Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 10:22:38 -0700
Subject:CA: Marijuana Club Owner Charged In Federal Court Up TOC

Title: Marijuana Club Owner Charged In Federal Court
Author: Jeremy Hay
Source: The Press Democrat
Contact: letters@pressdemo.com
Website: http://www.pressdemo.com/
Pubdate: Saturday, September 14, 2002

The owner of a Petaluma marijuana club was arraigned Friday on drug
charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Robert Schmidt, 52, was arrested Thursday by federal agents who raided a
ranch near Sebastopol where he had been growing marijuana since March.

He was arraigned in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on charges of
manufacturing and possessing marijuana with intent to distribute, and
assaulting a federal agent.

The maximum penalty for the drug charges is life in prison and a $4
million fine; the assault charge carries a maximum sentence of three years
plus a $250,000 fine, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mathew Jacobs said in a
statement Friday.

He said U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized 3,454 marijuana
plants from the Martin Lane ranch west of Sebastopol.

Several others questioned at the ranch told agents that Schmidt had hired
them to guard the crop, which one DEA agent estimated to be worth nearly
$2 million.

Neighbors said authorities told them that Schmidt had been under
investigation for more than a year.

Schmidt is the owner of Genesis 1:29, a marijuana buyers club named for a
Bible verse about God providing herb-bearing seeds.

Supporters said Schmidt was growing cannabis for nearly 800 members of his
club as well as for other clubs that opened in the Bay Area after voters
approved a 1996 initiative allowing marijuana use for medical reasons.

Federal law doesn't recognize any legal use of marijuana. Medical
marijuana advocates say stepped-up DEA enforcement efforts are misfocused.

"The DEA is needed to help fight the war on terrorism," said Ernest "Doc"
Knapp, spokesman for the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana. "When they
devote such huge resources to going after sick and dying people, what does
it say about them?"

Marijuana plants and computer equipment also were seized from the Petaluma
club, located in a business park on South Point Boulevard.

Calls to the club seeking comment weren't returned Friday. An answering
machine message said: "We are closed due to the DEA overriding state law
on the 12th of September."

Schmidt is next scheduled to appear in court Sept. 18.

Copyright The Press Democrat.


____________________________________________________
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 10:21:27 -0700
Subject:Canada: Red Tape Choking Pot Study Up TOC

Title: Red Tape Choking Pot Study
Author: Lynn Moore
Source: Montreal Gazette
Contact: letters@thegazette.southam.ca
Website: http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/
Pubdate: Thursday, September 12, 2002

The medical-marijuana clinical trials required by federal Health Minister
Anne McLellan could take more than five years to complete, according to
the McGill University researcher whose groundbreaking study into pot and
pain is entangled in red tape.

In July 2001, McGill announced Dr. Mark Ware had received federal approval
for Canada's first clinical study on marijuana and pain. The year-long
study was to have begun at Montreal General Hospital in January.

"We haven't actually started yet," Ware said yesterday. A "series of
requirements," including an import license to bring marijuana from the
United States, have to be acquired, he said.

Ware's peer-reviewed clinical trial - funded by a $235,000 grant from the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a branch of Health Canada - seeks
scientific evidence of anecdotal claims about cannabis as a pain reliever.
It would involve 32 patients suffering from acute, chronic pain.

Although medical marijuana is a controversial matter, Ware insisted the
delay isn't due to the nature of his study, but to his underestimation of
the time required to get various approvals.

"This is a kind of bureaucratic necessity to protect the patients of
Canada against any drug that's not high quality," he said.

While the delay might dismay sick Canadians awaiting the legal right to
smoke pot, more disconcerting is Ware's assessment that it could take five
to 10 years to complete the pivotal clinical trials McLellan has required
before the government will consider sanctioning marijuana as a medicine.

Even multimillion-dollar drug empires spend years getting a drug approved
for use, Ware noted.

Before pot can be approved, various phases of testing are required,
including large clinical trials with very specific pre-determined criteria
and a large numbers of patients, he said.

"Our study, important as it may be, is being perceived (by the public as
well as public officials) as giving definitive answers, but this is a
pilot study" involving a small number of people using small amounts of the
drug for a short period, he said.

Alex Swann, a spokesman for McLellan, agreed yesterday that Ware's pilot
project, along with another clinical trial involving HIV patients in
Toronto, were but first steps in a process requiring broad-based clinical
trials.

Those trials "haven't been designed yet ...so I can't speak to the time
line those trials would take," he said.

McLellan's predecessor, Allan Rock, unveiled a policy to provide
chronic-pain sufferers and terminally ill patients with the right to smoke
marijuana legally. During Rock's tenure, an abandoned mine in Flin Flon,
Man., was converted into a marijuana farm to supply medicinal pot.
McLellan rejected the crop, saying there were too many variations in the
harvest to do clinical trials.

Copyright The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc.






------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 18:53:02 -0700
Subject:WA: Feds Pose Challenge to Use of Medical Marijuana Up TOC

Monday, September 16, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific

Feds pose challenge to use of medical marijuana

By Ian Ith and Carol M. Ostrom
Seattle Times staff reporters

Standing near marijuana grown for medical use in a Bremerton garage loft
are, from left, Shawn Doyle, Woody Wines, Monte Levine and Marc Derenzy.

BREMERTON " When Monte Levine and Marc Derenzy planted marijuana in the
garage loft behind their Bremerton home, they thought they had the blessing
of Washington voters.
All they wanted, they said, was to quietly grow enough pot to help Levine
cope with the pain of a fatal liver disease, and to give lifelong friends
Shawn Doyle and Woody Wines something to ease their slow journey toward
death from AIDS.

The four men say they never expected to get a letter last month from the
office of U.S. Attorney John McKay in Seattle promising federal
prosecution, no matter how much pot they have.

"I'm afraid of going to prison; I don't want to die in prison," said Wines,
his face gaunt from disease. "I don't think I deserve to die in prison just
because I smoke pot because I'm sick. They have this big war on terrorism,
supposedly. So why are they bothering me?"

Medical-marijuana users, and their doctors, fear the letter represents a
shift in the federal prosecutor's stance in Washington state, from a policy
of tolerance just a year ago to a willingness to fight medical marijuana "
despite the initiative passed overwhelmingly in Washington four years ago
that allows it under state law.

Federal prosecutors in Seattle, who have yet to indict any
medical-marijuana users, deny any such policy change. They said they target
large-scale pot producers and are threatening to pursue the case of the
four Bremerton men simply because they repeatedly and openly grow pot, and
too much of it.

"It's one thing to raise medical marijuana as a defense," said Assistant
U.S. Attorney Doug Whalley, supervisor of the Criminal Enterprise Division
in Seattle. "It's another thing to flaunt it."

The issue has raised the ire of state and local initiative backers from
both sides of the political spectrum; they see the U.S. attorney's apparent
willingness to ignore the voter-passed initiative as an affront to the
state's right to make its own decisions. And they believe the move could
set the stage for raids similar to recent pot-club busts in California.

And just as in California, where the debate has become so bitter the state
attorney general last month demanded to meet with U.S. Attorney General
John Ashcroft, federal law-enforcement agents here have responded by saying
the state initiative goes against federal law.

"As far as we're concerned, there's no such thing as 'medical' marijuana,"
said Tom O'Brien, spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) field division in Seattle, which covers Washington, Idaho, Alaska and
Oregon.

"This has nothing to do with anyone being sick " this has to do with a
movement to legalize marijuana," he said.

In 1998, 59 percent of Washington voters passed Initiative 692, which gave
people with cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, spasms, intractable
pain and glaucoma the right to possess and use marijuana, with a doctor's
approval.

"The People of Washington state find that some patients with terminal or
debilitating illnesses, under their physician's care, may benefit from the
medical use of marijuana," the law says.

Washington is one of nine states, including Oregon, California and Alaska,
to pass such laws in recent years. Washington's law doesn't specify how
patients are to get marijuana, which remains an illegal drug under federal
law. Under the state law, a qualified patient or the patient's caregiver
can legally possess a "60-day supply."

Over the years, Seattle police, King County prosecutors and civil
libertarians have forged policies to help differentiate legitimate patients
from those using the law to sell pot, although the exact number of plants a
patient or caregiver can possess has remained a contentious issue.

"If someone has a legitimate medical-marijuana need, there will not be a
prosecution," says King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng's spokesman, Dan
Donohoe.

And former U.S. Attorney Kate Pflaumer, who left after President Bush took
office, told local drug agents in 1999 to stop forwarding medical-marijuana
cases to her office. And she wouldn't prosecute any pot growers with fewer
than 250 plants.

Meanwhile, the state Medical Quality Assurance Commission added several
diseases to the list of qualifying illnesses, including hepatitis C, a
potentially fatal liver disease; Crohn's disease, a painful bowel
condition; and any disease that results in nausea, vomiting, wasting or
seizures, if the symptoms were unrelieved by standard treatments.

Still, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that because federal law sees
no medical benefit in marijuana, "medical necessity" isn't a defense
against federal prosecution.

In California, agents started raiding marijuana co-ops and arresting
nationally prominent marijuana activists. In a speech this month, Secretary
of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson called marijuana "a clear and
present danger to the health and well-being of all its users."

On Sept. 5, agents raided a medical-marijuana cooperative in Santa Cruz,
Calif. In response, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer demanded a
meeting with Ashcroft and the head of the DEA, Asa Hutchinson, saying the
raids were "provocative and intrusive incidents of harassment."

This summer, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress that would allow
immunity from federal prosecution in states with medical-marijuana laws and
would reclassify marijuana so that it could be prescribed by a doctor. The
bill is sitting in a House subcommittee.

Levine and Derenzy say they don't sell or give their pot to anyone but
Wines and Doyle. When they decided to sprout marijuana in their garage,
they say they took great pains to make sure they were doing it just as
state voters had prescribed, hanging doctors' notes right on the front
door, under a copy of the Bill of Rights.

Levine, 56, has long suffered from hepatitis C, and the treatments leave
him nauseated and worse. Wines, 48, learned he had HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS, in 1986, when his partner died of the disease. He contracted
AIDS about 10 years ago, about the same time as his friend Doyle.

"This is a nightmare, but pot helps me cope," said Doyle, 49. "My health
has been on a steady decline. I'm not a criminal; I'm in the late stages of
AIDS. I have no energy and I'm in a tremendous amount of pain."

The men say they can't hold down food " let alone the cocktails of AIDS
medications " without smoking some pot for the feeling most recreational
smokers call "the munchies." And it alleviates the psychological pain of
watching themselves die, they say.

The men also sometimes take Marinol, a synthetic prescription pill meant to
simulate the effects of pot. But they say it's too powerful, like taking a
shot of morphine to ease a headache.

The men are known for being outspoken in their Kitsap County communities.
Levine, who used to work for the county health department, runs a
needle-exchange program. Doyle is an AIDS activist who runs a small food
bank from his home next door to Levine and Derenzy.

They suspect that activism brought Bremerton detectives to their door in
July 2001. Police say it was a tip. Detectives said they smelled pot and,
despite the doctor's notes, they carted off about 100 plants, from
seedlings to mature bushes, as well as growing equipment and personal
belongings, court records show.

Kitsap County prosecutors charged Derenzy, 54, and Levine with
manufacturing marijuana, a felony, and tacked on a school-zone provision
because the men live 741 feet from a school-bus stop. That alone would have
added an automatic two-year prison term to a sentence.

But Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge dropped the charges in January.
"The defendants had documentation" of their medical needs, said Mike
Savage, Hauge's chief trial deputy.

"While 100 plants is a substantial amount of marijuana, the statute
provides no definition of a 60-day supply," Savage said. "So we felt we
couldn't prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, despite all the other
facts of the case."

Four months later, in May, federal agents showed up and carted off 42
plants, all the grow lights and humidifiers, Levine's computer and other
personal items, according to search-warrant documents. Then in August, the
men's attorney got the letter from McKay's office.

"This letter is to advise you that if we receive a new marijuana-case
referral concerning (Levine) or Mr. Derenzy from state or local
authorities, we will accept the case for federal prosecution no matter what
quantity of marijuana is involved," said the letter, signed by Whalley on
behalf of McKay.

"At the same time, we will also file federal charges relating to the
marijuana seized in July 2001."

A federal conviction for growing as many plants as Levine and Derenzy had
in July 2001 could mean a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in
federal prison.

"What this represents is a gun at the head of my clients," said attorney
Douglas Hiatt of Seattle, who represents the four men in Bremerton. "Those
are sinister words that say they want to use the power of the federal
government to shut down a sick guy and his partner and hurt a couple of
other sick people at the same time. That's reprehensible, it's wrong and
it's evil."

Whalley says Hiatt and other medical-pot backers really have it backward:
"We target large-scale marijuana growers," Whalley said. "If you're growing
for medical marijuana, you're not growing hundreds of plants."

The U.S. Attorney's Office generally will not prosecute cases that involve
fewer than 100 plants, Whalley said. There are exceptions, he said,
depending on circumstances. He wouldn't speak in detail about the Bremerton
case.

Whalley said the Department of Justice has not told federal prosecutors in
Seattle to target medical-marijuana users. In fact, Whalley said, "they are
a small part of our caseload, and getting smaller." Shifting funds and
priorities since the Sept. 11 attacks have forced prosecutors away from
drug cases that don't involve large quantities or organized growers, he said.

Even so, Whalley said federal prosecutors aren't bound by the state's
medical-marijuana law. "Defense attorneys want to say their client is sick,
and they're growing it because they're sick and that this qualifies under
state laws," he said.

"But those issues don't make any difference to us at the charging stage. We
charge under federal law and under our own guidelines. An individual who is
sick when he breaks the law gets sentenced accordingly. It's something the
judge can take into account. It's not a debate we engage in."

As for the Bremerton men, Whalley questioned whether they are growing pot
only to treat their diseases.

"I never met a medical-marijuana user who didn't smoke and grow it before
they got sick," Whalley said.

The DEA is even more unwavering. As long as Congress lists marijuana as a
drug without medical benefit, the DEA will go after people who have it,
said Special Agent Will Glaspy, spokesman for DEA headquarters in
Washington D.C.

"Unfortunately, in some instances, that puts state law in conflict with
federal law," Glaspy said.

News of the U.S. Attorney's Office's letter to the Bremerton men has
heightened the fear of doctors who recommend pot to their patients.

"I'm afraid they'll do anything they can to interrupt this movement," said
Dr. Rob Killian, a Seattle family practitioner who treats Levine and who
was the architect of Washington's medical-marijuana law. "That would mean
even going after physicians who have the temerity to discuss this with
patients, and people who assist patients finding this drug."

Killian said federal agents have been watching him since 1996; pharmacists
have told him of federal requests for information on prescriptions he
writes, and his patients have been interviewed by agents.

Killian said he's given Levine his best medical advice: "To treat his
illness as best he can with the (prescription) medications available."

Some state officials have voiced concerns over the states-rights
implications of the Justice Department's stance.

"With all the problems we've got, the U.S. government is worrying about a
few ounces of marijuana? It's absolutely asinine," said state Sen. Bob
McCaslin, a Spokane Republican who has been a medical-marijuana supporter
since watching his wife die of cancer several years ago.

State Attorney General Christine Gregoire has no immediate plans to follow
the California attorney general in addressing the issue with the Justice
Department, said Joyce Roper, a senior assistant attorney general.

"It's clear the initiative affords protection from prosecution under state
law, but the initiative doesn't say that people are immune under federal
law," Roper said

In Bremerton, Levine, Derenzy, Doyle and Wines last week tended six bushy
pot plants growing in their garage that they have raised despite the
federal threat.

And they said they're preparing for the worst.

"We're Americans standing up for our rights, and if they want to imprison
sick people, so be it," Levine said.

Staff reporter Mike Carter contributed to this report. Ian Ith:
206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com.




------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 07:48:11 -0700
Subject:CA: OPED: High Crimes And Misdemeanors Up TOC

Newshawk: Terry Liittschwager
Pubdate: Sun, 15 Sep 2002
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Webpage:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-males15sep15.story
Copyright: 2002 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Mike Males
Note: Mike Males Has Written Four Books on Youth Issues and Teaches
Sociology at UC Santa Cruz.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?162 (Nevadans for Responsible Law
Enforcement)

HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

SANTA CRUZ -- Whether Nevada voters approve or reject the Marijuana Policy
Project's ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for adults, rational drug
policy is the loser. A "yes" vote would change little in a state that has
legalized gambling, gives counties the option of legalizing prostitution
and where pot possession by adults, even after three arrests, is a misdemeanor.

What has changed is the drug policy debate. Reform groups like the
Marijuana Policy Project now embrace harsh "war on drugs" ideas they once
vehemently opposed. For example, the Nevada initiative, while entitling
adults 21 and older to buy and possess up to three ounces of marijuana,
would constitutionally require the state legislature to "provide or
maintain" criminal penalties for persons under 21. Maintaining Nevada law
means a young person caught with a single joint would face a $5,000 fine,
four years in prison, a felony record and permanently jeopardized student
loans, government benefits and employment.

The executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, Robert Kampia, has
claimed that his group's proposed initiative would "end the arrest of all
marijuana users." Since half of all pot arrestees are under 21, Kampia's
claim cannot be true.

Drug wars traditionally feature two elements. The first is an official
crusade to link feared drugs to feared populations--the Chinese to opium,
blacks to cocaine, Mexicans to marijuana, immigrants to alcohol,
underclasses to heroin. The second is the lobbying of privileged groups for
drug-use exemptions. Upper-class patronage of opiates, cocaine and bootleg
liquor was rarely punished. Governors are not evicted from publicly funded
residences because family members violate drug laws; indigent
public-housing residents are.

The Nevada initiative similarly invites grown-ups to exempt their own
cannabis partying from criminal sanction even as they condone ever-crueler
punishments for today's drug-war scapegoat--young people. It doesn't matter
that neither the Marijuana Policy Project nor anyone else has shown an
apocalyptic difference between marijuana use by a 17-year-old and a
40-year-old--or, better, a 20-versus a 21-year-old--that would justify such
different treatment.

"Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts," the reformist Drug Policy Alliance's
bible, reviews hundreds of scholarly studies and reports none showing
marijuana more harmful for adolescents than for adults. While a few users
in all age groups become dependent, marijuana is not an addictive or
so-called gateway drug leading to hard-drug abuse. Rather, as
government-impaneled commissions consistently conclude, the biggest
marijuana danger to young people is getting arrested for using it.

The Marijuana Policy Project and other reform lobbies have jettisoned the
scientific rigor they once championed in favor of emotional appeals to
public prejudice, a staple of drug-war proponents. They twist facts
wholesale to support their new position that pot is a fearsome menace to
youth in the hope of gaining political popularity. The
marijuana-legalization groups invoke as their model a failed U.S.
alcohol-regulation system world-famous for fostering drunken excess,
further evidence of how these reformers have embraced the worst aspects of
the drug-war regime.

Kampia, recently told CNN that because marijuana is illegal and
unregulated, "the federal government's own surveys show that, year after
year, high school seniors find marijuana much easier to obtain than alcohol
or cigarettes." He never specified which federal surveys he had in mind.
The only federally funded survey of high school seniors, "Monitoring the
Future," consistently draws the opposite conclusion. Furthermore, teenagers
actually get and use legal, regulated alcohol and cigarettes two to 25
times more often than any illicit drug.

Nothing shocking about that. It's normal for adolescents to experiment with
adult behaviors. Accordingly, if Nevada's pot initiative passes, teenage
marijuana use is likely to increase. After the Netherlands legalized
marijuana, surveys conducted by the Trimbos Institute found that pot
smoking tripled among Dutch youth. While, two decades ago, Dutch teens used
marijuana one-third as often as U.S. teens, today the levels are
equivalent, another matter both drug reformers and drug warriors misrepresent.

What reformers should be emphasizing is that the Dutch successfully
implemented health measures to reduce hard-drug abuse by shifting resources
away from policing youths and adults who use mild drugs. By contrast, the
dismal campaign surrounding Nevada's initiative finds both sides
hyperventilating over whether someone under the age of 21 might light up.

The fatal flaw in U.S. drug debates, past and present, is that while drug
crises are real, the feared scapegoats rarely cause them. Addiction to
opiates and cocaine was far more serious among white middle classes than
among blacks or Chinese a century ago, just as today's white 40-year-olds
suffer heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine abuse rates many times higher
than teenagers or young adults of any color. Trumpeting drugs as a horror
foisted on mainstream society by feared minorities and young people evades
the fact that middle America harbors the most addicts.

Neither side in today's drug war will face up to this reality. Ultimately,
the misguided debate over the backward notion of reform embodied in the
Nevada initiative aggravates the uniquely American panic of young people
acting like adults, ensuring perpetual teen-drug scares and endless wars on
drugs.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Alex



------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 09:29:54 -0700
Subject:CA: Medical Pot Rallies Held Across State Up TOC

Newshawk: Libertarians 1 - Drug Warriors 0 - http://www.plylar.org
Pubdate: Tue, 17 Sep 2002
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Webpage:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/17/BA146950.DTL
Copyright: 2002 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: letters@sfchronicle.com
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Bob Egelko
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

MEDICAL POT RALLIES HELD ACROSS STATE

Patients Protest U.S. Raids On Supplies

Medical marijuana patients and advocates held protests in San Francisco and
several other cities Monday against the latest federal raids on their supplies.

Outside the federal court building in San Francisco, about 30 demonstrators
chanted, "We're patients, not criminals," and carried "Wanted" posters for
President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Drug Enforcement
Administration chief Asa Hutchinson.

"This is a life-and-death issue," said Randi Webster of San Francisco, who
uses medical marijuana to ease pain from arthritis and a degenerative
condition in her knees, and hobbled along the march on a brace. "The
federal government doesn't see it that way. They think we're drug pushers
and terrorists."

Protests were also held in Oakland, Santa Rosa, San Jose, Santa Cruz,
Sacramento, Santa Ana and a number of cities outside California, said Steph
Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, which organized
the events.

The rallies were in response to DEA raids this month in Sebastopol and
Santa Cruz, where City Council members plan to be on hand Tuesday as
members of the raided organization distribute marijuana publicly outside
City Hall.

The DEA's actions against the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in
Santa Cruz on Sept. 5, particularly angered advocates. Federal agents
seized and destroyed plants and arrested the organization's founders,
Valerie and Mike Corral.

The Corrals, who had helped to draft Prop. 215, were quickly released and
have not been charged with any crimes by the U.S. attorney's office.

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer protested and demanded a meeting with
Ashcroft. Local officials also were irate because they had worked with the
Corrals for six years on a system to identify medical users and provide
marijuana without charge.

Citing federal laws against marijuana growing and distributing, federal
authorities have sought to close down medical marijuana suppliers in
California since state voters passed Proposition 215, a 1996 initiative
allowing use of marijuana for medical purposes under state law.
DEA spokesman Richard Meyer, who watched the start of Monday's rally in San
Francisco but headed indoors when demonstrators tried to get him to speak,
repeated his agency's position that it was targeting only "major dealers,"
not patients.

Asked about the patients at the protest, Meyer said, "We see them as
victims of their traffickers."
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager



------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 09:32:31 -0700
Subject: NV: Despite State Registry, Use Of Medical Marijuana Isn't Easy Up TOC

Newshawk: Libertarians 1 - Drug Warriors 0 - http://www.plylar.org
Pubdate: Mon, 16 Sep 2002
Source: Reno Gazette-Journal (NV)
Webpage: http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2002/09/16/23848.php
Copyright: 2002 Reno Gazette-Journal
Contact: rgjmail@nevadanet.com
Website: http://www.rgj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/363
Author: Craig Klugman, Special To The Reno Gazette-Journal
Note: Craig Klugman is assistant professor of bioethics in the Department
of Health Ecology and the Nevada Center for Ethics and Health Policy at the
University of Nevada, Reno.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

DESPITE STATE REGISTRY, USE OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA ISN'T EASY

"Take two puffs and call me in the morning" may be your doctor's orders at
your next appointment. Last fall, Nevada enacted a medical marijuana
statute (Sect. 33, Ch. 592) that provides a registry for those who may
benefit from use of this plant.

The smoking of medical marijuana is highly controversial, but many swear
that it provides them inexpensive and fast relief from annoying symptoms.

The use of marijuana (Cannabis sativa L.) as a medicine dates back to China
in the year 3000 B.C. In 1854, marijuana was listed on the official U.S.
drug dispensary. Not until the Marihuana (sic) Tax Act of 1937 was the
plant first regulated in this country and only with the Comprehensive Drug
Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 was marijuana listed as a schedule
I drug (no medical use), thus making its use or distribution a federal crime.

The history of this control relates to marijuana's political associations
through sub- and countercultures. In the last decade, however, many states,
including Nevada, passed medical-marijuana provisions. As of Sept. 1, 211
people were registered under the Nevada medical-marijuana program.

According to the Nevada Department of Agriculture, marijuana may be used by
a person with a doctor's referral for such conditions as AIDS, cancer,
glaucoma or other disease that causes nausea, severe weight loss, muscle
spasms, severe pain or seizures.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the drug may alleviate these medical
conditions. There are few controlled studies on the medical effects of
marijuana and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which controls the only
legal marijuana farm in the United States, rarely gives permission for such
research. Many claim that marijuana is a gateway drug and that proponents
are merely looking for a way to legalize marijuana.

The active part of marijuana is known as dronabinol or THC. A man-made
version of THC is available in the ingestible pill Marinol. Smoking
bypasses the stomach, enabling those with severe nausea to ingest the drug,
something they could not do with a pill. Opponents point out that smoking
any substance is inherently harmful.

They also note that marijuana tends to slow down cognitive function and
reaction time. Proponents disagree, claiming there is no evidence of
marijuana being a gateway drug nor evidence of anyone overdosing.

After deciding, in consultation with your doctor, that medical marijuana
may help your condition, a patient can call the Department of Agriculture
at 684-5333. The state will mail a packet that includes all the forms and
information necessary for registration. A physician must note a qualifying
diagnosis, as well as indicate that he or she has counseled you on the
harms and risks of using marijuana.

Many physicians are reluctant to mention medical marijuana, concerned about
being punished for prescribing a highly controlled substance.

In Nevada, the physician does not prescribe the drug, but simply provides a
referral stating that the patient is eligible for a state program. Although
you and your physician still could be punished under federal law, neither
can be pursued under state law and the State Medical Board has stated it
will take no action against a referring physician.

Next you must get a signature from a second physician who verifies the
diagnosis. You must return to the state a registration application,
completed doctor's forms, copy of photo ID, notarized acknowledgement form,
notarized waiver form, fingerprint card and designation of a city of residence.

The acknowledgement says that the user is not exempt from federal laws,
that the registry card is good only in Nevada, and that the state is not
responsible for any "deleterious outcomes." The signed waiver releases the
state from liability and allows for release of private information
necessary to review the application.

Once submitted to the state, the Board of Medical Examiners verifies the
status and qualifications of the physicians. The state looks for any past
drug convictions. Any such history can disqualify you from the program.

The card allows you or a designated caregiver to have one ounce of
marijuana, three mature plants and four immature plants. However, while
taking marijuana, you cannot use a motorized vehicle, a water ski or
surfboard, an aircraft, a firearm or an amusement ride. Nor can the drug be
used in a public location or a detention facility. Opponents of marijuana
are concerned that registered growers could become semi-legal distributors.
The Department of Agriculture packet states that distributing marijuana to
others, even if they are registered, is illegal.

One oversight of this law is that it does not state how you obtain the
plants or seeds to begin growing marijuana.

To legally use this drug then, you have to illegally obtain a starter plant.

In Nevada, you may find symptom relief in an ancient remedy, but you risk
going to jail by procuring it.
__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager



------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 09:40:28 -0700
Subject: CA: How many will make the medipot exodus? Up TOC

Eureka Times-Standard  www.times-standard.com
Monday, September 16, 2002

Opinion

How many will make the medipot exodus?
Thomas D. Elias

It's not exactly an underground railroad even if it ends in Canada, which
was also the northern terminus of the pre-Civil War Underground Railroad
that assisted runaway slaves.
     Today's exodus of medical marijuana patients driven from their American
homeland is not underground at all, but quite public, as the federal
government simply won't allow them to use pot for alleviating pain or other
symptoms of diseases like AIDS and cancer -- no matter what the majority of
voters in their home states may say.
     But there are definite similarities between today's flight to Canada and
that of slaves who sought freedom, beyond merely the destination. Both cases
involve desperate people willing to depart from friends and family to escape
a situation they find intolerable and unjust. And as in the 1850s, some
state and local officials today are willing to defy federal edicts they see
as unjust or inhumane.
     The current northward flight, made up mostly of California, was growing
exponentially even before two events this month assured it would quickly
accelerate. One came when Health Canada, that country's national health
agency, granted a permit allowing ex-Californian Steve Kubby to grow all the
pot he needs for his anti-cancer therapy.
     Kubby, the 1998 Libertarian Party candidate for governor, still faces a
pot-raid misdemeanor jail term in Place County if he ever returns to
California. And he could be forced to come back, even though he's been told
he wouldn't be allowed marijuana in custody and he and his doctors are
convinced this would mean certain death from the adrenal cancer he's been
fighting off since the 1970s. For while Health Canada has backed Kubby,
Immigration Canada still has an extradition proceeding pending against him.
Nevertheless, his growing permit stands as a beacon to other patients who
feel their needs are equally urgent.
     The second event was a Drug Enforcement Administration raid on the Santa
Cruz pot farm of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, which long had
the public support of the county sheriff and other local officials. The
group for years provided free pot to medical users, issuing identification
recognized by local authorities. It was never accused of trying to sell
marijuana to anyone who wasn't a patient in need. Local officials still
support the group so strongly that after the raid, they invited its leaders
to distribute pot to registered patients in a City Hall courtyard Sept. 17.
     The DEA raid was a loud shot across the bow of the entire medical
marijuana movement, not just in California but all across America.
     It signaled that no matter how involved the federal Department of
Justice might be with fighting terror and trying to find missing kidnapped
children, it will never let up on patients using marijuana, even when they
desperately need something to ease their pain and have doctors'
prescriptions and terminal medical diagnoses.
     The feds justified their latest action, in which agents seized more than
150 pot plants and four guns, by citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that
earlier this year found federal drug laws take precedence over California's
1996 Proposition 215 and similar laws legalizing medicinal marijuana in the
only other six states where it's been voted on.
     The court decision and the congressional failure to legalize medipot
both carry a pre-Civil War sense of deja vu. Back then, lawmakers refused to
outlaw slavery for political and economic reasons. Lawmakers today refuse to
act for political reasons, fearing they'd be labeled pro-drug.
     And the Supreme Court's adamant refusal to recognize the public's will
on medipot echoes the disgraceful Dred Scott decision that forced Northern
states to return runaway slaves to their owners in the old South.
     The state official most in opposition to the federal actions today is
Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who protested the U.S. Attorney General John
Ashcroft that the Santa Cruz raid was "a provocative and intrusive incident
of harassment by federal agents. Lockyer, a Democrat who seeks re-election
now and hopes to run for governor in 2006, charged federal raids like the
one in Santa Cruz and earlier actions against medipot clubs in Los Angeles
and Oakland, "undermine joint efforts to fight dangerous drugs and the major
narcoterrorist organization that manufacture and distribute them."
     While his protest lacks both the moral outrage and the eloquence of
those by abolitionists in the 1850s, it's still an indication that the
Justice Department again has cast justice aside to assert its authority over
the helpless.
     The open question today: How many Americans, and especially
Californians, will have to leave home and seek shelter abroad before
Congress and the rest of the federal government wake up and act both
sensibly and morally?

------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 13:20:29 -0700
Subject: USA Today: Pot Raid Angers State, Patients Up TOC

Pot raid angers state, patients

By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - Suzanne Pfeil understands why federal agents burst in 
just after dawn with guns drawn and handcuffed her. That's routine in drug 
busts. What she can't understand is why agents kept ordering her to stand 
up after they saw her crutches and leg braces next to the bed.

Then when her blood pressure spiked and she felt chest pains, the agents 
refused to call an ambulance, says Pfeil, 42, disabled by polio. That she 
can't forgive. "Totally unprofessional," she says. "They were brutalizing us."

Outrage over a Sept. 5 raid at a medical marijuana cooperative in the 
coastal hills north of here festers beyond the terminally ill patients who 
use marijuana to ease pain, which California law allows.

The raid is the latest, perhaps most controversial collision of federal law 
and the nation's growing medical marijuana movement.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer condemned the bust as a waste of 
law enforcement resources, a cruel step against a group that presents 
slight danger to the public and a slap at the state's voters. The Santa 
Cruz County sheriff, whose deputies have worked closely with co-op managers 
to ensure that the operation is law-abiding, said he was "disappointed" by 
the raid.

Today, the Santa Cruz City Council will permit the co-op to hand out 
marijuana publicly to its patients at City Hall.

"It's just absolutely loathsome to me that federal money, energy and staff 
time would be used to harass people like this," says Emily Reilly, Santa 
Cruz's vice mayor.

A Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman in San Francisco accused the 
council of "flouting federal law" prohibiting marijuana possession.

In Washington, DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson defends the raid.

"What the DEA concentrates on is the investigation and prosecution of major 
trafficking cases," Hutchinson says. "But the DEA's responsibility is to 
enforce our controlled substances laws, and one of them is marijuana. 
Someone could stand up and say one of these marijuana plants is designed 
for someone who is sick, but under federal law, there's no distinction."

Since California voters approved medical marijuana in 1996, Alaska, 
Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have 
enacted similar laws. Federal authorities say no conclusive scientific 
evidence proves marijuana's medicinal benefit, but advocates say a number 
of foreign studies do.

"My hope is this bust represents the federal government pushing too far, 
the overreach that shocks the conscience of a lot more people, especially 
those in Washington who have seemed so callous to date," says Ethan 
Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. The group 
promotes alternatives to the drug war, such as treatment instead of jail 
for drug offenders.

The DEA has raided eight medical marijuana operations in California, 
including one in Sonoma County three days after the Santa Cruz bust. But 
Hutchinson denies that California is being targeted. "It's one of the 
things we're carrying out all across the country," he says.

Chris Battle, a DEA spokesman in Washington, says enforcement has been 
active in California because the state's law is loosely worded and open to 
abuse.

"California doesn't say how much you can grow, how much you can have or 
what disease you can use it for," says Allen St. Pierre, executive director 
of the NORML Foundation, a pro-marijuana advocacy group.

Laws in Oregon, Washington and Maine specify weight amounts, numbers of 
plants that can be possessed and specific diseases marijuana can treat. 
Oregon requires a doctor's recommendation and a photo ID card. Several 
bills that would set similar guidelines haven't been approved by the 
California Legislature.

Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies closely monitored the co-op that was 
raided last week - WAMM, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, 
founded and run by Valerie and Mike Corral. "Valerie has been very open and 
very consistent in what she's doing up there and how the marijuana is 
handled," sheriff's spokesman Kim Allyn says.

Valerie Corral is the movement's "Mother Teresa," says Nadelmann of the 
Drug Policy Alliance. She served on a task force Lockyer formed to write 
guidelines for the Legislature, and her group is seen as a model nationally.

Non-profit WAMM dispenses only marijuana it grows organically. It doesn't 
acquire marijuana from other sources. Marijuana is free to its 250 members, 
who contribute labor to the co-op. About 85% of members are terminally ill 
cancer and AIDS patients.

Using chain saws, DEA agents cut down 160 plants that were a month shy of 
maturity, Michael Corral says. The Corrals aren't sure how they'll continue 
to supply WAMM members. "We were hoping to increase our membership," he 
says. "Right now, attrition is the only way to get in."

Valerie Corral, who suffers seizures from a head injury from a car 
accident, began smoking marijuana after conventional drugs failed to 
control her symptoms.

Her doctor, Arnold Leff, says such drugs often work only in high doses that 
leave some patients with unpleasant side effects. "Her disorder is 
responsive to marijuana and not to other things," says Leff, a deputy 
director of the White House drug abuse office in the Nixon administration. 
"This is a very safe herbal product. So if it works, it ought to be used."

As in several other medical marijuana raids, no charges have been filed 
against the Corrals. Lockyer, in a letter to Hutchinson and U.S. Attorney 
General John Ashcroft, called the raids "punitive expeditions" and 
questioned "the ethical basis for the DEA's policy when these raids are 
being executed without apparent regard for the likelihood of successful 
prosecution." Medical marijuana advocates say prosecutors refuse to bring 
cases because they know juries won't convict.

One of WAMM's lawyers, Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, 
says the case could challenge federal actions against medical marijuana on 
constitutional grounds. The Supreme Court ruled in May that medical 
necessity cannot be used as a defense against charges of violating federal 
drug laws.

But Uelmen says the justices didn't rule on whether states could legalize 
medical marijuana under the 10th Amendment, which grants states powers not 
exercised by the federal government, such as regulating medical practices. 
And under the 14th Amendment's due process guarantee, Uelmen argues, 
patients have a right to medicine that provides relief. The conflict 
between federal and state laws over medical marijuana puts local 
authorities in an awkward position. Today, Santa Cruz police will be at 
City Hall to enforce the law - California's medical marijuana law and laws 
against possession and sale.

"You can imagine the level of discomfort we have sometimes in dealing with 
this issue," says Steve Clark, head of the police department's 
investigations unit.

At WAMM's co-op overlooking the Pacific, Mike Corral walks among the bare 
rows in the now-decimated marijuana garden, the stumps of once healthy 
plants protruding from the dirt, and wonders what will become of the co-op. 
"We'll keep our fingers crossed and hope that sometime between now and 
March we'll be able to replant," he says.


CRRH is working to regulate and tax the sale of cannabis to adults like 
alcohol, allow doctors to recommend cannabis through pharmacies and restore 
the unregulated production of industrial hemp.

*Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp*
mail:     CRRH ; P.O. Box 86741 ; Portland, OR 97286 USA
email:   crrh@crrh.org
phone:  (503) 235-4606
fax:       (503) 235-0120
web:     http://www.crrh.org/

------------------------------
End of Restore-Digest V2002 #194
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