around in the redwood trees,” Jurkovich said.

“It was said we were going to be the new Napa Valley of cannabis,” said Tony Smithers, executive director of the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We took it very seriously, and it was an intriguing marketing challenge: how to do cannabis tourism while preserving our core branding as the most beautiful place in the world with the world’s tallest trees. In the end, it was kind of a relief when [Proposition 19] didn’t pass.”

All of the H.P.R.C.’s cannabis is grown on-site. Kevin Jodrey, the H.P.R.C.’s cultivation director, was good enough to give me a tour of the garden, which lay in a klieg-lit room just past the reception desk. Brushing past a pungent canopy of lush, serrated leaves, Jodrey went on amiably and with eye-crossing knowledgeability about plant genetics, the analgesic properties of different “medicines” and their observed effects on such maladies as cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s and depression. As the conversation wore on, the room began to feel less like a pot farm than a research lab at Merck. “What’s this?” I asked Jodrey, pausing at a plant with sugary foxtails that smelled pleasantly of grapefruit. “Oh,” he said. “That’s Green Crack.”

That night, I gorged enjoyably at Tomo, a first-rate sushi restaurant on the ground floor of the Hotel Arcata. Because it was the last evening of the year, it seemed important to have a night on the town. Up the street, at the Arcata Theatre, a gypsy jazz band was getting under way. The band was very good, but the crowd was going in for styles of West Coast whimsy irksome to a peevish East Coaster like myself. People in the throes of air-palming jam-band dances kept revolving in my personal space. Someone dressed in a dark shroud with a spray of foam swimming-pool noodles jutting from the top exhibited his or her liberty from hangups by painfully whacking the noodles into my and everybody’s face. Soon, it was necessary to go.

Out on the crowded plaza, the ball had dropped, and the first drum circles of 2011 had formed. Youngsters in dreadlocks had scaled a statue of President McKinley, whose bronze pelvis was being ground from three sides. Describing the scene in my notebook prompted two separate people to come over and ask me if I was a cop, and that, like, according to the Constitution or something, I had to tell them if I was.

The night and I were getting old. I went to the hotel and was stopped at the door by the hotel employee who had days ago balked at extending my stay. Before she stepped aside, she examined my key, asked my name and quizzed me about which room I was staying in. It seemed to disappoint her that she couldn’t catch me out as an impostor or a noisy lunatic, but in the end, she let me back inside.

NORML news of the week

2011-03-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

This Week from NORML

Marijuana Inhalation Associated With Spontaneous Tumor Regression, Study Says

New York City: Prosecuting Near-Record Pot Arrests Costs City $75 Million Annually

New Jersey: Health Regulators Approve Marijuana Dispensary Applicants

Recent Action Alerts

Maryland Lawmakers Amend Medical Marijuana Measure To An Affirmative Defense -- Substitute Language Passes Senate @ http://www.capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=37663501

Kansas Lawmakers Fail to Act on Medical Marijuana Legislation @ http://www.capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=37578516

Washington Senate Passes Legislation To Expand States Medical Cannabis Law @ http://www.capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=22061501

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Marijuana Inhalation Associated With Spontaneous Tumor Regression, Study Says

NORML Weekly Press Release Vancouver, British Columbia: Cannabis inhalation is associated with spontaneous brain tumor regression in two subjects, according to a pair of case reports to be published in Child's Nervous System, the official journal of the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery.

Investigators at the British Columbia Children's Hospital in Vancouver documented the mitigation of residual tumors in two adolescent subjects who regularly inhaled cannabis. Authors determined that both subjects experienced a "clear regression" of their residual brain tumors over a three-year-period.

"Neither patient received any conventional adjuvant treatment" during this time period, investigators wrote. "The tumors regressed over the same period of time that cannabis was consumed via inhalation, raising the possibility that cannabis played a role in tumor regression."

Researchers concluded, "Further research may be appropriate to elucidate the increasingly recognized effect of cannabis/cannabinoids on gliomas (brain cancers)."

A 2006 pilot study published in the British Journal of Cancer previously reported that the intratumoral administration of the cannabinoid THC was associated with reduced tumor cell proliferation in two of nine human subjects with brain cancer.

Separate preclinical studies assessing the anti-cancer activity of cannabinoids and endocannabinoids indicate that the substances can inhibit the proliferation of various types of cancerous cells, including breast carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, and lung cancer.

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, "Spontaneous regression of septum pellucidium/forniceal pilocytic astrocytomas – possible role of cannabis inhalation," will appear in the journal Child's Nervous System.

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New York City: Prosecuting Near-Record Pot Arrests Costs City $75 Million Annually

New York, NY: Criminal justice expenses pertaining to the arrest and prosecution of minor marijuana offenders in New York City cost taxpayers some $75 million a year, according to a report published last week by the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), a national drug policy think tank.

The report, authored by Queens College sociologist Harry Levine and Loren Siegel, an attorney formerly with the American Civil Liberties Union, estimates that the criminal justice costs in New York city associated with a single arrest for marijuana possession, including all police and court expenses, is between $1,000 and $2,000.

In 2010, New York city police made 50,383 lowest level marijuana possession arrests [NY State Penal Law 221.10] involving cases where marijuana was either used or possessed in public. The total is the second highest in the city's history and is an increase of over 5,000 percent from 1990, when police reported fewer than 1,000 low-level pot arrests.

The DPA report states that during Michael Bloomberg's tenure as mayor, from 2002 through 2010, the NYPD made nearly 350,000 arrests for marijuana possession – costing taxpayers $350 million to $700 million.

Although simple marijuana possession is a violation and not a crime in New York State, if the marijuana is "open to public view" it can be charged as a misdemeanor.

"More people have been arrested for marijuana possession under Mayor Bloomberg than under Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Guiliani combined," said the report's co-author, Harry Levine. "These arrests are wildly expensive, do not improve public safety, and create permanent criminal records which seriously damage the life chances of the young people targeted and jailed."

Added Gabriel Sayegh, New York State Director for the Drug Policy Alliance: "It is beyond hypocritical for the Mayor, who once said he smoked marijuana and enjoyed it, to make arresting young people of color for marijuana possession his top law enforcement priority," said. "While cutting services for seniors, youth, housing, transportation, teachers, education, and more, the Mayor spent 75 million dollars last year to arrest over 50,000 people for marijuana possession – which isn't even a crime under New York State law. It's just outrageous."

For more information, please visit: http://www.drugpolicy.org.

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New Jersey: Health Regulators Approve Marijuana Dispensary Applicants

Trenton, NJ: State health regulators on Monday selected six applicants to grow and dispense cannabis in accordance with the state's nascent medical law. Twenty-one separate applicants had applied for the state's six available licenses.

Signed into law in January 2010 by former Gov. Jon Corzine, the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act authorizes patients with a physician's recommendation to possess and obtain medical cannabis from state-authorized "alternative treatment centers."

However, draft rules proposed by the state Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) in 2010 to govern the yet-to-be established program have been criticized by several state lawmakers as unduly restrictive.

Lawmakers have held hearings but have yet to vote on whether or not to repeal the regulations.

Commenting on the applicants' approval, Ken Wolski the executive director of The Coalition for Medical Marijuana – New Jersey (CMMNJ) said, "We certainly wish the successful applicants luck because patients need legal marijuana as soon as possible. However, we have serious doubts that these non-profit organizations will be able to develop a working program with the overly restrictive regulations proposed by DHSS. CMMNJ still supports the legislative Resolution to invalidate significant parts of the DHSS regulations."

For more information, please visit: http://www.cmmnj.org/ or e-mail: media@cmmnj.org.

IRS and club Audits

2011-03-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

As The American Independent has reported, perhaps the most effective of these tactics is a push within the IRS to audit the books of medical marijuana dispensaries and declare all business deductions ineligible (http://www.americanindependent.com/174351/irs-goes-after-medical-marijuana-in-california). If the move continues and isn’t overruled in court, it could mean that all but the largest dispensaries in the country could shut down within months.

Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), tells The American Independent that he believes this is phase three in a federal push to stymie medical marijuana that began in 1996, when medical marijuana first became legal in California. St. Pierre says that federal investigators first went after doctors, threatening to convict any who discussed medical uses of marijuana with patients as accomplices in the procurement and possession of marijuana. That tactic was declared unconstitutional in the case Conant v. McCaffrey.

The next tactic was to prosecute landlords. “If you’re renting property to someone breaking federal law, the property can be taken,” says St. Pierre. “Unsurprisingly, a lot of landlords stopped renting to dispensaries.” Eventually, enough landlords found liability loopholes or simply decided it was worth the risk to rent to dispensaries that the government gave up, as the thousands of dispensaries that today populate California alone attest.

Now, the federal government is using a time-honored method that could just cripple the medical marijuana industry once and for all, St. Pierre says.

“Rather than the SWAT approach, they’re going the Al Capone approach. He didn’t go to jail for cutting off people’s testicles and shoving them down their throats as a calling card,” St. Pierre colorfully offers. “He went to jail for tax evasion. If past is prologue, that route is much more effective.”

There may be an answer as to whether that route will be effective this time around very soon. As TAI previously reported, at least one California dispensary has already received a final determination from the IRS demanding nearly $800,000 in back taxes from 2009 alone (http://www.americanindependent.com/174367/california-medical-marijuana-dispensary-plans-to-take-irs-to-court). The Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM) intends to take the IRS to court to dispute the claims within the next month, and the outcome of that trial will likely determine the course that medical marijuana throughout the country will take in the months and years to come.

St. Pierre believes that, though a 2007 case set a precedent for dispensaries being allowed standard business deductions, the IRS may be successful in making a collection this time around — and that’s why it’s pursuing these audits so vigorously all of a sudden. St. Pierre thinks that the IRS could easily point to the fact that marijuana isn’t treated like any other drug and, importantly, isn’t taxed at the production stage, all in order to make the claim that medical marijuana dispensaries shouldn’t get the same tax write-offs as other businesses.

Says St. Pierre, “Activists in the field will make the clarion call that medicine is not taxed,” and neither, they contend, should marijuana. “However, the corporations that make the medicine are taxed. Not surprisingly, the pharmaceutical industry is getting a little sick after ten years of people growing something in the closet, putting it in a mason jar, walking it across the street and selling it for 50 to 100 times the production value without even going through the medicine review process at the FDA.”

That could be the linchpin of the IRS’s argument — that dispensaries want special treatment with regard to marijuana’s medical status but expect to be treated like normal businesses when it comes time to file their taxes. “In some ways, it’s all part of the immaturity of the industry,” says St. Pierre. “Not many people show up in the newspapers screaming that they make millions of dollars and don’t want to pay taxes.” Only time will tell if the IRS indeed takes up this line of reasoning and, more importantly, if it works.

The larger aim of dispensary owners like MAMM’s Lynette Shaw in taking the IRS to court — namely, getting a judicial review of the legal status of marijuana as a Schedule I drug — St. Pierre dismisses out of hand. “Judges won’t rule against the federal government,” he says. “We’re really talking about the big enchilada here, which is Congress. They created this mess” by criminalizing marijuana through a series of 20th century laws, “and they’re the only ones who can fix it.”

“The most expedient route would be for Congress to pass a law taking an eraser to parts of the Controlled Substances Act. Is that going to happen? No,” says St. Pierre.

NORML and other advocacy groups hope instead to at least start a conversation about changing federal marijuana laws. To that end, they’re working with legislators to introduce five new marijuana reform bills in coming weeks: the “Truth in Trials” act, which would allow medical use of marijuana to be considered in federal drug trials (at present, any evidence relating to medical use is inadmissible in federal court); a bill that would reduce the classification of marijuana to Schedule II; a federal decriminalization bill that would impact very few actual court cases, as 98 to 99 percent of marijuana-related arrests are at the state and local levels; an outright legalization bill; and one that may take shape as a rider on a banking bill.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) has already pledged his support to the banking bill and is due to introduce it in the House soon. It would reform those regulations that Drug War Chronicle reported on, absolving banks of liability or a responsibility to keep tabs on dispensaries.

St. Pierre gives all five bills a “snowball’s chance in hell” of passing. But he’s counting on them to push the conversation on decriminalizing marijuana that much further forward.

“Congress is the best chance we’ve got,” he says.

Next Step Conference

2011-03-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

It was a fantastic day, a special thanks to Susan Soares for the work she put in to make the event come off so seamless, enjoyable and informative for the attendees. One of the comments I heard most while sitting at the Cal NORML table most of the day was how people were not expecting so much valuable information and to me it was interesting to note that out in the smoking area people were hurrying up to medicate, get high and eat at the gourmet food trucks on site to go back inside and listen to the next speaker as the day was filled with panels, speakers, questions and answers from the audience without any breaks of more than a few minutes each. And almost everyone stayed to the end. It was truly a remarkable event.

I also want to say thank you to the many members of this group who I met in person for the first time at the event and the kind words that you said truly mean a lot to me. Special thanks to the folks involved with OC NORML, your chapter and the members just rock, no other way to describe you. Thank you.

Crawling back into the bed and listen to the rain pound on the roof today. Back with news later today or over night. Stay dry and stay high.

Peace

brett

20 peopledetained in downtown LA pot bust

2011-03-15T07:11:00.002-07:00

Over 20 people were detained in connection with the bust, but arrests
are still being processed.

KTLA News

7:36 PM PDT, March 13, 2011

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -- Officers serving a search warrant Saturday
uncovered a dangerous and extensive marijuana lab with "thousands upon
thousands" of plants in a warehouse south of Downtown Los Angeles,
reports said.

LAPD Media Relations Officer Norma Eisenman said officers were serving
a search warrant for a narcotics suspect at an industrial warehouse on
the 1000 block of Santa Fe Avenue around 3 p.m. Saturday when they
found the illegal lab.

The brick building appeared to have been illegally converted into
housing.

When officers entered, they found over 3,000 living marijuana plants.

"As a result of that investigation, [officers] found thousands upon
thousands of marijuana plants inside including growers, lights and
fans," Commanding Officer Matt Blake told KTLA.

Over 20 people were detained in connection with the bust, but arrests
are still being processed.

Officers also found evidence of chemicals consistent for making
methamphetamine and cocaine, but Blake said that lab did not appear to
be active. Blake also said that evidence at the location showed that
it was operating as an unregistered medical clinic.

The westbound I-10 freeway was closed for six hours as city fire
hazardous materials teams and the Department of Water and Power
investigated the area.

Other surface streets were closed as well at Santa Fe and Sacramento
Street.

Next Step in LA

2011-03-15T07:11:00.001-07:00

LA "Next Steps for Marijuana Reform" Conference March 19th

Reserve your tix now at http://www.drugpolicy.org/nextsteps or http://bit.ly/enYQJX

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 11, 2011

Contact: Dale Gieringer: (415) 563-5858 or Stephen Gutwillig (323) 542-2606

Conference on Future of Marijuana Reform in California Will Draw Broad Coalition to End Failed Prohibition Policies

Saturday, March 19th at Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood

"Next Steps for Marijuana Reform in California," a day-long gathering of marijuana reform advocates, will take place March 19th at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood. In the wake of Proposition 19's remarkably strong showing at the polls last year, this conference will address ongoing efforts to end failed marijuana prohibition in California, steps to reform the state's medical marijuana laws, and priorities for marijuana reform in the coming years.

The conference is presented by California NORML, Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, Americans for Safe Access, and VibeNation MultiMedia. Confirmed participants include leaders of the Proposition 19 campaign and other ballot initiative proponents, Latino Voters League, California NAACP, United Food and Commercial Workers, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and California Church Impact as well as political consultants, attorneys, medical marijuana advocates, and public officials.

The event is open to the public, and the audience will have the opportunity to comment and weigh in on competing proposals. A party and reception, featuring live music, other entertainment and refreshments, will be held at the Montalban Theatre immediately following the conference until 10 pm.

The conference follows up the sold out "Next Steps" conference in Berkeley in January (http://www.canorml.org/nextsched.html).

What: "Next Steps for Marijuana Reform in California"

When: Saturday, March 19th, 9 am to 6 pm

Where: Ricardo Montalban Theatre, 1615 Vine St., Hollywood

Conference Schedule: www.canorml.org/LAConfSched_Online.html

Tickets: www.drugpolicy.org/nextsteps or http://bit.ly/enYQJX

Admission: $20 for the conference; $20 for the reception. A $30 discounted ticket for both events is available online in advance only.

Organica fined for medical marijuana sales

2011-03-11T06:06:00.000-08:00

Status of L.A. medical marijuana dispensaries

2011-03-10T06:37:00.000-08:00

In a letter sent Monday, the office targeted dispensaries that did not file applications to participate in a lottery to choose 100 that will operate in the city. The city clerk received 228 applications from dispensaries and is reviewing them to make sure they meet the qualifications for the drawing, which include having been in business since Sept. 14, 2007.

Asha Greenberg, the assistant city attorney who has overseen the enforcement efforts, warned in the letter that the city could sue violators and seek financial penalties, as well as pursue administrative actions “to discontinue the use and padlock the property.”

“The next step for us is to wait and see if these places close, and if they don’t close, LAPD will investigate them, and we will take legal action against the ones that remain,” she said.

The move restarts a process that began 10 months ago when the city sent warning letters to 439 dispensaries. That effort was disrupted when scores of dispensaries sued to challenge the city’s restrictive medical marijuana ordinance. A judge declared parts of the law unconstitutional in December and the City Council adopted a new ordinance in January.

Greenberg said the 140 dispensaries were identified from the earlier list. “We basically whittled it down to these that are currently open and operating, which doesn’t mean that there aren’t more out there,” she said. “We keep getting information that places have reopened or new ones have opened up.”

-- John Hoeffel

Fines and not Court?

2011-03-08T17:54:00.000-08:00

The Auburn Planning Commission voted Tuesday night to recommend the City Council amend the city’s municipal code to make penalties for running dispensaries in the city civil rather than criminal infractions.

According to Will Wong, community development director for the city of Auburn, in 2004 the city adopted an ordinance putting regulations on the dispensaries, but in 2006 the city amended its code to prohibit the facilities altogether.

Wong said fines for operating a dispensary in Auburn would start at $100 for the first violation, $200 for the second and $500 for the third.

Wong said if someone tried to run the illegal business without a license, they would also be fined for that.

According to city documents, non-criminal penalties avoid conflict with the Compassionate Use Act and the Medical Marijuana Program Act, which “decriminalizes possession and cultivation of marijuana for specified medical purposes.”

Wong said hydroponic shops are not considered the same as dispensaries, because they don’t sell marijuana. So, they are legal in the city.

“Selling merchandise is not a problem,” Wong said. “We would have no grounds (for legal action). Someone could use it to grow tomatoes.”

Wong said people interested in opening dispensaries have asked him about business licenses, and he has had to explain the city’s prohibition policy.

Wong said if a time ever came where Auburn could no longer prohibit the facilities, the city would have to think about putting standards on them again.

The City Council still needs to approve the municipal code language change before it would go into effect.

Neighboring Sacramento County is home to dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries.

Reach Bridget Jones at bridgetj@goldcountrymedia.com

More arrested for Cotati Robbery

2011-03-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

Cotati police Wednesday announced the arrest of six more people for a recent home invasion robbery, bringing to 11 the number held on suspicion of taking marijuana at gunpoint.

The six were arrested with the help of Los Angeles police officers and soon will be transported to Sonoma County from Southern California, according to Sheriff's Lt. Dennis O'Leary, who temporarily is working with the Cotati police.

The robbers allegedly first met one of the home's occupants on Jan. 22 on a Cotati street. Gunmen later forced their way into a La Salle Avenue duplex, tied up its three occupants and escaped with an unknown amount of marijuana.

Police later pulled over two vehicles in Petaluma that matched descriptions of some of the getaway cars. Officers found marijuana and four firearms and arrested five men on charges of armed robbery, burglary and false imprisonment.

The six new suspects are John Delgado, 19, and Cory Elliott, 20, both of Simi Valley; Ashley Canale, 19, and Josef Lugo, 29, both of Chatsworth; Hulofton Robinson II, 27, Inglewood; and Garrett Koffmoore, 24, Woodland Hills.

— Robert Digitale

Preliminary hearing to be set in medical pot bust case

2011-03-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

GUELPH — Lawyers for the three men charged with drug trafficking following a bust at the Medical Cannabis Centre of Guelph last May are expected to set a preliminary hearing date on March 29.

Two of the men, Rade Kovacevic and Scott Gilbert appeared in a Guelph provincial courtroom Monday, where the matter was adjourned.

Guelph Police laid the drug trafficking, possession for the purpose of trafficking and drug production charges after they searched the centre at 62 Baker St., last May 6, as well as five other addresses on Dublin Street, London Road, Arrow Road and Quebec Street.

More than 20 kilograms of dried marijuana were recovered by police as well as several vials of ground marijuana, 258 marijuana plants, a quantity of marijuana-laced muffins, scones, cakes and cookies and more than $10,000 cash. Police estimated the value of seized drug items at in excess of $100,000.

Court heard the preliminary hearing will likely be set for three days. The Crown is expected to call the police officers who obtained the search warrant at the Baker Street medical centre.

Kovacevic is to be represented by Toronto lawyer Leora Shemesh and the other two men are to be represented by another Toronto lawyer, Marcy Segal.

Collectives against the new tax law

2011-03-05T06:48:00.000-08:00

By John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times

March 5, 2011

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0304-pot-tax-20110306,0,5657717.story

When Oakland's voters slapped the nation's first tax on marijuana sales a year and a half ago, the city's dispensaries backed the ballot measure, pushing it as a way to be seen as legitimate businesses.

And when voters in 10 California cities decided on pot taxes in November, the elections were largely uncontroversial. The taxes all passed by more than two-thirds.

But in Los Angeles, where voters decide Tuesday whether to create a pot tax, medical marijuana activists who once urged City Hall to tax and regulate them are hoping to defeat the proposal, angered by the council's decision to limit the number of dispensaries to 100 and choose them by lottery.

"The city has done nothing for the patients, and I don't see why the patients have to pay a sin tax. We're not a topless bar," said Yamileth Bolanos, a dispensary operator who leads a group of the city's oldest collectives. "The city hasn't even been able to enact an ordinance that creates safe access."

Measure M would require the city's dispensaries to pay a 5% business tax on gross receipts, which is 10 times more than the city's highest tax. Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who proposed the tax, estimated that it would raise at least $10 million. The city faces a $54-million budget shortfall through June.

"It seemed to me it was a way to bring more revenue to the city to keep us from laying off any more city workers, or firefighters, or cops," Hahn said. "And I think it's a fairness issue. I think they should pay their fair share of taxes to the city. We are expending enormous resources to pass an ordinance that allows them to operate in the city of Los Angeles. I mean, we've spent building and safety time, city attorney time, city clerk time. We're going to be spending code enforcement time."

The no campaign is low-key and low-budget, targeted at urging the city's medical marijuana consumers — enough to support hundreds of retail stores — to show up to defeat what opponents disparage as an unfair tax on a medicine. But there are also a few heavyweight opponents, including Police Chief Charlie Beck, Sheriff Lee Baca, Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and the city's two biggest daily newspapers.

On the yes side, the campaign is run by an Oakland political consulting firm that worked on last year's marijuana legalization campaign. The campaign is backed by some of the city's public employee unions, but no dispensary has publicly endorsed it. "Some are vehemently against, some are sitting on the side, and I would say a few, but not many, recognize this is how business works and will normalize their dealings with the city," said Andre Charles, a consultant with The Next Generation.

The debate centers on whether the tax is fair or even legal.

Under the city's medical marijuana ordinance, dispensaries are required to operate as nonprofits, though city officials believe many do not. The city attorney's office has told the council that the tax measure violates the city's municipal code, which exempts charitable organizations from business taxes.

This is the main reason the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News of Los Angeles editorial boards gave a thumbs-down to the initiative.

But many dispensaries that have business licenses from the city Office of Finance are already paying city taxes. Antoinette Christovale, the general manager, said her office does not track how many dispensaries there are in the city or how much money is collected from them.

Dispensaries cannot receive tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service because the sale of marijuana is illegal under federal law. That means they cannot receive exemptions from the state or the city, which rely on the IRS determination.

William W. Carter, chief deputy city attorney, said that his office had to stick to the fact that Los Angeles' laws bar taxes on charitable organizations, even if they are not tax-exempt. "We interpret the law based on what it says in black and white, not on how other departments have applied it," he said. The city attorney's office, as the lawyers for the City Council, has not taken a position on the measure.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who opposes the measure, believes dispensaries would sue to overturn the tax. "If it passes, you'll be saying a year from now, 'Where's the tax money?' " he said. He also believes it would require the Office of Finance to add a layer of bureaucracy. Christovale said her office has not studied what it might cost to collect the tax.

Beck, who as police chief typically tries to stay out of politics, said he opposes the measure because it undermines laws that allow marijuana to be distributed only as a medicine and only by nonprofits. "When we tax it, then we wink and nod toward the fact that it is not a medicine, it is a recreational drug," Beck said. "I think that it's a wrong position for the city to take. We're not taking the moral high road. It's like saying, 'Hey, let's tax prostitution because it's happening anyway.' "

Bolanos and other medical marijuana advocates also oppose the tax as too high for a medicine. What proponents call a fair share is nearly 40 times as much as tobacco sellers and pharmacies pay. Dispensaries are also required to charge sales taxes, which are 9.75% in Los Angeles.

But Hahn said she settled on a 5% gross receipts tax because it is similar to what other California cities have imposed on the lucrative businesses, including Oakland, which tripled its tax to 5% in November. Oakland expects the tax to bring in $1.3 million this year, enough to hire seven police officers.

The potential for revenue has drawn support from unions such as United Firefighters of Los Angeles City and Service Employees International Union, Local 721, which represents about 11,000 city workers. "At the time of this financial crisis right now we need to find more ways to generate more revenues," said Bob Schoonover, Local 721's president. "We're not really making a judgment call on this at all, but marijuana is being sold, so we just think they should pay their fair share of taxes, that's all."

SEIU 721 donated $5,000 to the yes campaign, the only reported contribution so far. The campaign still hopes to raise $5,000 more. The yes position will be on some slate mailers, and the campaign has a Facebook page and a website, yesonlameasurem.com.

The no campaign, which also has a website, notaxonmedicine.org, is largely the work of a few outspoken activists, including Bolanos and Richard Eastman, who credits pot with helping him to suppress his AIDS. "I don't believe my medicine is a sin," he said. "That's what they're trying to sell with this tax."

Bolanos has spent about $800 raised from supporters and Eastman about $500, mostly on literature ("Get the greed out of the weed!") aimed at dispensary customers who would pay for the tax. "I'm going out to as many dispensaries as I can," Eastman said. "I'm a working wrecking crew."

john.hoeffel@latimes.com

Oakland council opts for tiered medical pot tax increase

2010-08-05T08:45:00.001-07:00

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15582594?nclick_check=1

OAKLAND — After two hours of pitched public comment and council deliberation, Oakland City Council members decided to table a proposal that could have brought in up to $28 million through a medical marijuana tax increase.

Instead, they opted for a tiered tax rate based on a last-minute proposal by at-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan. She announced the new plan Thursday during a special City Council meeting.

The new plan includes a 2.5 percent tax on medicinal marijuana dispensaries, putting Oakland's tax in line with Berkeley's.

Oakland's tax would be as much as 8 percent on cultivators, allowing the city to capitalize on new rules approved by the council just days ago allowing large-scale medical marijuana cultivation.

The city also would levy up to a 10 percent tax rate on facilities that sell marijuana for recreational use if California voters in November pass a statewide initiative to legalize marijuana.

The rate hikes would not be retroactive.

Kaplan justified the different rates between growers and sellers, saying other industries are taxed differently based on whether they are retail- or production-related.

The original plan, an increase of up to 12 percent, faced hot opposition from moderate-size dispensary operators and growers. Steve Deangelo, executive director of Harborbay Health Center — the largest dispensary in California — warned that the plan would force Oakland dispensaries and growers to close down, taking potential revenue with them.

He refused to disclose how much the nonprofit dispensary pays its highest-earning worker.

The council will consider the new plan Monday during a special meeting scheduled for 4 p.m.

The tax was one of seven aimed at boosting revenue to the cash-strapped city, which is facing what could be a $50 million budget gap next year.

Council members stopped short of putting all the measures, some of which were reworked during the special City Council meeting, on the November ballot.

A set of telephone taxes faced little opposition. But there was little support for a quarter-cent sales tax hike that would bring the rate to 10 percent.

Equally unpopular was an expanded utility tax that would raise an estimated $7.6 million by taxing garbage collection and water use.

The council deadlocked over a measure aimed at allowing the city to collect a special Measure Y public safety tax worth $20 million, even though the number of police officers are now below the 739 minimum.

In addition, the council voted to change a proposal to amend the city's Just Cause laws before deciding whether it should go before voters.

Pot dispensary owner says police seized profits

2010-08-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

COLORADO SPRINGS - The owner of a medical marijuana dispensary plans to sue Colorado Springs police, alleging they illegally seized $13,000 in profits from his car.

Doctor's Orders co-owner Robert Pooler has filed a notice of his intent to sue. He plans to seek $120,000 in damages.

Pooler says police searched his car after he was involved in a near collision and found the money in a bank deposit bag.

Pooler's lawyer says he was moving the money to a new bank. Sean McAllister says many national banks have been closing dispensary accounts to avoid moving marijuana money across state lines, forcing owners to move accounts.

Pooler wasn't arrested, but McAllister says police say he's being investigated for money laundering. Police aren't commenting.

http://www.durangoherald.com/sections/News/2010/07/23/Pot_dispensary_owner_says_police_seized_profits/

Proposed 'One Love' dispensary gets none in City of Folsom

2010-08-04T09:47:00.001-07:00

http://blogs.sacbee.com/weed-wars/2010/07/planned-one-love-dispensary-gets-none-in-city-of-folsom.html

The City of Folsom has no love for a proposed One Love Wellness Center.

The suburban Sacramento city is aggressively pursuing a lawsuit (http://blogs.sacbee.com/weed-wars/cofonelovepa.pdf) to keep the marijuana dispensary out of town, even after backers of the cannabis club announced they have given up.

But Folsom City Attorney Bruce Cline said the city had cause for suspicion after three men applied for a city license to open up a "medical supplies" business.

In court papers (http://blogs.sacbee.com/weed-wars/cofonelovedeclroblesinopp.pdf), Fernando Robles of Sacramento said he and partners Salvador Molina and Tej Baath later directly approached Folsom officials and said they wanted to open a dispensary in town.

Informed that the city had an outright ban against pot shops, Robles said: "I did argue that the city was not following California law regarding medical marijuana, and I felt that under California law we could open our dispensary and challenge the city ordinance."

That was enough to send the city to court. A recent lawsuit, seeking a restraining order banning One Love from opening, said operation of a marijuana outlet in Folsom would be a public nuisance - "for which harm to the city and community is presumed."

"By defendant One Love's own admissions and action, the likelihood of a nuisance ... occurring is real and substantial," the city suit charged. "Representatives (for the proposed dispensary) have told the city attorney that they have obtained a location for the operations ... within the city, though refusing to disclose the location, and that they intend to open."

In court papers last week, Robles said: "After considering or options, we chose not to open a dispensary in the City of Folsom and took no further steps to do so or challenge the city."

But Folsom is pushing on with its suit to keep One Love out of town. A Sacramento Superior Court judge set a hearing on the matter for July 26.

Meanwhile, there is another One Love Wellness Center that is not at all happy with the Folsom controversy.

Lino Catabran, a board member for the dispensary on El Camino Avenue in Sacramento, said it has no tie to the attempted Folsom venture.

"I'm not trying to open a dispensary there. We've had a problem...with someone trying to infringe on our name."

Pot legalization proposal most potent among 10 measures on November ballot

2010-08-04T09:46:00.001-07:00

http://www.simivalleyacorn.com/news/2010-07-23/Front_Page/Pot_legalization_proposal_most_potent_among_10_mea.html

Besides choosing a U.S. senator, a governor and various state and local representatives, Californians will go to the polls this November to vote on 10 new ballot measures.

Proposition 19 carries the biggest buzz because it calls for the legalization of marijuana.

The initiative would have the state regulate the drug—as it does with alcohol and tobacco— by permitting taxed sales to anyone who is 21 or older.

According to the Board of Equalization, the state’s marijuana crop is worth $14 billion a year and could generate some $1 billion in taxes if sales are made legal. A similar measure to decriminalize pot, also called Prop. 19, made the ballot in 1972, but failed by a wide margin.

The measure would provide much-needed revenue for the cash-strapped state and save millions in judicial costs, proponents say. But James Bozajian, a Calabasas City Council member, said the decriminalization of pot would not reduce prosecution and incarceration costs because few people go to jail for breaking marijuana laws.

Bozajian, a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, opposes the new measure and said it is unlikely to pass because of heavy opposition from the state’s public safety agencies.

Capt. Joe Stephen of the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station said the law enforcement community opposes legalization because of the dangers associated with impaired driving.

Also, the sheriff said, “It would change the way we do business. Right now we can go into cars if we smell the presence of marijuana, but it would take away that right for us.”

While Moorpark City Councilmember Roseann Mikos is hesitant about legalizing pot, she said the measure might help rid the state of dangerous drug cartels and protect natural resources.

“We have a serious problem in state parks and national forests with illegal marijuana being grown in those areas. I would like to think that if this were to pass, it would reduce such illegal activity,” Mikos said.

Mary Ficalora, a teacher who lives in Agoura Hills, said she supports Prop. 19 because legalization would give young people a renewed deference for the law.

“I don’t endorse marijuana smoking for young people, but I do endorse a rational legal system that understands personal choices,” she said.

“We need to clarify the law to respect the rights of individuals because right now it takes away our right to choose for ourselves,” Ficalora said.

Herbert Gooch, a professor at California Lutheran University, favors the notion of tolerance but says he won’t endorse the measure because it might encourage new marijuana use.

“Given our free enterprise economy, the results would likely be a new and growing industry dedicated to creating ever greater demand,” Gooch said.

Proposition 22

Prop. 22 is an initiative placed on the ballot by an alliance of local government groups to forbid the state from taking local government, transit and transportation funds.

“We felt this initiative is necessary to close the loophole so the state can’t steal from us anymore,” said Simi Councilmember Glen Becerra, who pointed out that Simi Valley lost more than $6.8 million to the state this year.

Most of the money taken from local cities came out of redevelopment funds that had been set aside to create jobs and rebuild the infrastructure, he said.

Propositions 25 and 26

Hoping to reduce the annual gridlock in Sacramento, Prop. 25 would allow the Legislature to pass the state budget with a simple majority rather than the existing two-thirds majority requirement.

Under the proposal, if state officials fail to pass a budget by June 15, representatives would have to forfeit their salaries and expenses until a package is passed.

Gooch said he supports the amendment because it would pressure legislators to reach an agreement on the budget, while keeping in place the supermajority (two-thirds vote) needed to raise taxes.

Becerra said the two-thirds majority for the state budget should stay in effect because it forces elected officials to compromise.

“If left unchecked, the Democratic majority would put the burden back on businesses and individuals who are already overtaxed with high taxes and fees,” Becerra said.

Prop. 26 increases the vote requirement to two-thirds for certain fees, levies, charges and taxes that can be enacted by a simple majority vote under existing rules.

Water, cars, environment

and redistricting

Proposition 18 would allow the state to borrow $11.1 billion to overhaul its aging water delivery system. Opponents worry about plunging the state further into debt.

Proposition 21 proposes to raise the vehicle license fee by $18 to provide steady income for California’s state parks.

Proposition 23—aimed at putting strict environmental laws on the sideline until the economy improves— would suspend new air pollution laws that require major polluters to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions until unemployment drops below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters.

Proposition 24 would repeal a series of corporate tax breaks approved by the Legislature in 2009.

The ballot also includes two measures affecting reapportionment and the redrawing of political boundaries.

Proposition 20 would take the power to craft new Congressional districts away from the Legislature and give it to an independent commission. The 14-member commission was created in 2008 to craft boundary maps for state Assembly and Senate seats.

Proposition 27 is the flip side of Prop. 20. It would abolish the independent commission and return authority to the Legislature.

Judge sides with Gilroy in pot club ruling

2010-08-03T10:29:00.001-07:00

http://www.freelancenews.com/news/267361-judge-sides-with-gilroy-in-pot-club-ruling

A Superior Court judge on Tuesday upheld the City of Gilroy's decision to prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries within the city and determined the city's sole nonmobile dispensary is operating illegally.

In an eight-page court order, Judge Kevin McKenney granted the city a "summary judgment," paving the way for the city to issue an injunction to shut down MediLeaf, which has been open in west Gilroy for about eight months.

"Since it is undisputed that MediLeaf did not secure a license or permit before commencing the operation of the medical marijuana dispensary at the subject property, it necessarily violated the Municipal Code," McKenney wrote. "As such the unlawful medical marijuana dispensary may be enjoined."

Jim Roberts, the dispensary's attorney, said MediLeaf plans to appeal the case.

"Obviously, we're clearly disappointed in the result," Roberts said.

Normally, an injunction could be granted within two to three days of a summary judgment, said Andy Faber, who is representing the city of Gilroy in its lawsuit against MediLeaf. However, he did not want to speculate what would happen in this case.

Councilman Perry Woodward, who is an attorney, anticipated a flurry of legal activity within the next 30 to 40 days as the courts aim to determine whether MediLeaf can remain open during the interim period.

"Now's where the fun begins," Woodward said.

MediLeaf opened Nov. 9 without a business license at 1321 First St. in the same shopping center as Togo's and First Street Coffee Exchange after the City Council rejected an ordinance to regulate such operations.

Dispensary directors Neil Forrest and Batzi and Patricia Kuburovich have maintained the dispensary uses a not-for-profit model and therefore does not require a business license. However, McKenney stated in his order that city code requires nonprofits to obtain the city's permission to operate.

"A contrary interpretation that a nonprofit organization can commence the operation of any business or activity without the city's permission would be unworkable and unreasonable," he wrote.

MediLeaf directors could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and it was unclear whether they planned to close the dispensary if an injunction were granted.

Depending upon the type of injunction the judge approves, the dispensary may be able to legally remain open pending an appeals process, Woodward said. It is unclear according to the court order on whether the judge would allow the dispensary to continue to run if that were to happen.

Woodward anticipated that MediLeaf would seek to keep its doors open.

McKenney listened to Faber and Roberts make their case for their respective clients July 1. Previously, Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy had allowed MediLeaf to remain open while litigation was pending, rejecting the city's request for a preliminary junction on Dec. 15.

At the time, Murphy said the dispensary would not cause "irreparable harm" by staying open. He also said it was not clear whether the city would prevail when the matter goes to trial. Finally, he said Gilroy's City Council committed a Brown Act violation when it approved a resolution in a Nov. 16 closed session that allowed city attorneys to take legal action against the dispensary. The council corrected that violation in December by approving the resolution in open session.

McKenney did not bring up any of Murphy's objections when he deliberated on the case July 1.

City Administrator Tom Haglund has said the city spent $102,861 through May on the litigation against MediLeaf. However, that was before the July 1 hearing.

Mayor Al Pinheiro, who wants to continue the litigation as a matter of principle to make sure the city's laws are upheld, said the council will soon get debriefed on next steps the city can take regarding litigation. He said he was glad the courts finally agreed with the council's position.

"Obviously, as one of people that voted to go ahead and fight this thing, I'm happy about it, but we'll see what the next steps are," Pinheiro said. "We'll see if there's light at the end of the tunnel."

Jonathan Partridge is a staff writer for the Gilroy Dispatch.

Politics, Profits Dividing Medical Cannabis Providers in Oakland

2010-08-03T10:28:00.001-07:00

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/LegalizationNation/archives/2010/07/22/politics-profits-dividing-medical-cannabis-providers-in-oakland

A popular dispensary owner has found himself at odds with his long-time peers, city officials and former business associates at a time when Oakland has made an historic move to allow the country's first large-scale commercial medical cannabis cultivation farms.

Oakland wants to license four football-field sized indoor grows by January, 2011, and supply up to one-fifth of the state's medicinal pot, taxing the product to net tens of millions of dollars per year. A final reading of the proposed ordinance is scheduled for Tuesday, July 27.

But the cultivation permitting regime has illuminated stark rifts in Oakland's medical cannabis community, which outsiders think to be cohesive. Leading dispensary Harborside Health Center and owner Stephen DeAngelo spoke against the cultivation ordinance, alongside fellow Oakland dispensary the Purple Heart Patient Center. On the other side: Oaksterdam owner Richard Lee whose businesses include the Coffeshop Blue Sky dispensary, as well as other growers, and local landowner Jeff Wilcox — a former business associate of DeAngelo and Harborside's neighbor.

DeAngelo spoke on behalf of perhaps 250 local growers who supply Harborside and feel threatened by the rules, which would initially push growers into two camps: those under 96 square-feet that will not require a permit, and large football field-sized facilities which will need a permit.

DeAngelo said the Bay Area medical cannabis community is united on a fundamental level, and these skirmishes are limited to the shape of business to come.

“I think that the medical cannabis community is united on all of our core issues. Now the question is no longer, 'Is cannabis going to be legal?' It's changed to, 'How is cannabis going to be legal?'”

The differences can be wide. As traditional market forces begin to exert themselves on the once-marginalized illicit drug, a spectrum of reformers has emerged, from pragmatic capitalists on one end, to idealistic, longtime radicals on another. This spread is evident in the once-close relationship between Wilcox and DeAngelo who are now estranged. The two worked together for months devising a plan for large commercial grows in Oakland, but had a falling out over control of the facility and have begun airing their differences in public.

Harborside Health Center has possibly the biggest pot club on the West Coast and wants to get into the cultivation side of the industry, but lacks the space on-site at its waterfront location. Wilcox has acres and acres of light industrial-zoned land near Harborside and wants to get into growing legal medical cannabis.

DeAngelo says he can't say for sure why the two parted ways late last year. Wilcox has said that DeAngelo wanted too much control over the enterprise, while he wants to allow multitudes to come in and work his space for a fee.

“I was like no, no, no this is a regional thing,” Wilcox says.

DeAngelo's push for control of cultivation at Wilcox's site came from two assumptions which are now to be issues of debate. The first one was that state law requires grows to be associated with specific patients in collectives or cooperatives.

Simply put, growers need to be able to produce a patient list to justify their grows under Prop 215 and SB 420. Some enforcement in California is so strict, growers put individual labels on each plant stating who the plant is being grown for. Harborside has such a patient list, but Wilcox might not need it after all.

Oakland has taken state law and interpreted it quite liberally over the years, DeAngelo says. Permitting big grows without the legal paperwork proving who the plants are for would be a cutting-edge interpretation of state law. Some experts, including Dale Gieringer at NORML, say Oakland would violate both federal and state law at that point, thereby inviting a DEA raid. Similar raids of permitted city grows in Mendocino have already occurred.

“It's absolutely critical we be in strict compliance with state law. Cultivation on this magnitude is a huge challenge to the DEA. They will be all over this, looking at it very closely and if they can justify a departure from Obama's policy they will go after Oakland,” DeAngelo says.

DeAngelo's second assumption: that the city would allow dispensaries to get large-scale cultivation permits. But that is now unclear. Currently, dispensaries have a permit to cultivate on-site, but none have the space to do so.

Councilmember Larry Reid, a principle architect of the cultivation ordinance, has adamantly stated no dispensaries shall get cultivation permits, claiming he wants to prevent a “monopoly” on the industry. Other councilmember have disagreed with Reid.

“I can't imagine what justification there could possibly be for prohibiting a non-profit organization of patients for getting a cultivation permit,” DeAngelo says.

Council consensus on dispensaries getting cultivating permits remains unclear; as well as exactly how or if the city will justify large-scale cultivation under state law. The city might choose to deal with both issues and many, many others through administrative regulations developed in the months ahead.

Who Is to Blame for the DEA's Medical Marijuana Raids?

2010-08-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday half a dozen drug policy reform groups asked President Obama to withdraw his nomination of Michele Leonhart to head the DEA, citing her continued enthusiasm for raids on medical marijuana suppliers as the agency's acting administrator. "Under Leonhart’s leadership," says the joint statement by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, California NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and Students for Sensible Drug Policy, "the DEA has staged medical marijuana raids in apparent disregard of Attorney General Eric Holder's directive to respect state medical marijuana laws." As an example, the statement cites a recent raid on Mendocino County, California, grower Joy Greenfield, who "paid more than $1,000 for a permit to cultivate 99 plants in a collective garden that had been inspected and approved by the local sheriff." When told that Greenfield had approval from local law enforcement, the DEA agent in charge of the raid reportedly replied, "I don't care what the sheriff says." NORML et al. argue that "the DEA's conduct is inconsistent with an October 2009 Department of Justice memo directing officials not to arrest individuals 'whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.'"

Far be it from me to defend Leonhart, but her raids are not necessarily inconsistent with the DOJ's policy, which (as I've noted before) leaves lots of wiggle room for continued raids, seizures, arrests, and prosecutions. If there is any disagreement at all about the meaning of the relevant statutes, the DOJ can (and does) argue that growers and distributors are not "in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana." In California, for example, local officials continue to argue with each other and with state officials about issues such as the definition of a patient "collective" (or "cooperative"), what kind of cultivation is permitted, and whether over-the-counter sales are legal. So while Mendocino County's sheriff may have been satisfied that Joy Greenfield was complying with state law, officials in other jurisdictions might have taken a different view. Even if every law enforcement official in California were of one mind about the requirements for marijuana cultivation, the DOJ could still choose to interpret state law differently. It is not even clear that the DOJ would defer to the California Supreme Court's interpretation of the law.

Like I said: lots of wiggle room. And you can't blame Leonhart for that. It was Holder who formulated the new policy, and it was President Obama who let him do it, despite his repeated campaign promises to leave medical marijuana patients and their suppliers alone. The definitive test of whether anything has changed will be in jurisdictions such as Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, which have laws that explicitly authorize and regulate the production and distribution of medical marijuana. In Colorado, which had a law that, like California's, left crucial issues related to cultivation and sale unresolved, the state legislature recently enacted new regulations that clarify the law's requirements. If the DEA nevertheless continues to raid medical marijuana suppliers in Colorado, including dispensaries that are licensed, regulated, and taxed by the government, Obama's bad faith will be clear and unambiguous.

Addendum: In addition to the July 7 raid on Joy Greenfield, medical marijuana activists are protesting a July 6 raid on John Roberts and Stephanie Whisman in Thomas Township, Michigan. Like California, Michigan allows "primary caregivers" to help patients by growing marijuana for them. Unlike California, where the state Supreme Court has said a primary caregiver must be substantially involved in a patient's life (beyond supplying him with marijuana), Michigan defines a primary caregiver simply as someone "who has agreed to assist with a patient's medical use of marihuana." According to Americans for Safe Access, Roberts and Whisman (who are engaged) were both approved as caregivers by the state Department of Community Health. They said they were each caring for five patients, which is the maximum allowed. ASA says they were "well below the legal limit" for Michigan caregivers, which is 12 plants plus two and a half ounces of "usable marihuana" for "each registered qualifying patient." The DEA's basis for claiming they were not complying with state law is unclear.

http://reason.com/blog/2010/07/22/who-is-to-blame-for-the-dea

Timberwolves' president fined for remarks on Beasley's marijuana habit

2010-08-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Sports Network - The NBA on Friday fined Minnesota Timberwolves president of basketball operations David Kahn $50,000 for his recent remarks about forward Michael Beasley, for whom the team recently traded.

In a radio interview Thursday, Kahn spoke about Beasley's marijuana use in Miami, reasoning that it hampered his play with the Heat. He added that he spoke to Beasley about discontinuing his marijuana use with the Timberwolves, which would help him become a better player.

In the interview, Kahn said Beasley was "a very young and immature kid who smoked too much marijuana" during his tenure with the Heat.

In general, Kahn has been complimentary of Beasley, including comments made at his introductory press conference in which he said Beasley "has a chance to become one of our leaders."

The Timberwolves recently acquired Beasley, the second overall pick of the 2008 draft, from Miami, which was looking to clear cap space after signing Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh to long-term contracts.

The Timberwolves organization was also fined a separate $50,000 for the remarks.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sns-wolves-beasley,0,7813833.story

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New Jersey’s Medical Marijuana Law Loses Planned Grower and Dispensers

2010-07-29T10:44:00.001-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/nyregion/24marijuana.html?_r=1&hpw

Five months before its new medical marijuana law is set to take effect, New Jersey this week moved further away from having answers to basic questions about how the law will work — specifically, who will grow the marijuana and who will dispense it.

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration had been pursuing a plan to make Rutgers University the only approved cultivator of cannabis, and to make teaching hospitals the only places where patients could get it.

But on Thursday, Rutgers announced that it would not participate for fear of losing grants from the federal government. State officials said the hospitals had the same concern.

State laws legalizing medical marijuana are at odds with federal law. The Obama administration has stopped the practice of raiding marijuana dispensaries in those states, but the Drug Enforcement Administration remains reluctant to grant permission to grow the plants, even for medical research.

“This is genuinely something we were interested in doing,” said Robert M. Goodman, the executive dean of agriculture and natural resources at Rutgers. “We have agricultural stations; we have programs in medicinally reactive plants, in chemical biology, in pharmacy. It’s a potential new crop for the state, and we’re interested in promoting the state’s economy.”

But, he added, “it just puts too much at risk,” jeopardizing research grants, contracts, student aid or other funds from Washington.

Fourteen states have passed laws allowing medical use of marijuana, but New Jersey’s, signed in January, is in some ways the strictest. The law was written to prevent the proliferation of growers and dispensaries seen in states like California and Colorado, at first limiting the state to six dispensaries run by nonprofits, and it prohibits patients from growing the plants themselves.

New Jersey allows doctors to prescribe marijuana only for patients with terminal illness or a fairly limited set of specific, chronic conditions, and limits each person to two ounces per month, compared with as much as 24 ounces in other states.

Governor Christie, a Republican who took office days after the law was enacted, has sought to make it still more restrictive in the way it is carried out. The administration is supposed to put regulations in place for carrying out the law by Oct. 1, and the law is scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1.

Michael Drewniak, the governor’s chief spokesman, said Friday that the administration still expected to have dispensaries ready to open in 2011.

“As we’ve said all along, we’ve been considering other options beyond the Rutgers plan,” Mr. Drewniak said, “and we will continue working diligently to implement a high-quality and secure program.” He declined to elaborate.

The governor is angry about the university’s decision, according to officials who were granted anonymity to comment on private discussions, and so are some legislators. Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, a Democrat from Mercer County who was one of the primary sponsors of the legalization bill, said “the university is chickening out” by not testing federal authorities’ willingness to grant a waiver.

State Senator Nicholas P. Scutari, a Democrat from Linden who was the other main sponsor, said that Mr. Christie wanted too much control over the program and that the state would have no choice but to approve private growers.

“We’ve known this was going to be a concern for Rutgers from the get-go, but the administration indicated no, it’s not going to be a problem,” Mr. Scutari said. And the hospitals, he said, “have got the same exact issue.”

The New Jersey Council of Teaching Hospitals declined to comment, but several people briefed on the discussions said the hospitals wanted some kind of guarantee that they would not be jeopardizing federal money.

Mr. Christie has said he had concerns about how to carry out the law with enough security. At his request, the Legislature delayed putting the law into effect for 90 days.

The plan to use Rutgers and teaching hospitals would have given the state far more direct control over the program than the Legislature intended, but for the most part, lawmakers said they were amenable to the idea if it would work.

California ACLU Affiliates Endorse Prop 19

2010-07-29T10:43:00.001-07:00

For Immediate Release: July 22, 2010
Contact: Laura Saponara, ACLU-NC, 415.621.2493

California ACLU Affiliates Endorse Proposition 19's Move Toward a Rational Marijuana Policy

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - The California affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union today announced their endorsement of Proposition 19, the initiative on the November 2010 ballot that would allow state regulation of marijuana.

Enforcement of marijuana prohibition consumes a great deal of California's law enforcement and court system resources, and has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Proposition 19 would allow adults age 21 and older to possess and grow small amounts of their own marijuana for personal use, and would allow cities and counties to regulate and tax commercial sales. Unless individual cities and counties enact local regulatory structures, marijuana sale would remain illegal under state law.

The three California affiliates of the ACLU have 96,000 members combined and join a broad coalition supporting Proposition 19's common sense approach to controlling marijuana. Supporters of the initiative include former U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, the California NAACP, labor unions, and law enforcement officials from around the state.

In 2008, California police made 60,000 marijuana possession arrests, the majority of them young men of color. The arrests, however, do not indicate actual marijuana usage. A new report from the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) reveals distinct racial disparities in California arrests for low-level marijuana possession. Data in the report reveal that African Americans in California are more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, but more white youth use marijuana than black youth.

"California makes tens of thousands of arrests each year for simply possessing small amounts of marijuana. These arrests overload our already stressed courts and jails and divert scarce public safety dollars that could be used to address violent crime," said Kelli M. Evans, associate director at the ACLU of Northern California.

The California Legislative Analyst's Office cites that Proposition 19 would allow "redirection of court and law enforcement resources to solving violent crimes."

"The significant racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests have serious consequences, for young men of color in particular. The impact of a misdemeanor conviction for marijuana possession creates barriers in finding a house, a job, and even a school loan," said Ramona Ripston, ACLU/SC executive director.

In Los Angeles County alone, the marijuana possession arrest rate of African Americans is more than 300% higher than the same arrest rate of whites, although blacks made up less than 10% of the county's population, according to the DPA report.

"Proposition 19 is smart policy that would regulate and tax marijuana for adults, just like alcohol and tobacco," said Kevin Keenan, executive director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties.

Voters asked to expand Oregon's medical marijuana law

2010-07-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

EUGENE, Ore. - Oregon voters will decide in November if the state should have dispensaries to sell medical marijuana.

Supporters of the idea gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the November ballot.

Alice Ivany, who lives near Newport, was one of the chief petitioners for the initiative. She said marijuana has totally improved the quality of her life. "It works for pain like no other medication out there," she said.

It will be up to voters to decide if Oregon's medical marijuana act should be expanded. Ivany said the original law in Oregon didn't go far enough.

"As wonderful as the original act is, it still was fatally flawed in that it did not allow safe, legal access for patients to obtain medical cannabis," she said.

She believes a regulated medical marijuana supply, sold in dispensaries, will be much safer for Oregonians. "Not only are you exposed to dangerous people but you don't know exactly what you're getting," she said. "The medicine could be tainted with other drugs."

Oregonians right now are required to grow their own marijuana or have to find someone to do it for them. They are also limited to 6 mature plants and 24 ounces of marijuana. If voters approve the ballot measure in November, patients could buy their pot at a dispensary or continue to grow their own - as long as they have a license.

The new law would allow dispensaries to have 24 plants and 96 ounces of marijuana, and the state would regulate sales. The dispensaries could not be located within 1,000 feet of a school or in a residential area.

If voters say no, the state's medical marijuana law will stay as it is. This is not the first time the issue has been up for a vote in Oregon. Voters rejected a measure to set up dispensaries back in 2004.

KVAL News talked to foes of the measure. Hear why they oppose dispensaries on KVAL 13 TV News Friday night and on KVAL.com.

19.25% TAX on MEDICATION!!!!!

2010-07-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

Link: http://sanjosecannabis.org/2010/07/23/san-jose-city-council-meeting-august-3-10/

The City of San Jose is trying to put in place a 10% SALES TAX in
addition to the states 9.25% sales tax.. Taxing medication in SJ at
19.25%!

With a survey of less then 800 "likely voters," of which over 50% were
over 45-White/Caucasians, and 80% lived in single family homes, the
city of San Jose has come to the conclusion that a 10% sales tax for
medical cannabis is appropriate. The survey they used is both
confusing and misleading. This is another attempt by the powers at be
to chase medical cannabis out of San Jose. A 19.25% tax would drive
medical patients back to the streets, where no tax is charged or out
of town for their medication

San Jose's goal is to place the 10% tax on the November Ballot, at the
next city council meeting August 3rd, 2010

Review the survey & potential ballot measures yourself:

SURVEY OF POTENTIAL BALLOT MEASURES:

http://www.sanjoseca.gov/clerk/Agenda/20100803/20100803_0303a.pdf

MEMO: MARIJUANA BUSINESS TAX BALLOT MEASURE:

http://www.sanjoseca.gov/clerk/Agenda/20100803/20100803_0303c.pdf

RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL: A BALLOT MEASURE PROPOSAL TO TAX MARIJUANA:

http://www.sanjoseca.gov/clerk/Agenda/20100803/20100803_0303cres.pdf

The Marijuana Business Tax Measure is item 3.3.c of the Agenda

CITY COUNCIL MEETING, AUGUST 3, 2010 Agenda:

http://www.sanjoseca.gov/clerk/Agenda/20100803/20100803a.pdf

Christie’s making medical marijuana unworkable for New Jersey’s patients

2010-07-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/commentary/christies-making-medical-marijuana-unworkable-for-new-jerseys-patients

The Christie administration is contemplating making the nation's most restrictive medical marijuana law even more restrictive. Lawmakers do so at the expense of patients' well being.

To review: in January, after years of debate, outgoing Democrat Governor Jon Corzine signed legislation making New Jersey the fourteenth state in the nation to allow for the state-authorized use of medical cannabis by qualified patients. The measure, known as The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, authorizes select patients with a physician's recommendation to possess and obtain medical cannabis from up to six state-authorized "alternative treatment centers." Unlike the laws in thirteen others states, state-qualified patients are not legally permitted to grow their own marijuana, nor are they allowed to legally consume marijuana to mitigate the symptoms of chronic painful conditions.

Yet these safeguards apparently provide little comfort to Gov. Chris Christie. Recently, the Governor has proposed amending state law so that patients would only be eligible to obtain medical cannabis in state hospitals. He has also proposed limiting the cultivation of marijuana to a single supply source at Rutgers University. Lawmakers ought oppose to these amendments, which are unnecessary and, if enacted, would make New Jersey's law totally unworkable for patients.

How so? Consider this: For over nine years the University of Massachusetts has sought — unsuccessfully — to cultivate marijuana for medical research purposes. The University even went so far as to file a legal challenge with the DEA — which it won — to gain permission to grow pot. Yet in 2009 the DEA's acting director overruled the determination of the agency's own administrative law judge in order to prohibit UMass from growing even a single marijuana plant — citing that allowing the University to do so would be in violation of international conventions. It is unlikely that a similar plan at Rutgers University would be met with any greater success.

Moreover, centralizing the supply of medical-grade cannabis severely limits patients' options. The efficacy of cannabis as a medicine is derived from its various active therapeutic components, known as cannabinoids. Different strains of marijuana vary in their therapeutic prowess based on their percentages of distinct cannabinoids. By limiting patients' legal access to only one or two specific varieties of cannabis, lawmakers are needlessly consolidating the total number of patients that may be helped under the law.

Finally, it is burdensome and unnecessary to limit patients' use of medical marijuana solely to hospitals. As stated in 1988 by no less than the DEA's own administrative law judge, "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." The plant's compounds are virtually non-toxic to healthy cells and organs, do not depress the central nervous system, and are incapable of causing a fatal overdose.

In fact, a 2008 meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association (CMAJ) reported that cannabis-based drugs were associated with virtually no elevated incidences of serious adverse side effects in over 30 years of investigative use. To place this finding in proper perspective, consider this: taking just a small amount of acetaminophen (Tylenol) over the recommended total daily dose has been conclusively shown to cause liver damage and death. It is arbitrary and unnecessary for the Governor to propose impose restrictions regarding the use of medical marijuana that are more stringent than the regulations already in place governing the distribution and use of other doctor recommended medications.

The bottom line is this. Seriously ill patients in New Jersey have already waited years for legislative relief and safe access to medical marijuana. Lawmakers should reject any further amendments or delays to the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act.

Paul Armentano is the Deputy Director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and he is the co-author of the book "Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?" (Chelsea Green, 2009).

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/commentary/christies-making-medical-marijuana-unworkable-for-new-jerseys-patients

Santa Barbara Set to Implement New Marijuana Ordinance

2010-07-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.noozhawk.com/local_news/article/072210_santa_barbara_marijuana_ordinance/

Santa Barbara’s new ordinance on medical marijuana goes into effect July 29, and city officials are readying themselves to implement the new requirements.

After nearly a year of revisionary meetings, the consensus called for a three-storefront citywide cap and stricter security and operational rules.

Only one of the three permitted storefronts — at 331 N. Milpas St. — can stay, and all other locations have six months to shape up, with a permit under the new ordinance, or close up.

Under the new ordinance, members must live within Santa Barbara County and have a valid doctor’s recommendation, cultivation must be within the Tri-Counties and the operations can’t turn a profit — though reasonable compensation is thought to be acceptable. Vending machines are OK, as long as they’re located within a permitted collective dispensary, and edible products also are allowed.

In fact, according to the ordinance, anyone who “assists” in preparing the edibles will be viewed as “an individual who provides assistance to a qualified patient or person with an identification card, or his or her designated primary caregiver, in administering medical marijuana to a qualified patient …” as the phrase is mentioned in the Health and Safety Code.

Criminal Investigations

While the zoning ordinance requires operators to comply with state laws — such as being nonprofit — a permit is by no means a get-out-of-jail-free card.

The Pacific Coast Collective is permitted at 331 N. Milpas St., but after a traffic stop prompted an investigation, the owner was arrested and charged with cultivation and possession for sales of marijuana, and the storefront was temporarily shut down, Santa Barbara police Capt. Armando Martel said.

Martel, who represented police at most city meetings on the subject, is a 25-year veteran of the department in charge of the investigative division.

Local law enforcement agencies have conducted raids on several city dispensaries and residences, which yielded arrests and seizures of marijuana and cash for evidence purposes.

“The city takes people for face value when they say, ‘I’m going to open up this business,’” he said. “(The city) isn’t endorsing them — there’s an assumption that the business owners are going to obey laws.”

Regardless of civil actions, the police department will always investigate potential law violations, whether they’re reported by the public or discovered by police personnel, Martel said.

“Don’t think that I or anyone else thinks, ‘I’m going to go to a dispensary and pick on them,’” he said.

Investigations into the storefront collective and dispensary raids are resource-and-time intensive and can take four to six months from the start to getting warrants and taking enforcement action, Martel said.

Enforcing the Ordinance

Danny Kato, a senior planner with the city’s Community Development Department, had stayed busy with storefront-collective applications and ordinance updates, but has found a reprieve now that policy decisions are made.

He said he’s in the middle of writing letters to all known dispensaries telling them to close or update their applications.

Many applications stuck in limbo while the moratorium was in place are no longer valid, Kato said, leaving at least three current owners vying for two open spots — all of whom ignored cease-and-desist letters issued by the city attorney.

The Santa Barbara Patients Group has an application for a new location, and The Compassion Center on De la Vina Street and Hortipharm on Upper State Street have applications submitted with updated operational plans to comply with the new ordinance.

The owners of the Pacific Coast Collective and Hortipharm were arrested on charges of possession of marijuana for sales after investigations into compliance with the Compassionate Use Act of 1996.

The Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting cases involving six dispensaries, four of which are within city limits, District Attorney Joyce Dudley told Noozhawk in an e-mail.

She said that everyone arrested in connection with those cases are awaiting preliminary hearings, most of which are scheduled for August or September.

No owner of a dispensary can have a felony conviction, but the city takes no action on arrests alone, Kato said.

“We’re not going to try to revoke their permit just on the arrest,” he said of the Pacific Coast Collective.

Although some owners have been involved in court action with the city over shutting down, Kato said none complied right away with the cease-and-desist letters.

City Resources

Enforcement and the processing of applications can be a drain on the police department, the city attorney’s office and the community development department, but the heavy implementation process could be short-lived.

A new $120-per-hour fee for processing applications is designed to help with cost recovery, and after the six-month deadline to comply or shut down, there will be only three to deal with, Kato said.

Plans for annual reviews and record-keeping, with cooperation from the police department, are still being developed, but operators of storefront collectives must keep all financial, membership and cultivation records on hand for three years and make them available to city staff.

New applications will be accepted through July 29, though chances could be slim as there are many people fighting for two available spots.

“You could spend a lot of money and not even get the chance to present your case,” Kato said.

Other Jurisdictions

Santa Barbara County is one of 15 in California with a moratorium against dispensaries, and the city is one of 36 with an ordinance, according to Americans for Safe Access.

Many jurisdictions have their eyes on the November ballot measure that proposes legalizing the use of marijuana, and 101 cities have adopted moratoria and another 132 have bans. The Santa Barbara City Council approved a ballot measure for November that would ban all storefront collectives.

Just recently, the Ventura City Council continued its moratorium. During the meeting, some people made references to Santa Barbara, calling it a marijuana mecca, and said the distinction between legitimate collectives and for-profit dispensaries is too difficult to discern, according to the Ventura County Star.

The nearest areas with an ordinance allowing dispensaries are cities in Santa Clara County, Tulare County or the Long Beach area, depending on which way you’re driving.

— Noozhawk staff writer Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com.

http://www.noozhawk.com/local_news/article/072210_santa_barbara_marijuana_ordinance/

Medical marijuana provides an economic boost in Montana

2010-07-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

The rapid growth of Montana’s medical marijuana community has fueled a local economy but isn’t making anyone rich, yet. In the past two years, the state’s licensed patient pool has grown to 20,000 who are supplied by nearly 4,000 caregivers. Montana allows small individual growers to provide the supply of medical marijuana, whereas in New Mexico growing is limited to state approved non-profits or licensed patients themselves. The result in Montana is a flourishing medical marijuana cottage industry, reports the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, that generates millions in economic activity in various sectors of the economy.

As the Daily Chronicle reported:

After the home construction market crashed, medical marijuana has helped “a massive amount,” said Ron Boston, president of Comfort Systems, a Bozeman ventilation, heating and air-conditioning business. “It has put a jump start to part of our business.”

Boston stressed his company is reputable and only agreed to install ventilation systems for marijuana growers because it isn’t breaking any laws. New systems can cost $8,000 to $20,000, he said. The new business allowed him to hire a couple people.

“In a downturn, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to survive,” Boston said.

The paper said the industry had benefitted garden supply stores, “lawyers, accountants, builders, electricians, Web page designers and commercial real estate brokers.”

The executive director of the Montana Medical Growers Association said growers have spent $17 million on start-up costs for things like lights, nutrients, soils, odor abatement gear, security, lawyers and insurance. Then, there are the utilities, rent, and employees to help tend the plants in a routine similar to the doting that’s required for orchids.

http://newmexicoindependent.com/59917/medical-marijuana-provides-an-economic-boost-in-montana

Oakland poised to cash in on medical marijuana boom

2010-07-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_15570277

OAKLAND — Oakland is ready to cash in on the medical marijuana boom — and perhaps recreational pot use — now that the City Council agreed to license and tax four industrial-sized marijuana farms and promised to review policies that exclude small and medium-size farmers who grow the marijuana sold at the city's four dispensaries.

Hundreds of small growers and collectives complained that the new ordinance could drive them out of business, despite having risked arrest to supply $28 million worth of medical marijuana sold at dispensaries last year.

The city intends to crack down on growers who are not permitted or exceed the growing guidelines established for patients and caregivers, but agreed to delay enforcement until the large cultivation, manufacturing and processing permits are issued in January.

The delay gives city staff members time to develop a point system for evaluating the applications and return to the council with recommendations for ensuring the licensed growers will follow fair labor and local hiring policies as well as sound environmental practices.

It will also allow time for the public safety committee in the fall to figure out how or if independent small and medium-size growers should be regulated and taxed.

Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who co-authored the cultivation ordinance with Councilmember Larry Reid, assured the small farmers that the city would work on creating permits for medium-size facilities, and reassured medical-marijuana patients that licensing large farms does not prevent them from growing their own plants or selling to dispensaries as long as they are within the city's guidelines.

"We are at a time when medical cannabis is a growing and emerging industry," she said. "There is a growing demand to have permitted facilities, not just (to reduce) danger, but to provide good products, good paying jobs and to provide revenue for public safety."

Councilmember Nancy Nadel voted no and Councilmembers Jean Quan and Jane Brunner abstained. They supported the regulation but had questions about the criteria for selection, local hiring, environmental issues and the amount of tax revenue the cultivation operations would generate. Nadel wanted to delay a vote until the small and medium-size growers could be included.

The city will issue a request for proposals for four Cannabis Cultivation, Manufacturing and Processing Facility permits. Several people have expressed interest, among them Dhar Mann, a founder of iGrow, a hydroponic superstore in East Oakland, and Jeff Wilcox, a businessman who owns several acres of light industrial land along the Embarcadero.

Each applicant must pay a $5,000 fee to cover administrative costs for background checks and to review business and site plans.

Once selected, the four permitted cultivation businesses will be charged an annual $211,000 regulatory fee that will be used to hire staff members and develop and sustain a program to oversee the cultivators, similar to the team that oversees compliance and complaints about the city's liquor establishments.

The permitted facilities must be in industrially zoned areas of the city and meet all relevant building and fire codes, hire security guards and maintain security cameras, and carry sufficient liability insurance.

"(Passing this resolution) will actually decrease public safety," said Dan Grace, a small grower with five employees. "It will create an environment where small growers will have to go back underground, where they will not be able to get electrical permits. We actually do our best to be above board and follow safety regulations."

Steve DeAngelo, executive director of the Harborside Health Center dispensary, said he supports the licensing and regulation of the industry, but he wants to make sure that the more than 500 small and medium-sized growers who supply his business are included.

"They are not miscreants. "... These courageous growers have taken serious risks to provide medical marijuana to those who need it. Let's create a system that legitimizes all growers," he said.

Reid, co-author of the cultivation ordinance, said the new regulations would ensure that patients receive a high-quality product grown at a safe, regulated facility. He said the regulation is also needed to cut down on the numbers of fires, robberies and shooting crimes that are rampant among bootleg growers who take over homes in residential areas or in small warehouses.

He said there is nothing to prevent the small growers or collectives from banding together to apply for one of the four cultivation permits.

James Anthony, attorney for Harborside, said that's exactly what they intend to do. He said the permit application would include existing individual and small collective cultivators. Anthony also said he was hopeful that the council would take action to include the small cultivators in the fall.

Medical marijuana myths ‘disposed’ at El Centro City Council meeting

2010-07-21T10:07:00.002-07:00

Cannabis is an effective pain reliever and helps overcome side effects of chronic pain medicine, said Dr. Wally Marsh at Tuesday’s El Centro City Council meeting.

Medical marijuana was a topic of discussion at the meeting as three people came before the council to “dispose myths of medical marijuana,” Marsh said.

Marsh was an ophthalmologist for more than 40 years in Lompoc near Santa Barbara before switching to a cannabis consultant two years ago, he said. He sees medical marijuana as a “wonder drug,” not only being natural but also with the potential to benefit a lot of people. However, residents here don’t have access to it.

“I would like to see this council clear the way for people to buy marijuana in a safe way,” he said.

El Centro resident Joann Villareal agreed. Villareal was the director at the alleged dispensary that was shut down last week.

“I’m here for the patients of El Centro,” she said to the council, adding that a collective or dispensary is a safe environment for patients. “We’re just looking for some help from you.”

In the three weeks the collective on Fifth Street in El Centro was open, people from all walks of life, including veterans, the elderly and those in wheelchairs, came in to get help, she said.

“These are medical patients with needs,” she said.

Placing a moratorium, as the city had done, is taking away rights from collectives, said Lanny Swerdlow, registered nurse and medical marijuana activist from Riverside. Patients need the medicine, and the city must enforce state law.

The city placed a moratorium on dispensaries at its April 21 meeting, and later extended the hold at the June 2 meeting.

There were multiple reasons that Mayor Cheryl Viegas-Walker previously said as to why the city decided to wait until the beginning of October to take action. The first was to await a decision in the appellate court about another city banning marijuana dispensaries.

The moratorium also allowed staff time to find an appropriate land zone to classify a dispensary, she said. The final reason was to see what the outcome of the November election will be as one of the ballot measures would be whether to legalize marijuana for all adults in California.

“It’s an issue that isn’t going away,” she told the three, who said they would be back at other meetings to discuss the issue.

Oregon to Vote on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in November

2010-07-21T10:07:00.001-07:00

http://elections.firedoglake.com/2010/07/19/oregon-to-vote-on-medical-marijuana-dispensaries-in-november/

Oregon voters will decide in November if the state should have medical marijuana dispensaries in the spirit of California and Colorado. A ballot initiative, known as I-28, would legalize nonprofit medical marijuana dispensaries to sell marijuana to card-carrying patients. According to Oregon Business, the initiative barely qualified for November’s ballot (http://www.oregonbusiness.com/ben/3814-jobs-watch-marijuana-measure-makes-ballot).

The Secretary of State’s office has announced that I-28, the medical marijuana dispensary initiative, has qualified for the November 2 ballot.

Organizers of the I-28 campaign turned in 130,702 signatures, 85,848 of which turned out to be valid, narrowly exceeding the required number of 82,769 valid signatures. A separate campaign to legalize marijuana and sell it through state-run liquor stores went nowhere.

The idea behind I-28 is to allow people to set up nonprofit dispensaries for selling marijuana to people holding medical marijuana cards. The system would be overseen by the state health department.

Such a system would almost certainly result in a gold rush to tap into the growing market for legal weed, which has been lucratively exploited in California and Colorado. Marijuana is the nation’s largest cash crop, and any move to update regulations controlling how it is grown and sold will create opportunities within Oregon’s already sizable marijuana business. Just because an operation is a nonprofit doesn’t mean it can’t bring in big money. The dispensaries also would bring new revenue into state government from license fees.

As this article notes, an initiative to legalize marijuana failed quite miserably. The Oregon Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, sponsored by the Oregon chapter of NORML, gathered only 12,000 signatures of the 83,000 required. A similar initiative in Washington missed the ballot by a hair. Expect these two Western states, along with Colorado, to try again with full force to put legalization on the ballot in 2012.

Portland accepts medical marijuana dispensaries into business zones

2010-07-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- The Portland City Council has unanimously agreed to include a medical marijuana dispensary in the city's business zoning ordinance.

Three companies have been selected to dispense medical marijuana in Maine to patients suffering from a number of illnesses from cancer to AIDs.

The dispensaries will be located in six areas of the state including downtown Portland.

The state has agreed to allow Northeast Patients Group to set up dispensaries in Portland, Thomaston, Augusta or Waterville, and Hermon.

Now that Portland's ordinance allows it anywhere within the business 2, 3, and 7 zones of the city, there are a number of places the group is looking to move into.

One key location under discussion now is the former location of a Key Bank on the corner of Congress and St. John Streets.

But one major concern is that it's too tight of an area to accommodate a lot of traffic.

Another concern some have is that it's within 500 feet of the Deliverance Center, a church that holds classes for kids and rehabilitates drug and alcohol abusers.

A third concern is safety; as with any pharmacy, there's strong potential for the dispensary to get robbed. Executive Director of Northeast Patients Group, Becky Dekeuster, says they will have a security guard on-site 24 hours a day.

Applications for prospective dispensaries in two districts, York County and Washington & Hancock Counties, didn't score high enough to make the cut.

Companies with low scores can make changes and apply again through August 20th.

Northeast Patients Group hopes to have dispensaries up and running before December 31st.

California Blacks Split Over Marijuana Measure

2010-07-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

SACRAMENTO — Ron Allen says he knows all too well the ravages of drug addiction.

“I was a pastor on crack cocaine, sir,” said Mr. Allen, who says he has been sober for 11 years and now identifies himself as the bishop of the International Faith Based Coalition here. “Drugs have no religious preference.”

And while crack cocaine laid him low, Mr. Allen says his first drug of choice was marijuana. So it is that Mr. Allen and a cadre of other black pastors, priests and other religious leaders have bonded together in recent weeks to fight what they see as a potentially devastating blow to their communities: Proposition 19, the California ballot measure that would tax and regulate marijuana.

In doing so, Mr. Allen and his followers have opened a new, potentially crucial front in the battle over Proposition 19, pitting those afraid of more widespread use of the drug versus those who see legalization as “an exit strategy in the war on marijuana.”

Mr. Allen has been particularly critical of Alice A. Huffman, the president of the California branch of the N.A.A.C.P., who has been vocal in her support for the measure, casting it as a potential victory for civil rights that could help reduce the number of young black men jailed on marijuana-related offenses.

“I’m not encouraging anyone to recreationally use marijuana,” said Ms. Huffman. “I am simply focused on the injustice and the disparities in the criminal justice system.”

How black voters in California decide on Proposition 19, which would allow anyone 21 and over to possess up to an ounce of marijuana, could be critical to its success or failure. (At the moment, possession of more than 28.5 grams of marijuana, about an ounce, is punishable in most cases by up to six months in prison and a $500 fine.)

Blacks make up less than 10 percent of the population in California, but unlike two larger minority groups in the state where opinions on the measure are also split — Asians and Latinos — their “participation in elections is on par with their populations,” according to the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit group here.

In the case of Proposition 19 — which is trailing narrowly in a recent Field Poll — appeals to that potential swing bloc have already begun, and the measure’s backers have been seeking out the support of prominent black leaders. Last week, proponents secured what they view as a major endorsement, that of Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the former United States surgeon general and the first black to hold that position.

In a statement to be published in a voter guide, Dr. Elders said the legalization bill would help divert law enforcement resources to more serious threats. “We can let police prevent violent crime, or we can accept the status quo, and keep wasting resources sending tens of thousands of nonviolent marijuana consumers — a disproportionate number who are minorities — to jail,” Dr. Elders wrote.

Kamala D. Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, who is black, joined the opposition last week. Ms. Harris, who is running for state attorney general, issued a statement saying that the proposition would encourage “driving while high” and drugs in the workplace.

Enforcement of marijuana possession laws is a touchy topic among many blacks here and nationwide.

This month, the Drug Policy Alliance — a New York group that is supporting Proposition 19 — released a study showing that blacks were arrested for possession at far higher rates than whites in California’s 25 largest counties, often two or three times higher. In those 25 counties, blacks make up 7 percent of the population but accounted for 20 percent of the marijuana possession arrests; in Los Angeles County, which accounts for about a quarter of the state’s population, blacks were arrested for marijuana possession at three times the rate of whites.

At the moment, 1,515 people are in California prisons on marijuana charges, 750 of them black, state corrections officials say.

The study’s author, Harry G. Levine, a professor of sociology at Queens College who has discovered similar trends in marijuana arrests in New York City, said that the impact of those arrests could be profound.

“A criminal record lasts a lifetime,” Mr. Levine wrote. “The explosive growth of criminal record databases, and the ease with which those databases can be accessed on the Internet, creates barriers to employment, housing and education for anyone simply arrested for drug possession.”

Rob MacCoun, a professor of law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied marijuana use in America, said there was little doubt that blacks — particularly black men — bore the brunt of arrests for marijuana.

“The arrest statistics are disproportionate with respect to African-Americans and disproportionate with respect to use,” said Mr. MacCoun. “And that’s very hard to justify in any way.”

And while Mr. MacCoun said he was not certain that a ballot measure was the way to address that inequity, he said the positioning of Proposition 19 as a civil rights issue could be a potent selling point.

“I don’t think it’s decisive for all voters,” Mr. MacCoun said. “But I think it’s an important argument, and I think it’s going to carry weight with some people.”

Mr. MacCoun was one of several authors of a report issued this month by the RAND Corporation that found that legalization could double the use of the drug in California — of the 15 million Americans who regularly use marijuana, the study found, about 1.9 million of them, or 13 percent, are in California — and slash the price by up to 80 percent.

Opponents of Proposition 19 seized on the report as evidence of the potential damage of legalization. They were also cheered by the Field Poll, taken on July 9, which showed that support for the measure had dropped to 44 percent, with 48 percent disapproving, equal to national levels of support for legalization.

The poll found only 40 percent of black voters backing the proposition with 52 percent opposed. But white people are supporting the measure, 48 to 43 percent.

Mr. MacCoun cautioned that polls could be deceptive on the issue, because of the longtime stigma surrounding drug use.

“If you get called on the phone, people may be uncomfortable saying that they support a marijuana initiative,” he said. “But for years, I’ve had people come up to me — grown-ups in corporate America — and say to me, sotto voce, ‘If it were up to me, I’d legalize it.’ “

On the ground, meanwhile, Mr. Allen and his followers have continued to campaign against the referendum. At a recent rally on the steps of the state capitol here, several pastors used fiery language to rally a small crowd, calling for Ms. Huffman’s resignation, describing marijuana as “the most sinister drug,” and asking that “the demonic spirits be cast back into hell.”

“How stupid to think that by legalizing a vice it’s going to help the situation,” said Darryl B. Heath, pastor of St. John Baptist Missionary Baptist Church in Sacramento. “This is not a game. A whole generation is at stake.”

For her part, Ms. Huffman shows no signs of backing off her support for the proposition, saying her critics “have got their heads in the sand” when it comes to the reality of drug use, and enforcement, in America.

She also scoffed at the notion that she would bend to their calls for her resignation.

“Why in the world would I allow a bunch of locals who don’t amount to anything run me out of office?” she said. “When they come up with a solution, they can look me up.”

Malia Wollan contributed reporting from San Francisco.

Legal pot wouldn't stop office testing

2010-07-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/jul/18/legalizing-pot-wouldnt-help-workers/

If California ever legalizes marijuana usage, employers will still have the right to test employees for it, experts say, because the proposed laws don’t offer new protections in the workplace.

“The employers will continue to have the right to determine what level of impairments they allow in their workplaces,” said Karen Gabler, an Oxnard lawyer who specializes in labor law.

Marijuana wouldn’t be treated differently than prescription medicines or other legal substances that cause impairment, Gabler said, should legalization occur under a new bill alive in the state Assembly, AB 2254, or Proposition 19 on the Nov. 2 ballot.

“Alcohol has been legal for a long time, but you’re still not permitted to be under the influence of alcohol in the workplace,” she said.

But marijuana remains in the system longer than alcohol, and may register on tests long after smokers feel any effect. A smoker could test positive for the drug even a week after smoking marijuana.

“We don’t want the employer independently analyzing whether the employee is truly ‘under the influence’ because it’s too subjective,” she said.

It’s up to employees to decide whether to raise the issue and challenge the adequacy of drug tests as a gauge for measuring impairment, lawyers say.

If an employee is smoking marijuana for legitimate medicinal purposes, Gabler said employers would treat it like a disability and offer employees a leave of absence until they finish treatment.

Lawsuits have been brought by medical marijuana users who argue they are entitled to protection from medical discrimination, and have rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The conundrum for legal scholars is that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a person who takes “illegal drugs” is not a “qualified individual with a disability.”

Whether medical marijuana is technically “illegal” under the act is a question being debated, as it’s not illegal in certain states, but is a crime under federal law.

Rhode Island took care of the issue by enacting a medical marijuana law that explicitly states employers cannot discriminate against medical marijuana users. But neither of the proposed laws in California would protect a medical marijuana patient from employment discrimination, according to Tamar Todd, an attorney with the Drug Policy Alliance in Berkeley.

Were either to become law, Todd agrees that little would change in the workplace. Common law — a 2008 case called Ross v. RagingWire Telecommunications Inc. — would still govern workplace issues concerning medical marijuana.

“Since that case is currently controlling law in California,” Todd said, “employers in California can fire patients for their medical use. California companies don’t really need to come up with a defense for firing patients because the California Supreme Court has said it is legal for them to.”

A change in the law also wouldn’t warrant new policies for random drug testing.

Random testing can be conducted under limited circumstances under current law, Gabler said. For example, random testing can occur if an employee works a job where safety is an issue. Testing can also be conducted when there’s “reasonable suspicion that an employee is currently under the influence.”

“Reasonable suspicion is the key,” said Gina Hudak, a third-party administrator for drug and alcohol testing programs in the workplace who does training for Ventura County companies and public agencies.

“There has to be reasonable suspicion,” she said “It can’t be somebody comes to the employer and says, ‘hey, I know so-and-so smokes pot.’”

Management has to be trained in what to look for, she said, and “be able to articulate that there’s something about the person that indicates they’re impaired because there’s something out of the ordinary about their speech, behavior or appearance.”

Suspects In Marijuana Money-Laundering Case Arrested

2010-07-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.canyon-news.com/artman2/publish/shermanoaks/Suspects_in_Marijuana_Money-Laundering_Case_Arrested.php

SHERMAN OAKS — An investigation in a massive marijuana money-laundering case has pointed detectives to a dispensary in the San Fernando Valley area. It is believed that the dispensary unlawfully sold millions of dollars worth of marijuana and attempted to conceal the profits by transferring the money between illegitimate businesses, according to officials. (Brett adds - While not identified in this story the dispensary that this marijuana was allegedly grown for was Golden State Collective in Granada Hills.)

The suspects in the case are 26-year-old Northridge resident Jimmy Silva, and Sherman Oaks residents 55-year-old Steven Kall and 47-year-old Anne Adams. A search warrant affidavit indicates that the three individuals allegedly laundered drug sales valued at $2.18 million during from 2007 to 2009.

On July 3, Kall and Adams were reportedly taken into custody while in Las Vegas, and have a bail amount set at $750,000 for Kall and $250,000 for Adams. Silva was taken into custody in Northridge, but was released on $250,000 after entering a not guilty plea to the charges made against him.

The suspects were arrested as a result of an investigation that lasted for approximately a year, and originated after investigators received a tip about a marijuana farm in a residence in Lockwood Valley, according to the Ventura County Sheriff. After a search warrant was executed at the home, approximately 1,000 marijuana plants were discovered. Kall reportedly indicated that the plants were being cultivated for medical purposes in connection to a Granada Hills dispensary.

A search of the dispensary, a number of homes, (including a Sherman Oaks apartment in which Kall and Adams lived), and bank accounts connected to the defendants uncovered that $3 million worth of marijuana was being sold each year during the operation. According to written documents, the marijuana profits were being transferred from one account to another in an attempt to cover its actual source. Further investigation later determined that millions of dollars was still missing, so a search was conducted to find a possible hidden cache for the missing profits. According to investigators, a man who had previous involvement in the collective had also indicated that the Kall and Adams may have purchased marijuana from individuals who did not work for the collective. It is also believed that the suspects may have used the profits to purchase expensive or luxurious items.

Kall is reportedly facing charges involving 109 counts of felony money laundering and one count of promoting an area in which to cultivate marijuana. His co-defendant, Adams, faces charges involving 13 counts of felony money laundering and nine counts of felony money-laundering respectively. Kall and Adams are expected to be arraigned. Officials indicate that the two suspects are also to receive sentencings for other felony drug charges for which they had previously entered guilty pleas.

Silva currently has pled not guilty to all charges and has a pre-trial conference scheduled for July 23. Kall and Adams have had their arraignment on the indictment continued to July 23, according to the County of Ventura District Attorney.

Al Martinez: Do we need one more drug to shield us from reality?

2010-07-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_15334359

I predict that by the end of the year the sale of marijuana will become so common in L.A. that Mom will be able to say, "Timmy, run down to Vons and get me a quart of milk, a loaf of sourdough bread, a pound of tomatoes and two ounces of pot."

Even though an effort is being made to limit the number of places that sell marijuana, and even barring home delivery, there will be no way to keep it totally under control.

Any effort to confine its sale to specific venues will be out the window by the time that old devil weed has made inroads into our culture. Fake prescriptions will pop up by the thousands and burden the marijuana stores to the extent that sellers will be expanded to include pet stores, gas stations, coffee shops and street vendors.

Its sale will satisfy not only its users but those who profit from it, including growers, sellers and the city. There's nothing like making money to keep a product in the public eye, or the public bong.

Kids who don't already have the habit will pick it up from their friends and parents and before you know it every third person in L.A. will be wearing a dim smile and calling everyone Dude; beggars will carry signs that say "Will work for Weed."

Marijuana has never been my drug of choice even though the very air reeked of burning hemp during the 1960s when I was covering the student uprisings in Berkeley. You could get stoned by just breathing. I was a martini man then and I'm a martini man now and I rarely smile, dimly or otherwise, and I call no one Dude.

That is not to say I've never tried the stuff. Since I was writing about them a lot I decided one evening to eat a sugar cube soaked in LSD. But instead of rising into psychedelic space or trying to fly out a window, I remained in my own world, as bland and colorless as it was. I just sat there drinking beer, of all things, and waiting for my soul to soar. It never did.

Someone remarked that I was unaffected because I couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. It reminded me of the famous boozer/comic W.C. Fields who, when asked if he ever suffered delirium tremens from overdrinking, replied, "I can't tell where Hollywood ends and the d.t.'s begin."

Next, on a separate occasion, I tried a pipe loaded with kief, which is made from the crystals of a cannabis plant. There were maybe four couples involved, and after a few puffs, everyone fell asleep where they sat, practically in midconversation. Only my wife Cinelli declined to smoke the pipe and remembers the evening as very weird, with everyone slumped in their chairs like oversized rag dolls.

I guess that's the way it was about 2,000 years ago when the ancient Egyptians were using pot to treat sore eyes. It worked. After a sufficient number of hits the patients just fell asleep, thus closing their eyes. In such a state the soreness was gone.

One wonders what inroads the drug sellers will make next. Well, how about controlled cocaine parties? What you do for those inclined to sniff things up their noses other than decongestants is to confine the festivities to closed auditoriums, sell a certain amount of the drug to each partygoer and let them have the time of their lives until the coke is gone and they're too stoned to party any longer.

Then when the doors are open and they stumble out onto the streets, you arrest them for being under the influence of a banned substance, fine them and release them until the next coke party. There again, you see, everyone makes money, society gets its pound of flesh and no one is hurt.

A pamphlet once distributed out of Chicago warned that "friendly strangers" might try to sneak "marihuana" into your tea pot or your tobacco in the days when you rolled your own cigarettes, describing the drug as "a powerful narcotic in which lurks murder! Insanity! Death!" Wow!

I don't believe you necessarily go from one or two hits to becoming a serial killer. But I do wonder if our culture, already a little screwy, needs one more drug to shield it from the realities of the world we should be moving to face head-on before it's too late. To cure or relieve pain, sure. But where there's money to be made, I can't help but believe that the whole humanitarian process is going to be ridden like a drunken horse over the wishes of the people and we'll all go to hell smiling dimly and calling everyone Dude.

Al Martinez is a journalist and author for newspapers and magazines across the country and a frequent contributor to the Daily News. He can be reached at almtz13@aol.com.

Landmark 'Pot vs Anaheim' Appeal to Set Precedent This Week

2010-07-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/LegalizationNation/archives/2010/07/13/landmark-pot-vs-anaheim-appeal-to-set-precedent-this-week

California's balkanized approach to medical marijuana can mean profits or jail depending on where a patient lives. The most restrictive cities like Anaheim, Calif., have re-criminalized the drug, thereby setting up an appeals court showdown scheduled to end some time in the next seven days.

The California's 4th Appellate District Division Three will issue its opinion of 'Qualified Patients vs. Anaheim' by July 19th, capping a years-long appeal watched by thousands of patients, politicians, lawyers, and press. Qualified Patients' lawyer Anthony Curiale says cities cannot make growing and distributing medical marijuana illegal, because Prop 215 and SB420 took away the criminal penalties for doing so.

If the three-judge appellate court sides with Qualified Patients, and their reasoning is sound, it could set precedent used by lawyers across the state in battleground cities like Los Angeles, Costa Mesa, and San Jose. Anaheim City Attorney Moses W. Johnson said the city's ban has already stood up once in a trial court, and if it loses on appeal, Anaheim could take it to the state Supreme Court.

The appellate court could also rule in favor of Qualified Patients, but issue an unpublished opinion inapplicable to other cities, says Oakland lawyer Joseph Elford, counsel for Americans for Safe Access. “We're hoping it'll be a bellwether case, but there's no guarantee."

If Qualified Patients' appeal fails, California would simply become even more balkanized, says Curiale, with hard-line cities like San Leandro sending even more consumer dollars to cities like Oakland that tax and regulate the $14 billion a year agricultural product.

County, city wait on courts, election to decide medical marijuana issue

2010-07-13T08:35:00.001-07:00

BARSTOW • The county will continue to prohibit new medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas for another year. Dispensaries likely won’t be allowed within city limits for another 10 months either.

City officials will recommend extending Barstow’s current dispensary moratorium another 10 or 12 months when the Council revisits the issue next month, said Ron Rector, Barstow’s community and economic development director. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to extend the county’s moratorium on dispensaries for another year.

City and county officials are waiting on the outcome of several lawsuits against cities like Los Angeles and Anaheim by medical marijuana advocates before deciding if dispensaries should be allowed at all.

Officials are also waiting on a November ballot initiative to legalize and tax marijuana. If the initiative passes, officials will still have to deal with zoning issues, county spokesman, David Wert said.

“The community has concerns about that the way they would have concerns about a liquor store,” he said.

Barstow established a 45-day moratorium last August, mirroring the county, which suspended the issuing of permits to medical marijuana dispensaries for 45 days last June. After the county extended that moratorium another 10 months and 15 days in August, Barstow followed suit the following month.

When the Council established the moratorium last year, City Planner Mike Massimini had said the city had received inquiries about medical marijuana dispensaries and needed time to research community impacts. Now, until the city won’t take action until they know what the law is, Rector said.

“We’re not going to move into findings until we really understand what the rules are,” he said, adding that the city hasn’t had any more inquiries about marijuana dispensaries. “Once the rules are put in place by the courts, then we’ll know what they are and move forward to build our medical marijuana ordinance.”

Staff at a Yucca Valley clinic that provides two Barstow area clients with medical marijuana is also waiting to see what the rules will be. According to D.J. Ross, executive director for California Alternative Medical Solutions, he is waiting on the outcome of the Anaheim case.

“That (case) will affect the ability of cities and counties to enact a ban,” he said. “Yucca Valley on Tuesday (discussed) an outright ban within town limits, which would affect us, but we’re not going to close any time soon.”

When it comes to zoning concerns, Ross said the clinic he works for is located in a plaza with a karate school and a ballet school next door. California Alternative Medical Solutions sits 3,000 feet away from a school, and the nearest home is 500 to 700 feet away, he said.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com

Will Medical Marijuana Lead to Criminal Reefer Madness in NY?

2010-07-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week NYC's special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan (website: SPECNARC.org!) fired off a letter (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/prosecutor_whacks_weed_pqjmrqhSmybvhcOlYO2prN?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=) to state legislators considering a bill that would legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Among her concerns, she feels that the bill would create a situation similar to LA, where pot dispensaries supposedly outnumber Starbucks. That's what we call Utopia, but it's Brennan's nightmare, and she thinks the New York bill is "far too loosely drawn, and offers no safeguards to protect the health of those who use it, and the safety of the communities where marijuana dispensaries would be located."

Brennan also argues that "dispensaries have proven to be public nuisances and magnets for crime," and criticizes the bill for not requiring a doctor in "good standing" to meet with a patient in person before writing a pot prescription. For counterpoint, we turn to Mike Meno, Director of Communications for the Marijuana Policy Project. He tells us, "Bridget Brennan’s fears are way off mark. New York’s medical marijuana bill is specifically crafted to safeguard against abuse through regulation—one of the many reasons it has garnered support from the likes of former Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau and state Sen. Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain.

"Brennan believes, wrongly, that the bill would allow “an unlimited number of ‘unregulated’ marijuana dispensaries, which could be near schools or in high-crime neighborhoods.” In reality, New York’s dispensaries will be licensed, tightly regulated and subject to intense scrutiny. The bill allows only state-licensed establishments to distribute medical marijuana, and the state health department will be able to deny a license to anyone it finds is not 'of good moral character.' Dispensaries would also be subject to local zoning laws."

Meno's riposte continues below, concluding that Brennan's comparisons to LA are not specifically too apt:

It’s also misleading to compare New York’s bill to the medical marijuana law California passed in 1996. The reason Los Angeles became home to more dispensaries than Starbucks (which may no longer be the case after the L.A. City Council regulated the city’s dispensaries 14 years after the fact) is because California did not impose statewide regulations on its program. New York’s law would provide regulation from the onset, and therefore more closely resemble the tightly controlled medical marijuana program in place in New Mexico.

Lastly, there is very little evidence to back Brennan’s claim that “dispensaries have proven to be public nuisances and magnets for crime.” In fact, a recent study in Denver showed that dispensaries are less likely to attract crime than banks and liquor stories. That same study showed they are as likely to be robbed as pharmacies—which, like medical marijuana dispensaries, exist to provide people with safe access to legitimate medical treatment options.

Council set to vote on extending pot shop moratorium

2010-07-12T08:59:00.000-07:00

AURORA | Aurora City Council members are set to decide Monday whether to extend the moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries through July 2011.

The vote is scheduled to take place during the council’s regularly scheduled session, beginning at 7:30 p.m. at the Aurora Municipal Center.

The moratorium that was originally implemented in December 2009 is set to expire this month. If voters decide not to outright ban medical marijuana dispensaries in an upcoming election, the moratorium would continue until July 1, 2011 or until zoning rules and regulations are put in place.

Gov. Bill Ritter signed legislation earlier this month that allows cities to either ban dispensaries at city councils’ discretion, or ask voters whether they want to ban dispensaries within their city limits.

The new statewide law allows for ballot language that could ask voters whether they want to prohibit the operation of medical marijuana centers, grow operations, and manufacturers’ licenses for marijuana-infused medical products.

Council members have discussed the possibility of asking voters whether they want to ban dispensaries in the city through a November ballot item.

At a regularly scheduled study session before the vote, council members will discuss a proposal to ask voters this November whether they want to extend a property tax.

Voters could be asked whether they want to approve a tax extension either this November, next year or in 2012.

The property tax in question is $28 for an average home costing $175,000.

If the extension is approved, the money generated could be used for capital projects, or to help the city’s budget shortfall, or both, according to city documents.

Some members of the council’s Management and Finance Committee thought seeking a tax extension in the current economic climate would be difficult and were split on whether to move forward with a ballot question this year, according to the documents.

http://www.aurorasentinel.com/articles/2010/06/21/news/metro_aurora/doc4c1ed9dea921d396424682.txt

Could L.A.'s Pot-Shop Law Be Softened Up?

2010-07-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

In what reads like a follow-up on LA Weekly's own report about how many L.A. pot shops are remaining in business despite the city's tough new law outlawing most dispensaries, the Wall Street Journal quoted Councilman Ed Reyes as saying a change in the ordinance is possible. And it sounds like by "change" he meant a softening up:

"This document is like a living organism that continues to evolve," Reyes, an author of the ordinance, told the paper. "I never saw this as a cure-all."

This is an eye opener, as the council took more than three years to draft a permanent ordinance dealing with medical marijuana dispensaries in the city. During that time the number of dispensaries in L.A. mushroomed from less than 200 to more than 500, leading late-night comics to quip that there were more pot shops in town than Starbucks outlets.

So, is Reyes saying that three-plus years wasn't enough time to get it right? After studying ordinances in places such as West Hollywood and getting tons of feedback from fed-up neighbors and dispensary lobbyists, it's still not right?

Now that the rubber meets the road and many dispensaries are resisting the city's call to shut down, Reyes is indicating that a change might be in order. Maybe we exhaled too soon.

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/marijuana/la-city-pot-law-change/

Medical cannabis industry looks to the future

2010-07-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_15337725

With much of the state engaged in discussion over legalization, the local medical marijuana community is taking steps to develop Southern Humboldt into what they hope will be a center for sustainable outdoor medical marijuana grows.

Medical marijuana advocates met Saturday night in Garberville to discuss creating health and safety regulations and to encourage education for sustainable growing. The panel discussion ranged from marijuana growing education at 707 Cannabis College, a newly formed institution in Garberville, to a proposed dispensary for the Southern Humboldt Community Hospital, to creating new policy around medical marijuana.

Syreeta Lux of the newly formed Humboldt Medical Marijuana Advisory Panel --an organization created after a forum in March about what the marijuana industry will do if pot is legalized -- said local growers have to collaborate to keep up with the rest of the industry.

She said there are growers in the Bay Area who are organizing and Humboldt should do the same.

”Regardless of what happens in the fall, we feel as a group it's time to move forward with marketing legal marijuana,” she said.

The group is also hoping to create industry standards, work that is similar to the Bay Area-based Medical Cannabis Safety Council.

Sierra Knolle, a member the Medical Cannabis Safety Council and a Southern Humboldt resident, said the council is trying to implement a safety-based production process that
could be proposed to policymakers. The council is looking at many elements, including contaminants, water quality, sanitary practices, and industry models.

The council has members who are mostly a part of the urban growing industry, and Knolle encouraged more Southern Humboldt growers to get involved so they're opinions could be heard.

”To see the difference with the urban growers to the country growers -- it's night and day,” she said.

Michael Geci, a longtime emergency room and holistic medicine doctor from Montana, discussed the science behind medical marijuana. The founder of the Montana Botanical Analysis Lab, Geci performs tests on medical cannabis at his lab in Montana to identify potency and determine the optimal strength for individual patients.

He said medical marijuana needs to be treated like other medications. Geci said there needs to be more research on what is optimal for medication, not just an optimal high.

”There are a lot of people who don't want to be high,” he said. “There are a lot of people who don't want to smoke pot -- people want an option.”

Montana Public Radio commentator and lobbyist Kate Cholewa talked about how to bridge the gap between the medical marijuana community and policymakers.

She encouraged advocates to reach out to representatives and remember that they are trying to create policy for a product that doesn't fit into any existing model. Cholewa recommended reaching out to supporters of organics or environmentalists -- groups that could see the value of outdoor, sustainable growing.

”We get to create this -- this is a whole different way of doing politics,” Cholewa said. “We're not trying to change something, we're trying to create it.”

Rally in D.C. to try and end the prohibition of marijuana

2010-07-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

Why should anyone have to continue to buy extremely toxic chemicals from the big pharmaceutical companies that give a sick person little or no relief from an illness? Many of the drugs the pharmaceutical companies sell and doctors prescribe, can and have killed people. People can grow safer and more effective medicine for pennies on the dollar. Medical marijuana has been proven to be beneficial in the treatment of pain, cancer, autism, epilepsy, high blood pressure, anxiety, anorexia and many other illnesses.

Instead people have been arrested, jailed, fined, beaten and had their property taken from them. 420inDC is holding a peaceful rally in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, 4/20/2011. It is to try and legalize of medical marijuana or for the total legalization of all marijuana.

The speakers that are scheduled to appear are Jessica Corry, Robert Corry, Brett Strauss, Don Christen and a representative from NORML.

It requires the politicians to CHANGE THE FEDERAL LAWS. It takes an act of Congress to change the law. 420inDC writes to all U.S. Senators, Representatives and the Whitehouse. They let them know where they stand and ask the politicians what their position is on legalizing medical marijuana. They ask them why medical marijuana wasn’t part of the healthcare bill. Election time is just around the corner. They ask questions and vote for the people that share their views. For more information, go to http://www.420inDC.org

Related Links:

420inDC Home Page - http://www.420indc.org/

Scheduled speakers - http://www.420indc.org/Speakers.htm

Sign up to attend - http://www.420indc.org/JoinNow.htm

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=118809

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County voters to decide on medical marijuana

2010-07-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

Voters will shape the future of medical marijuana in Douglas County this November, with a ballot question targeting unincorporated areas of the county.

Douglas County commissioners are poised to adopt a resolution to ask county residents if they want to allow medical marijuana dispensaries in Douglas County.

At a June 16 staff meeting, commissioners gave the green light to the county’s legal staff to draft a resolution slated for a June 22 adoption. The resolution extends the county’s moratorium on dispensaries through Nov. 2, when voters will decide whether Douglas County is a marijuana friendly community.

If voters elect to allow dispensaries in Douglas County, the county will extend the moratorium as it begins the process of drafting medical marijuana regulations, said Lance Ingalls, Douglas County attorney. Should voters say yes to medical marijuana, a moratorium remains in place until regulations are adopted, according to the draft resolution.

If Douglas County residents open the door for medical marijuana dispensaries, any moratorium is lifted by July 1, 2011, the state’s deadline to have regulations in place. Commissioners will have until then to draft regulations, Ingalls said.

The county will additionally revisit its present zoning restrictions on dispensaries to confirm whether or not it aligns with Colorado’s 80 pages of statutes in the Medical Marijuana Code. On March 30, the county adopted zoning regulations to restrict medical marijuana dispensaries to a handful of industrial parcels in unincorporated Douglas County.

“If the zoning regulations already adopted are deemed insufficient because of something in [state statute], we are directed to review and propose any changes to the board,” Ingalls said.

The election will be the first in recent history to pose a ballot question to all of unincorporated Douglas County, said Jack Arrowsmith, Douglas County clerk and recorder. Most county-wide ballot questions include all county residents, whether or not they live within the limits of a municipality.

The clerk and recorder’s office is charged with creating a ballot to isolate those residents who live within an incorporated portion of the county, Arrowsmith said.

The ballot question will not be presented to residents of incorporated Parker, Castle Rock, Lone Tree, Larkspur, Castle Pines North and pockets of the county that include Littleton and Aurora.

Residents of Parker already know the outcome of the medical marijuana question, with a ban adopted by Parker town council at about the time Douglas County opted for an election. Castle Rock remains under a moratorium as Castle Rock’s town council debates whether to send the question to a public vote.

The county’s decision to send it to the public reflects a longtime tradition in Douglas County, said Wendy Holmes, Douglas County public affairs director.

“The commissioners want the people to decide,” Holmes said. “That’s the culture here.”

The people who will decide if Douglas County will allow the cultivation and sale of medical marijuana include residents of Highlands Ranch, Castle Pines Village, Franktown and all of rural Douglas County, Arrowsmith said.

At present, Douglas County is home to a handful of medical marijuana dispensaries whose future is uncertain, said commissioner Jack Hilbert. Hilbert attended a meeting for commissioners from across the state where the conversation revolved around the issue of how existing dispensaries are impacted by the outcome of an election.

If voters decide to close the door on medical marijuana dispensaries, commissioners across the state are wary of getting caught up in an illegal taking of any dispensaries already in business.

“We just don’t want to end up in a taking issue,” Hilbert said. “It would all be open to interpretation; there would certainly be court action.”

If medical marijuana gets a stamp of approval from Douglas County voters, existing dispensaries will have until July 1, 2011, to comply with any county regulations adopted, Ingalls said. Otherwise, Ingalls does not know how existing dispensaries could be impacted.

Regardless of the outcome, commissioners across the state know the issue could result in lengthy legal arguments.

“They say this [medical marijuana debate] is going to be a lawyer’s dream,” Hilbert said.

County revisits medical marijuana

2010-07-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

La Plata County commissioners on Tuesday will consider whether to lift the county's moratorium on new medical marijuana operations to give existing operators a shot at staying open while a new state law is implemented.

If the county lifts the moratorium in the next couple of weeks, it would give operators a small window of opportunity to apply before the July 1 deadline when they must prove to the state they have a local license or are in the process of getting one.

Otherwise, they will have to wait until new state licensing rules, which have yet to be drafted, are in place.

"It kind of puts me in a little bit of a pickle here," Travis Pollock, owner of Natures Own Wellness Center, said in a phone interview last week.

Pollock said he has a site in the county where he grows some of the marijuana used to supply centers he has in Durango and Cortez.

When he called the county's Planning Department last year about getting a permit or license, he was told no process existed.

"So they told me to stay under the home-based business rules of having my facilities under 800 feet. If I was able to do that, then I wouldn't have to be licensed," he said.

But now Pollock doesn't have any documentation to meet the state requirement demonstrating he has local government approval.

The predicament is emblematic of the mad dash at all levels of government to improvise a legal structure for regulating medical marijuana where none existed before.

Colorado voters legalized medical marijuana in 2000, but the flood gates opened last year when the Obama administration announced that it would not seek to prosecute individuals who are complying with state laws, although medical marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

State lawmakers responded with House Bill 1284, which was signed into law earlier this month and sets new rules for growing and selling medical pot.

Commissioners received a briefing on the new law in a work session last Tuesday. Though not normally allowed, commissioners took testimony from the audience of about 15 people. Pollock and other center owners urged them to lift the moratorium.

Jonny Radding, an owner of Durango Organics, said the operations create jobs.

"I think it also brings in much-needed growth to these areas," he said.

The state bill differentiates between centers, manufacturing facilities and caregivers.

Caregivers are not licensed by local government and can provide medical marijuana for up to five patients.

Centers, on the other hand, will be required to have both state and local licenses. They cannot possess more than six plants and 2 ounces for each patient registered with the center.

Centers must also grow 70 percent of their marijuana on site or at a licensed grow site that has been officially recognized as their supplier.

The bill gives local governments or voters the power to ban centers and manufacturing facilities. Bayfield imposed such a ban last month.

Pollock said if he can't get his La Plata County grow site licensed, he will have to go elsewhere.

"We have multiple sites," he said. "It's just more of a hassle for me because then I have to travel to pick up my medicine. I have to bring it back, and I'm spending time and so forth that could be contained in this community."

Commissioners in March voted to impose a six-month moratorium on the development of land for medical marijuana dispensaries or grow houses.

County staff reported seeing a spike in interest, mostly in establishing grow houses, before the moratorium was imposed.

Even if commissioners vote Tuesday to lift the moratorium, the county still will have to quickly come up with a temporary process for permitting the operations. Otherwise applicants would be no better off than if the moratorium had stayed in place.

The options commissioners will consider Tuesday are permanently lifting the moratorium, leaving it in place or lifting it just until July 1 to give existing operators a chance to meet the state requirements.

In a report, county staff recommended against lifting the moratorium permanently but was moot on the other possibilities.

"The other options are policy decisions which are solely within the purview of the (board of county commissioners)," it reads.

The report recommended against lifting the moratorium if commissioners are inclined to ban operations in the future.

"A continuous moratorium would prevent staff and the public from wasting resources on the drafting of new regulations that may never be adopted or making business plans that may not come to fruition," it reads.

Under the state law, the location of operations that grow marijuana for a center, called an "optional premises," are confidential and will be kept out of public records.

The plants, which can be worth thousands, have been a target of break-ins and theft.

But the secrecy creates another problem for the county if the centers are to be allowed.

The county's land-use code uses neighborhood compatibility to determine whether a land-use permit should be approved.

"If you can't identify where the property is, how do you determine compatibility?" County Attorney Sheryl Rogers asked.

Lansing-area arrest might clarify medical marijuana law

2010-07-06T09:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20100621/NEWS01/6210319/1002/NEWS01

When Meridian Township police stopped 37-year-old Aaron Katz for speeding, they discovered marijuana in his car.

He faces the possibility of time behind bars because of a charge of marijuana possession, along with another of operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol.

Yet the Marshall man apparently has a state-issued medical marijuana card, which his attorney says is reason to drop the marijuana charge.

Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III argues in his brief that Katz received the card after his March 4 arrest and that he didn't have a "bona fide" relationship with the doctor who gave him a recommendation for the state's medical marijuana program.

"He was not a 'registered qualifying patient' at the time of the offense," Dunnings said in court documents. "There was not a 'bona fide physician-patient relationship' at the time."

According to Dunnings, the doctor who gave Katz his recommendation specializes in obstetrics and gynecology.

The case is another that could help bring clarity to Michigan's medical marijuana law, which two-thirds of the state's voters approved in 2008.

"Everyone is trying to be compliant with the law," said Lisa McCormick, Ingham County's chief assistant prosecuting attorney. However, "there's a lot of questions that have come up with the way it's written.

"That's why cases will be litigated. That's our system. It will be very interesting to see how it all pans out."

Mike Nichols, Katz's attorney, is upset with prosecutors for touching on the doctor-patient relationship.

"The issue is whether (the) Department of Community Health checked it out, endorsed the application and granted the card," he said. "It's nobody's business how long (the doctor) spent with that person and what (he or she) did to analyze their case."

While Dunnings emphasizes that Katz received his medical marijuana card after his arrest, Nichols said that the medical marijuana allowance should be permitted because Katz's conditions existed before the arrest.

Katz declined to comment for this story, and Nichols would not say what those medical conditions are. But court documents say that they include "severe and chronic pain," "severe nausea" and "severe and persistent muscle spasms"

What constitutes a "bona fide" doctor-patient relationship is something state officials may look into.

"That's one of the things we are concerned about when it comes to doctor-patient relationships," said James McCurtis, spokesman of the Michigan Department of Community Health. "That's one of the topics that we're going to ask the Board of Osteopathic Medicine and the Board of Medicine to define (and) set up some type of guideline.

"Right now, there isn't anything that clearly defines what is a bona fide doctor-patient relationship, not in the public health code."

He did not say what he thinks the proper guidelines are, explaining that he wouldn't want to influence the state boards.

The Capitol City Compassion Club, an advocacy and education group, invites the seriously ill to meet with a doctor for potential recommendations to participate in the state's medical marijuana program.

Traveling from outside Greater Lansing, the doctor recently began making weekly trips to the 2010 E. Michigan Ave. club.

Robin Schneider, the club president, said that appointments of less than a half hour shouldn't be an issue.

She emphasized that she's known doctors to do the same for other types of medication.

Voters may get say on pot tax

2010-07-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.chieftain.com/news/local/article_0c5183e8-7cf1-11df-8ad5-001cc4c002e0.html

Pueblo voters may get to voice their opinions on medical marijuana in November, including whether to levy a 4.3 percent sales tax on the drug and its related paraphernalia.

That would be on top of the current city sales tax of 3.5 percent. And on top of the state's 2.9 percent sales tax. And Pueblo County's 1 percent tax. Those taxes already total 7.4 percent if you're adding them up.

"So we're talking about a total sales tax of nearly 12 percent on medical marijuana?" asked Tom Sexton, the owner of MediMar Ministries, a medical marijuana center that is trying to get licensed in Pueblo. "It seems the city's attitude is to make it as difficult as possible for people who have a legal right to use medical marijuana to obtain any. And the only thing that will accomplish is keep the business underground."

In two weeks, City Council will consider a proposed ballot measure that would impose the 4.3 percent tax on medical pot and other products sold with it. That rate of tax was picked by city staff because the city already charges a 4.3 percent surtax on every hotel and motel room in the city — called a lodging tax.

"No one knows what it would actually cost the city to license and regulate medical marijuana centers, so we are proposing a similar amount to the lodging tax as a starting point," City Attorney Tom Florczak said last week.

Council hasn't really discussed the sales-tax issue yet, although there is broad sentiment among the seven members that if the city is going to license and regulate those businesses, the medical pot centers should pay additional sales tax. Part of the reason is that council expects the businesses to require more attention from police.

Council President Larry Atencio, who favors licensing and regulating the businesses said all indications are the marijuana centers have plenty of patients or customers.

"Voters have said people have a right to use medical marijuana for certain health conditions," Atencio said. "That's fine, but I'm also willing to tax the heck out of them. I'm all in favor of sin taxes, so a 4.3 percent tax sounds fine to me."

Councilwoman Judy Weaver doesn't want any medical marijuana centers in Pueblo. She wants council to support a resolution that would put that fundamental question on the November ballot. Thus far, a majority of council appears to be favoring licensing, regulating and taxing the medical pot industry instead.

But if centers are established in the city, Weaver wants to tax them, too.

"I'd hope we'd do the research on what other cities are charging and what their experience is," she said, noting that voters in the Western Slope town of Fruita approved a 5 percent tax on medical pot sales.

Sexton has been trying to get formal city approval to operate his center since the summer of 2009. He obtained a sales tax license and then council passed an emergency moratorium last autumn on licensing marijuana centers. That ban has been extended twice and now runs through July 27 of this year. And the Legislature just finished approving a new state law that will not start providing state licenses until July 2011.

Sexton said that state and local governments are setting up hurdles for medical marijuana providers faster than operators can address them.

"What I'm hearing is that the state is going to be charging something like $30,000 for a state license," Sexton said with some resignation. "And now the city wants to tack on more sales tax. They must want to force all medical marijuana providers to operate underground. What about the people who need this for their medical conditions? Why are they being punished with these higher taxes?"

Council intends to have a public hearing on the proposed ballot question at its next regular meeting on June 28.

http://www.chieftain.com/news/local/article_0c5183e8-7cf1-11df-8ad5-001cc4c002e0.html

Implement medical marijuana program

2010-07-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

Look at other states and use the best model to get New Jersey's program running this year.

In January, New Jersey became the 14th state to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. It was an affirmation of what thousands of sufferers of cancer, AIDS, glaucoma and other conditions already know -- that marijuana is one of the few substances, for some, the only substance, that can take away their daily pain and mask some of their symptoms.

New Jersey's law is restrictive, probably more so than all other states that have legalized medical marijuana. Patients certified by a doctor and registered with the state won't be allowed to grow the plant themselves. Rather, they'll have to purchase marijuana from one of a handful of dispensaries around New Jersey that will be created to provide small, strictly governed amounts of marijuana.

The dispensation of medical marijuana to patients was supposed to begin in October, but now the Christie administration wants a delay to fine tune the rules and parameters of the program. One thing Christie's Health and Senior Services commissioner is looking to do is create a single site for growing all the marijuana that would be available to patients who qualify to use medical marijuana.

The administration had sought a delay of up to a year in implementing the law. That's unnecessarily long. State Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, the law's sponsor, has proposed a more reasonable delay of 90 days.

We can understand the governor's desire to get this right. He's trying to ensure that medical marijuana doesn't open a Pandora's box to fully legalized marijuana for recreational use, which is not what the Legislature intended in approving this law.

We just don't see how it would take up to a year to get it right. There are 13 other states that allow patients to use marijuana for legitimate medical purposes. Some of them administer it better than others. Simply look at the other states and find the ones that do it right by making it easy for people who truly need the drug to get it while preventing recreational users from abusing the system to get the drug.

Health and Senior Services need not waste time reinventing the wheel while legitimate sufferers with chronic and even fatal conditions are denied a pain medication that has been shown to work. For many, marijuana has far better results in suppressing nausea, restoring vision and easing pain than any pill or liquid the pharmaceutical industry has come up with.

There are workable medical marijuana programs out there in states that legalized marijuana for this use years ago. Copy how these programs work and get it going in this state quickly. Patients ought to be able to legally obtain marijuana through the state by the end of this year.

http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20100621/OPINION/6210307/1046/Implement-medical-marijuana-program

2 marijuana dispensary workers killed hours apart; LAPD probes possible links

2010-07-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/2-marijuana-dispensary-workers-killed-hours-apart-lapd-probe-possible-links.html

Los Angeles Police Department detectives Friday morning were trying to determine whether there was any connection between two robberies hours apart Thursday at two medical marijuana dispensaries that left two employees dead.

The first robbery occurred on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. The second at 9:15 p.m. a few miles away on El Centro Avenue in Hollywood. The killings come as Los Angeles authorities are in the process of cracking down on pot businesses, resulting in the closure of dozens of the outlets.

LAPD sources told The Times that detectives were looking at all possibilities, but stressed they were not sure if the two crimes were linked. The victims at both locations were shot, they said, but a knife might have also been used in one of them.

Me.pot-photoAt the marijuana dispensary in Echo Park, one worker was killed and another was wounded. Officials said the store was ransacked.

[Updated at 6:56 a.m.: The worker killed in the Echo Park shooting was identified Friday by the L.A. County Coroner's office as Matthew Benjamin Butcher, 27, of Los Angeles.]

An unknown number of suspects stormed into the Higher Patch Holistic Care store at 1302 Sunset Blvd. In Hollywood, the employee was discovered dead in that store when someone entered the establishment. The shootings are sure to increase debate about medical marijuana businesses around L.A.

Critics say there are far too many and claim the businesses generate crime.

-- Andrew Blankstein and Robert J. Lopez

Budget, marijuana ordinance committee before Butte County supervisors

2010-06-29T10:49:00.001-07:00

OROVILLE -- Butte County's Board of Supervisors can be expected to have a long and possibly difficult day Tuesday, as they conduct a public hearing on the proposed budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

The proposed budget, including all categorically earmarked funds, comes to more than $425 million.

The General Fund — that portion of the budget that pays for "discretionary" programs, such as firefighting and law enforcement — makes up only $128.5 million of the total.

During the public hearing on the budget, county department heads usually come forward in an attempt to persuade the supervisors to increase their allocation.

The agenda also calls for the board to transfer 10 percent of the Public Health Realignment Trust Fund and 5 percent of the Mental Health Realignment Trust Fund to the county's Welfare Fund. There is also a scheduled discussion on the size of the contingency fund.

Also on the board's agenda for its regular session is a request to endorse a grant application that would create an "agricultural easement" on 145 acres of land adjacent to Hegan Lane in Chico, half a mile west of the "green line" — the demarcation point between urban and agricultural uses.

The Northern California Regional Land Trust will apply for the grant from the state Department of Conservation's Farmland Conservancy Program. The documents going to the supervisors don't specify the precise amount of the grant request other than to say it will cover the market value of the property.

The land is currently in agricultural production and the proposed easement is meant to guarantee it will remain that way.

In other issues, the supervisors are being asked to establish a marijuana ordinance committee to work with the sheriff, district attorney, county counsel, Department of Development Services and the county administration in helping to craft proposals on how to regulate the growing of medical marijuana. The committee would also look at other medical marijuana issues including how, where and if to allow cannabis dispensaries in county jurisdiction.

Public Meeting

Butte County Board of Supervisors

Budget hearing at 1:30 p.m., regular session begins at 9 a.m. Tuesday

In the Administration Building on County Center Drive in Oroville

Marijuana lollipops for sale on Lakers parade route

2010-06-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/marijuana-lollipops-for-sale-on-lakers-parade-route.html

In addition to the sales of Lakers paraphernalia and water, some surprising entrepreneurs took to the parade route to sell their wares.

Among them was a mobile truck, Weed World Candies.com, selling marijuana lollipops in hues of orange and blue. (The truck itself is green with a photo mural of young women in bikinis sorting marijuana leaves.)

The assortment included brands of marijuana such as OG Kush and Grand Daddy Perp. The truck’s owner, Bilal Muhammad, said he was recently forced to shut down his store in West Hollywood and had taken his business on the road.

Customers approaching his truck were asked if they had a prescription card allowing them to purchase marijuana and then were handed a free lollipop.

“It’s been working out very well,” he said of business before driving away as police became visible in the distance.

So far, Muhammad was able to work without interruption from police.

-- Gale Holland

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/06/marijuana-lollipops-for-sale-on-lakers-parade-route.html

Medical pot can cost parents in custody disputes

2010-06-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

MATLOCK, Wash. -- Nicholas Pouch runs an organic farm and a glassblowing studio on a 20-acre spread in southwest Washington's timber country. Spicy mustard greens, tomatoes and corn sprout in humid greenhouses as chickens and sheep roam nearby.

It would be an ideal place for children to romp, Pouch thinks. But his children can't be there because he's a medical marijuana patient.

A drug task force acting on a tip from his former partner raided his grow operation in 2007. Even though Pouch's criminal charges were dropped, she cited the arrest and his marijuana use in winning full custody of their boys, now 9 and 11.

For the past 2 1/2 years, Pouch has seen the boys twice a month, during supervised visits at a neutral house in Olympia. "There's no reason anybody should have to go through this," Pouch said. "Why aren't they here, chasing snakes like they like to do?"

More than a decade after states began approving marijuana for medical use, its role in custody disputes remains a little-known side effect.

While those laws can protect patients from criminal charges, they typically haven't prevented judges, court commissioners or guardians ad litem from considering a parent's marijuana use in custody matters - even in states such as Washington, where complying patients "shall not be penalized in any manner, or denied any right or privilege," according to the law.

Arbiters often side with parents who try to keep their children away from pot. Medical marijuana activists in several states, including Washington, California and Colorado, say they've been getting more inquiries from patients wrapped up in custody-divorce cases in recent years as the ranks of patients who use marijuana swell.

Lauren Payne, legal services coordinator with a California marijuana law reform group called Americans for Safe Access, said that since mid-2006 her organization has received calls about 61 such cases.

In Colorado last month, an appeals court ruled that medical marijuana use is not necessarily a reason to restrict a parent's visitation. Washington courts have held otherwise.

"The court cannot countenance a situation where a person is using marijuana, under the influence of marijuana and is caring for children," an Island County, Wash., judge ordered in one such dispute. "There's nothing in the medical marijuana law that deprives the court of its responsibility and legal authority to provide for proper care of children so that people aren't caring for children who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs."

In that case, the medical marijuana patient, Cameron Wieldraayer, was granted only supervised visits with his two young daughters - a decision upheld by an appeals court.

Many patients insist that using pot makes them no less fit as parents, and that they shouldn't lose custody or visitation rights if there's no evidence they're abusing the drug.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, two of the 14 states with medical marijuana laws - Michigan and Maine - specify that patients won't lose custody or visitation rights unless the patient's actions endanger the child or are contrary to the child's best interests.

Pouch, who grows marijuana in an old chicken coop, smokes a few puffs three or four times every day, and says he doesn't get high the way he did when he used marijuana recreationally in his younger days. He said he uses it to treat pain from carpal tunnel syndrome aggravated by glassblowing, as well as a shoulder that frequently pops out of its socket due to old sports injuries.

"I'm an outgoing, upstanding person. I do three different farmers markets and I'm a member of the Mason County Chamber of Commerce," said Pouch, 37. "I am not an activist at all, but I have the right to use this. It aids my pain, and it allows me to function in my everyday activities, where pills and opiates don't."

The mother of Pouch's boys declined to comment.

Pouch also has a young daughter with another woman, and is also allowed only supervised visits with her. This month, after a guardian ad litem made a favorable report about Pouch's parenting skills, a court commissioner awarded him custody - but then stayed the decision while the girl's mother challenges it.

Opposing spouses often argue that they have a right to keep their children away from illegal substances, and marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

With some other medications, such as narcotic painkillers or bipolar medications, judges can require tests to establish how much of the drug a parent has in his or her system, said Eleanor Couto, a family law attorney in Longview, Wash.

But treatment providers can't prescribe specific amounts of marijuana without running afoul of federal law, so it isn't always clear what constitutes an appropriate level of the drug.

"How do you monitor how much someone can smoke?" Couto asked. "How do know they're able to adequately care for that child? I think it's got to be a case-by-case basis."

Seattle lawyer Sharon Blackford noted that urine tests can establish how much marijuana is in a patient's system based on current use, and that monitoring is "as easy to do for medical marijuana as it is for alcohol."

Couto said she represents one father who worked out a tentative arrangement with his ex whereby he can continue to use medical marijuana, as long as someone else watches their child while he does.

In another case, she's representing a father who is trying to win primary custody of his teenagers for the first time because their mother is married to a medical marijuana patient who also has a history of minor criminal offenses and several drunken-driving convictions.

Early this year, a judge who called Washington's medical marijuana law "an absolute joke" and "an excuse to be loaded all the time" ordered that stepfather, Julian Robinson, to keep at least a quarter-mile from the teenagers because of his marijuana use, according to a transcript of the hearing.

That means Robinson can't be around the children he has raised for the past 13 years, even though they live in his home near Castle Rock, with his wife and their four younger children.

Robinson sometimes stays with friends or rolls out a foam sleeping pad in his neighbor's horse trailer. He misses baseball games and church services.

"It has torn my family apart," Robinson said. "We used to do everything together."

Pouch, who said he's spent $35,000 on legal costs in the past four years, hopes to persuade the court to grant him partial or even primary custody of his children.

In the meantime, they dug a garden last year at the Olympia home rented by South Sound Family Services where they have their supervised visits. Pouch brought in manure and vegetable starts last month. The boys planted corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and pumpkins.

---

Online:

Pouch's farm: http://www.naturescreationfarm.com/

Americans for Safe Access: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/

Plan to burn pot riles activists

2010-06-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

Julie Falco got hot under the collar when she learned Cook County would burn 5,500 pounds of cannabis seized last week in one of its largest busts.

"Depending on its purity, that represents a lot of medicine that could have helped so many Illinoisans," said the North Side woman who uses marijuana to ease the symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

The reaction was echoed by others calling on the state to join 14 others in legalizing marijuana use for medical purposes. It also follows last Wednesday's seizure of 5,525 pounds of cannabis.

The cache, carrying a street value of $20 million, was found in a house on West 47th Street in southwest suburban Lyons, police said Friday. A man renting the property, Frederico Moreno, 35, has been charged with manufacturing and delivery cannabis. He faces 6 to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Police are planning to incinerate all but 10,000 grams of the marijuana, saving that amount as evidence.

"We will solicit a court order today to have the rest incinerated safely," Kevin Ruel, deputy chief of special investigations for the Cook County sheriff's office, said Friday.

Advocates for legalization object to the move.

"Incinerating it is a waste," said Lisa Lange, who relies on cannabis to ease chronic pain associated with degenerative osteoarthritis. "I would prefer to see it tested and then, if safe, distributed to compassionate care clubs."

Still, she argued that the size of the seizure -- product police allege was bound for Chicago streets -- won't dent local supply.

"The only way to stop this trafficking is to show compassion of those who rely on medical cannabis and pass Bill 1381," said Lange, who like Falco is working with various groups, including the Marijuana Policy Project based in Washington, D.C.

'There is support on both sides'

The Illinois Senate has already passed that legislation. House Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) is planning to introduce it for a vote in the House as early as November.

He now has 58 of the 60 votes needed to get the measure passed in January, he said Saturday. The liberal Democrat said he's confident the remaining votes can be secured after the pressure of November elections has passed.

"There is support on both sides," he said Saturday. "What we have is a very narrow piece of legislation that avoids the problems of dispensaries like those in California."

Bill 1381 would stop short of setting up those businesses, which operate in many of the 14 states with medical marijuana laws. The Illinois legislation is the most limited and would require patients to cultivate marijuana plants at home, restricting them to having three mature specimens at any one time. They would also be responsible for cultivating the seeds. If passed, the the legislation would expire after three years.

They're compromises, but ones Falco hopes will satisfy lawmakers and lead to broader legalization in three years.

"It's only a start," she said.

Local legislator lends an ear and a compassionate heart for medical marijuana

2010-06-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

MUSCATINE, Iowa -I f Iowa supporters of medical marijuana find a sympathetic ear in the Iowa Legislature, it will be because of lawmakers like Jeff Kaufmann.

Kaufmann, R-Wilton, who represents the 79th House District, together with legislative candidate Mark Lofgren of Muscatine, a fellow Republican who's running for the seat in the 80th District currently held by Nathan Reichert, D-Muscatine, attended a Saturday afternoon screening of the documentary film, "Waiting to Inhale," at the Musser Public Library.

Lofgren took notes but offered no public comments.

The event, which attracted 11 people, was sponsored by the group Iowa Patients for Medical Marijuana, founded by Jimmy Morrison, 23, of Muscatine.

Kaufmann urged people who want the law changed, including those with fibromyalgia, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and those with Multiple Sclerosis -patients who say marijuana reduces their pain or nausea - to be careful how they lobby their legislators.

"You are asking us to go into the fray, but we can't address your issues without asking the tough questions," he said. "There is no chance for this bill (which would legalize marijuana use for medical purposes only) unless you shut the door and triple lock it" against those who would prefer that Iowa approve marijuana for recreational use, too.

"I'm the only legislator who showed up today. I'm here," he told a crowd who shared with Kaufmann both their pain and their tears, "because my mother suffered from fibromyalgia."

Lisa Jackson, 44, of Crawfordsville, also has fibromyalgia, a chronic condition with symptoms that include pain, tenderness and stiffness in the muscles and joints, and fatigue and anxiety.

She said that smoking marijuana has enabled her to "get out of bed, raise 50 chickens, mow 2 1/2 acres and keep the kids fed and dressed. To me that's a life I can be proud of."

She described a life before trying medicinal marijuana in which "my family carried on around me, but without me."

A little more than two years ago, she said she was seated on her bed holding her husband's gun, ready to take her own life. Then her husband walked into the room, and the two had a heart-to-heart talk about "how our lives had to change."

For her the most beneficial change was when she began smoking half an ounce of marijuana each week.

"My children know I smoke and why," she said, her talk interrupted a few times by tears. "In many ways they have paid a higher price than I have."

Kauf-mann said he got his first inkling of Iowans' strong support for a change in the law during what he called a "listening post" event in Clarence.

"It doesn't get much more conservative than Clarence," he said. "I threw out (the topic of) medical marijuana and at least 90 percent of them said they believed we should continue to have the discussion."

"It's an idea," he added, "that you've convinced me needs to be discussed (in the Legislature). We're still small enough (in Iowa) that people talking to (legislators) can change our minds.

"Now," he said of the proposal, "we need to make it politically viable."

After the film, Morrison talked about the prospects of following up February's vote by the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to recommend that the Legislature remove marijuana as a Schedule I drug, which by definition have no medicinal use and a high probability of addiction.

Medical marijuana proposals died during the 2010 session. Morrison said he and Jackson want to help form a study group that includes patients, scientists, law enforcement officials and drug treatment providers.

Kaufmann said he supports that idea, even if it's not appointed by the Legislature.

"We read reports from task forces all the time," he said. "Sometimes we turn them into bills."

Legit medical pot growers to be identified in registry

2010-06-18T10:18:00.001-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO — After police confiscated 162 marijuana plants from a Taraval neighborhood home last week, a registry of certified medical cannabis growers in San Francisco will be put together by the Police Department and health officials.

The arrest has caused an uproar among medical marijuana advocates because the suspect provided pot to a dispensary and had papers that allowed him to grow the plants, according to members of Axis of Love, a collective of medicinal marijuana providers.

On June 10, police raided a home at 215 Crestmont Drive about 1:30 p.m., according to police. Officers arrested Cody Phillips, 28, and took the 162 plants, several bags of marijuana, cash and growing equipment.

Prosecutors charged the case and there was some confusion about the legitimacy of the grower’s papers, according to police Cmdr. John Loftus. The home also had problems with its electrical wiring, and PG&E was called to the house at one point.

There’s currently a citywide permitting process for medical dispensaries that includes hearings in front of city planners, but there’s no local registry for the growers who supply medical marijuana.

"We are hoping for some kind of guidelines so that they can register with the Department of Public Health," Loftus said. "There is a large criminal element that grows marijuana illegally and does it for profit. We’re having problems distinguishing between the two."

The Police Department has not been able to provide consistent numbers on marijuana arrests despite repeated requests from media organizations and an oversight committee formed in 2006 after The City passed legislation making marijuana offenses the lowest priority for police.

One member of the Marijuana Offenses Oversight Committee, Catherine Smith, said there have been 71 raids on grow houses in the past year. Many of those have come in the Taraval police district, which includes the Sunset district.

"That’s a lot of home invasions," Smith told the Police Commission on Wednesday. "Some of them were warranted. Most of them were not."

Police commissioners Petra DeJesus and Jim Hammer agreed with the idea, saying there should be a way to separate legitimate medical cannabis growers from illegal ones.

Collecting signatures to legalize marijuana turns violent

2010-06-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

SPOKANE -- A Spokane activist is hitting the pavement hard collecting thousands of signatures for Initiative 1068 to legalize marijuana. But the person who owns the pavement triggered a heated exchange on one Spokane street corner.

Angela Johnson has been prepared for the rain as she stood on Ruby and Division for several days. But the thing she was not prepared for was the backlash from property owners. Johnson had put signs on the public sidewalk telling drivers where to pull in and sign a petition for I-1068.

She did not have any problems until Thursday morning. The property owner came over furious. Johnson said the owner told her she was trespassing and she had to leave. Johnson said that was not a problem and moved her car. But it didn't stop there.

"He said he was going to take the signs because they were on his property. He tried to rip the signs out of the ground and he grabbed my arm and I got scratched," said Johnson.

Johnson is not pressing any charges and is now looking for a new location. But she says that does not make what happened right.

"I understand as much passion as I have for the cause, they have the same passion against the cause. But I didn't expect to be confronted like that in that hostility," said Johnson.

Calls to the property manager went unanswered.

http://www.krem.com/news/local/Collecting-signatures-to-legalize-marijuana-turns-violent-96624904.html

Prosecutor whacks weed

2010-06-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

The city's top drug prosecutor is campaigning to stop a bill that would legalize medical marijuana -- warning state lawmakers that the current proposal could boost crime by creating more pot delivery centers than Starbucks, The Post has learned.

"I am writing to express concern for the public health and safety of all New Yorkers, if the 'medical marijuana bill' should pass," special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan said in a stern letter to lawmakers.

The measure working its way through both houses of the state Legislature would allow patients with life-threatening diseases or severe pain to toke marijuana. The state Health Department would regulate so-called marijuana dispensaries and prescribers.

But Brennan -- who supports the study of marijuana for medical use -- said the bill is "far too loosely drawn, and offers no safeguards to protect the health of those who use it, and the safety of the communities where marijuana dispensaries would be located."

Brennan outlined a number of flaws in the legislation, including:

* Allowing an unlimited number of "unregulated" marijuana dispensaries, which could be near schools or in high-crime neighborhoods.

She noted that in Los Angeles there were more pot palaces than Starbucks, adding that the city was forced to shut down 437 marijuana dispensaries last week.

"Dispensaries have proven to be public nuisances and magnets for crime," Brennan said

* Failing to require a doctor in "good standing" to meet with a patient before providing a certification to obtain medical marijuana. The bill would allow veterinarians and podiatrists to prescribe marijuana, she said.

* Lacking protocols to test for dangerous contaminants that could harm patients with weak immune systems, such as HIV or those undergoing chemotherapy.

New Pot Ordinance Approved

2010-06-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

By a 6-1 vote, the Santa Barbara City Council tentatively approved a new and stricter medical marijuana ordinance that would allow no more than three dispensaries within city limits. In addition, the council agreed to place an initiative on the November ballot asking city voters whether dispensaries should be banned outright. The vote came after more than three hours of passionate debate, ornate oratory, and intricate procedural maneuvers among a board of elected officials who have collectively wrestled with the issue for no less than 22 meetings over the past two years.

The vote comes three weeks after the council seemed to have put the matter to rest. That’s when the council tentatively adopted a measure that would have set the maximum number of dispensaries at five. That vote came unglued, however, when Councilmember Frank Hotchkiss experienced a change of heart two weeks ago and opted — upon reconsideration — to vote against an ordinance that he had helped craft. At that point, Mayor Helene Schneider and Councilmember Bendy White concluded the council had reached an impasse and proposed placing two competing initiatives on this November’s ballot — one in favor of the five-dispensary ordinance and another for a total ban.

Dispensary opponents on the council opposed the two-initiative solution, however, and persuaded White — a self-described swing vote — to vote in favor of the one-initiative approach. With White’s vote, the anti-dispensary block — councilmembers Dale Francisco, Frank Hotchkiss, and Michael Self — had the votes. At that point, Councilmember Das Williams and Mayor Schneider joined with them, leaving Councilmember Grant House as the sole councilmember to vote against the new ordinance and the proposed ballot initiative.

http://independent.com/news/2010/jun/17/new-pot-ordinance-approved/

Marijuana Ordinance to Go Before City Council for Vote

2010-06-15T10:14:00.001-07:00

Since last July, the conversation around Santa Barbara’s medical-marijuana ordinance has changed from where, to how, to whether dispensaries should be operated at all within the city limits.

When it meets Tuesday, the Santa Barbara City Council will have four options to consider, but if its track record holds firm, there is likely to be a fifth — indecision or continuance.

Five of seven votes are needed to approve any sort of action regarding the medical marijuana storefront collective ordinance — whether it’s adoption, further revisions, sending the topic back to the Ordinance Committee to consider a ban, or pursuing competing ballot measures on November’s ballot.

At the May 18 meeting, a 5-2 vote pushed the ordinance to Tuesday, where members were expected to adopt it without further ado. However, the crucial fifth vote given by Frank Hotchkiss is moot, as he now plans to push for a complete ban.

“Everything’s back on the table,” Mayor Helene Schneider said.

She and Councilmen Grant House and Das Williams have consistently voted for the ordinance revisions to move forward. Ordinance Committee member Bendy White has been hesitant with some aspects, usually arguing for more restrictive requirements, such as excluding the downtown area. He also recommended a two- to four-cap maximum and stricter location limits during his time on the Planning Commission.

He and Schneider have announced that, if the issue gets stuck in gridlock, they would propose two conflicting ballot measures regarding storefront collectives. Voters would be faced with adopting a ban or the revised ordinance — and if both passed with more than 50 percent, the one with the most votes would prevail.

Council members Dale Francisco — who was on the Ordinance Committee previously and helped craft the document he now votes against — and Michael Self dissented in the May 18 vote and show no signs of changing their minds. Francisco has openly supported a ban and argued for a discussion of the dispensary vs. collective legal dilemma late last year. He and former Councilwoman Iya Falcone brought the issue of ordinance revision to the council last July.

Self, in addition to Schneider, has never been on the Ordinance Committee.

Arguments for the dispensaries have focused on safe access to medicinal marijuana, while opponents have focused on the possibility of crime and illegal use and abuse of the system.

Tuesday’s meeting will begin at 2 p.m. in City Hall, Anacapa St. The item is on the consent agenda, although it’s likely to be pulled off for more discussion.

Judge: Pot shops must close immediately

2010-06-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

LAKE FOREST – A Superior Court judge has issued a final order requiring all medical marijuana dispensaries in the city to close immediately.

Judge David Chaffee ruled that "all defendants and their officers, agents, employees, representatives and all persons acting in concert or participating with them are prohibited and restrained from engaging in committing, providing the location or performing by any means activity related to the distribution of marijuana."

The order, made public Monday, appears to be the final chapter in the city's effort to shut down the dispensaries which officials say are operating in violation of the city's zoning code.

In September, Lake Forest sued 35 people in the city, including medical marijuana dispensary owners and retail landowners who rented space to them. Since then, 11 collectives have shut down; 10 continue to operate.

"This has been an important issue to the city," said Jeffrey Dunn, who has litigated the cases on part of the city. "They (dispensaries) create a whole host of problems for the city. They are not and never have been an allowable use."

The city's attorneys are contacting the remaining dispensaries to see of they will shut down voluntarily or if the Orange County Sheriff's Department needs to enforce the judge's order, Dunn said.

The remaining open dispensaries include: 215 Agenda, Vale Tudo Café, Lake Forest Patients Collective Association, Lake Forest Wellness Center and Collective, Evergreen Holistic Collective, Independent Collective of Orange County, GGICO, The Health Collective, New Amsterdam Cooperative and the Lake Forest Community Collective.

Chaffee issued his initial ruling on the issue May 12, siding with the city and allowing it to seek a preliminary injunction to stop the dispensaries from operating. The city argued the dispensaries violate zoning laws.

Chaffee agreed, citing two reasons:

•Cities are legally prohibited from passing land-use ordinances that violate state or federal law. Marijuana is illegal under federal law, so land-use laws that allow medical marijuana dispensaries would be prohibited.

•Because the city municipal code does not allow dispensaries, they have to be closed down.

Dunn said he believes Chaffee's ruling could eventually force the closure of all marijuana dispensaries in the state. For now, because the ruling is a trial court decision, it applies only to Lake Forest.

"Were it to be appealed and a court of appeal would uphold this ruling, it could be precedent setting for other cities in California," Dunn said after the May 12 decision. "It means medical marijuana dispensaries aren't allowed in the city of Lake Forest and they shouldn't be allowed in any cities – that's the big story in this."

Christopher Glew represents some of the dispensaries in the city. On Monday afternoon, he said none of his clubs had been served with papers, ordering them to close.

"If the police were to take action, it would be an abuse of police power because this is a civil order," he said. "The proper remedy would be to address it with a contempt proceeding."

Eliot, Maine, voters shoot down moratorium on medical marijuana

2010-06-14T08:39:00.001-07:00

ELIOT, Maine — Organizers behind a nonprofit entity looking to grow
and dispense medical marijuana out of a locally based clinic cleared a
substantial hurdle Saturday when town meeting voters shot down a
proposed moratorium that would have allowed elected Eliot officials more
time to study the issue before permitting such activities within the
town.

Substantial debate over the topic preceded a simple hand vote that saw
the proposed moratorium failing to pass muster, with some voters saying
they didn't want to support a temporary ban that seemed too open-ended,
with one resident arguing it would let selectmen study the issue "in
perpetuity."

About 100 Town Meeting voters gathered at Marshwood Middle School on
Saturday to vote on 40-plus warrant articles dealing with everything
from proposed zoning ordinance changes to budgetary items for the
2010-2011 fiscal year.

Among the most heavily debated and discussed item on the warrant was the
proposed moratorium, which represented a reaction to "inquiries" on the
part of those looking to establish a medical marijuana dispensary in
Eliot.

The proposed moratorium article noted the Maine Department of Health and
Human Services has indicated it plans to approve a medical marijuana
dispensary in York County by July 9 as part of a Maine Medical Marijuana
Act passed in November of 2009.

Maine DHHS data indicates a nonprofit dispensary operator will be
allowed to open up such facilities in eight districts in Maine.

Eliot officials proposed a moratorium to allow for more time for
municipal leaders to establish regulations and determine the potential
impacts of having such a facility in the community.

It stated: "The Town anticipates that such a study and review and
development of regulation will take at least six months from the
effective date of this Moratorium."

The approval of such a ban would have been a blow to the "Green
ReliefMD" organization, which is eyeing a Route 236 property as a
possible location for a dispensary clinic it hopes the Maine DHHS will
approve.

Green Relief Executive Director Ron Fousek said his organization has
been searching for a place to locate a dispensary in the York County
district with the deadline for their DHHS application rapidly
approaching at the end of the month.

Fousek said towns like Sanford, Kittery, Biddeford, North Berwick and
York already have approved moratoriums preventing them from being viable
locations in the upcoming application process.

GreenRelief is made up of a number of practitioners who will be looking
to grow medical marijuana in a secure indoor facility and allow those
with appropriate prescriptions to come pick it up. Fousek said his
organization would hand out the medical marijuana to those with proper
prescription cards with the recipients receiving a "trip ticket" that
allows them to legally take it from the facility to their homes.

Fousek addressed Eliot voters on Saturday, arguing the medicinal
benefits of the drug for those suffering with chronic illness.

He balked at talked that the introduction of such a facility would lead
to increased crime, noting hundreds of studies have proven it as an
effective drug for the treatment of everything from chronic illness to
addictions to more serious drugs.

"More is known about this plant than any other in the world," Fousek
said.

Eric Friberg — another practitioner from GreenRelief and Gulf War
veteran who has used marijuana for medical purposes — noted the
dispensary will not be a place were drugs are dealt to anyone who wants
marijuana.

"We are going to be heavily regulated ... give us a chance," Friberg
said.

Brian Enger — another practitioner — told the voters they have
little to worry about.

"We are not here to be pot dealers," Enger said.

Some Eliot residents expressed concerns that Maine laws regulating
dispensary operators allow for a 24-hour window before they come in and
check that they are operating correctly and growing within the set
guidelines spelled out by the law.

"I'm very concerned about the public safety aspects," said State Rep.
Sarah "Sally" Lewin of Eliot.

Eliot Police Chief Theodor Short didn't express any overarching concerns
about such a facility coming to town, but did note his department is
looking at how other communities have handled such facilities.

He said it isn't for his department to decide whether a moratorium was
needed.

Others expressed support for such clinics.

Janice Cerabona — a local voter — was nearly in tears when she
recalled her daughter's pain as she struggled with diabetes
complications that took her life in 2005.

"Conventional medicine could not help her," Cerabona said.

Others opposed the proposed moratorium simply because its wording didn't
prescribe a set amount of time for the town leaders to review the issue.

Budget Committee Chair John Reed said the proposed moratorium appeared
to amount to a "not in my backyard" response to Maine's approval of such
dispensaries.

He said the moratorium as proposed would allow the study to take place
of an "infinite" amount of time.

Residents eventually voted against the moratorium.

Fousek said the vote will let his organization at least apply to open a
dispensary in Eliot.

He said the group is looking to open their clinic in a building on a
property near the junction of routes 236 and 101.

Unlikely evangelist for legal marijuana

2010-06-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, June 13, 2010

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/06/13/MN3N1DPDS1.DTL#ixzz0ql9bXz6W

At first glance, Richard Lee looks nothing like a man who regularly smokes dope and spent his youth working with rock 'n' rap gods from Aerosmith to LL Cool J. Or who gunned his Harley up and down Texas highways as a young man, and has a will as stubborn as iron.

He looks like, well, a quiet business yuppie. In a wheelchair. With tidy slacks and button-down shirt, short cropped hair and a shy smile.

Even cops trained to assess people are surprised - especially once they learn that this quiet guy is the champion for one of the most revolutionary social-change movements of our time, the legitimizing of marijuana.

Lee's latest effort is the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act on the Nov. 2 ballot, which would make California the first state to legalize recreational marijuana use. Its passage would notch the 47-year-old Oakland man a spot in the annals of pot.

Such notice wouldn't be all that new for him. From hemp activism in Texas to building a cannabis university empire in Oakland, Lee has been a pioneer in the marijuana movement for 20 years - something that neither he nor his conservative Republican parents could have foreseen.

It all began with a catastrophic accident in 1990 that broke his back.

From rock to activism

Lee was 27 and working as a lighting technician for Aerosmith when he slipped on a catwalk in New Jersey while setting up for a concert. The resulting spinal injury left him paralyzed from the waist down - and suddenly the young man who flew ultralight planes and loved motorcycles and playing basketball was grounded. At least as far as his legs were concerned.

Medicinal pot which was illegal then - was the only thing, he said, that dampened back spasms as he sat in his wheelchair. When he was carjacked in Houston a year into his disabled life and waited nearly an hour for uninterested cops to show up, he found his cause.

He figured police were probably off wasting their time making marijuana busts instead of chasing the people who had stolen his car.

"I felt like, here was this wonderful medicine of cannabis that had helped me so much, and why were the cops going after people using and selling it instead of the psychos and sociopaths who are out there robbing people?" Lee said. "I thought I should do something about it."

He soon opened a hemp clothing store in Houston and became a nationally known spokesman for the weed - for both clothing and smoking use - at trade shows and community gatherings.

Other than rock 'n' roll lighting, the only hint of a career he'd had before then had been studying advertising and public relations at the University of Houston, where he dropped out in 1984.

He'd spent his youth in Texas in a house with four brothers mostly having a good time, "not really thinking about the future." Traveling the nation setting up the light racks for top acts of all kinds - he also worked with Dwight Yoakum - had seemed like enough of an avocation.

No more. Pot is now his life's work. He is so serious about its positive qualities that he rarely even calls it pot, weed or dope anymore. Its cannabis or marijuana, terms that connote the legitimacy with which he regards the plant.

Libertarian leanings

"My parents are Republicans, and actually, I'm kind of a conservative," said Lee, who is unmarried and childless. "You might call me a bit of a Libertarian. I think government is very wasteful, and for a lot of things, the free market can do better. So I guess you could say in some ways this was an unusual path for me.

"But it fits."

"When Richard told me that marijuana helped him, I did not want to hear that," Lee's 80-year-old mother, Ann Lee, said by telephone from her home in Houston. "We had always thought marijuana was the weed of the devil, and I did not want to hear anything about Richard having anything to do with it."

But after seeing that smoking helped their son's pain and eased the depression that followed his accident, Ann and her husband, Bob, 85, became reluctantly accepting. Ann was a schoolteacher and Bob ran a library for accountants and attorneys. This drug thing, they said, was not in their personal frame of reference.

"When you have a young son sitting in his wheelchair telling you that marijuana, of all things, has helped him so much with his pain, you can't dismiss it," Ann Lee said. "We realized it wasn't just because he wanted to get high. We had to gulp hard, pray hard, believe in our son and then do a heck of a lot of reading and research."

Mom to campaign

Twenty years later, the couple still get ribbed by their Republican friends for supporting their son's enterprise, but they say they hear more words of support, even in church. This summer and fall, Ann Lee intends to fly to California to help campaign for Richard's measure.

"The older I get, and the more I look back and think how I grew up in Louisiana with Jim Crow, and didn't really understand it as a white person," she said, "the more I realize that we should be talking against an unjust drug war against marijuana just the way we did against Jim Crow."

As for the career path her son has chosen - "I would never have thought he'd choose this, but then Richard has always marched to his own drumbeat and had real integrity," Lee said. "I knew he wouldn't do anything ordinary as a career.

"I just didn't know it would be this. He's worked hard and I'm proud of him." Richard Lee already had a reputation as a leader in the national movement to legalize hemp when he showed up in Oakland in 1998 to work in the medicinal cannabis business created by California's pas sage, two years before, of Proposition 215.

Starting out an employee for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, he soon opened a couple of his own dispensaries, including the SR-71 - named, from his love of aviation, after the Blackbird reconnaissance airplane. The plane's manufacturer, Lockheed, was not amused, so he eventually gave it the name it has today Coffeeshop Blue Sky.

Oaksterdam University, which teaches how to run a business or personal grow operation in the decriminalized medicinal marijuana trade, followed in 2007 in Oakland as the nation’s, first marijuana college. The district where the school sits, just north of the downtown core, got its name after Prop. 215 inspired a flurry of pot dispensaries there and local fans melded the names of Oakland with weed-tolerant Amsterdam. Lee appropriated the moniker for his cam-pus and is now so associated with the district that High Times magazine last year dubbed him "the mayor of Oaksterdam.”

Today, with a T-shirt and paraphernalia shop, grow operation and other businesses, Lee's empire pulls in $5 million a year. (Lee says his take from that is about $50,000 annually.) The $i.5 million in annual fees and local and state taxes that Oaksterdam University and Lee's other outfits collectively pay has made him a power player in area politics.

50-50 odds

It surprised nobody when he became the first person in many years to generate a ballot initiative to legalize pot. Polls place the measure's chances at about even for November.

If the measure passes, marijuana will still be illegal under federal law. Don't expect Lee to shy away from a fight with Washington.

"The most notable characteristic of Richard is his persistence," said Steve D’Angelo, whose Harborside Health Center cannabis dispensary in Oakland is the biggest in the United States. "I've known him since 1994, when we were both foremost advocates for hemp, and he is focused like a laser on whatever his goal is.

"If he wasn't working for medicinal cannabis, he'd be an advocate for some other form of social justice."

Lee may be the unthreatening face for his cause, said El Cerrito police Capt. Mike Regan, but he's not convincing the majority of those in law enforcement.

Some officers and judges have come out in favor of the November initiative, but more -including the California Police Chiefs Association - are opposing it.

Making it worse?

"Richard looks like John Q. Citizen, and he's actually a really nice guy," said Regan, who speaks all over the state against marijuana use. "But I believe medical marijuana in California has grown wildly out of control, and I think the initiative would make it much worse.

"This is not a harmless drug."

He said Lee took him on a tour of Oaksterdam once, and he found the business impressive. But strictly medicinal use is one thing, Regan said and rampant use, which he believes is what the measure would encourage, is another.

"I don't agree with him, but he listens to your viewpoint and gives you his viewpoint," the captain said. "Years ago, the only people I saw promoting this kind of business were dope dealers, and they looked like Cheech and Chong. Then you meet someone like Richard Lee, and you realize that today they are businessmen.

"But let's not kid ourselves," he said. "You're talking about some serious dollars being earned there. And when a cop who's been in this business a long time takes a look at the marijuana business that's grown up all over this state, it looks like a criminal enterprise from long ago. You've got lots of cash, tons of unaccounted marijuana hanging around, and a product that is illegal." '

Education challenge'

Lee has heard the criticism before, and he's sure he will hear it more when the campaign starts heating up over the summer. He has even taken heat from some growers in Mendocino and Humboldt counties who say his advocacy of indoor growing undercuts the purity of their outdoor, supposedly more organic, operations.

Lee shrugs at the flak. An "education challenge," he calls it.

"Support goes up for what we are doing the more people learn about it, and realize marijuana is not terrible, and that it is safer than alcohol and healthier than prison," Lee said.

"I'm sure I'll have a few more gray hairs by November," he said, cracking his shy smile. "But I do think we'll get our point across enough to win."

E-mail Kevin Fagan at mkfagan@sfchronicle.comailto:.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/06/13/MN3N1DPDS1.DTL#ixzz0ql9bXz6W

---
Don't forget to join my Medical Marijuana News From Brett Yahoo newsgroup for the latest marijuana and medical marijuana news http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/mmjnews/

"A Pot Smokers Dilemma: An empty bowl needs to be filled while a filled bowl needs to be emptied. It never ends."

Eliot voters to consider moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries

2010-06-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

ELIOT, Maine — Voters at Saturday's annual Town Meeting will decide
whether to impose a six-month moratorium on siting a medical marijuana
dispensary in town.

Selectmen proposed the moratorium at their May 27 meeting after the
measure was discussed in executive session, said Chairwoman Elizabeth
O'Donoghue. "The only thing that happened at the meeting was that we
decided to put it on a warrant article," she said, adding there has been
no public discussion. "We had word from the planning assistant that
somebody was trying to rent property to a group that was planning to
grow medical (marijuana), and that started the whole thing."

The board proposed a moratorium to give the town time to write an
ordinance to provide itself protection the state law may not have,
O'Donoghue said. The language of the moratorium states "a medical
marijuana dispensary presents the potential for new and unknown impacts,
including public safety concerns and concerns about compatibility with
surrounding uses." The moratorium would give the town six months to
study the issue and develop regulations governing their location and
operation, if needed, she said.

The state began accepting applications this month from nonprofit
corporations to become dispensaries under Maine's Medical Use of
Marijuana Act. The state will allow eight dispensaries, one in each of
its eight Public Health Districts including York County, according to
the Department of Health and Human Services. DHHS expects to approve the
location of a dispensary in York County by July 9.

The act passed last November allows patients with "debilitating medical
conditions" diagnosed by a physician licensed in Maine to receive
written certification allowing them to "acquire, possess, cultivate,
manufacture, use, deliver, transfer or transport marijuana and/or
paraphernalia without fear of prosecution."

Rep. Sarah Lewin, R-Eliot, said allowing medical use of marijuana would
bring other serious drug use issues.

"It was written with nowhere near the limitations that are needed to
protect the citizens where this stuff is grown and sold," she said. "The
good and kind and compassionate people of Maine heard how much people
are suffering from cancer and other issues, and how much relief they
would get from smoking marijuana and no one ever explained how serious
the use of marijuana is in many, many cases."

Lewin said marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to more serious drug
use and would add to existing drug problems in terms of costs of law
enforcement and treatment.

"It costs the state nearly $900 million a year in substance abuse
funding," she said, adding there are other costs in public safety. "It's
still against federal law to have this stuff."

Colorado's pot debate is headed to the cities

2010-06-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

Less than a week after a new law cleared the way for Colorado cities to
ban marijuana dispensaries if they wish, some are already moving to ban
pot shops.

One of the biggest battles is brewing in Colorado Springs, where city
officials were expected Friday to sign off on a petition drive seeking
to shutter more than 100 dispensaries located there.

And a ban is already headed to ballots in Aurora, Colorado's
third-largest city. Aurora has had a moratorium banning dispensaries so
far, but the vote could make the ban permanent.

Gov. Bill Ritter approved a law Monday to allow cities to ban
dispensaries. Marijuana advocates say city bans will face lawsuits.

Democrats debate pot policies

2010-06-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

SPRINGFIELD — Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin on Tuesday
said Vermont should decriminalize marijuana to help free up prison space
and money better devoted to education and other social needs.

"We need to have an honest conversation with Vermonters about changing
laws that are diverting resources and attention from real problems, and
filling our prisons up with folks that shouldn't be there," Shumlin said
in a forum last night with the other four Democratic candidates running
for governor.

"I believe it's a mistake to be sending young people on second, third,
fourth offenses to prison on marijuana-related charges," said Shumlin, a
Putney Democrat who has previously sponsored a decriminalization bill.
"That's where we could make a difference."

None of the other four candidates explicitly called for the
decriminalization of marijuana, which has been opposed by outgoing
Republican Gov. James Douglas, but others touched on the issue.

Former state Sen. Matt Dunne, a Hartland Democrat, said policymakers
need to "connect the dots and right-size the way we punish people" and
said an occasional Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 91 in Hartford
was burdening local courts by "going after individuals who have small
amounts of marijuana … it's crazy."

A third candidate, Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz, D-Montpelier,
said Vermont needs to rethink how it punishes people for petty crimes, a
theme touched on by other candidates, as well.

"We need to think differently about how we are dealing with crimes
related to a drug habit," she said.

The forum at Springfield High School was attended by more than 110
Windsor County residents and also touched on single-payer health care,
job creation and wind energy.

"What the state of Vermont is suffering from is a lack of a plan" on
energy, said Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Bartlett, D-Hyde
Park. She also said the state should not raise taxes next year to curb a
looming deficit until more savings are found, but said a $55 million
rainy day fund will have to be tapped to balance the budget.

State Sen. Doug Racine, D-Richmond, along with the other Democrats,
criticized a Republican proposal, since scrapped, that threatened to
merge regional economic development and planning councils.

"The administration didn't understand what was going on in the counties.
The state doesn't have one economy. It's a collection of individual,
local economies," Racine said.

Racine, a former lieutenant governor, also touted the endorsement from
the Vermont-NEA and the Vermont AFL-CIO, two labor unions that together
represent about 20,000 Vermonters.

"It was a real boost to my campaign," Racine said.

After the debate, Windsor County State's Attorney Robert Sand, who was
in the audience and has long favored a proposal to regulate and tax
marijuana, credited Shumlin for taking on the issue of decriminalization
directly.

"Other people talked generally about emphasizing treatment. Peter was
the only one who had a significant proposal about changing marijuana
laws," said Sand, who has yet to publicly endorse a candidate. "I was
happy to hear that. I hope that discussion continues."

Shumlin did get slightly edgy in his remarks, making light of the
homophone "doobie," common slang for a joint of marijuana, and the last
name of Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, the likely Republican gubernatorial
candidate.

After the debate, Weathersfield resident Chris Harris, a former
Democratic town chairman, said he hasn't written any of the candidates
off and has yet to make up his mind.

"It's remarkable that Vermont has this number of excellent candidates,
and it's going to be tough to choose. I don't know that I'll do it
before I get into the voting booth," Harris said.

Berkeley seeks revenues from medical marijuana

2010-06-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

Seeking to bring in revenue from the city's flourishing medical
marijuana businesses – and setting the stage for the possible
legalization of pot by voters in November – Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates
is proposing a new tax on cannabis businesses.

Under a proposal he presented to a medical marijuana subcommittee on
Wednesday, Bates would tax medical marijuana dispensaries $25 per $1,000
in gross receipts. If pot becomes legal after the November election,
Bates is proposing to levy a tax on those selling pot for recreational
use of $100 per $1,000.

"I am shooting high with this tax," said Bates. "It can be
lower."

The proposed tax was significantly higher than one recommended to the
city council in May, and drew surprised gasps from the audience, which
was made up of patients, representatives from Berkeley's three
dispensaries and patient collectives.

Bates and City Council members Darryl Moore, Laurie Capitelli, Linda
Maio, and Max Anderson have been meeting regularly to gain a better
understanding of Berkeley's medical marijuana industry. The aim is
to put a measure on the November ballot.

As Bates passed out his proposal, he cautioned that none of the city
council members had seen it, and that it most likely will be changed
significantly before it goes on the ballot. The medical marijuana
subcommittee will meet next Wednesday to discuss the proposal further.
It will then go to the City Council on June 29.

Bates' proposal would:

* Allow each of the three dispensaries to have an ancillary site in
an industrial area. These sites would not serve patients, but would be
used to grow marijuana and process cannabis products.

* Limit cultivation by collectives to 100 square feet in a house.

* Require that there be a buffer zone between dispensaries and
private schools, in addition to the one required for public schools.
Reduce this zone from 1,000 to 500 feet.

* Require dispensaries who get a new ancillary location to dedicate
1/10 of their product to low-income patients.

* Impose a maximum tax rate of either $25 per $1,000 of gross
receipts on dispensaries or $25 a square foot if the dispensaries become
nonprofits.

* Tax sale of cannabis used for recreation at $100 per $1,000 of
gross profits. (if possible)

* Modify the structure of the Medical Cannabis Commission to make it
a city-appointed commission. This would diversify its membership

Dispensaries quietly close as L.A. ordinance takes effect

2010-06-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

Officials with the Los Angeles city attorney's office Monday said they
believe there will be "substantial compliance" with an ordinance that
shuts down more than 400 medical marijuana dispensaries that opened over
the last two and a half years.

But Assistant City Atty. Asha Greenberg said her office wouldn't rule
out taking "enforcement action" against possible holdouts.

"I don't think anyone should assume they can remain open and that the
city is not going to take any action any time soon," Greenberg said.
"It's a definite possibility. Anyone who is not living in a cave" knows
that the ordinance went into effect Monday.

Reports from police officers, building inspectors and residents will
help identify possible violators. City prosecutors also set up an e-mail
address for the public to report scofflaws:
atty.medicalmarijuana@lacity.org.

Offenders face civil penalties of $2,500 a day and six months in jail.
Dispensaries that registered with the city in 2007 will have until
Monday to file paperwork showing their intent to comply with new
location restrictions.

Signs posted on the doors of the City Clerk's office Monday indicated
that staff members were prepared for an onslaught of medical marijuana
operators filing notices of intent to register on the first available
day.

But things seemed to run smoothly with only a handful of people in line
by mid-morning. By noon, about 50 people had been through the office to
submit paperwork on their intent to register, a process that took about
20 minutes.

"I thought it was going to be a little crazy," James Catipay, 33, said
as he exited the office with his business partner, Peter Tejera. The two
operate Herbalcure in Los Angeles and although they have a week to file
the paperwork, they wanted to do it as soon as possible.

"It demonstrates responsibility," said Tejera, 41, a real estate
consultant.

Catipay and Tejera said they opened Herbalcure in 2007 because they
wanted others to benefit from the remedy they had used to relieve their
own pain left by illnesses.

Tejera said he found that cannabis relieved the pounding headaches that
came after an aneurysm. Catipay, an attorney, said he used marijuana to
address the breathing problems left by sarcoidosis.

Both believe the city's regulation of marijuana collectives is a wise
move.

"There need to be guidelines," Tejera said. "The city has to get control
of what's going on from a safety standpoint."

The new ordinance prohibits dispensaries from being located within 1,000
feet of "sensitive use" areas such as schools, churches and parks,
setting the stage for the closure of more than 400 outlets.

Attorney Eric Shevin, who is representing more than a dozen medical
marijuana patients in a class-action lawsuit against the city, argued
that the law would unconstitutionally bar patients' access to their
medicine.

On Friday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant
rejected their bid for a temporary restraining order. The judge did ask
for additional arguments on whether allowing certain dispensaries to
remain open while closing others would be a violation of the equal
protection clause of the California Constitution.

Shutting down some 400 existing dispensaries would have tremendous
fallout, both economically and practically, said Shevin, who accused
city officials of changing the rules on the collectives that existed
before 2007 by prohibiting transfer of ownership.

"Landlords, who have been relying on this rental income, are going to
have leases terminated," Shevin said. "The overall effect will take time
to play out but the types of things we can expect to see are that
patients are going to have difficulty obtaining their medicine and the
few stores that remain will have difficulty meeting the demand."

Lack of cash could snuff pot measure

2010-06-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE — An effort to legalize marijuana for adults in Washington
is in danger of not making the ballot this year, after support from the
state's progressive establishment failed to materialize.

Initiative 1068 would remove all state penalties for marijuana
possession, cultivation, use and sale. It's one of the most sweeping
marijuana reform efforts playing out around the country this year, and
polls have suggested it would pass — if it makes the ballot.

Campaign chairman Douglas Hiatt on Monday told The Associated Press more
than 100,000 people have signed a petition to get the initiative on the
ballot. The group needs 241,000 signatures by July 2.

The campaign can't afford to hire paid signature gatherers, and has
recently been counting on financial support from the Service Employees
International Union — a big player in liberal politics.

But Monday, the labor union said no such support would be forthcoming.

"It's really unfortunate, but you cannot do this without
money," Hiatt said when the AP informed him of the SEIU's
decision. "I never intended I-1068 to be an all-volunteer effort.
We'll make a decision in a couple days about whether we're going
to go forward."

Hiatt and a few other activists filed the initiative with the Secretary
of State's Office in January, calling their group Sensible
Washington. They argued that in a time of dire budget woes, the
state's government should stop spending millions of dollars a year
on police, court and jail costs for people who use or produce marijuana.

But they failed to line up establishment support in advance, and the
state Democratic Party declined to contribute to the effort.

"There's a lot of support for this within the party, but
it's just not a high priority," state party chairman Dwight Pelz
said Monday.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington also declined to
endorse the initiative, saying it supports marijuana legalization but
thinks legalizing the drug without providing a regulatory framework
governing its cultivation and distribution is irresponsible.

The campaign responded by saying that since initiatives can cover only
one subject in Washington, there was no way to both remove criminal
penalties and create a regulatory system.

The Legislature would rush to regulate marijuana if the initiative
passed, supporters argued.

Aspiring marijuana growers look to stake a claim in N.J.'s new industry

2010-06-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

With N.J. expected to permit the sale of medicinal marijuana soon, The
Star-Ledger visited Colorado and New Mexico to observe the impact
legalizing the drug for medical reasons has had in those states.

ASPEN, CO. — The line of people spilled outside the door, even while
it rained.

Some 3,000 Colorado medical marijuana patients ventured to this posh
skiers' paradise for one weekend in April, and for the $25 entrance
fee, each received a plastic green bracelet granting them entrance to a
veritable pot flea market.

They lingered over cases of handblown, multicolor glass pipes, ooohed
and ahhed over enhanced confections likes Rice Krispies Treats and
chocolate-covered pretzels, and snapped up tiny bags of pot from dozens
of growers.

But only 130 people — who paid $100 or more — earned themselves
a Willie Wonkaesque Golden Ticket, giving them critic-like status to
decide — from their own home, no smoking on site, please — who
should win the first annual Cannabis Crown for the best weed.

Nicki Gross of Aspen didn't have a golden ticket and wasn't
there for fun. She was there to learn more about the medicine that
reduces her chronic back pain. "I'm in excruciating pain right
now,'' Gross said through clenched teeth. "I wish we could smoke
here. All I take is one hit at a time — the stuff is really
strong.''

Held at two of Aspen's exclusive hotels, the conference embodied the
best of what the burgeoning medical marijuana industry has to offer: a
recession-defying opportunity with seemingly limitless economic
potential. Equally important to many entrepreneurs, the industry also
satisfies a benevolent urge. Everybody in the industry can rattle off a
string of examples of how marijuana has helped people walk, eat,
function and sleep better while diminishing their reliance on
prescription painkillers and their discomforting side effects.

ON THE FRINGE

But for every heartfelt testimonial, dispensary operators can share
insomnia-provoking tales of what it's like to enter an industry
shunned by banks, insurance companies, many elected officials and large
segments of mainstream society. Competition is fierce, and there are few
tested models of success to emulate.

That uncertainty hasn't stopped an expanding group of aspiring
growers and dispensary owners from making their own pitch to get in on
the ground floor in New Jersey, where nary a detail about New
Jersey's medical marijuana program has been disclosed, and the
governor is delaying the launch of the program until as late as next
year.

But even with the most restrictive medical marijuana law in the country,
New Jersey will gain jobs and revenue, said Gus Escamilla, founder and
CEO of Greenway University, which helped open 230 dispensaries in
California and Colorado.

Medical marijuana "helped the economy in Denver in so many ways.
Security companies, CPAs, attorneys, physicians — their practices
are booming. We are about to see something similar occur'' in New
Jersey, Escamilla said. Greenway hosted a seminar in Paterson yesterday
and was scheduled to hold another today to teach people the business.

RESEARCH IS LACKING

There are no authoritative economic studies of the medical marijuana
industry in the 14 states where it has been legalized.

In Denver alone, 279 storefronts that were vacant less than a year ago
are now occupied by licensed medical marijuana dispensaries that each
paid the city $5,000 for a license, according to state Treasury and
Economic Development statistics. In Colorado, 199 shop owners paid
$631,000 in sales tax from February, and 201 more registered with the
state have yet to pay any sales tax, said Mark Couch, spokesman for the
Colorado Department of Revenue. Colorado also charges $90 for every
person who applies to be a patient, and there are 80,000 of them.

STRESS ON THE JOB

No one working in Colorado's medical marijuana industry would call
this an easy way of life.

Jesse Lafayette, his wife Holly Bockenthien, and two partners took a
vacant gas station in downtown touristy Glenwood Springs and opened
Peaceful Warrior dispensary and grow operation in September.

Since then, they said, two banks they had been doing business with
dropped them in fear the federal government might question any
involvement with what is still an illegal substance. And the couple
works all the time because they've been robbed by some of the
employees they hired, they said. "We can't trust anybody,''
Bockenthien said.

But Lafayette, 33, who holds degrees in horticulture, and Bockenthien,
26, a cattle owner, say they are committed to their patients — a
steady roster of 350 people, like Noel, a mother of three recovering
from a brain tumor. She stopped in on a Sunday afternoon in April for
marijuana for her pain — instead of morphine.

Bradley Mann of Monroe and some partners have already formed a nonprofit
entity, the Compassion Associates Inc., to be among the first in line
when the state chooses the dispensary operators. The organization plans
to start an assistance fund for low-income patients, and a launch a
website that will inform the public about the program, said Mann, a
42-year-old father of four who is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

"Whether we get a license or not, we have a few different things we are
doing to reach our goal of supporting patients.''

-----sidebar-----

Medical Marijuana for sale: A sample of edible and smokable menu items
sold in Colorodo, which will undoubtedly make their way to New Jersey.

Sellers say they strive to charge less than the illegal dealers, but
many comply with state law and charge sales tax.

• 1 gram of marijuana: $20

• 1/8 ounce of marijuana: about $50

• 2 ounces of marijuana (the monthly limit for N.J. patients): $560
and up

• Pot-laced ice cream cups: $8 - $10 each

• Keef Cola: $8 per bottle

• Hard candies: $3

• Rice Krispie Treat: $5 - 10

• Brownies: $5 - 10

• Tinctures: (marijuana-infused drops for tea and other drinks and
foods) $30 per ounce

• Hand-blown glass pipes: starting at $15

New medical-marijuana regs now law in Colorado

2010-06-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

Gov. Bill Ritter signed into law today two bills regulating and
legitimizing the state's medical-marijuana industry.

"The companion measures I signed today strike a delicate balance between
protecting public safety and respecting the will of the voters," Ritter
said in a statement.

The bills — which impose complicated licensing requirements on
medical-marijuana dispensaries and crack down on unscrupulous doctors
indiscriminately handing out marijuana recommendations — were some
of the most high-profile measures passed in the legislature this year.

But Ritter signed the bills, House Bill 1284 and Senate Bill 109, this
morning without the usual public ceremony such attention-grabbing
legislation usually commands. Instead, the bills were signed privately
along with a slate of 28 various other bills before Ritter headed out on
a bill-signing tour in southwestern Colorado.

Supporters of the bills say they will professionalize the
medical-marijuana industry and make it harder for people to abuse the
system. But several prominent medical-marijuana advocates say the rules
go too far, will drive marijuana dispensaries out of business and will
push patients back into the underground marketplace. A team of lawyers
has already begun recruiting potential plaintiffs for lawsuits
challenging the laws' constitutionality.

A number of law enforcement officials, meanwhile, say the rules don't go
far enough. They argue that, by permitting marijuana dispensaries, the
legislature overstepped its constitutional authority.

Of the pair, Senate Bill 109, which requires that patients have a "bona
fide" relationship with the doctors who recommend marijuana for them,
had the less bumpy ride through the legislature.

The new law will require doctors to have completed a full assessment of
the patient's medical history, to talk with the patient about the
medical condition that has caused them to seek marijuana and to be
available for follow-up care. The law also prevents doctors from getting
paid by dispensaries to write recommendations.

Supporters hope the measures will eliminate fast food-style
medical-marijuana-recommendation operations that critics say have
swelled the state's registry with illegitimate patients.

"Senate Bill 109 will help prevent fraud and abuse," Ritter said in his
statement today.

House Bill 1284, which creates strict new regulations for
medical-marijuana businesses, generated considerably more controversy.
The law requires that dispensaries be licensed at both the state and
local levels, and it allows local governments — or voters — to
ban dispensaries and large-scale marijuana-growing operations in their
communities.

Some cities have already moved to do just that. Vail's Town Council
voted last week to ban dispensaries, while Greenwood Village officials
are currently drafting an ordinance to do the same. Aurora City Council
members are preparing a ballot question that would ask voters whether
they want dispensaries in the city, and a number of other cities have
extended their dispensary moratoriums while they figure out what to do.

The new law will place other requirements on dispensaries, as well.
People convicted recently of a felony — or at all of a drug-related
felony — will be barred from operating a dispensary. People who have
lived in Colorado for fewer than two years cannot open a new dispensary.
And all dispensaries must grow at least 70 percent of the marijuana they
sell, meaning people currently operating as wholesale growers either
have to partner with a dispensary or shut down.

Significantly from a legal standpoint, the law also makes a distinction
between dispensaries and "primary caregivers" — small-scale
marijuana providers whose work is protected in the state's constitution.
In order to qualify for that special protection now, caregivers can
serve no more than five patients and grow no more than six plants per
patient, in most cases. They must also register with the state.

Dispensaries, the new law says, are not caregivers and don't qualify for
their elevated, constitutional protection.

A number of dispensary owners fear that — between the new
requirements and the ability of local governments to ban dispensaries
— the law may put them out of business.

But Ritter said in his statement today that the law will allow
communities to put "sensible and much-needed controls" on dispensaries.

Going to pot: 'Cannabis caravans' give Montanans permission to smoke medical marijuana

2010-06-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — As Bob Marley music wailed in the next room, the makeshift clinic hummed along like an assembly line: Patients went in to see a doctor, paid $150 and walked out with permission to buy and smoke medical marijuana.

So it went, all day, at a hotel just blocks from the state Capitol that was the latest stop of the so-called cannabis caravan, a band of doctors and medical marijuana advocates roaming Montana to sign up thousands of patients.

"You're helping end suffering on this planet for human beings," clinic organizer Jason Christ said as he sat outside the hotel in an RV filled with pot smoke.

To the dismay of state medical authorities and lawmakers, the caravans have helped the number of pot cardholders in Montana swell over the past year from about 3,000 to 15,000.

Christ's group, Montana Caregivers Network, will take the caravan out of Montana later this month for the first time, with clinics scheduled in three Michigan cities: Detroit, Kalamazoo and Lansing. He said pot advocates from several other states — including New Mexico, New Jersey and Hawaii — have contacted him to inquire about setting up similar businesses.

The state medical board is trying to curtail the mass screenings and recently fined a physician who participated in a similar clinic in the first disciplinary action taken against a doctor in a Montana medical marijuana case. The board found that the doctor had seen about 150 people in 14½ hours, or roughly a patient every six minutes, nowhere near enough to provide appropriate care in the eyes of medical observers.

The board also recently reminded physicians that they must perform thorough examinations, take medical histories, discuss alternative treatments and monitor patients' response to the cannabis — standards that typically apply when prescribing other medication.

"Be on the alert. You are still held to these same standards," said Jean Branscum, the board's executive director.

The roving cannabis caravans appear to be unique to Montana, although mobile marijuana operations have arisen elsewhere. A rolling marijuana dispensary in California sold chocolate-covered cookies, brownies, pretzels and other marijuana-laced items out of an RV before authorities moved to shut it down.

Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, the chief lobbying arm of the legalization movement, said the 14 states that allow medical marijuana have varying regulations that could make it difficult for the caravans to operate outside Montana.

"The more I hear about these things, it sounds like they're not following the intent of the law," Meno said. "People say they might be making a mockery of the law, and I hope that's not the case."

Medical marijuana has been legal in Montana for more than five years, allowing people with debilitating conditions to buy pot with a doctor's permission.

After the Obama administration announced last year that it would not prosecute medical marijuana users, the pace of registrations quickened, and people began flocking to the caravans.

At a recent stop in Helena, the clinic processed between 200 and 300 people seeking one of the coveted registration cards.

In the hotel conference room, when patients emerged from behind a curtain after talking with a doctor, they were ushered to the next room, where a half-dozen marijuana providers competed to become their personal "caregiver," as the suppliers are called in Montana.

A group called the First Montana Grow Circle signed up 15 new patients that day. One of them was a state employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared repercussions from her employer and her family.

She said she went to the clinic during her lunch hour after her personal doctor declined to prescribe medical marijuana for her severe migraine headaches. "He said I am not the type of person he would prescribe it for. He said I'm not there yet based on my medical history," the woman said.

She said the doctor at the clinic gave her the recommendation she was looking for after a 15-minute examination and a promise to send him her medical records. She said the marijuana has eased but not eliminated her headaches.

The Montana Board of Medical Examiners fined Dr. Patricia Cole $2,000, accusing her of practicing substandard care at a medical marijuana clinic in Great Falls last year. The caregivers' network is paying her fine. She is also barred from participating in such clinics.

The board said Cole did not document whether she took medical histories or performed physical examinations, did not discuss proper dosing and failed to document a risk analysis of medical marijuana for them.

Cole said she agreed to the punishment, but believes she is being made an example of as the board seeks to halt the caravans. She said she reviewed medical histories online before the clinic.

At the same, some lawmakers say the clinics demonstrate the pot boom is out of control and the rules need tightening.

Despite the warnings and the disciplinary action, the cannabis caravans are slated to roll on next month with stops in Kalispell, Missoula, Great Falls, Helena, Bozeman and Billings.

"Change is scary. I understand," Christ said of the backlash. But he added: "The need is out there. Patients are in pain."

Dispensary Ordinance Passes 1st Reading

2010-05-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Colorado Springs medical marijuana dispensary
owners are one vote away from guaranteeing their doors will stay open
come July 1st.

On Tuesday night, Colorado Springs City Council gave initial backing to
an ordinance that will create a pre-application process for medical
marijuana businesses. Under the proposed ordinance, businesses will have
to pay a $500 fee.

Council members also voted to require these businesses to be at least
400 feet away from a school, an alcohol or drug treatment facility, or a
residential child care facility. Medical marijuana businesses cannot be
located in a residential area.

Governor Bill Ritter is expected to sign into law a bill that will
require medical marijuana businesses to be licensed. House Bill 10-1284
was approved by state lawmakers May 12th.

The owner must have applied to a city by July 1, 2010 to remain open for
business. Under the law, dispensaries in communities that don't put new
regulations into place, would have to close their doors this summer.

City Officials say it will also give the council ample time to develop
an ordinance to regulate medical marijuana businesses. Since February
2010, the City Clerk along with the City Attorney, Colorado Springs
Police Department and members of the Cannabis Taskforce have been
working to develop an ordinance to regulate the medical marijuana
business.

President of Cannabis Task Force, Tanya Garduno, said if this
pre-application ordinance doesn't pass, the entire medical marijuana
industry in Colorado Springs could be shut down. Garduno said, "it opens
up very opportunity for lawsuits in this city, last time I checked can't
afford that."