The California Supreme Court ruled on Monday that medical cannabis dispensaries are legal under state law, but cities and counties can still ban them. The decision in City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center is disappointing, but it is not the end of the fight for safe and dignified access to medicine in approximately two hundred communities where patients’ associations are banned. The Supreme Court pointed out that “nothing prevents future efforts by the Legislature, or by the People, to adopt a different approach.” That means the ball is in your court now.

Ask your California lawmakers to protect safe access for every legal patient by adopting statewide regulations based on our “Principles of Sensible Medical Cannabis Regulation.” Two measures before the state legislature seek to regulate medical cannabis activity – AB 473 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) and SB 439 by Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). Act now to be sure these two measures, which are still being finalized by lawmakers, reflect what patients and other medical cannabis stakeholders want to see.

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Last week, Kal Penn, who plays Kumar in the “stoner” film franchise Harold & Kumar, spoke to Huffington Post Live about President Obama’s marijuana policies. During the April 26th interview, Penn defended recent Justice Department attacks on dispensaries in medical marijuana states like California, citing articles he read from a Google search.

Unfortunately, we cannot always rely on a pliant mainstream media — that too often quotes Justice Department officials without any counterpoint — to provide consistently factual information.

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I am so excited to be attending the ASA California Medical Cannabis Policy Summit and Lobby Day this weekend.  The event last year was absolutely brilliant.  Steph and the Sacramento ASA Chapter did an outstanding job organizing the event, and together, we accomplished the impossible. Imagine visiting EVERY representative in Sacramento in ONE day.  What an undertaking!  We might qualify for a Guinness Book of World Records.

Lobbyists have a lot of power in Sacramento, but legislators really take notice when an “ordinary” citizen takes the time to show up in their offices.  The value is priceless.

Seriously, I learned so much about being an EFFECTIVE advocate: how to make  appointments to talk to your representatives, how to address them, how to prepare my talking points, and how to follow up after the meeting.  This training has served me well during the past year and I have developed relationships with several legislators as a result.

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California Senator Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) has proposed a bill that would turn most of the state’s legal medical cannabis patients into criminals. SB 289 will make it a crime to drive with any amount of a controlled substance in your blood, unless the drug was prescribed by a doctor. The bill makes no exception for medical cannabis patients, whose medicine is recommend by a doctor, as opposed to prescribed. That means trouble for responsible, law abiding medical cannabis patients statewide.

Regular medical cannabis users may have detectable levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the active compounds in cannabis, for up to two days after using medicine (See G. Skopp and L. Potsch, “Cannabinoid concentrations in spot serum samples 24-48 hours after discontinuation of cannabis smoking,” Journal of Analytical Toxicology 32: 160-4, 2008). However, measurable impairment from medical cannabis use may only last a few hours. This means that a legal medical cannabis user will be in violation of SB 289, because he or she has a detectable amount of THC long after there is any potential for impairment.

ASA is asking medical cannabis supporters to speak up against SB 289 to protect legal patients from unnecessary arrest. The bill will be heard in the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, April 30, so your California Senator needs to hear from you now.

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Nothing happens in the state legislature just because it should. Sometimes laws get passed because those with a financial interest in the outcome influence lawmakers. In some cases, political favors get traded to get something done. And all too often, lobbyists are the only voices lawmakers hear when they make choices that affect citizens. That is what is happening with medical cannabis in Sacramento right now, and I hope you will join me there next month to change that conversation for the better.

Medical cannabis patients and other stakeholders are meeting in Sacramento May 4-6 for the California Medical Cannabis Policy Summit and Lobby Day. The goals of the event are to develop strategies and skills necessary to adopt beneficial legislation for medical cannabis this year, and to take that message to lawmakers in person. Americans for Safe Access (ASA) and our partners at Californians to Regulate Medical Marijuana (CRMM); a coalition of patients, cultivators, organized labor, and others; is organizing this event to be sure that patients are at the table when important decisions about regulating medical cannabis are made this year.

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Third time’s a charm? Not in the case of Navy veteran and former San Diego dispensary operator Jovan Jackson.

San Diego Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Chris Lindberg decided this week to try Jackson for a third time in as many years. Jackson, who operated the San Diego dispensary Answerdam Alternative Care Collective (AACC), was raided by a multi-agency law enforcement task force in 2008 and again in 2009. Jackson was tried the first time on possession and distribution charges, but was acquitted by a jury in 2009.

Unsatisfied with that result, ADA Lindberg, likely at the behest of San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, tried Jackson a second time on charges levied after the 2009 raid on AACC. The second trial was not considered “double jeopardy” by the court because the prosecution was based on a different raid. During Jackson’s second trial in 2010, Lindberg prevented him from using a medical marijuana defense and, as a result, was convicted this time on the same charges of possession and distribution.

Outraged by this official persecution of a law-abiding dispensary operator and the waste of taxpayer dollars, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) appealed Jackson’s conviction in late 2011. In a unanimous landmark decision by California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, Jackson’s conviction was overturned in October 2012. The court also held that Jackson should have been entitled to a medical marijuana defense, rejecting arguments made by both Lindberg and the Attorney General that patients must take part in the cultivation used to supply dispensaries.

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In a highly-publicized and widely-watched medical marijuana case, the California Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday on whether municipalities should be able to ban local medical marijuana distribution, an activity deemed legal under state law. For all of the controversy and strenuous arguments made on both sides of the issue, those who stand the most to lose — medical marijuana patients themselves — were completely ignored.

In the case City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center, the abstract but quantifiable impact of dispensary bans is that tens of thousands of patients are left without safe and legal access to their medication, mainly as a result of hostile or reluctant local officials. Today, more than 50 localities in California have adopted ordinances regulating the lawful distribution of medical marijuana, while more than 200 of the state’s cities and counties have banned dispensaries outright. For the past 7 years, city councils and county boards of supervisors have passed bans with complete disregard to the impact on their most vulnerable residents.

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Although the case of Arizona v. Okun arises out of Arizona, the patient whose marijuana was seized is from California.  While driving across the California-Arizona boarder at Yuma, qualified California medical marijuana patient Valerie Okun was stopped at a border patrol checkpoint and her medical marijuana was seized.  Because Arizona law includes protections for medical marijuana patients from other states, the charges against Okun were dropped, so she asked for her marijuana back, and the cops refused.  This had been an all too familiar story in California as well, until the Court of Appeal resolved the issue in favor of medical marijuana patients in the Americans for Safe Access-litigated case Garden Grove v. Superior Court (Cal. App. 2007) 68 Cal.Rptr.3d 656.

As in California’s Garden Grove opinion and Oregon’s State v. Kama (Or. App. 2002), the court found that state law mandates the return of marijuana where it is shown that it is lawfully possessed under the state’s medical marijuana laws.  Relying on these cases, the court held that federal law does not require a contrary outcome, since a federal immunity provision, 21 U.S.C. section 885(d), provides immunity to state and local police who lawfully administer state law relating to controlled substances.  Thus, the immunity provision allows for harmony between state and federal laws.  The Okun court went on to deny standing to the State of Arizona in arguing that federal law preempts state law.

Chalk up another victory to medical marijuana patients who have been harassed by the police.

“The matter is now final,” according to the California Supreme Court.  On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court denied requests from the League of California Cities, the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, the Sacramento District Attorney’s Office, the Sonoma District Attorney’s Office, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles City Attorney to depublish or review the published decision in People v. Jackson.

After years of struggling over the issue, the Court of Appeal held that storefront dispensaries are legal under California law, so long as they operate on a not for profit basis and adhere to certain corporate forms.  This decision establishes that storefront dispensaries are unquestionably legal under California law and that localities cannot continue to rely on their now-discredited view that all sales of medical marijuana are illegal in order to support their ongoing attacks on medical marijuana dispensaries.

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Voters in Los Angeles will have three medical cannabis measures from which to choose when they go to the polls in May. The City Council approved a motion (11-1) by Council Member Paul Koretz on Wednesday instructing the City Attorney to write a voter initiative regulating collectives and cooperatives and raising the tax they must pay. The city’s belated effort at regulating hundreds of patients’ associations will join two community-led efforts to adopt regulations that have already qualified for the ballot.

Staff at City Hall does not expect to see initiative language from the City Attorney until just before the January 31 deadline for submitting ballot measures, so no one knows the details of City Council’s plan. Council Member Koretz’s motion instructs the City Attorney to base the voter initiative on a draft ordinance last vetted by the City Planning Commission on November 29. Known at City Hall as the “limited immunity” ordinance, that draft banned patients’ associations unless they met strict criteria, including opening before September 2007, locating 1,000 from sensitive uses, paying taxes, never having closed, and more.  Council Member Koretz’s new motion instructs the City Attorney to  add another 1% local tax on collectives and cooperatives – bringing the city’s total medical cannabis tax to 6%.

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