ASK THE LAWYER: Privacy of medical marijuana request

By Ron Sokol

Q: I am concerned if I meet with a doctor and obtain approval for medical marijuana that it will be reported. What's to prevent that? - H.G., San Pedro

A: Medical records are subject to well-established confidentiality and privacy protections. Further, the doctor who evaluates you has no obligation to report to law enforcement or otherwise. This is so even if the doctor concludes you do not qualify for medical marijuana use. In addition, case law has come forward in which a physician recommending patients for medical marijuana was held not required to turn over records sought by the California Medical Quality Assurance Board because no sufficient reason was shown to invade the patients' privacy rights.

Q: We are going to be drug tested at work. I have a doctor's formal approval for medical marijuana use. If I test positive can they still fire me? - L.M., El Segundo

A: While having approval for medical marijuana allows you (under California law) to possess and to use a certain amount of marijuana here, it remains up to your employer's discretion concerning your employment status. You can emphasize to the employer that you are a legal patient under applicable California law, but your job may be such that marijuana use is considered too risky or simply not appropriate. It is possible that in time legal issues will be tested in a California court where an employee claims he or she can not work unless allowed to utilize medical marijuana (at least during off hours), and thus there is a disability or medical condition that must be considered, but to my knowledge this kind of situation has not resulted in a binding legal decision to date.

Q: Our 15-year-old came home from school, and told us about one of his classmates who has medical marijuana. Is there no age limit? Can anyone get it? - M.C., Torrance

A: You have to be at least l8 years of age to be able to seek approval for medical marijuana use. As to whether anyone can get it: Many who seek medical marijuana are suffering greatly. They are military persons who have been injured; people who are dealing with the effects of cancer and cancer treatments; and others who have genuine physical problems that are relieved, in part anyway, by judicious medical marijuana use. The physicians who evaluate patients for marijuana use have a fundamental obligation to carefully and competently screen patients, not rubber-stamp approvals.

NOTE: Questions arose in response to the recent column about the legality of marijuana in California. Some are addressed here. First, when I referred to a "prescription" for medical marijuana, it is more typically considered a doctor's "recommendation" or "approval for" use. Also, California law has been modified such that possession of one ounce or less of marijuana (ie, for which you do not have a doctor's approval), will be handled in many instances now as an infraction subject to a fine rather than a misdemeanor.

Ron Sokol is a Manhattan Beach-based attorney with more than 30 years of experience who has arbitrated and mediated many cases. E-mail questions and comments to him at RonSEsq@aol.com or write to him at Ask The Lawyer, Daily Breeze, 21250 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 170, Torrance, CA 90503. This column is a summary of the law, and not a substitute for legal consultation on any particular case.

Source: Daily Breeze

NEWS: Making The City Attorney Account For Erroneous Legal Information

By Greggory Moore

9:30am | Long Beach allows medical-marijuana collectives to operate within city limits. For a very heavy price. If I'm not mistaken, the heaviest price in the country.

Ironically, the price is heaviest on the smallest collectives. In fiscal terms, our City treats collectives with as few as four (4) members exactly the same as a collective with 500 members.

Why such a heavy burden on such small collectives? From whence this definition of collectives as being "four (4) or more Qualified Patients and their designated Primary Caregivers (LBMC § 5.87.015(I))?" That's exactly what Councilmember Rae Gabelich wanted to know at the May 18 City Council meeting. Here's exactly what she was told by Assistant City Attorney Mike Mais: "We came to that number because that's what the state, the Compassionate Use Act, defines a collective as: four or more." One minute later, in response to Gabelich's inquiry into the possibility of raising the figure, Mais replied, "Since we did follow the state law, which defines a collective as four or fewer [sic; he meant to say "more"], I would suggest that we stay with that for the purposes of regulation."

Trouble is, what Mais said is completely false. State law does not define collectives, period. Consider the following:

• The word 'collective' does not appear in the Compassionate Use Act (1996), nor does any synonym for 'collective.'1
• In the Medical Marijuana Program Act (2003), the word 'collective' and its synonyms appear only as adjectives. No number of patients, members, etc., is associated with their usage nor anywhere discussed.2
• In State Attorney General Jerry Brown's August 2008 guidelines regarding medical marijuana, he notes that "California law does not define collectives" (IV.A.2).3

Being that the City Attorney's office explicitly referred to all three of these documents numerous times during the process of crafting our medpot guidelines, it is (to put it politely) puzzling why they would provide such erroneous legal counsel. Worse, the City has made policy in part based on this erroneous counsel.

Am I the only one who thinks that the City Attorney's office providing erroneous counsel and the City Council making policy based on that erroneous counsel is cause for concern—and that it's an issue that transcends the specific context in which it occurred?

During public comment on non-agenda items at the June 15 City Council meeting, I pointed out all of this4. City Attorney Robert Shannon replied that he did not believe his office had provided any erroneous information but that he'd be happy to look into it, and Mayor Bob Foster request that Shannon provide the Council with a memo on where this figure "4 or more" comes from.

It's three months since then, and to my knowledge this memo has never materialized. But I'm going to the September 21 City Council meeting to find out. I'll let you know what happens.

Source: LB Post