Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: California, cannabis, ganja, hashish, hemp, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, medical research, pot, Santa Cruz, skunk, WAMM, WAMM Festival, weed
Santa Cruz, CA — Thousands of medicinal marijuana patients and supporters attended WAMMfest to celebrate and learn about the herbal medicine Saturday.
Though medical marijuana patients were able to smoke their medicine at the event that featured music, crafts and speeches, that portion of the festivities was in question until this week. After failing to muster the votes to lift the city smoking ban in parks in a prior meeting, the council Tuesday agreed to do so. Only those with a medical marijuana identification card were allowed to smoke in a specially-designated tent Saturday.
Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana co-founder Valerie Corral said the event is an opportunity to normalize the use of medicinal marijuana and bring its members’ stories to the public eye.
“Almost 200 of our members have died in the past 15 years since our inception,” said Corral. “We do this work for a lot of reasons and for all aspects of illness. We get to be with people at the most important time in their lives when they are facing death. We are here to take care of each other and to be by their bedside and it takes you to places you can’t even imagine.”
WAMM is a collective of patients and caregivers that offers free medical marijuana to seriously ill patients with a doctor’s recommendation and aims to, provide hope and build community.
Santa Cruz police reported that there were no problems during the event, and that the festival provided its own security.
Organizers began setting up the celebration of the herbal drug at 6 a.m. Saturday and said by the end of the day they expected to see 2,500 visitors.
Colorful tents filled San Lorenzo Park with vendors offering a range of organic hemp soaps from Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps to bright tie-dye shirts and jewelry. Plastic marijuana leaf tiaras were also for sale in addition to sunglasses and hemp bags.
Councilman Tony Madrigal, who spoke at the event, said he was happy the council was able find a compromise that allowed patients to use their medication in a controlled, confined and secure area, while still taking part in a community event.
“This is an example of the community working together with the local government to find a solution for many of the problems the city faces,” Madrigal said. “People are loyal to WAMM and come to celebrate the good work that WAMM does.”
A newly expanded children’s area was moved to the front of the park to invite members of the community to the family friendly event said WAMM member Babianna Mince.
“It’s a family affair here. My husband is working security and I am in charge of the kids area,” Mince said. “We have had about 20 kids come by since noon, which is more than we have ever had.”
A survivor of uterine, bone and breast cancer, Mince said that being a medicinal marijuana patient has allowed her to participate in events such as the festival and get through 40 surgeries within the past five years.
“I feel like after that I can get through anything,” Mince said.
A small memorial for WAMM members who have died was set up by the medicinal marijuana tent, featuring their names and faces.
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, Council, ganja, hashish, hemp, marijuana, pot, Santa Cruz, skunk, WAMM Festival, weed
Santa Cruz, CA — Medical marijuana patients will once again be allowed to smoke dope in San Lorenzo Park this Saturday, after city leaders temporarily lifted a smoking ban to allow for a festival celebrating the medicinal herb.
The decision came after testimony from more than 20 patients who reasoned and pleaded with the Santa Cruz City Council to allow them to inhale their medication while partaking in Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana’s annual WAMMfest.
Some accused council members of growing old and more conservative, while others said Santa Cruz was losing both its compassion and its weirdness.
“Do not Carmel-ize Santa Cruz,” said Valerie Corral, co-founder of WAMM.
The catch, however, is that the ban was not lifted for the entire park. Instead, those with a medical marijuana identification card only will be allowed to smoke inside a tent designated for that purpose.
“I think it’s good. I think it’s a good compromise,” said WAMM co-founder Mike Corral.
The arrangement is not much different from previous years, where a tent was provided for medical marijuana patients but recreational tokers still smoked up on the lawn.
However, Sean Wharton, a WAMM patient who will double as a security guard at the festival, said he will speak with anyone this year who lights up on the grass.
“I would really like this to happen in the way it has in the past, and I will look for people smoking outside the smoking tent,” Wharton said.
Council members approved the proposal on a 5-1 vote, with Councilwoman Lynn Robinson voting against the measure and Mayor Ryan Coonerty absent.
Robinson said she does not like making exceptions to rules that the city requires everyone else to follow.
“The onus is on the organizers to work within our parameters and not ask our staff to look the other way,” Robinson said.
The issue arose two weeks ago after WAMM requested an exception to the city’s ban on smoking in San Lorenzo Park so its 200 patients could attend WAMMfest and breathe in their drug of choice.
With Councilman Tony Madrigal sick, the City Council split the vote 3-3. All council members voiced their support for medical marijuana, but not all were crazy about granting an exception to city rules for a festival celebrating drugs that are illegal without a prescription, fearing it could draw recreational tokers.
The tie vote pushed the issue onto Tuesday’s agenda, but with Coonerty scheduled to be away, many assumed the vote would split again and no smoking would be allowed. Ed Porter, Cynthia Mathews and Robinson all had voted against lifting the ban.
Porter ended up proposing the compromise that lifted the smoking ban only in the patient tent.
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: California, cannabis, Dea, ganja, hashish, hemp, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, Santa Cruz, skunk, war on drugs, weed
CA — A landmark decision for all Californian’s quietly made history on August 20th in a Santa Cruz courtroom. For the first time since 1996, when the Compassionate Use Act was passed, the federal authorities have been charged with violating the 10th Amendment for harassing medical marijuana patients and state authorities.
The case of Santa Cruz vs. Mukasey, was heard by U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who said the Bush Administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by Santa Cruz city and county officials, and the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), wasn’t going to happen.
In a recent telephone interview with Alan Hopper, an ACLU counsel familiar with the case, I asked him what came next?
”The plaintiff will get a get a court-ordered discovery document that will allow them to get documents, and even depositions, from the federal authorities to support their claims,” he explained.
So now it’s the city, county, and WAMM’s turn to prove their case against the federal government. The court has recognized a concerted effort by the federal government to sabotage state medical marijuana laws, which violates the U.S. Constitution. The significance of this ruling, the first of its kind, cannot be overstated.
California voters may finally get what they asked for a dozen years ago. When the court said that the federal government had gone out of its way to arrest and prosecute some of the most legitimate doctors, patients, caregivers, and dispensary owners that had been working with state and local officials, it finally drew a line-in-the sand.
An example of the federal authorities violations was their pursuit of WAMM. This non-profit group has been around for many years, and has been fully supported by the city and county of Santa Cruz. They have been referred to, by officials, as the model medical marijuana patient’s collective.
The group was functioning so smoothly that the city even allowed them to hold regular meetings to distribute marijuana to its patients on the steps of city hall! The federal agents still went after them, which brought about this court decision.
When the ACLU filed this lawsuit to stop them from targeting medical marijuana providers and patients, they opened a door that may finally lead to no federal interference in California’s medical marijuana law.
We must not forget that medical marijuana brings in about $100 million each year in tax revenue. Conferring total legitimacy to the law will allow this cash flow to continue, and hopefully, increase over time.
When the judge ruled the feds were threatening physicians who recommended marijuana, he set the stage for regaining patient’s rights. The ruling clearly pointed out that the feds were also threatening government officials who issue medical marijuana cards, and interfered with municipal zoning plans.
In the summation, the court found that, “There was a calculated pattern of selective arrests and prosecutions by the federal government with the intent to render California’s medical marijuana laws impossible to implement and therefore forced Californian’s and their political subdivisions to re-criminalize medical marijuana.”
In a recent column, I mentioned California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown had passed out an 11-page directive that all law agencies were to go by. I expressed concern that the federal authorities would ignore those guidelines, but upon finding out about this recent ruling I now have some cause for hope.
It sure sounded like Hopper was looking forward to the next phase, and he seemed confident that positive change lay ahead. Asked which presidential candidate would be more amenable to upholding medical marijuana laws, he cleverly replied that he thought they both would be willing to work for change. He could be right too. This is a year of change.
This on-going battle with the federal authorities ignoring California’s laws has been well-documented in the past. Why hasn’t there been more coverage for such an epic ruling? Its potential as breakthrough legislation is something all Californian’s should know about in my opinion.
The war against medical marijuana hasn’t been won yet, but this could be the breakthrough everybody’s waited for. At the core of the war waged by the federal government against the voter’s will, is the failed War on Drugs by the Bush Administration. It’s about time someone told them to back off.
As It Stands, we can score this as a successful round for state’s rights.
Source: Times-Standard
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, ganja, hashish, hemp, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, Santa Cruz, skunk, WAMM Festival, weed
Santa Cruz, CA — WAMMfest, the annual event where medical marijuana patients toke up in San Lorenzo Park while touting the benefits of their medicine, may be in for a major bummer.
Organizers might have to throw a marijuana festival without the smoke. On Sept. 27, Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana will hold its annual WAMM Festival — a medical pot, hemp and music celebration.
The group last week requested an exception from the city’s ban on smoking in San Lorenzo Park so its 200 patients could attend the event and inhale their medicine.
With Councilman Tony Madrigal sick, the City Council on Tuesday split the vote 3-3 and the motion failed. All council members voiced their support for medical marijuana, but not all were crazy about granting an exception to city rules for a festival celebrating drugs that are illegal without a prescription, fearing it could draw recreational tokers.
The issue will return to the council on Sept. 23. But Mayor Ryan Coonerty, who voted for the measure the first time around, will be absent — raising the possibility of another tie. While Madrigal said he supports lifting the ban, one of the other council members who voted “no” Tuesday — Ed Porter, Cynthia Mathews or Lynn Robinson — would have to change their stance to lift the ban and allow patients to light up in the park.
“In all likelihood it will be a 3-3 vote and it will not pass,” Coonerty said.
Porter, a teacher at Santa Cruz High School, said he supports medical marijuana but does not want to lift the ban because “inevitably the festival becomes a recreational thing and a celebration in the park.”
“I encounter students who want to use it recreationally and I need to work against that. I think it’s a problem,” he said.
For Valerie Corral, the co-founder of WAMM, the situation is infuriating.
“I don’t understand the big kerfuffle about taking legal medicine, really. I think it’s absurd,” Corral said. She does not plan to move the festival at this late date; instead, Corral said she is preparing vaporizers for the event, which heat cannabis to the point where active ingredients are released but smoke is not.
Councilwoman Emily Reilly, who with Coonerty and Councilman Mike Rotkin voted to lift the ban, said she still hopes to find a way around the smoking ban.
“This is not and never has been about the recreational use of illegal drugs. This is about having compassion for sick and dying people,” Reilly said.
WAMMfest in recent years has come under the jurisdiction of the city’s no smoking rule, which applies in San Lorenzo and other parks. The council unanimously approved a temporary suspension of the smoking ban for last year’s event, and organizers planned a closed tent for patients who couldn’t wait to get home to take a hit.
However, Sentinel reports from last year’s festival showed that many participants did smoke joints on the lawn, and some drove in from out of town for what they considered a recreational event.
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
