NEWS: The hazy road to Long Beach's medical marijuana regulations

It took months of meetings for the Long Beach City Council to craft a law regulating medical marijuana collectives. Once the law was approved, collectives worked for months to meet the requirements, then participated in a controversial lottery process.

Collectives still must go through city inspections and take other steps before receiving permits to operate, but even that is in question now. Today, three council members are seeking to alter the ordinance to further restrict where collectives may operate.

The council meets at 6tonight - an hour later than usual - in City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Blvd.

Aug. 4, 2009 - Concerned about the number of collectives in Long Beach, the council votes to have a committee consider how to regulate the operations.

Nov. 10, 2009 - In a meeting attended by a crowd of medical marijuana advocates, the council approves creating a medical marijuana law but takes out some of the more restrictive measures. At Councilman Gary DeLong's suggestion, the council votes not to prohibit collectives near libraries and parks, as City Attorney Bob Shannon proposed. The council leaves in some requirements, such as prohibiting collectives in residential areas, near schools and within 1,000 feet of each other.

Jan. 21 - Draft ordinance goes to the council. Council deadlocks over where to allow marijuana cultivation.

Feb. 4 - Police recommend requiring marijuana to be grown within city limits but the council decided not to restrict medical marijuana cultivation within city limits.

Feb. 9 - A final vote on the law is postponed by Mayor Bob Foster and City Attorney Bob Shannon because of concerns about the crime ramifications of importing marijuana from outside of the city.

Feb. 16 - Council again delays a final vote, after representatives from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department tell the council that Long Beach's law should require marijuana to be grown within the city limits.

March 9 - Council votes 5-4 to require that medical marijuana be grown within the city limits.

Aug. 27 - Collective members protest in front of City Hall after their applications were rejected.

Sept. 21 - City holds lottery to eliminate collectives that are too close together; 32 out of 43 total collectives move forward in the permit process. Marijuana advocates ridicule the lottery after the city's lottery machine fails and winners' numbers must be drawn from a trash bin.

Today - Citing constituent concerns, DeLong and council members Gerrie Schipske and Patrick O'Donnell seek to add new restrictions, including creating collective-free zones around parks, libraries and child-care centers; limiting marijuana cultivation to industrial areas; and restricting the number of collectives.

Videos clips of speakers from previous council meetings

Source: Long Beach Press-Telegram

EVENT: Free-Legal Cannabis Classes in San Diego

Time: Friday, November 12 · 10:00am - 9:00pm

Location: World Beat Cultural Center 2100 Park Blvd. San Diego, CA 92101

Topics of the agenda will cover criminal law, business law as well as many other local and state matters.

This event will be hosted by the California Cannabis Coalition

NEWS: Convictions upheld for medical marijuana-growing couple

A federal appeals court upheld the drug convictions and five-year prison sentences Monday of two Northern California medical marijuana activists who grew pot for themselves and their fellow patients.

Attorney Dale Schafer began growing marijuana for his wife, physician Marion "Mollie" Fry, on their property in the town of Cool (El Dorado County) in 1998. She had secured a doctor's recommendation for the drug to ease the effects of chemotherapy following breast cancer surgery.

Schafer later started using medical marijuana for back pains and other ailments. The couple began distributing the drug to other patients in 1999 and contacted sheriff's deputies, who let them continue under California's medical marijuana law.

In September 2001, however, federal agents and local officers raided their California Medical Research Center and their home with a warrant under the U.S. drug law that bans using, growing or selling marijuana.

Schafer and Fry were indicted in 2005 and convicted in 2007 of conspiring to grow at least 100 plants.

U.S. District Judge Frank Damrell of Sacramento called it a "sad day" when he sentenced them to the mandatory five-year terms in March 2008. He allowed them to remain free on bail during their appeal.

Schafer said the couple ran a humanitarian enterprise that served more than 10,000 patients from 1999 to 2005. But prosecutors said the couple collected between $750,000 and $1 million in fees for marijuana recommendations during the two years and two months covered by the charges.

In their appeal, defense lawyers challenged Damrell's refusal to let the couple present evidence that two sheriff's officers had entrapped them. They said the officers had told Schafer and Fry that their operations were legal while allegedly working undercover for the federal government.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the clinic had told patients in writing that marijuana remained illegal under federal law. That showed that Schafer and Fry "were not misled into believing that their conduct was permissible," Judge Richard Tallman said in the 3-0 ruling.

Schafer, 56, and Fry, 54, said they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Schafer said the couple probably wouldn't have been raided or prosecuted under the Obama administration's year-old policy of not interfering with medical marijuana operations that comply with state law.

They said they had turned down a pretrial offer from prosecutors that would have sent Schafer to prison for two years and allowed Fry to avoid imprisonment while permanently surrendering her medical license.

"I was driven by the calling that I felt, to help the dying and the sick and the disabled," Fry said.

U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner issued a statement deriding California's "so-called 'medical' marijuana law." He said the ruling reaffirmed that the federal drug law is "separate and distinct from the state law."

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

NEWS: City Council Seeks Tax for Medical Marijuana

Voting 9-3, the council directed its attorneys to draft a ballot measure

The Los Angeles City Council called Friday for a ballot measure to tax medical marijuana, though its attorneys and other advisers seemed wary of the idea.

Voting 9-3, the council directed its attorneys to draft the ballot measure. They would have to take another vote before Nov. 17 to put the measure on the March 8 ballot.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn sought to establish a tax of $50 per $1,000 of "cash and in-kind contributions, reimbursements, and reasonable compensation provided by members of medical marijuana collectives."

"I think we've seen as of yesterday (Election Day) that voters up and down the state of California -- whether or not they believe in the use of marijuana -- believe that their cities should be able to receive revenue in the form of taxation of these clinics," she said. "They were overwhelmingly approved wherever they were on the ballot (Tuesday)."

Hahn estimated the proposed tax would add $3 million to $5 million a year to the city's coffers.
Several of the council's advisers, however, questioned whether the city had legal standing to impose such a tax.

Senior Assistant City Attorney Pete Echeverria testified that "it's (the City Attorney's Office's) position that the city should not allow and tax marijuana sales, which would basically amount to a sanctioning of illegal activity."

Larry Manocchio, the city's principal tax compliance officer, said medical marijuana collectives are classified as nonprofit organizations and cannot be taxed.

Hahn disputed the notion that the city would be taxing profits from the sale of medical marijuana.

Several other cities tax medical marijuana, Hahn said. In San Jose and La Puente, the tax is $100; Oakland and Richmond, $50, Sacramento, $40; and Berkeley, $25.

Source: NBC Los Angeles

NEWS: S.D. marijuana magazine still growing

On the day after California voters rejected the legalization of marijuana, the editor and co-founder of NUG magazine was too busy working to grieve. News on the marijuana front was bad, but business for “San Diego’s original cannabis publication” was booming.

“I’m collecting money and selling ads,” Dion Markgraaff said on Wednesday. “The beat goes on.”

Serving San Diego’s cannabis community since July of 2009, the Santee-based NUG (which stands for nuggets of pot and nuggets of information) is the rare expansion story in the ever-shrinking print-media universe. It is also the ad-filled and shadow-plagued reflection of the conflicted portrait that is San Diego’s pot profile.

In San Diego, NUG and other purveyors of the cannabis-friendly lifestyle face a splintered civic personality that can’t decide if it wants to join them for a Creamsicle Spiked Shake (recipe in the August 2010 issue) or send them and their hydroponics off to greener pastures in other parts of the state.

“It’s a mesh of personalities here,” said the 41-year-old Markgraaff, who grew up in Oceanside and attended Vista High School and San Diego State University. “We have our lovable qualities, but we’ve got a hard edge. We’re like a mutt that has all these different traits.”

Long before San Diego voted to legalize marijuana for medical use in the state 14 years ago, we were open to the idea of different strokes for different folks. The utopian-minded Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society settled in Point Loma in late 1896, the pioneering Golden Door Spa began welcoming sun-worshippers and fitness nuts in 1958, and the UFO-watching members of the Unarius Academy of Science have been doing their cosmic thing in El Cajon since 1954.

“The notion of alternative therapies, alternative approaches to health, that is deep in our history,” said UCSD sociologist Mary Walshok. “Chinese herbal medicine, massage, acupuncture and meditation, all of that has a long history in San Diego.”

Then again, we are also a community with deep military roots and a long history of conservative voting patterns. So while we were progressive enough to become the largest city in the country to adopt medical-marijuana guidelines in 2003, we were not quite comfy enough to support the legalization of small amounts of recreational marijuana earlier this week.

At NUG, the natural-remedy-embracing, alternative-lifestyle-appreciating side of San Diego is alive and well and loving its organic marijuana, edible marijuana and water pipes. All of this interest from medical-marijuana patients and — let’s not kid ourselves — enterprising recreational smokers has turned NUG into a totally ad-supported success story.

In less than two years, it has grown from a 48-page bimonthly distributed in clinics and dispensaries to a 98-page monthly magazine that is also available for free at local 7-Eleven stores.

“What this says about San Diego is there is a huge cannabis community here and there is a huge market that is unaddressed by society,” Markgraaff said during a break from sales calls, which he makes wearing shorts, flip-flops and a NUG T-shirt. “Our biggest problem is we don’t print enough copies.”

Actually, their problems are bigger than that. Because the other side of San Diego’s public consciousness — the side with the serious border-related drug worries and the staunchly anti-marijuana District Attorney’s office — is also living large at NUG.

It was there in the first issue, which was dedicated to longtime local medical-marijuana activist Steven McWilliams, who committed suicide in 2005. It is there in the ads the magazine lost when the Kush Lounge dispensary was raided last July. And it is there in the masthead, where many of the staffers don’t use their real names. That includes publisher and medical-marijuana patient Ben G. Rowen, a native San Diegan who became an activist after his home was raided by federal authorities two years ago.

Then again, that masthead is also on the latest issue of NUG, in all its fat, healthy glory. With his San Diego cannabis magazine growing, editor Markgraaff is letting his hopes grow, too.

“Did you see the exit numbers for Prop. 19?,” Markgraaff said via e-mail yesterday. “San Diego voted Yes at 47 percent, which was as big as L.A., the state average, and most of Northern California. I think that shows the cannabis community and NUG magazine are doing a good job in helping people evolve here in San Diego.”

Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune

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NEWS: 15 arrested at suspected cannabis processing house

Lake County officials on Wednesday arrested 15 people suspected of being involved in a large-scale marijuana operation in the Buckingham subdivision.

Law officials were checking on the Kelseyville-area home to see whether marijuana being grown by the residents was in compliance with medical marijuana laws when they found large amounts of pot being packaged, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

A search warrant ultimately turned up 408 pounds of processed marijuana and 820 pounds of unprocessed marijuana plants, tents, other camping equipment and a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun that had been reported stolen from San Diego, said Lake County Sheriff’s Capt. James Bauman. Thirty unharvested plants were growing in the yard.

The Eastlake Drive homeowner, Benjamin Bizon, 60, had two medical marijuana cards but could not account for the excessive amount of processed marijuana on the premises, Bauman said.

There is reason to believe the residence was used to package and process marijuana primarily from other gardens, he said.

Bizon was booked on suspicion of felony cultivation and possession of marijuana for sales. The other 14 men, who ranged in age from 18 to 57, were arrested on suspicion of cultivating marijuana, commission of a felony while armed and receiving stolen property.

Nine of them also had immigration holds placed on them, Bauman said.

Source: PressDemocrat.com

VIDEO: Medical Marijuana Helps Epileptic Seizures, Depression, and Anxiety

NEWS: ACLU Letter to Attorney General Argues There Is No Basis for Challenging California's Proposition 19

WASHINGTON - October 25 - The American Civil Liberties Union and its three California affiliates today sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), arguing that there would be no legal basis for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to sue to overturn Proposition 19 should it be approved next month by California voters, and urging the Justice Department to not change its current law enforcement focus on major criminal activity in favor of new enforcement activities against California marijuana users.

The letter asks Holder and Kerlikowske to stop threatening costly litigation and the deployment of federal drug police to arrest individuals who might use marijuana if the state enacts the proposition, which would allow adults 21 and older to possess and grow small amounts of marijuana for their personal use and allow cities and counties to regulate and tax commercial sales. The letter calls such rhetoric "unnecessarily alarmist" and says it does little to foster a balanced discussion of a legitimate policy issue.

"Proposition 19 would remove state criminal penalties for certain adult marijuana use," says the ACLU's letter. "The new law would not require anyone to do anything in violation of federal law. There would be no positive conflict."

News reports have indicated that federal officials have not ruled out following a recommendation by nine former Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) chiefs to sue to overturn Proposition 19 under a wrongly-held belief that it would violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In a letter to the nine former DEA chiefs made public earlier this month, Holder said he will "vigorously enforce" federal laws against marijuana in California, even if Proposition 19 is approved.

The ACLU's letter argues that states do not have to march in lockstep with the federal government's prohibition of marijuana possession and that California can decide for itself whether it wishes to remove state criminal law penalties for adult marijuana use. An explicit clause of the Controlled Substances Act, passed by Congress in 1970, holds that preemption of state drug laws is limited to a narrow set of circumstances where there is a "positive conflict" between state and federal law "so that the two cannot consistently stand together."

The ACLU's letter also highlights the fact that African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately arrested for low-level marijuana possession in California and across the nation even though their usage rates are the same as or lower than those of whites.

"The ACLU took heart from Director Kerlikowske's acknowledgement that the 'war on drugs' has failed," states the ACLU's letter. "But instead of scaling back the rhetoric associated with that ineffective and out-of-date campaign, it appears the administration would resist California's modest attempt to begin dismantling one of the defining injustices of our failed drug policies: that the war on drugs has become a war on minorities."

A new report released last week shows that from 2006 to 2008, police in 25 of California's major cities arrested blacks at four to 12 times the rate of whites.

"The historical and racially disparate enforcement of marijuana laws is a primary reason why [the ACLU of Northern California, the ACLU of Southern California and the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties] have endorsed Proposition 19," the ACLU's letter reads.

The ACLU's letter to Holder also questions why the federal government's response to the enactment of Proposition 19 should be any different than its approach to the existence in California and 13 other states of laws allowing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

"We commend DOJ's instruction last year to U.S. attorneys that prosecuting medical marijuana patients who comply with state laws should not be a federal law enforcement priority," the ACLU's letter reads. "The very same standards should apply if Proposition 19 is enacted. Regardless of the federal government's disagreement with California's choice to amend state criminal law, it makes no more sense for the federal government to waste scarce resources policing low-level, non-violent marijuana offenses after Proposition 19 passes, than before."

Californians have every right to enact Proposition 19, the ACLU's letter asserts, in an effort to curtail the wasting of criminal justice resources on the policing of low-level adult marijuana offenses and to help end the selective enforcement of drug laws.

"This is about priorities," the ACLU's letter reads. "Given the state of the economy, record unemployment and foreclosure rates, and thousands of troops deployed abroad, should voters enact Proposition 19, we hope the federal government will re-evaluate its priorities and use scarce federal enforcement resources wisely."

Source: CommonDreams.org

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