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Marijuana legalization
expected to go to ballot in California
By
John Byrne
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 — 8:09 am
Opponents of a plan to legalize marijuana for personal possession in California have conceded that supporters of the measure are likely to get their proposal on a statewide ballot, the New York Times revealed in a longer story about possible legalization Wednesday.
California lawmakers are taking up a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, a first in the United States. Officials estimate the bill could bring in an additional $1.4 billion a year, a huge sum of money in a state bedeviled by financial woes.
While the “legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue,” the Times wrote.
Perhaps equally important, the paper adds:
California voters are also taking up legalization. Three separate initiatives are being circulated for signatures to appear on the ballot next year, all of which would permit adults to possess marijuana for personal use and allow local governments to tax it. Even opponents of legalization suggest that an initiative is likely to qualify for a statewide vote.
All of us in the movement have had the feeling that we’ve been running into the wind for years,” said James P. Gray, a retired judge in Orange County who has been outspoken in support of legalization. “Now we sense we are running with the wind.”Proponents of the leading ballot initiative have collected nearly 300,000 signatures since late September, supporters say, easily on pace to qualify for the November 2010 general election. Richard Lee, a longtime marijuana activist who is behind the measure, says he has raised nearly $1 million to hire professionals to assist volunteers in gathering the signatures.
“Voters are ripping the petitions out of our hands,” Mr. Lee said.
Despite widespread support, however, the bill would almost certainly run into thorns with federal law, which classifies marijuana as an illegal substance. Some supporters are encouraged, though, by the Obama Administration’s announcement that they will not prosecute those involved in the medical marijuana trade.
Lee, the organizer, says he intends to spend $20 million on a campaign to win passage of the measure.
Numerous states have already decriminalized personal possession of small amounts of marijuana, though none have legalized it.
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Add a comment 04/11/2009
Bob Egelko:
Feds vs. state pot war down the road?
Now that the Obama administration says it won’t arrest medical marijuana patients and suppliers who are following their own state laws, a Northern California congressman wants the same leeway for those who are already being prosecuted.
Currently, someone who’s charged in federal court with growing or selling marijuana can’t argue that he or she was just doing what’s allowed by the law of California or one of the 13 other states that recognize the medical use of cannabis. A bill introduced Tuesday by Rep. Sam Farr, D-Monterey, would change that.
Farr’s H.R. 3939 wouldn’t legalize medical marijuana under federal law. But it would require a not-guilty verdict if the defendant was complying with state law, even if a future presidential administration repealed the guidelines announced by Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month.
“This bipartisan bill is about compassion and states’ rights,” said Farr.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, a co-sponsor, said, “The federal government should never have overridden state law on this issue to begin with, and this legislation will prevent them from doing it again.”
It’s yet another attempt to get Congress to soften the federal law that prohibits all possession, cultivation and transfer of marijuana and has been used by successive administrations to go after medical pot suppliers in California.
A group of Democrats and libertarian Republicans has been trying for years to get the feds to lay off marijuana dispensaries and growers in states where they operate legally. They’ve been beaten back by law enforcement interests and presidential drug czars who argue that medical pot is a myth and a smokescreen for legalization.
Whether the Obama administration follows the same course remains to be seen.
In Sacramento, meanwhile, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s bill to legalize marijuana for personal use in California in being heard this morning before the Assembly Public Safety Committee. If the San Francisco Democrat’s AB390 becomes law, or voters approve any of the circulating legalization initiatives next November, get ready for another state-federal drug war.
Bob Egelko covers legal issues for The Chronicle. E-mail him at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
Posted By: Michael Collier (Email) | October 28 2009 at 11:33 AM
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Add a comment 31/10/2009
US vows
crackdown on
medical marijuana
By correspondent Kim Landers for The World Today
Marijuana ‘collectives’ could be the answer to ensuring legitimate LA distribution for medicinal purposes. (Victoria Police: supplied)
//
Officials in the United States are vowing to crack down on medical marijuana facilities even as the Obama administration signals a new hands-off policy on the drug.
Los Angeles officials have been agonising for two years over a move to introduce what they call sensible guidelines to help regulate the booming industry.
In the US, 14 states have laws allowing the use of medical marijuana, but no state has gone further than California and no city has gone further than LA, where there are more marijuana dispensaries than public schools.
Brian Berens is the owner of Green Oasis, a medical marijuana dispensary in LA.
“Daily I would say we get about 30 to 50 people in a day. We service the local community and most of the people live within two miles of the dispensary,” he said.
“Our collective is a little bit different than most; we’re a large operation, we have a second floor – we have a vapour lounge which is much like an Amsterdam cafe.”
He says his medical marijuana cooperative complies with state laws, but the city of Los Angeles is vowing to eradicate what it calls the illegal sales of marijuana in many of the city’s dispensaries.
Legitimate sales
David Berger, an assistant city attorney for the city of Los Angeles, says not even 10 per cent of the dispensaries are selling marijuana for legitimate reasons.
“How many places are there selling marijuana? About a thousand – how many of them are genuinely supplying medical marijuana to people legitimately in need? Perhaps a hundred,” he said.
“What these other places are doing is basically saying, ‘if you’re a recreational user, if you just want to get high, find a doctor who for $150 will write you a recommendation, come in here on a nod and a wink and we will give you marijuana’.”
The city of Los Angeles says California state law only allows the exchange of marijuana between growers and patients who are members of a cooperative and that it has to be on a non-profit, non-cash basis.
But Mr Berger says that for the past two years, medical marijuana dispensaries have mushroomed in the city.
“How did it happen? It’s because the law that allowed this to come into effect was very poorly written and expressed in very broad terms,” he said.
“And you know the emotion of allowing seriously ill people to obtain some relief was used to basically allow a poorly written law into effect.”
‘For medicinal use only’
LA is now trying to mount a crackdown. The council will debate an ordinance next month that introduces strict new rules about medical marijuana dispensaries.
Mr Berger says marijuana collectives, not shops, is the way forward.
“It has to be a collective, not a shop, a collective, and a collective is basically a group of people who come together for a common purpose,” he said.
“In this case, it’s to cultivate marijuana for medicinal use only and only amongst themselves. They cannot sell it.
“All they can do is share it amongst themselves and share the costs of cultivating the marijuana.”
He also says the dispensaries will not be able to have more than two kilograms of marijuana on the premises at any one time.
No on-site consumption will be allowed and the collectives will not be able to be within 300 metres of schools, parks or other collectives.
Threat of legal action
But Mr Berens says the owners of medical marijuana facilities will fight the ordinance in court if it is passed.
“I don’t know if they will be able to ratify ordinances in November – this might be just a lot of lip service for the public,” he said.
“Even if they do, we have already notified Los Angeles of certain points in the proposed ordinances that our attorney will sue them if they approve them.”
While the city of Los Angeles tries to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries, the Obama administration has told federal authorities not to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana users and suppliers who are not violating local or state laws.
In a statement, US Attorney General Eric Holder says: “It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana.”
“But we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal,” the statement adds.
The city of Los Angeles says its planned crackdown would comply with these guidelines.
It says the Obama administration is making it clear that its hands-off policy towards medical marijuana only applies to places that are complying with state and local law.
But Mr Berger thinks the Obama administration’s policy is the seed from which the movement to legalise all marijuana will grow.
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Posted on October 22, 2009 by
Lex
The Obama administration threw a bone to the lunatic, fringe left a few days ago. The memo to federal prosecutors in medical marijuana states has garnered hearty applause from Greenwald and the Marijuana Policy Project.
When elected, Obama said that federal raids on state-law legal marijuana cultivation and distribution would end. The didn’t, not by a long shot, and the reasoning was that the feds would continue to prosecute people who violated state and federal laws. That boils down to everyone, no matter their standing under state law. The latest memo simply tells prosecutors that it’s not a good use of their time to bring charges against those abiding by their State’s law.
So hold your applause. This memo amounts to nothing, which is precisely what’s it’s meant to amount to while simultaneously making Obama look like a good guy.
The Department of Justice is committed to the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in all States. Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime and provides a significant source of revenue to large-scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels. One timely example underscores the importance of our efforts to prosecute significant marijuana traffickers: marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels.
Note the Department’s commitment, “in all States”. I have to wonder what credentials Congress possess that enables it to determine how dangerous any drug is, as if that august body was known for its deep, careful thinkers and scientists. Furthermore, according to everything i’ve ever read, drug scheduling is under the purview of several departments that are all within the executive branch. That’s how Congress established the system when it determined which drugs were dangerous and which drugs weren’t. So the President could order the DEA, HHS and the FDA to review the scheduling of a drug and force Congress to be along for the ride.
Yes, marijuana trafficking is the single largest source of revenue for Mexican drug cartels. That’s because it’s illegal. I thought supply and demand was like the American catechism. Restricting supply only pushes prices, and hence profits, up. This idea that further restricting supply will somehow diminish cartel profits flies in the face of everything Ronald Reagan and common sense taught me…not that the two necessarily intersect.
As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities [catching druggies] should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. …prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department. To be sure, claims of compliance with state or local law may mask operations inconsistent with the terms, conditions, or purposes of those laws, and federal law enforcement should not be deterred by such assertions when otherwise pursuing the Department’s core enforcement priorities.
So according to the Obama administration, if you’ve got cancer or aids and your supplier is giving you marijuana for free that’s ok. But just because someone is in full compliance with his State’s law is no protection. In other words, “Hey, don’t make us look like assholes by arresting someone who’s got six months to live.”
The administration produces a list of characteristics that should suggest prosecution. Some of them make sense, but there’s always a catch. “Evidence of money laundering activity” makes the list. As any monetary gain from the sale of marijuana is criminal under federal law, just about any use of marijuana proceeds could be considered money laundering. And if you don’t think that the DEA won’t see that argument, you’re high.
This guidance regarding resource allocation does not “legalize” marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law, nor is it intended to create any privileges, benefits, or rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable by any individual, party or witness in any administrative, civil, or criminal matter. Nor does clear and unambiguous compliance with state law or the absence of one or all of the above factors create a legal defense to a violation of the Controlled Substances Act.
Get the picture?
Nor does this guidance preclude investigation or prosecution, even when there is clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law, in particular circumstances where investigation or prosecution otherwise serves important federal interests.
It should be clear by now that there’s nothing in this memo worthy of applauding. Sure it’s a step in the right direction, but that only deserves the response, “It’s about damned time.”
The administration has the power to start the ball rolling on significant drug reform. Rescheduling would end the entire “debate”. Judging by election in results in states where a marijuana referendum was on the ballot in 2008, dope is a lot more popular than hope. There’s no political risk to Obama at the voter level. The voters who would be angered by the move won’t be voting Democratic before the second coming in any case. There are a at least few million who would probably vote for the politician who reforms marijuana laws regardless of anything else the politician does. The youth vote would basically deify such a politician.
Big time donors like the pharmaceutical industry wouldn’t like it, which might indicate who’s side the President is on, but see above and ask yourself if it would even matter for the one more election he can win.
But there almost certainly won’t be any movement on a relatively simple problem with a pretty straight-forward solution that would have positive benefits in other areas of concern like health care and the economy. With the ability to legally cultivate marijuana there are probably a lot of unemployed American facing foreclosure who might attempt an entrepreneurial response to the death of the American Dream. Places like Southeastern Kentucky would have a valuable cash crop, and they probably wouldn’t need so much tax-funded aid. Hell, folks in those places might even start thinking that Obama ain’t so bad after all.
Never mind the taxation question. Enforcing taxation will be even more difficult than enforcing criminalization. Let the money flow through the real economy and accept that it will trickle up. Smart states will establish retail distribution licensing similar to the existing structure for alcohol. It will raise local and state revenues; keep control over the retail sector; and be subject to sales tax. We’ll just have to take our chances on person-to-person transactions being claimed as miscellaneous income. Regardless, that money will be spent and serve the greater economy.
Plenty of savings can be found by not wasting tax dollars on prosecution and incarceration of marijuana cases. And i’ll bet that law enforcement will still have plenty to do.
The answer is simple and frankly, the question is stupid. So you’ll have to forgive me if i hold my applause until the end…though i might not be able to hold them if some intrepid journalist asks the President if he thinks it would have been better for the nation if he’d been convicted of his youthful indiscretions and never gotten to be President. Clearly you can smoke pot and grow up to be President, you just can’t get caught doing it.
Add a comment 27/10/2009
From Obama,
sanity on marijuana policy
Steve ChapmanOctober 22, 2009
In 1973, Robert Randall was going blind from glaucoma when he discovered that smoking marijuana seemed to help his condition. That didn’t matter to police when they found the Washington, D.C., resident growing cannabis and arrested him. Preferring to keep his sight, Randall sued the federal government, arguing that he was entitled to smoke pot as a “medical necessity.”
It was a far-fetched argument — but it worked. In 1976, a court ruled in Randall’s favor. Before long, the federal government found itself in the strange position of supplying marijuana to him and a handful of other patients under a “compassionate use” program.
The compassion didn’t go very far. President George H.W. Bush stopped the acceptance of new patients into the program in 1992 rather than admit all those annoying AIDS victims, insisting that it sent a dangerous message to young people.
The real danger, of course, was the message that government policy on cannabis was ignorant and irrational. But since then, one president and one drug czar after another has furiously resisted efforts to allow therapeutic use of the drug no matter how helpful it may be to the sick and dying.
Until now. This week, the Justice Department kept a promise made by candidate Barack Obama when it announced that henceforth, “it will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana.”
The change is not only historic but humane and intelligent, two adjectives rarely applied to federal drug policy. Science has established that cannabis has useful properties for the treatment of various diseases, countless physicians have endorsed it, and 14 states have allowed sick people access to marijuana. But for three decades, the people in charge of drug policy in the federal government didn’t give a rat’s bottom.
In 1996, after California voters approved a medical marijuana law, President Bill Clinton‘s administration fought it every step of the way — filing lawsuits to close cannabis buyers clubs, threatening to strip the licenses of doctors who recommended marijuana to patients and denouncing the entire program as “a Cheech and Chong show.”
President George W. Bush‘s administration stuck to the same course. It raided California dispensaries and went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a successful effort to crush the notion — the conservative notion, come to think of it — that states should have the power to set their own policy on pot.
But before long, the idea had caught on not just in hippy-dippy California but in less fashionable places like Alaska, Maine, Michigan and Montana. Some 75 percent of Americans think doctors should be permitted to prescribe cannabis. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws reports that in 33 state referendums since 1992, voters have embraced liberalization 30 times.
Most of the time, the two major parties are about as different as Coke and Pepsi. But last year, they presented a stark contrast on this issue. Republicans denounced the use of marijuana as medicine, while Democrats lined up to criticize the prevailing federal policy. Obama took a clear position, declaring it “entirely appropriate” for physicians to prescribe cannabis and pledging, “What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.”
But as opponents of the Iraq war, “don’t ask don’t tell” and Guantanamo know, a promise made by Obama is not exactly money in the bank. This time, though, he deserves full credit for doing what he said he would do, repudiating a bipartisan legacy of pigheaded stupidity.
What’s more, Obama may not stop there. Some reformers expect the administration to agree to let a scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst grow cannabis for research on its medical potential — something the Bush administration opposed, lest the research contradict its ideology.
During the campaign, Obama also indicated he favors scrapping a 21-year-old policy that forbids cities from using federal money to finance needle-exchange programs to block the spread of AIDS, and the House voted last summer to lift the ban. The White House drug czar has even solicited advice from critics of the drug war, whom previous drug czars saw as deranged.
Robert Randall, who died in 2001, might have been surprised to hear the federal government admit the possibility that it was wrong about marijuana. He probably wouldn’t have been surprised that it took 33 years.
Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune’s editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/chapman
schapman@tribune.com
compliance brings privilege
Add a comment 27/10/2009
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/medical-marijuana-longer-federally-prosecuted-states-legal-obama/story?id=8912772
—————————–
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STEPHANOPOULOS: Another trigger, that’s exactly right. But before we go,
another decision I think did not get as much play as maybe it should have
this week, the Attorney General Eric Holder announcing that the federal
government would no longer prosecute marijuana cases in states that have
approved medical marijuana laws.
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: We will not use our limited resources in the
fight against the marijuana trade against those people who are using it
consistent with state law and to fight serious illnesses, such as cancer or
other diseases.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Right now, 14 states have medical marijuana laws. A lot of
others considering it. So this is a significant announcement.
WILL: What he’s saying is we will not pre-empt state laws with federal
poweras we could. What that means is where medical marijuana laws are enforced,
doctors will advertise, as they’re doing in California, that they will give
a prescription for medical use.
Now medical use can be marijuana to cure anxiety, to cure insomnia, all the
rest. And you will have what you now have in California, where marijuana is
essentially legalized. We have legalized gambling in this country over two
generations. It used to be considered a sin and a crime. With no national
debate, and no decision moment, we just did it. We legalized prostitution as
anyone who opens a telephone book and looks under “escort” can tell
you. And we may be doing, probably in the process now of legalizing marijuana.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Good idea?
PODESTA: Well, I think that overstates the case. I think that what Eric
Holder did was to say look, we have scarce resources. We’re not going to go
after people with glaucoma or cancer or whatever on medical marijuana.
They’re still going with a vengeance really against the Mexican drug
cartels. So I think there’s — this is kind of a mixed bag. I think we
won’tsee a full legalization of marijuana until somebody figures out that if you
tax it, maybe you can pay for health care.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That might be what drives it.
WILL: Eighty percent of the revenue of the Mexican cartels is marijuana. If
you really want to go after the Mexican cartels and I’m not saying that is
the only criterion for public policy, you’d legalize marijuana.
STEPHANOPOULOS: We are seeing gradually the public more open to the idea of
legalization. It was in the 20 percent throughout the 1990s, hit 30 percent
around 2000. Now it’s well above 40.
INGRAHAM: Yes, I think all of us have either gone through cancer or family
members and it’s a terribly painful disease. I think you have a lot of
sympathy. There’s a lot of public sympathy for medical marijuana use.
I think George hit on it, though. It’s being prescribed for a whole
range of issues. Like if you have pain from Botox injection, you can get medical
marijuana. That means a lot of people in California must be toking up, OK?
No, I’m just teasing. Look, I just have one question, does this mean
brownies are going to be for sale at the CVS and Walgreens? Because that’s
always been a product that’s been missing.
STEPHANOPOULOS: In Los Angeles, I think it may be, that’s right.
HUNT: Well now that I no longer have a teenager, I have a little bit
different view, a bit more permissive. I don’t think it’s a great
utilization of scarce federal resources to be prosecuting pot. I am not sure
if it’s going to lead to what George suggests. I’m not sure that would
be a bad idea. But I was at the University of Mississippi a couple of years ago
and it’s interesting, they grow marijuana on the campus. So, times are
A-changing.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The times are changing. I was just thinking back, could you
imagine Janet Reno in 1995, announcing that I’m not going to prosecute
this,there would have been a massive uproar.
INGRAHAM: We had jobs.
WILL: There was one problem and that is we talked to the federal drug czar
which I have done, marijuana is getting much better. They’re growing and
making it better in the sense that the active ingredient is much stronger
than it used to be.
TUCKER: Well, I wished that I believed that this was going to lead to some
broader federal look at the whole futile war on drugs. But as John just
mentioned, Eric Holder followed that announcement with massive raids on drug
cartels, which isn’t a bad idea. I just don’t think that this is a
relook at the futility on the war on drugs. I really think instead of just acting in a
small way to say, marijuana isn’t such a bad thing. Let’s relook at
all ofour drug laws, the way we fight the so-called war on drugs, because it
isn’t working.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I think John may be right. What’s going to drive that in
the long run are budget issues. That’s all we have time for today. You guys
continue this in the green room. You all can catch it on ABCNews.com and get
political updates all week long from our daily newsletter which is also on
ABCNews.com.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003230573
********************
Sincerely,
Degé Coutee
Education & Advocacy Director
Patient Advocacy Network
www.CannabisSavesLives.com
Add a comment 26/10/2009
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