Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: AIDS, California, cancer, cannabis, ganja, grow, hashish, hemp, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, seattle, skunk, weed
Seattle, WA — The state Health Department on Thursday defined a two-month supply of medical marijuana as 24 ounces of usable pot and up to 15 plants, a limit designed to end a decade of confusion over how much patients are allowed to have.
But patient advocates criticized the limit as arbitrary and insufficient, saying it could leave sick people in danger of going to jail, and they threatened to sue to prevent the rule from taking effect.
“We looked at what appears to make sense for most of the patients in the state,” said department spokesman Donn Moyer. “There will be some who don’t need as much, and there may be some who need more.”
Washington was among the first states to approve the medical use of marijuana to treat AIDS, cancer and other debilitating illnesses. The law, passed in 1998, allowed patients a 60-day supply of marijuana, but didn’t say how much that was. Over the years, several patients with a doctor’s authorization to use marijuana have been arrested by police who deemed them to have more pot than necessary.
Patients who need more marijuana than allowed by the new rule can make that argument to a judge if they’re arrested.
The limit adopted Thursday takes effect Nov. 2, and nearly matches the rule used by Oregon, which allows 24 ounces plus six mature plants and 18 immature ones. Some California counties allow more marijuana, but many of the dozen states with medical marijuana laws allow much less than Washington’s new rule – just an ounce or two, in some cases.
The Health Department decided against using a mature immature plant distinction largely because it didn’t want police to have to determine what constituted a mature plant.
Instead, officials went with a limit of 15 plants at any stage of growth.
Law enforcement officers “really just want a line in the sand,” Moyer said, and the 15-plant limit allows patients flexibility to decide how to grow them.
Patient advocates scoffed at that. Douglas Hiatt, a Seattle attorney who represents patients, noted that only female marijuana plants are usable as medicine, and about half of all plants growing from seed grow to become male. So to get to 15 usable plants, a patient or provider might have to plant 30 – in violation of the law.
“No patient I know of anywhere in the state is in compliance with that number,” Hiatt said.
And, he said, the 24-ounce limit for dried bud might work for patients who smoke marijuana, but not for those who eat it. He called the limits “completely nonscientific.”
“We all know this is a political decision that doesn’t have anything to do with the reality of patients’ lives.”
The Health Department initially considered setting the limit at 35 ounces plus 100 square feet of plant canopy. But Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire found those numbers too high and urged officials to get more input from law enforcement and doctors.
The Health Department did so, and cut the numbers accordingly. Law enforcement had worried that drug dealers could use a higher limit to conceal illicit marijuana growing operations.
The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs’ policy director, Joanna Arlow, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday. But she previously called the 24-ounce limit “reasonable.”
Steve Sarich, a patient and advocate from Kirkland, said he would go to court to seek an injunction to prevent the rule from taking effect. He argued that it was arbitrary, and he took no comfort in knowing that patients could try to prove in court they need more than the limit – something that would likely require a doctor’s testimony.
“How is the doctor going to prove you need more plants? Is the doctor going to prove you’re not very good at growing,” he said. “Where is the clarity this rule was supposed to provide?”
Source: Associated Press
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: AIDS, cancer, cannabis, ganja, glaucoma, grow, grow houses, hashish, hemp, Hepatitis C, HIV, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, multiple sclerosis, pot, skunk, weed
Michigan — If people who are seriously or chronically ill can convince their doctors that using marijuana will make them feel better, the State of Michigan should not stand in the way.
Proposal 1 on the statewide ballot Nov. 4 would allow Michigan residents to cultivate and possess small amounts of marijuana for medical reasons with a doctor’s approval. Voters should say yes to this proposal, which was placed on the ballot by a petition campaign that collected almost 378,000 signatures.
This is not about drug use. It’s about compassion. The initiative would amend Michigan law to allow seriously ill people to seek authorization from a doctor to grow up to a dozen marijuana plants and possess up to 2.5 ounces of the weed, strictly for personal use. The continuing, regulated sale of alcoholic beverages poses more of a problem for society than will passage of this law.Voters in five Michigan cities — Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, Ferndale and Traverse City — and a dozen other states have already approved similar statutes without the dire consequences forecast by federal drug-control authorities who fear the start of a slippery slope toward broad drug legalization.
While there are other prescription drugs available to control the pain or anxiety that afflicts the seriously or terminally ill, some such patients find more relief with less loss of control and fewer side effects from marijuana. These are not people who will start peddling the products of their little pot gardens to neighborhood kids. They won’t have that much and will need all of it for their own use. And such sales would still be illegal under the proposed law.
Last month, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a national survey showing Americans rank marijuana well behind other illicit drugs, prescription drugs and alcohol among substances that pose a threat to society.
The national Marijuana Policy Project, which provided nearly all of the $1.1 million spent to put this question on the Michigan ballot, acknowledges a larger goal of replacing “marijuana prohibition with a sensible system of regulation.” But that may be a long way off, if, indeed, it happens at all. Meantime, Proposal 1 is about helping sick people feel better.
Sidebar: Proposal 08-1
A legislative initiative to permit the use and cultivation of marijuana for specified medical conditions. The proposed law would:
• Permit physician approved use of marijuana by registered patients with debilitating medical conditions including cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, hepatitis C, MS and other conditions as may be approved by the Department of Community Health.
• Permit registered individuals to grow limited amounts of marijuana for qualifying patients in an enclosed, locked facility.
• Require Department of Community Health to establish an identification card system for patients qualified to use marijuana and individuals qualified to grow marijuana.
• Permit registered and unregistered patients and primary caregivers to assert medical reasons for using marijuana as a defense to any prosecution involving marijuana.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Filed under: Hemp&Law, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, Detroit, ganja, grow, hashish, hemp, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, skunk, therapeutic use, weed
Lansing, MI — A proposal to legalize the cultivation and use of marijuana for medical purposes, which will be on the Nov. 4 ballot and has gone virtually unchallenged for more than a year, will have some organized opposition after all.
A coalition of medical, law enforcement and anti-drug organizations calling itself Citizens Protecting Michigan Kids has scheduled news conferences across lower Michigan for Thursday to kick off the campaign to encourage a “No” vote on Proposal 1.
A spokesman for the coalition said it will be led by Appeals Court Judge Bill Schuette and former Michigan Chamber of Commerce President James Barrett, and will include the Michigan State Medical Society, the Prosecuting Attorneys Association and the Michigan Sheriff’s Association.Proposal 1 was placed on the ballot after supporters, including a nucleus from a national organization that has run similar campaigns all over the country, collected nearly a half million petition signatures. Until today’s announcement of the anti-Proposal 1 coalition, it had been subjected to some criticism from law enforcement officials but appeared likely to slide through until Election Day virtually unnoticed.
A Free Press poll released earlier this week indicated voters approve of the idea of legalizing pot for some medical conditions by a more than 2-1 margin.
Complete Title: Group That Opposes Medical Marijuana Will Kick Off ‘No’ Campaign Thursday
Source: Detroit Free Press
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, ganja, grow, hashish, hemp, legalize, Livingston, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, skunk, weed
Livingston, MT — Downtown Livingston has gone to pot.
In the open garage doorway of a small white warehouse, six blocks from the Park County Sheriff’s Office and minutes from the nouveau eateries and art galleries where tourists stroll, Homer Terry churns ice into a five-gallon bucket of marijuana.
It’s a hot Friday afternoon. The whir of Terry’s power drill and stir paddle mixes with the shovel chucks of a nearby railroad crew spreading gravel. He gives the customary Montana greeting of a slight head nod and an easy smile to passers-by, but otherwise he keeps working, blending bits of marijuana into a potent smokable paste.
Some would say Terry is making hashish, but the man with drill in hand churning a icy drink of cannabis prefers to say he’s harvesting “tri-chromes,” that is, the secretions of resins rich in THC forming on the exterior of discarded marijuana plant matter. Others would say Terry and the other half-dozen volunteers toiling on the northern edge of a busy thoroughfare in this sleepy railroad town are growing dope. Terry, a volunteer at the medical-marijuana growing co-op, would say he’s making medicine. And the state of Montana agrees.
It has been four years since Montana voters cast an overwhelming vote to legalize medical marijuana. The ballot initiative, allowing patients with a doctor’s referral to grow as many as six marijuana plants for medicinal purposes, garnered more voter support that November than Gov. Brian Schweitzer or U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg.
In practice, however the law is receiving mixed reviews. Patient groups and legally sanctioned growers say they now navigate a vague legal path with enough unexpected curves to send some, unintentionally, into violation of drug laws.
Likewise, law enforcement officials say they are seeing the emergence of a marijuana culture they didn’t expect, with a few large indoor marijuana farms and a shield of confidentiality preventing detectives from determining whether business is being done according to law.
In practice, medical marijuana didn’t take root right away in Montana. Even after the law passed with 63 percent approval Nov. 2, 2004, newspaper accounts of the vote suggested that “Montanans suffering from certain medical conditions may be able to legally smoke marijuana” with emphasis on the word “may,” not “can.” Prior to the vote, Montanans were warned by U.S. deputy drug czar Scott Burns that federal law trumps state law and that Montana wouldn’t be a safe harbor for legal cannabis.
Except for a few incidents, however, medical marijuana in Montana hasn’t resulted in many arrests by federal or state officials. State registration of patients approved to use medical marijuana has more than tripled in the last year, said Roy Kemp, who issues medical-marijuana licenses for the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.
“We had 1,280 registered patients this July,” said Kemp, who receives 40 to 50 applications a week. “We had 358 last July.”
State health officials run a registry of patients, Kemp said. It tracks the number of participating doctors, currently 162, as well as the number of appointed caregivers, 386. The state never discloses the names of the people involved to anyone, including police.
What Kemp will disclose are the categories of qualifying conditions into which registrants fall. Patients suffering from severe and chronic pain with nausea or muscle spasms represent 70 percent of those registered for what’s conversationally called a green card, a plastic medical-marijuana license good for one year. Patients suffering from severe seizures coupled with severe nausea and muscle spasms are the second largest group, at 11 percent.
One Patient’s Experience
Included in the remaining 8 percent of registered patients is Donna Woodworth, who has struggled with diminishing weight since being treated for colon cancer 25 years ago. Appetite loss due to medical treatment or chronic condition is one of about a dozen conditions covered by the state medical-marijuana law.
“Suddenly, I can eat what I call my old-lady diet,” said Woodworth, “yogurt and mashed potatoes and some bread. Basically that’s what I eat.”
Since being approved for medical marijuana, Woodworth said, her body weight has increased from 80 pounds to 112. Using cannabis is not an easy subject to talk about, said Woodworth, who lives in Livingston and receives her marijuana from Montana Caregivers, a registered corporation that grows marijuana for some 50 medical-marijuana patients.
Marijuana use bears a stigma with or without the state card, said Woodworth, who nervously spoke of her experience while standing in Montana Caregivers’ Park Avenue office. People who casually know she uses cannabis assume she’s doing something wrong.
At the mention of implied wrongdoing, grower Ronita Minnick begins to laugh. She, her husband, David, and another grower formed a sort of co-op and started growing medical marijuana a year ago. Friends then were warning that they were all going to jail. They’ve been waiting for the bad news ever since.
“There were a lot of people saying, ‘You’re not in jail yet?’ ” said Minnick. “And some are still saying ‘You’re not in jail?’ “
‘Caregivers’ With Green Thumbs
The Minnicks are registered patients. Ronita has a degenerative diabetic eye disease. Dave’s spine was injured in an auto accident that causes him chronic pain. But they’re also caregivers, the term used by the state to identify people chosen by patients to grow medical marijuana.
Caregivers have to be selected by a patient. No selection, no authorization to grow marijuana legally. Each patient is allowed to have up to six marijuana plants. A caregiver with several patients can have a pretty big crop. The growers in Minnicks’ co-op are raising about 300 medical-marijuana plants in multiple stages under grow lights inside a secured building.
The operation is legitimate under state medical-marijuana standards, but the setting mirrors a noncertified operation. There are smoking pipes and rolling papers in the break room, along with smoke-free marijuana vaporizers for patients concerned about carcinogens.
The varieties of marijuana grown sport names like AK-47, White Widow and Kush. Different varieties produce different highs.
“It’s a large grow operation,” said Tim Barnes, a detective with the Missouri River Drug Task Force. “Minnick was in the newspapers, so we’ve always known what was going on. Dave’s pretty much been forthcoming.”
Lingering Legal Questions
Dave Minnick not only invited the detectives to check out his crop, he said he approached the Park County attorney before he got going so law enforcement wouldn’t be alarmed. They were still alarmed, Minnick said. The county prosecutor first told Minnick to leave, then called in a deputy and asked the caregiver to stay once he realized Minnick wasn’t joking.
Barnes isn’t sure large grow operations were expected when the medical-marijuana initiative passed. It’s one of many issues he thinks the law overlooked or ignored. Growers aren’t required to keep records, and because state records are tightly guarded, it’s difficult to determine if the marijuana is being grown for registered patients and if the amount of marijuana grown exceeds the limit of six plants per patient.
Barnes also has concerns about caregivers growing a small number of plants in homes where children are present. And he’s not entirely convinced everyone registered for medical marijuana needs it. There is no age limit for legally using medical marijuana.
“One of the things that concerns me is that more people are moving here because they can have access to medical marijuana,” Barnes said. “It’s all over the state, not just here.”
Patients and caregivers have concerns, too, said Tom Daubert, with Patients and Families United, an advocacy group for medical-marijuana users.
Working with law enforcement, Daubert and others are trying to work some of the kinks out of the state law. Patients and Families United would like to see some allowances for transportation by nonpatients. Patients too ill to travel now must rely on caregiver home delivery or courier, which poses problems because only patients and caregivers can possess the drug. Barnes and other detectives want more accountability written into the law.
One Missoula patient committed suicide last year after drug enforcement agents seized her marijuana because it was sent through United Parcel Service.
The group would also like to increase the amount of marijuana a patient is allowed to have on hand from an ounce, roughly a lunch bag full, to a larger amount. The group lobbied the 2007 Legislature to make the changes, but to no avail.
Federal officials would like to put the kibosh on medical marijuana, in part because they believe it undermines drug prevention programs such as the elementary school program Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE.
“I don’t have a lot of huge worries about it because I trust Americans to fix what they break, but I’m worried about the message we’re sending to our kids. That’s a tragedy,” said Jeffrey Sweetin, special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. “The kids that flunked DARE are now telling your kids, my kids, that this is medicine.”
Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I narcotic, meaning that the federal government believes it has no useful purpose. Doctors can’t prescribe the drug without breaking the law, they can only recommend it. Government agencies like the National Institutes of Health have argued for years that marijuana is damaging, Sweetin said. That argument was not heard in states where marijuana advocates have persuaded voters to allow medical marijuana.
“Please understand, we don’t ignore marijuana grow operations,” Sweetin said. “I assure you, there are thresholds at every U.S. attorney’s office.”
Not all doctors agree that marijuana is harmful. Ed Stickney, a retired physician in Billings, has written referrals for several patients. He said that particularly in pain cases, marijuana poses less of an addiction threat than powerful painkillers like OxyContin.
“I contend that if it were discovered today, marijuana would be considered a miracle drug,” Stickney said.
Source: Billings Gazette
Filed under: Hemp&Law, hemp in general | Tags: canada, cannabis, ganja, grow, hashish, hemp, marijuana, pot, skunk, weed
POLICE TAKE TO SKIES TO STOP OUTDOOR GROW-OPS
A integrated police team combing Vancouver Island from the sky looking for marijuana grow-ops expects to seize more than 20,000 plants.
The team is expected to find a significant amount of outdoor pot as the growing season now comes to an end, says Const. Darren Lagan of the Island District RCMP.
“Based on what we have seen in the air so far, we will get 20,000 plants altogether,” Lagan said Friday.
The goal of the annual fall police project is to locate and destroy marijuana grown outdoors, which is often on Crown land, notes Lagan.
While he noted police may be able to detect grow-ops from a helicopter, they can not always get into the isolated areas to tear them down.
“The number of sites we get to depends on weather and location,” said Lagan.
“Through our partnership with the Canadian military, we are able to utilize their expertise and equipment to gain access to these challenging locations,” added Lagan.
Last year, he said, the fall detection program on the Island netted RCMP about 20,000 plants.
And Lagan pointed out that many of those they busted last year set up in a new location: “They will change location from year to year, but were atuned to that.”
Outdoor pot production poses significant environmental risk, he said.
Streams are often diverted, growth-enhancing chemicals and pesticides are introduced into pristine lands and garbage is left behind at many of the sites, said Lagan.
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Website: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/
Filed under: Hemp&Law, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, ganja, grow, hashish, hemp, Langley City, marijuana, pot, skunk, weed
ANTI-MARIJUANA TEAM REBOOTS IN FALL
Pot growing operations will likely soon be under PSIT scrutiny once again.
The Public Safety Inspection Teams will be back on duty soon, after being shut down following a theft accusation against a Township firefighter in the spring.
“We expect they’ll be up and running again in the fall,” said Township Mayor Kurt Alberts.
In early May, there was an accusation made that a Township firefighter on the team had stolen a halogen worklight and two batteries from one of the homes being inspected.
The accusation came from another member of the team. Charges have since been forwarded to Crown counsel about the incident, according to fire department spokesperson assistant chief Bruce Ferguson.
During the time the team was shut down, an outside independent review of the way it operated was completed by a Surrey fire department member, said Alberts.
The review compared how the Langley PSIT worked compared to other, similar forces around the province.
With the review done, the teams should be up to speed again soon, although no exact date has been set.
The PSIT was formed more than a year ago using new provincial legislation as its base.
The legal change allowed municipalities to get electric consumption data from BC Hydro for individual homes and businesses.
If the power use was very high, it might indicate that a home was being used as a marijuana grow operation, because grow ops use high powered lights and other gear.
Once homes were identified, a team consisting of a Township bylaw officer, two RCMP officers, an electrical inspector, a clerical worker and a firefighter began an investigation.
They would check out suspected properties from the road and look for signs that there might be a legitimate use for the electricity.
Some of the homes on the list turned out to be the locations of home-based businesses or avid power tool users.
Once they suspected a home to be a grow op, the team would move in to make an electrical inspection. They had to give 24 hours notice to occupants.
In many cases, they found the remnants of hastily dismantled grow ops. Sometimes they found plants still there.
More than 220 were found or disrupted during the course of that first year.
The legal reason for the team is that high electricity use and grow ops are a fire hazard. The RCMP members couldn’t make any arrests as a result of the team’s activities, because there were no criminal search warrants for any of the homes.
However, pot was confiscated and owners of the homes had to pay to clean up unsafe wiring.
Langley City does not have a similar full-time team, but other Lower Mainland communities have tried their own versions. Surrey and Coquitlam’s teams have recently come under legal fire. In Coquitlam, a Lions Club fundraiser was targeted, apparently because a hot tub used too much power. He was told his power would be cut.
Source: Langley Advance (CN BC)
Website: http://www.langleyadvance.com/
