http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/10/4043853/medical-marijuana-advocates-take.html Medical marijuana advocates take their battle to the courts By Peter Hecht phecht@sacbee.com Published: Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1A Last Modified: Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011 - 10:15 am They are the public face of a litigious battle to redefine federal authority on medical marijuana. With emotion and printed placards – "Marijuana is medicine, Let states regulate!" – about 200 people protested at the U.S. courthouse in Sacramento Wednesday against a federal crackdown on California dispensaries and property owners leasing to medical cannabis businesses. But the real action may result from five lawsuits filed in recent days against U.S. government officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, California's four U.S. attorneys and President Barack Obama's director of national drug control policy. The suits assert that federal prosecutors are violating equal protection laws and states' rights, and constitutional protections for in-state commerce. The ultimate goal may be to force the government to negotiate a settlement that spells out what it will tolerate in California and other states permitting medical marijuana use. "We would like to get a rational dialogue going with the federal government about how to handle medical cannabis in California," said Matt Kumin, a lead attorney in lawsuits filed in each of the state's federal judicial districts. The suits seek injunctions to stop the seizure of properties of landlords leasing to medical marijuana operations. A fifth suit, by the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, seeks to bar federal actions "to dismantle the laws of the state of California." Don Heller, a former Sacramento federal prosecutor, said the suits could force a definitive answer by the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of federal "supremacy and states rights and who shall prevail with respect to marijuana." "It has been nibbled at and now it really should be decided," he said. In an announcement last month, U.S. prosecutors broadly asserted that dispensaries in California are profiteering in violation of both federal and state law. They've brought charges that some bad actors have trafficked medical marijuana out of state or pocketed millions of dollars from cultivation operations for marijuana stores. U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner in Sacramento said in a statement Wednesday that California prosecutors "will continue to enforce federal narcotics laws, unless and until ordered to do otherwise." In contrast, marijuana advocates are suing on behalf of people such as Ryan Landers of Sacramento, who uses medical marijuana for symptoms of AIDS, or Briana Bilbray, a cancer patient who uses cannabis and the daughter of San Diego Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray. The suits also challenge threats to seize properties of landlords who rent to dispensaries, including the El Camino Wellness Center, one of Sacramento's leading medical marijuana outlets, or the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, California's longest operating medicinal cannabis provider. Kumin said plaintiffs want to know why the federal government has taken little action in Colorado, which permits a heavily regulated, for-profit medical marijuana industry, while launching aggressive actions in California. The government's stance is that all marijuana – medical or otherwise – is illegal under federal law. But Kumin said the Colorado model suggests California may be able to negotiate standards for medical marijuana distribution that would ward off federal intervention. Santa Clara Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen said a U.S. Supreme Court battle is unlikely to produce positive results for the medical marijuana movement. Uelmen unsuccessfully argued a 2001 case for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club, in which the Supreme Court ruled no "medical necessity" exempts marijuana from federal law. In 2004, the court rejected California medical user Angel Raich's claim that federal marijuana laws intruded on constitutionally protected state commerce. But Uelman said legal actions may force the government to negotiate with the advocates. Uelmen represented the Santa Cruz Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) in an eight-year battle against federal authorities after a 2002 raid on the pot garden of a colony of severely or terminally ill patients. It resulted in a 2004 ruling permitting the group to grow marijuana and a 2010 agreement to drop the suit on the condition the government would no longer raid the garden. Uelmen said authorities may be less accommodating for dispensaries the government views "as a ploy to run commercial operations to sell marijuana." In a parallel effort to the lawsuits, advocates are drafting a ballot initiative for statewide regulation of California's medical marijuana industry, hoping it may diminish incentives for federal intervention. California Board of Equalization member Betty Yee joined courthouse protesters Wednesday, decrying federal actions against dispensaries that she described as "responsible corporate citizens who pay state sales taxes." Kumin said he hopes the lawsuits can "enshrine" support for medical marijuana in California into federal law or policy. "We believe there are judges out there who are brave and ready to look at the utter contradictions," he said.
I've been thinking a lot about the situation in CA. Surely the feds can't believe that if they just keep pushing and pushing harder and harder that the folks in CA and other mmj states are just going to give up. They must know that when those in charge try to exercise their authority by making an example of someone, they usually just end up making them a martyr. If you push too hard for too long, the people being pushed will eventually push back. You don't need to be a history scholar to know that's what will inevitably happen. So maybe, just maybe, our president is more clever than we think. Maybe he's pushing extra hard just so the feds will be challenged and the legalzation issue taken to court. Then he would essentially be taken out of the picture and not seen as either the good or bad guy. After all, the Supreme Court could overturn the Controlled Substances Act even more easily than the president or Congress could. Maybe by going after the mmj movement hard now, he's actually trying to protect it in the long run. Maybe not. Maybe he really is just what he appears to be -- a hypocrite and liar.
I think it's a lot simpler than that Tony. I think things got seriously out of hand as far as the dispensaries in Ca being non profit. Most of the dispensaries here are making a profit and everyone knows it. Then you've got large growers popping up on television programs on a regular basis about the mmj movement. Next' you've got warehouse growers who are operating large grows, some over 99 plants, some bypassing power. These growers are then offing their stuff to the dispensaries and/or shipping the stuff out of state. This is all just a very large middle finger being pointed right at the feds. I am not one bit surprised that the feds are threatening the dispensaries here. I think that unless MJ gets classified on a lower drug/danger scale then we are all fucked. I think the only model that may work in the current political climate is the way Colorado has things set up. The most important part of the way they set everything up; the don't have some farce of a law declaring the whole thing as non profit. They are for profit and regulate the shit out of it. I think that if Ca followed Co's model then things would be much different here.
Profit or "Non-profit", people who deliver a State legal commodity deserve to be reimbursed for their labor. Just because the Feds don't like it doesn't change this simple reality. One of the keys in Colo is that dispensaries are now required to grow 70% of their own product (correct me of I'm wrong Stash). This greatly diminishes the likelyhood of illegal product being sold into other states due the increased ability to monitor suppliers. But in truth.....if we are focusing on MJ strictly as a medicine it makes sense to tightly control manufacture. We don't let anybody with a chemistry set and recipe make and sell aspirin. The problem is that everybody knows most of the state legal MMJ use is a charade to simply toke with fewer consequences. To keep this avenue available for tokers and growers we remain inconsistent with how all other medications are treated. Personally I'd love to see an end to all personal illicit drug laws. If you can make it or grow you can use it. Limit only sales or transaction ability. If I grow an acre of poppies and harvest opium I should be able to use it. If I sell it then it triggers consequence.
No Shit GTWT, think about it a minute. If easily grown or manufactured drugs are legal for personal consumption what do you think will happen to all the designer drugs, meth heads and heroin use? My guess is that due to lower costs and associated legal risks use pattern would shift to things like weed, psilocybin, coca, salvia...natural alternatives that are incidentally enormously safer physically. Think the average junkie, crack head or meth head knows how to distill alkaloids or cook a batch?
I have dude. I'm a chemist in my past life, and though I've never made any kind of chemically based drug, I'm pretty sure I could figure it out, based on my knowledge and experience. That, and when the retard meth head decides to cook his own in the back of his 92 Buick Lesabre and blows himself up in the process, I just smile. Natural selection, baby. Let 'em make it. GTWT :XXhippylove:
