Quick Hits (page 4)
Judge Orders 18 Ounces of 'Purple Haze' Marijuana Returned to Local men
By: Cathy Redfern (Santa Cruz Sentinel)
SANTA CRUZ - Judge Art Danner ordered police to return 18 ounces of "Purple Haze" marijuana to two men who had the drug confiscated during a minor car stop in Scotts Valley.
Police pulled over Leo Beus, 47, of Felton, on Sept. 22 because his car had tinted windows. His friend, Jon Balesteri, 54, of Santa Cruz, was with him. The men had bought the 14 ounces of "herbal medicine" a day earlier at the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club, said their attorney, Ben Rice.
They didn't have their medical prescriptions with them, but the "very nice" officer allowed them to go home and get them, Beus said. However, their $3,000-plus worth of medicine was confiscated for evidence.
The District Attorney's Office charged the men with transporting and possessing marijuana for sale, then dropped the charges. District Attorney Bob Lee said there have been a handful of county cases in the past few years where judges have ordered medical marijuana returned to patients.
Rice said Danner issued the return order because of the December federal appeals court ruling that the 1970 Controlled Substances Act outlawing marijuana may not apply to sick people who have a doctor's recommendation. The decision is likely to be appealed by the federal government.
California voters in 1996 passed Proposition 215, which made medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation legal under state law. The law contradicts federal drug laws.
"In the past, Danner has refused to order it returned because of the divergence of federal and state law," Rice said. But the December decision "means that California and federal law, at least in the 9th circuit area, are on the same page."
He said county officials and Sheriff Mark Tracy have been working on defining how much medical marijuana is reasonable for a patient to possess. A state law that took effect Jan. 1 says patients may possess up to 8 ounces, but that counties can set more lenient amounts. Rice said 8 ounces is an "unrealistic number."
When medical marijuana is confiscated, Rice and others would like to see officers seize only as much marijuana as needed for evidence.
"We are lucky to have Sheriff Tracy and other local government leaders," he said. "But one thing that has to stop is the confiscation of crops and then officers giving back spoiled marijuana."
Beus, a landscaper, has two broken vertebrae and says pain medication in pill form nauseates him. Balesteri, a disabled former truck driver, suffers from maladies including migraines, hepatitis C and carpal tunnel syndrome.
The men were obviously pleased with the outcome. The marijuana was given to the court by Sgt. Donna Lind, then handed to Rice. Lind said later she was simply following the court's order.
"The law is so confusing that it puts us in a difficult position," she said.
Outside Danner's courtroom the pungent odor of marijuana wafted in the hallway.
Rice's clients thanked him for getting their marijuana back.
"Thanks, man, you're a sweetheart," Balesteri said.
"Yes, thanks, it's been great," Beus echoed. "Santa Cruz has come a long way. I'm really grateful."
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Tan 'n' Trends
Growin' Our Own (page 4)
Clinic Sees Pot as a Valid Treatment
By: David Haldane, (LA Times Staff Writer)
Andy Kinnon recently walked into an Orange County doctor's office looking for relief. When he walked out an hour later, Kinnon said, he had just the thing he'd been seeking: a recommendation, on embossed white paper signed and dated by a physician, for all the marijuana he could smoke.
"I suffer from migraine headaches," Kinnon, 41, explained. "They're wicked -- "you have to shut out light and sound."
For years he'd tried various remedies, none of which had worked. Finally, in 1996, Kinnon said, he discovered the one thing that helped ease the pain cannabis, which he's been smoking ever since.
"I've tried everything else," Kinnon said. "Now I have the legal right to use it as medicine. These guys are folk heroes."
The guys he's talking about are Drs. Phillip A. Denney and Robert E. Sullivan, who recently opened in a Lake Forest strip mall a medical practice devoted to recommending medical marijuana to patients.
In focusing their entire practice on that narrow specialty, the pair joined a handful of doctors statewide -- mostly in Northern California -- openly promoting the treatment of a variety of ailments with cannabis, which California voters legalized with the approval of Proposition 215 in 1996. But both acknowledge they have also opened themselves to what they contend is police harassment and an array of challenges that they say have plagued many colleagues.
"I'm scared to death," Denney, 55, said Feb. 9, the day the office opened in a retail center just off Interstate 5 and Kinnon showed up to become their first patient. "I'm scared that the medical board will take away my license. I'm scared that the federal government will kick down my door and take me off to prison in handcuffs."
His fear is not entirely unfounded.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml), generally considered the most authoritative source on such matters, lists on its website a dozen California physicians who routinely recommend cannabis as a treatment.
Despite a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the right of doctors to discuss marijuana with their patients, the website says at least eight of these doctors have come under investigation by the California Medical Board, following law enforcement complaints that their medical examinations of patients were a sham.
Dr. William Eidelman, an alternative-medicine specialist who until recently practiced in Santa Monica, had his license suspended last year after undercover sheriff's deputies posing as patients said he had recommended cannabis without sufficient medical cause. Eidelman, who estimates he has issued more than 4,000 recommendations for medical marijuana since 1998, denies the charge and is fighting the suspension in a series of hearings before an administrative law judge this week in Los Angeles.
And Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a Berkeley psychiatrist, is being investigated over allegations that he recommended cannabis on several occasions without performing adequate medical evaluations. "One of the things I've been trying to get is practice guidelines," he said. "What exactly do they expect, in other words, with regards to an examination?"
Denney and Sullivan say each of their patients is given a thorough physical examination. Vital signs such as pulse, blood pressure, height, weight, vision and temperature are recorded, and a complete medical history is taken.
They say documentation from other treating physicians is sought.
"We're going to be held to a higher standard" than most other doctors, Denney said.
The recommendations signed by doctors provide a degree of legal protection to patients who are caught by police with marijuana in their possession.
Because Proposition 215 legalized the consumption of marijuana for medicinal purposes, few prosecutors would waste their time and resources pressing charges against anyone who could demonstrate approved medical need.
About half of his patients, Denney said, come in complaining of chronic pain caused by old surgeries, injuries, lost limbs, arthritis or neuropathic ailments. "Cannabis can be nothing short of miraculous for these people," he said.
Other conditions often helped by the herb, he said, include chronic digestive disease, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, facial tics, seizures, glaucoma, insomnia and muscle spasms.
"We're just trying to provide a service that nobody else is providing," Denney said. "We'd be very happy if nobody came to see us because they could get this from their family physician."
Denney himself began his medical career with a family practice. After graduating from USC's School of Medicine in 1976 and serving a short stint at L.A.'s County-USC Medical Center, Denney moved to the town of Greenwood in Northern California and established a family practice there.
Later he became an emergency room physician in Sacramento. That's where he met Sullivan, a Saint Louis University Medical School graduate who had also been in family practice. The two hit it off. Four and a half years ago, after his hours at a Placerville hospital were cut back, Denney became interested in the medical benefits of marijuana, which he had smoked recreationally in the 1960s.
"I became fascinated by the potential of offering this to people for medicinal purposes," he recalled. Although Proposition 215 had legalized medical marijuana in 1996, Denney said, he was struck by "the lack of interest by practicing physicians."
A fledgling cannabis practice he established slowly grew, with Denney being invited to make "house calls" to clinics all over Northern California. But what impressed him even more, Denney said, were the distances some patients were willing to travel for appointments. "I had patients from every county in California," he said.
Encouraged by new legislation and court rulings that he believes have improved the climate for medicinal cannabis practitioners, Denney recently decided to relocate his practice. "I looked at a map of California," he said, "and asked, Where is the largest population with the least amount of access to these services? The answer was clear: the Los Angeles Basin."
Dr. Felicia Cohn, director of medical ethics for the UC Irvine College of Medicine, likens the doctors' marketing of themselves as medicinal marijuana specialists to ophthalmologists who advertise Lasik eye surgery -- focusing on the cure, instead of the disease. "I don't see anything unethical about it," she said.
"In fact, I'd say it requires a certain amount of moral fortitude to take a politically active position for a controversial, though legal, medication. I teach my medical students all the time that we get the healthcare system we build. And if we want there to be input into that system, who better than physicians to advocate for the healthcare they consider appropriate?"
Law enforcement have a decidedly different view.
Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, declined to comment on the new medical practice within his jurisdiction.
The use of marijuana for medical reasons in general, he said, "is the subject of some appellate cases -- litigated by the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. I haven't dealt with this issue at all."
John Anderson, head of the narcotics enforcement team at the Orange County district attorney's office, said the use of medicinal cannabis in the county is handled on a case-by-case basis. "The guidelines are spelled out quite vaguely," he said. "It's very complex; the biggest problem in California from top to bottom is that our law is inconsistent with federal law. In all honesty, in the last several years we've seen only a handful of these cases. Orange County doesn't appear to be a bastion of medical marijuana use."
And a spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, while acknowledging a doctor's legal right to recommend cannabis to patients, said his agency doesn't condone it. "We do not recognize the term 'medical marijuana,' " Richard Meyer said. "Marijuana is not a medicine at all."
Though the DEA doesn't go after doctors just for making recommendations, Meyer said, "the way federal law now stands, it is illegal to possess, cultivate or distribute marijuana, regardless of the amount, and regardless of the intended purposes. This is the first time in our history that a substance has become a medicine by popular vote. We believe that the marijuana lobby has deceived the public in California, big time. Our mission is not to go after users, but -- distributors."
That's why Denney and Sullivan carefully avoid telling patients anything about where to get their marijuana. Most, Denney said, get it in one of three ways: They buy it on the street, grow it themselves or obtain it from one of several medical "cannabis clubs" whose legality is in dispute.
On opening day of the doctors' new Orange County practice resembled something of a reunion of activists involved in the issue.
"I came to congratulate them and tell them how wonderful it is that they are taking this on," said Anna T. Boyce, a retired nurse from Mission Viejo who said she had helped write Proposition 215. "This is the only clinic of its kind in Southern California, and I don't feel the hostile atmosphere that we had even two years ago. People are finally beginning to realize that it's not a harmful drug."
Edward Feldkamp, 63, of Lake Forest said he'd also come to lend his support.
The survivor of a 1982 surgery for cancer of the saliva gland, he smokes cannabis several times daily to fight off the pain. "I tried yoga and meditation," he said, "and then I discovered how effective marijuana was -- it's the only thing that works."
Like other patients, Feldkamp has had to travel long distances to renew the official physician's recommendation that expires after one year. From now on, he'll just have to drive a few miles. "I think it's wonderful," he said of the new practice in town. "It takes a brave doctor in this day and age to put his patients first."
Five patients showed up on the first day, none flinching at the $200 fee for an initial consultation. The doctors believe they will be the first among many. "I don't mind sticking my neck out," Denney said, adding that "politics is the 400-pound gorilla. I'm flying by the seat of my pants."
Why, then, is he willing to do it?
"It's the right thing to do," the doctor said.
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Pipeline (page 4)
Couple Cry Foul Over Federal MMJ Arrest
By: Denny Walsh (Sacramento Bee)
The medical marijuana confrontation between California and the U.S. government took a dramatic turn when two people were arrested on federal charges as they sat in a Tehama County courtroom.
David Dean Davidson and Cynthia Barcelo Blake were waiting for their attorneys to finish a meeting in the judge's chambers after Deputy District Attorney Lynn Strom had announced at the hearing that she would seek a dismissal of charges against the pair for cultivation and possession for sale of marijuana.
When the prosecutor, who requested the meeting in chambers, left the courtroom with the defense attorneys and the judge, sheriff's deputies ordered the defendants into the hall, handcuffed them and told them they were under federal arrest.
At the same time, the county prosecutor informed the judge and defense attorneys that the pair had been indicted five days earlier by a federal grand jury in Sacramento. When the defense attorneys rushed back to the Corning courtroom, their clients were gone and they were informed by a deputy that the pair were on their way to jail in Sacramento.
Deputies had taken Davidson and Blake out the back door of the courthouse and placed them in an unmarked car.
As he was being handcuffed, Davidson said, he told a deputy he wanted to see his lawyer. "He told me, 'You don't have a lawyer. Your case was dismissed,' " Davidson said at a news conference in front of the U.S. courthouse in Sacramento shortly before he and Blake were arraigned on the federal charges.
The pair are charged in the federal indictment with conspiring to grow at least 1,000 plants, possessing marijuana with the intent to distribute, and manufacturing at least 100 plants.
If convicted, they face a mandatory minimum 10 years in prison.
California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act legalized medical marijuana on a doctor's recommendation. The law has pitted state and some local officials against federal drug agents and the current administration's zero-tolerance pot policy.
Davidson, 53, and Blake, 54, use marijuana on the recommendation of physicians to alleviate pain, depression and insomnia, they said. Both said they had never been arrested before their July arrest on the state charges.
Davidson is a retired businessman who lives in Oakland. Blake worked 16 years for the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco. She took disability leave in April and now lives in Red Bluff.
They appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory G. Hollows and were ordered released on $50,000 bail each. Davidson said they were processed out of the downtown jail in Sacramento about midnight.
"It was a nightmare come true," Davidson said of the ordeal.
Their attorney, J. Tony Serra, had stronger words.
Strom "knew she couldn't win," Serra asserted. "So, she concocted this terrible, illegal, underhanded scheme to separate David and Cindy from their attorneys and transition them into federal jurisdiction, where she knows that medical necessity is not a defense.
"The U.S. attorney's office should never have taken this case. David and Cindy have never sold marijuana. They grow it strictly for their own medical use," Serra added.
The veteran defense lawyer cited a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- the highest court in the West -- that personal cultivation and use of medical marijuana in a state like California, which permits such activities, can be outside the control of federal authorities.
The appellate court's rationale would apply to those who grow their own pot or obtain it from local grower-caretakers without involving interstate commerce.
Serra insists that Davidson and Blake fit that profile.
Tehama County Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Skillman disputed Serra's characterization of Tuesday's events.
"Typically, this case would be taken by the federal government because it is multijurisdictional, in that the evidence was gathered in two counties, Tehama and Alameda," Skillman said in a telephone interview. "And, there has been a federal presence from the beginning. Federal agents were involved in the search (of Davidson's residence) in Alameda County.
"There were more than 62 pounds of processed marijuana and 1,803 plants seized at the two locations. So, we were not too concerned about any kind of medical marijuana claim. They could have supplied the entire West Coast."
The number of plants and amount of marijuana seized is contested by Serra and two other defense lawyers.
Serra said the amount charged is "ludicrous," and was inflated to achieve the specter of a very long sentence and "manipulate us into some kind of plea bargain. This is a political case, and it will be fought."
Skillman confirmed the circumstances of the arrest but said the defense lawyers' presence "would not have made a difference."
Besides, he said, Davidson and Blake had no constitutional right to counsel in the federal case prior to their arraignment.
The pair were first arrested July 29 when Tehama County sheriff's deputies raided Blake's home in Red Bluff, where Davidson was visiting. When asked by officers if there was marijuana at his Oakland residence, Davidson told them there was.
"When I got home, the front door was standing open and the place had been ransacked," he said.
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