Quick Hits (page 3)
Marijuana Task Force Recommends DA's Limits With Minor Changes
By: Leann Whitten (The Eureka Reporter)
The county's Medical Marijuana Task Force will recommend the Board of Supervisors deem three pounds of dried cannabis "a reasonable amount" for medical marijuana patients to cultivate, possess and consume per year at the board's meeting.
The recommendation is the same as District Attorney Paul Gallegos' guidelines which he set in 2003, except the county's proposed ordinance does not specify an amount of plants within a 100-square-foot canopy.
The task force was created by the board in March to "study the proposed ordinance adding - the Humboldt County Code relating to medical marijuana guidelines for the implementation of Proposition 215 and California Senate Bill 420."
The task force creation was prompted by some community opposition including the County Office of Education.
The proposed ordinance says a qualified medical marijuana patient or 215- cardholder cannot engage in the possession "in any place where smoking is prohibited; in or within 1,000 feet of the grounds of a school, recreation or youth center, unless medical use occurs within a residence; on a school bus; while in a motor vehicle that is being operated; or while operating a boat."
In September, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 420 which set a statewide minimum for medical marijuana patients of six mature plants or 12 immature plants and up to 8 ounces of processed cannabis flowers. SB 420 also allows local governments to set their own guidelines using it as a minimum.
Proposition 215 - the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 - says regulations "relating to the possession of marijuana and cultivation of marijuana, shall not apply to a patient or to a patient's primary caregiver, who possesses or cultivates marijuana for the personal medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician."
The board meets Tuesday at 9 a.m. in its chamber in the Humboldt County Courthouse.
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Mary Jane'z Novelties
Growin' Our Own (page 3)
Token Justice
By: Steve Kubby
By continuing to target medical pot patients, the federal government turns its back on millions of voters, the wishes of the dying and the authority of the courts.
The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February, 2000 when researchers in Madrid Spain announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the most psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
Most Americans don't know anything about the Madrid discovery. Virtually no major U.S. newspapers carried the story, which ran only once on the AP and UPI news wires, on Feb. 29, 2000. Why has this vitally important information been suppressed while the media regularly trumpet any possible breakthrough in cancer research?
The Madrid study wasn't the first time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health in order to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice – lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia. Since then, dozens of other peer-reviewed scientific studies have confirmed that THC and other canabinoids shrink tumors, cut off their blood supply and may even program cancer cells to die.
Because news of such advances in our understanding of medical marijuana has been suppressed, serious opposition still exists within the law enforcement community. They claim that the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 was some sort of hoax, or worse, not a law to be obeyed because federal marijuana laws trump state laws.
As a result, seven years after voters approved Prop. 215, sick, disabled and dying people are still being arrested, jailed, humiliated and bankrupted. An ideology of zero tolerance has deprived medical marijuana patients not only of justice but of life itself.
Contrary to assertions by police and US officials, federal law ought not to trump state medical marijuana laws, according to the 9th Circuit Court decision on December 16, 2003. In that decision, the Court found that "the appellants have demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on their claim that, as applied to them, the CSA [Controlled Substances Act of 1970] is an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause authority."
On May 14, 2004, District Court Judge Martin J. Jenkins acted upon this decision by the 9th Circuit Court and granted a preliminary injunction against the federal government, thereby protecting the medical marijuana rights of the two patients who are suing the government in this case.
Just one month later, in the case of County of Santa Cruz et al. v. Ashcroft, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel issued a temporary injunction barring the federal government from raiding the marijuana gardens of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, or WAMM.
The ruling allows the collective to resume cultivation free from the fear of further federal prosecution. This relief comes 18 months after a brutal Drug Enforcement Administration raid on WAMM in Santa Cruz, and a year after the collective's seriously ill members filed suit against the federal government to stop the law enforcement harassment.
Law enforcement and prosecutors also claim that patients dragged before the courts possess "too much for personal use." However, Proposition 215 set only one medical-marijuana possession limit, and that limit is "for personal medical use."
In 2002, the California Supreme Court affirmed this quantity limit in People v. Mower. There, the court clearly held that the only quantity limit or requirement in Proposition 215 is "for personal medical use."
But how much is too much? How much would be too much if your life depended on it?
Most narcotics officers claim that more than a few ounces of marijuana per month would be more than is necessary for personal use. In contrast, the US government allows their legally licensed patients to consume a pound per month. In Canada, patients such as myself are licensed to grow and consume up to two pounds per month. Law enforcement refuses to accept these levels of medical usage, but patients can and do consume these amounts of cannabis and still lead productive lives. Indeed, many need it to be able to live at all.
If respect for the law is to mean anything in our society, our elected officials must set aside their zero tolerance ideology and uphold California's medical marijuana law – exactly as it was written and passed by the people of California. Elected officials should begin tomorrow to implement the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 by taking the following four specific actions:
1. Stop arresting sick people. Don't authorize budgets or federal grants that will be used against sick people. Adopt and implement the Mower Decision to protect sick people from arrest.
2. Stop treating sick people like criminals. According to the Mower Decision, bona fide medical marijuana patients are entitled to a special hearing to establish that they have a recommendation or approval to use medical marijuana from a licensed physician. Unless police have clear evidence of actual sales, it is unlawful and immoral to arrest marijuana growers who make claims of medical use.
3. Stop forcing sick people into the black market. Demand that the federal government take action on the petition filed by Jon Gettman with the Drug Enforcement Administration on July 27, 1995, and reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III. That action alone would solve many of the problems and concerns voiced by law enforcement and allow patients to go directly to their pharmacist to obtain their medicine.
4. Start prosecuting those who violate the rights of sick people. Elected officials must provide legal protection for sick and dying patients from illegal arrests and prosecutions. To uphold the law, officials must see to it that police and prosecutors are held accountable for violating the medical marijuana rights of patients, caregivers and physicians.
Make no mistake; this issue is no more about marijuana than the Boston Tea Party was about tea. This is about sick and dying people who are living in fear that the very people they pay to protect them have turned against them, all because they use a medicine that the Federal government's own IOM study says, "there is no clear alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting."
Seven years is long enough. It's time to stop hiding behind federal laws and the failed ideology. The voters have spoken and they have clearly voted to stop treating medical marijuana patients like criminals. Medical marijuana is the law; now is the time for law enforcement and our elected officials to show good faith and stop arresting sick people.
It is time for our elected officials and police to uphold their oath of office and uphold the will of the voters who wisely chose to protect sick people and exempt them from the War on Drugs. It wasn't difficult for the voters to understand medical marijuana, they voted by a whopping 56 percent to 44 percent to pass the law. Juries don't seem to have a problem understanding medical marijuana either. Only police and prosecutors seem to have difficulty comprehending that medical marijuana is real and it is the law.
Medical marijuana patients need real justice. They need police and prosecutors who will respect their rights, their dignity and protect them from real criminals.
[Ed. note: Steve Kubby has written two books on drug policy reform and currently serves as the National Director of the American Medical Marijuana Association.]
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Pipeline (page 3)
U.S. Correctional Population Hits New High
By: Fox Butterfield (NY Times)
The number of Americans under the control of the criminal justice system grew by 130,700 last year to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million, according to a Justice Department report released today (July 26, 2004).
The total includes people in jail and prison as well as those on probation and parole. This is about 3.2 percent of the adult population in the United States, the report said.
The growth in what the report termed the "correctional population" comes at a time when the crime rate nationwide has been relatively stable for several years. It also comes when many states, faced with budget deficits, have passed new, less strict sentencing laws in an attempt to reduce the number of inmates.
The report does not address why the number of men and women in jail and prison and on probation and parole has continued to increase. But experts say the most likely reason is the cumulative effect of the tougher sentencing laws passed in the 1990's, which led to more people's being sent to prison and being required to serve longer terms.
The report found that there were 691,301 people in local and county jails and 1,387,269 in state and federal prisons last year, for a total of 2,078,570. That was an increase of 3.9 percent in the jail population and 2.3 percent in the prison population.
At the same time, the report said, there were 4,073,987 Americans on probation at the end of last year, an increase of 1.2 percent from the end of 2002, and 774,588 on parole, up 3.1 percent.
In general, people on probation have been placed there after being convicted of a crime instead of being sent to jail or prison. People on parole have usually already served prison time and are kept on parole for further supervision.
About 41 percent of adults on parole last year were black; 40 percent were white.
The number of women on parole has steadily increased in recent years, the report found. The percentage of parolees who were women was 13 percent at the end of 2003, up from 10 percent at the end of 1995. This increase reflects a slow but steady growth in the number of women being arrested for and convicted of serious crimes.
Of those people discharged from parole in 2003, 38 percent were returned to prison, either because of a technical violation like failing a drug urine test or because they were charged with committing a new crime. Another 9 percent absconded and could not be located by law enforcement, the report said.
The 3.1 percent increase in the number of people on parole, the biggest in at least a decade, troubles many police and prosecutors, because they believe that newly released inmates are likely to return to a life of crime and are a major source of violence in some cities, including Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Texas led the nation with 534,260 people on probation or parole, followed by California, with 485,039.
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