Chronic City: Darkness In San Diego -- Attack On Medical Marijuana Moving Northward

By Steve Elliott in

Courtesy Donna Lambert

San Diego medical marijuana patient Donna Lambert was arrested in Operation Green Rx as part of the "crackdown."

​First, we heard from ambitious, headline-seeking San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis that there are "no such things" as legal medical marijuana dispensaries, despite state law. Now, even as a brutal crackdown on providers and patients is underway in San Diego County, officials from Los Angeles and other counties are being influenced by San Diego's anti-weed brigade to implement their hardline policies further north.

At a Long Beach City Council meeting yesterday, City Prosecutor Tom Reeves was still flushed with anti-ganja fervor as he told the council of attending a summit last week held by L.A. County DA Steve Cooley, where the message was that all dispensaries are illegal and will be prosecuted. What this means, he told the council, is that Long Beach can't or shouldn't try to regulate dispensaries.

longbeach.gov

Hardliner Long Beach prosecutor Tom Reeves: "You can't regulate illegal businesses."

​ "Over-the-counter sales are illegal," Reeves flatly stated. "So you're not helping us any," Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga repied. "I'm helping you a great deal," Reeves snapped. "I just told you that you can't regulate illegal businesses."

So even as city governments in places like Long Beach honestly try to grapple with the real issues surrounding regulation and recognition of medical marijuana dispensaries -- including possibilities like taxation, on-site inspections and regulations similar to liquor stores or adult businesses -- their "legal experts" and law enforcement officials are giving them monumentally bad advice which seems to be in conflict with state law.

Not surprisingly, since those present couldn't agree on whether such a thing as a legal dispensary even exists, the Long Beach council didn't find a solution after two hours of discussion, and will continue wrestling with the issue at a future meeting.

San Diego: Bitter Intransigence and Stubborn Refusal

Office of Bonnie Dumanis

San Diego DA Bonnie Dumanis: arrest 'em all and let the courts sort it out

​​San Diego County officials have simply refused to abide by the will of the voters and accept the state's medical marijuana law. For 13 years now, since the passage of Proposition 215 by voters in 1996, and even since the law was clarified and expanded by the Legislature with SB 420 in 2004, they've been fighting the practical implementation of legal medical marijuana.

The notoriously conservative San Diego County Board of Commissioners is well known for its irrational opposition to medical pot, even pursuing a quixotic and hopeless challenge to the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, losing the case in every court that heard it, every step of the way.

Last week, the Board unanimously extended for 10 more months what had been a 45-day moratorium on new dispensaries in unincorporated areas of San Diego County. After its court challenge to the law was defeated, the Board began grudgingly issuing ID cards for medical marijuana users. But in the meantime, DA Dumanis has sent her raiders to shut down dispensaries and arrest their owners, creating a climate of fear and confusion among patients countywide.

The latest raids forced at least 14 dispensaries to close, and resulted in at least 33 arrests. Dumanis assembled strike forces of San Diego Police, San Diego County Sheriff's officers, DEA agents, and IRS agents to descend on the dispensaries, make arrests, seize cash and pot, and disrupt the local medical marijuana distribution system. Many patients who had come to depend on safe, legal access to the medicine recommended by their doctors were left in the lurch.

"I don't think Bonnie Dumanis has ever seen a 'legal dispensary' in 13 years," said Dion Markgraff, San Diego coordinator for Americans for Safe Access (ASA). "She can't follow the plain language of the law, but instead she holds some impossible standard that no one else knows about. The DA is sending in cops who lied to doctors to get valid recommendations, and then busting dispensaries that are operating according to the law."

"The question in court is, 'Can one medical marijuana patient help another and be exempt from sales charges?' " patient Donna Lambert, arrested back in February in the "Operation Green Rx" phase of Dumanis' crackdown, told the SF Weekly. "The answer is a clear yes, but San Diego has not yet accepted that. For a total of two quarter ounces of marijuana, they did a SWAT-style raid on my home, pointed assault rifles at me and tore my house apart," she said. Lambert is still fighting her case in court.

San Diego attorney Patrick Dudley has represented people accused of illegal use of medical marijuana. "Most people would say that the last battleground for medical marijuana is San Diego," Dudley told NPR.

Under state law, medical marijuana patients and primary caregivers may "associate within the State of California in order collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes" (§ 11362.775). But according to Dudley, San Diego law enforcement has shown no inclination to help dispensaries understand how to follow the law. Their approach, he says, is to arrest first and ask questions later.

Attorney General Jerry Brown's Guidelines for Medical Marijuana Dispensaries [PDF]

Chronic City: San Diego Says 'No Bongs For You!'

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Chronic City: The Results Are In -- Medical Marijuana Works

By Steve Elliott

julianayrs.com

You can't argue with results.

​"There's no proof that medical marijuana works. It needs more study. There's only anecdotal evidence. It doesn't treat specific conditions. People just want to get high." Every cannabis advocate and medical marijuana patient has run into these arguments, threadbare as they are in 2009. Even from professionals who should know better -- such as many medical doctors -- the same tired arguments come up again and again.

As baffling as it may be, just listening to the patients (what a concept!) isn't considered "proof" by the medical establishment, which considers such evidence interesting, but "merely" anecdotal.

But after a new groundbreaking round-up clinical evidence for the efficacy of medical pot, however, such misconceptions are going to be a lot easier to shoot down.

In the landmark article, published in the Journal of Opioid Management, University of Washington researcher Sunil Aggarwal and colleagues document no fewer than 33 controlled clinical trials -- published over a 38-year period from 1971 to 2009 -- confirming that marijuana is a safe, effective medicine for specific medical conditions.

"The most common misconception among doctors and the general public regarding medical marijuana is that its effectiveness claims are substantiated only by compelling anecdotes from patients," Aggarwal told SF Weekly. "What is not acknowledged is that 33 separate controlled clinical trials with patients -- at least a third of which are of gold standard design -- have been conducted and published in the United States by investigators at major research centers using the same federal cannabis supply and mode of delivery.

"In fact," Aggarwal and colleagues write, "nearly all of the 33 published controlled clinical trials conducted in the United States have shown significant and measurable benefits in subjects receiving the treatment."

Photo by Joe Mabel

Dr. Sunil Aggarwal: The results are in.

Additionally, the article documents the growing acceptance of the therapeutic use of marijuana among organized medicine groups. More than 7,000 American physicians (in the 13 states where medical marijuana is legal) have signed medical marijuana authorizations for a total of 400,000 patients, according to Aggarwal and colleagues.

Notably absent from medical marijuana patients in the published trials -- and in glaring contrast to opiate drugs -- are withdrawal symptoms and other signs of drug dependence. Adverse effects were relatively rare, and "the vast majority of reported adverse effects were not serious... It is clear that as an analgesic, cannabis is extremely safe with minimal toxicity."

Unfortunately, ignorance regarding marijuana still remains widespread, even in the medical community, according to the article. "There remains a near complete absence of education about cannabinoid medicine in any level of medical training," Aggarwal writes.

"This is arguably the most thorough review of the literature on medical marijuana since the Institute of Medicine report over a decade ago, with a trove of data that wasn't available to the IOM," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which works for legalization. "It is simply incomprehensible that a medicine that is so clearly safe and effective remains banned from medical use by federal law and the laws of 37 states."

Under current federal law, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, defining it as having high potential for abuse, unsafe for use even under medical supervision, and lacking currently accepted uses in the U.S.

The article, "Medicinal Use of Cannabis in the United States: Historical Perspectives, Current Trends, and Future Directions," is available here (PDF).

Aggarwal offers a complete list of the 33 U.S. clinical trials; contact him here.

Chronic City: Taking the High Road -- Attorneys Say DUI Laws Shouldn't Apply To Pot

By Steve Elliott

Students for Sensible Drug Policy

Hey, watch where you're going!

​ Remember the first few times you drove high? You knew you were stoned, you knew it might be dangerous to operate a motor vehicle, and you drove like a little old lady.

This tendency of stoners to overcompensate for their impairment is one reason that marijuana-related car crashes aren't in the headlines every day. With estimates of current marijuana users in the United States varying between 40 and 100 million, you can bet that if weed really caused wrecks, it'd be a national tragedy on the level of drunk driving.

But you don't see those headlines, and you probably don't have anecdotes about "that time I was so high I couldn't even remember how my car got in the ditch." Seems all those stories have alcohol as a component instead. (That certainly goes for me, with 32 years of accident-free driving on pot. And, yes: There were a few alcohol-related crashes in my teens.)

Now, I'm not recommending you take a few bong rips and then hit the freeway. In fact, it'd probably be best for everyone if you'd stay your stoned ass home on the couch. There's a reason God invented pizza delivery.

San Diego attorneys Lawrence Taylor and Cole Casey, however, are arguing that California's DUI laws shouldn't apply to marijuana. While many automatically assume that pot affects the ability to safely operate a vehicle, Taylor and Casey said two federal studies do not support that.

Even the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which in its understandable quest for respectability is very cautious around the stoned driving issue, grants: "...emerging scientific research indicates that cannabis actually has far less impact on the psychomotor skills needed for driving than alcohol does, and is seldom a causal factor in automobile accidents."

The attorneys -- who could certainly benefit from the name recognition as "The pot DUI guys" -- point out that while the California Department of Justice has found that marijuana impairs driving, the U.S. Department of Transportation's studies contradict this."There are two federal studies that have come to that conclusion that although marijuana can impact someone's short-term memory, when somebody is concentrating on the task of driving that really there was no measurable impact," Casey told 10News in San Diego.

Another study by the Department of Transportation (DOT) found that "it appears not possible to conclude anything about a driver's impairment on the basis of his/her plasma concentration of THC."

Law Offices of Lawrence Taylor, Inc.

DUI Attorney Lawrence Taylor: Stoned does not equal drunk.

​ Taylor, known as the "Dean of DUI Attorneys," points to another more recent report. Titled "Marijuana and Actual Performance" (DOT-HS-808-078), it also found that "THC is not a profoundly impairing drug....It apparently affects controlled information processing in a variety of laboratory tests, but not to the extent which is beyond the individual's ability to control when he is motivated and permitted to do so in driving." Voila!: The Little Old Lady Effect.

So, first of all, according to the DOT, there is no association between marijuana intoxication and driving impairment. But that's not the biggest problem with detecting THC in bodily fluids.

The glaring weakness of tests which detect THC, as opposed to alcohol sobriety tests, is that marijuana metabolites stay in the body for at least 30 days -- long after any impairment associated with being "high" is gone. Therefore the mere presence of THC or its metabolites in a blood, urine, hair, or saliva sample is meaningless when it comes to measuring impairment.

Bottom line, according to attorneys Taylor and Casey: (1) marijuana may not impair driving ability at all, and (2) the blood "evidence" only measures an inactive substance which may have been there for days.

Chronic City: Here's Progress -- S.F. Firefighters Rescue Marijuana Grow-Op

By Steve Elliott

Save the medical marijuana, fire teddy!

​ Sometimes the biggest signs of epochal change in society are those that are casually mentioned, five paragraphs down in a story. Such was the case with Sunday's four-alarm warehouse fire in Bayview, where fire crews remained yesterday monitoring for flare-ups.

"Marijuana was found growing in one of the buildings," CBS5 reported, "but police Sergeant Wilfred Williams said this morning that the narcotics unit investigation found that the marijuana is being grown legally, 'for medicinal purposes'."

Now, of course, that's a completely normal sentiment to youthful San Franciscans. But for a child of the 1960s, it is nonetheless a big, happy deal. Youngsters, I lived in a time when such an incident could could not have ended happily for the growers, who would have likely faced a prison term.

Sadly, that's still the case back in the heartland. In May, fire crews in Bloomfield, Iowa, found 1,200 marijuana plants growing in a Davis County home after someone reported a blaze. The plants were found in pots in the attic; authorities got a search warrant, seized the weed, and arrested the couple who owned the home -- as well as an unfortunate tenant living on their property in a mobile home, for good measure.

Even in supposedly cultured places like Brooklyn (incredibly, New York still has no medical marijuana law), the same sad story plays out. A fireman responding to a Bushwick warehouse blaze last year spotted a pot-growing operation next door and called the cops. Eighty to 100 plants were hauled out in trash bags; the growers got away.

.......

We all know our city purports to be on the cutting edge. Has marijuana enlightenment come to the rest of California? Not all of it, of course, as the dispensary bans and growers busts continue apace in less enlightened sectors of the state.

But the change is coming, or rather has already come, in the form of 1996's Proposition 215 (legalizing medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation) and 2005's SB 420 (with the legislature amplifying and clarifying the original voter initiative, including clearing the way for continued existence of storefront dispensaries).

Are some counties and municipalities recalcitrant when it comes to medical marijuana, forcing themselves to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century? Yes, of course. That's what happens when 72 years of propaganda has a head-on collision with the facts. But what you're truly seeing in places like San Diego and Sacramento are the death throes of the old guard.

As much as I hate to say it, some of my drug policy reform friends and associates are bloody defeatists, forever moaning how The System is so totally corrupt, top to bottom, that real change when it comes to drug enforcement is forever elusive and just beyond our grasp, at least without some cataclysmic paradigm shift.

To these people, I say: The paradigm has already shifted. Shift with it, surf on it, and let's share a smile.

In the fair City by the Bay, heroic firefighters are saving marijuana plants.

Tags: Chronic City

Chronic City: Fresno's Freakin' -- But Marijuana Dispensary To Stay Open

By Steve Elliott

Medmar Clinic

Medmar Clinic is under legal attack from the City of Fresno.

​
You've gotta pity the poor, put-upon city officials of Fresno. After all, they've only had 13 years to suss out Proposition 215, this newfangled medical marijuana law that's being forced upon their fair city by more progressive Californians. And, heck, it's only been a little over half a decade since the legislature amplified and clarified the intent of the law with SB 420, opening the door for medical marijuana dispensaries statewide.

So what have they been doing all that time? It's hard to say, actually. But one thing seems pretty clear: They didn't find much time to study the law.

The city of Fresno is trying to shut down Medmar Clinic, the first medical marijuana dispensary in town -- along with seven other city dispensaries -- via the monumentally lame move of filing a suit through its city attorneys. But on Thursday, a judge said Medmar did not appear to post an immediate threat to public safety.

"He is not in violation of any law, ordinance, or regulation," said William Logan, an attorney who represents Medmar's president, Rick Morse. "He is completely in compliance with state law, and he is not doing anything wrong."

Courtesy abc30

Deputy City Attorney Charlotte Konczal: Maybe she'd be happier in the DEA

​
Could Deputy City Attorney Charlotte Konczal really be unaware of the difference between federal and municipal government? Perhaps Konczal always wanted to be a federal agent, because she seems quite eager to enforce federal law (which is an activity completely outside her job description). Konczal and the city say they don't like Medmar because it is not in compliance with federal rules. She asked Judge Alan Simpson to issue an emergency restraining order to close the dispensary.

Konczal , who huffily notes that federal drug laws prohibit the use of marijuana for any reason, indignantly told Fresno TV station ABC30, "We had two undercover officers actually purchase marijuana in an illegal manner, so we feel that is sufficient enough to show there's illegal activity at this particular dispensary." Wait, they bought pot at a pot dispensary? Horrors!

Judge Simpson delayed making a decision, admitting he is "unclear how to move forward," but the net effect is that Medmar gets to stay open at least until September when another hearing is scheduled.

Tags: Chronic City