Guest blog by Jahan Marcu. Cathy Jordan was on a panel with Jahan Marcu at the Cannabis Therapeutics Conference in Arizona. Before taking the stage, she discussed the medical use of cannabis for ALS with the Vice Chair of ASA’s Medical and Scientific Advisory Board.
Finally, President Obama has spoken about his aggressive stance toward medical marijuana. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, his statements are underwhelming, inaccurate and do nothing to address medical marijuana as a public health issue. In response to a question from Rolling Stone on why his administration is conducting more medical marijuana raids than the Bush administration, President Obama failed to come clean on reasons for the breadth and intensity of the attacks, which significantly escalated since he took office.
What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana…
Actually, what Obama said on the campaign trail in 2008 was that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state [medical marijuana] laws.”
As we find ourselves, yet again, under attack by the federal government, a new medical marijuana documentary tells the story of a dispensary operator arrested in 2007 by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Five years later, the story of Charles C. Lynch has not died out and, in fact, is more relevant than ever.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Rick Ray teamed up with Brainstorm Media to release “Lynching Charlie Lynch” this past Friday. A press release issued at the time described the film this way:
Controversial and provocative, Lynching Charlie Lynch explores the conflict between the state-permitted medical marijuana business and Federal drug law in America, and the human cost of the arbitrary and inconsistent application of the law. Through in-depth interviews with experts and advocates across the country and on all sides of the issue, Lynching Charlie Lynch finds many answers, and raises even more questions.
Ten years ago today, I stood below the biggest free-standing billboard in San Francisco and watched volunteers drop a huge banner that said “No War on Patients!” right next to one of the busiest freeways in the city. It was the beginning of a series of actions and media work in response to former Drug Czar Asa Hutchinson’s visit to the Bay Area. He was coming to town to gloat about raids at medical cannabis dispensaries and gardens, and we were determined to tell a different story. That’s how the nation’s largest medical cannabis patients’ advocacy organization got its name – Americans for Safe Access v. Asa Hutchison or “ASA v. Asa.”
Faced with an extremely hostile trial court judge, medical marijuana dispensary operators Joe Grumbine and Joe Byron were convicted of marijuana sales after Long Beach Superior Court Judge Charles D. Sheldon initially deprived them of a medical marijuana collective defense and later gave them only one day to prepare such defense. Judge Sheldon later recused himself from the case after he admitted to sending a congratulatory letter to the prosecutor. Further extreme bias by Judge Sheldon can be found in the trial transcript, which reveals that he repeatedly sustained prosecution objections to the introduction of defense evidence, but did not sustain a defense objection until page 1004 of the transcript of the proceedings.
Many, including me, expected the convictions to be reversed on appeal, due to Judge Sheldon’s actions. Instead, the two Joes got a far earlier reversal of their convictions, as Long Beach Superior Court Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani cited a number of improprieties by Judge Sheldon — including complimenting the prosecutor, while being extremely rude to the defense team, before the jury — in granting the two Joes’ motion for a new trial. Judge Comparet-Cassani dubbed this a “terrible, terrible, terrible trial.” Hopefully, there will be no need for a second one.
The D.C. Deparment of Health’s Health Regulation and Licensing Administration (HRLA) finally unveiled the names of the business that will be directly providing safe access through dispensaries to the District’s medical cannabis patients. Yesterday, the HRLA announced which dispensary applicants received scores of at least 150 points during the review process. Only 4 dispensaries made the 150-point requirement, and according a District government official “[t]his list is pretty final,” meaning these 4 dispensaries will be the only providers in the District for the foreseeable future. And on top of the mere 1 dispensary per 125,000 residents, there is also the cultivation center plant limit of 95 at each of the 6 approved locations, meaning less that one plant per 1,000 District residents. However, at least now the “foreseeable future” includes includes safe access in D.C., even if it comes through the most severely restrictive program in the country. (more…)
When the New Hampshire Senate passed SB 409 last week, perhaps the most noteworthy component of the story was overlooked. Bucking the unfortunate and ill-advised trend of “recently” passed bills in east coast states like New Jersey and Delaware, and the District of Columbia, the New Hampshire Senate made the compassionate and pragmatic decision to include patient cultivation in their medical cannabis bill. This is one of the most encouraging state legislative developments for medical cannabis to take place in 2012.
The use of the quotations around “recently” in the prior paragraph was deliberate to illustrate what happens when states refuse to include patient cultivation rights with their medical cannabis programs. Both DC and and New Jersey passed their medical cannabis laws about 2 years ago, and both places have been extremely slow to implement their medical cannabis programs. Progress with New Jersey program has been moving with all of the swiftness of a turtle walking sideways. In fact, the painfully slow implementation has caused at least one patient to sue the state for relief. Result: no safe access in New Jersey.
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