Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, drug, ganja, hashish, hemp, King County, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, Satterberg, seattle, skunk, therapeutic use, weed
Seattle, WA — A new rule determining how much pot constitutes a 60-day supply for medical-marijuana users was finalized on Thursday, a decade after Washington voters passed an initiative legalizing marijuana for people suffering from terminal and debilitating illnesses.
The new state rule, which goes into effect Nov. 2, sets the supply limit at 24 ounces of usable marijuana plus 15 plants. Those who need more marijuana to manage their pain will have to prove they need it — though how they would do that remains unclear.
While the new, 60-day-supply rule is meant to clarify the law and help police officers determine legitimate amounts, medical-marijuana advocates say the amounts are unreasonable — especially the 15-plant limit — and put patients at risk of criminal prosecution.
In King County, though, that’s not going to happen, said Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, who has met with local law-enforcement officials and created an office policy that looks upon medical-marijuana cases “with a very lenient eye.”
“Having this rule, having some amount … is helpful, but it’s not the end of the analysis,” Satterberg said. “If you’re in King County and you’re dying of cancer, we’re not going to prosecute you if you have 15 plants or 30. If somebody is legitimately ill, we’re not going to prosecute that case, period.”
In 1998, Initiative 692 legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Passed by 59 percent of Washington voters, the initiative said patients with valid certification from their doctors could possess a 60-day supply — but never said how much pot that was. The confusion and uncertainty led to conflict between police and patients.
Last year, the Legislature ordered the state Department of Health to spell out an acceptable amount. An early recommendation put the limit at 35 ounces of usable pot plus 100 square feet of growing space. That proposal was changed after Gov. Christine Gregoire’s policy analysts urged the health department to get more input from law-enforcement agencies and medical experts because the amounts appeared to be on the high side.
Earlier this year, the draft rule was changed to 24 ounces of usable pot, six mature plants and 18 immature ones. The new rule finalized Thursday, however, doesn’t differentiate between mature and immature plants.
The rule also drops a requirement included in the earlier draft that patients get a doctor’s note if they need more marijuana than the determined 60-day supply. The department opted “for more general wording” to better reflect what is written in state law, said Health Department spokesman Tim Church.
During a public hearing in August, many patients argued that their doctors were unlikely to write them a note because of the controversy surrounding supply limits, he said.
The department didn’t come up with an alternative to a doctor’s note because that wasn’t their task from the Legislature. While Church acknowledged that the new language muddies the waters some, he said it will now “be up to patients and the courts to determine what medical necessity is” and how to prove it.
Gregoire’s spokeswoman, Laura Lockard, said Thursday the governor “wanted the department to have a solid sense of wide-ranging opinions and information to develop the best possible rule. She feels they have done that.”
But doctors and patient advocates say the new 60-day limit is woefully inadequate and could have a chilling effect on physicians if they have to go to court to defend their medical opinions.
“I’m disappointed. I think it’s more politically driven — they used politics rather than science” in determining amounts, said Dr. Greg Carter, a clinical professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Washington. Carter was one of the first researchers to report marijuana’s effectiveness in treating the symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“The state is really not operating in the best interest of sick people who require this medicine,” Carter said.
Steve Sarich, the executive director of CannaCare, an advocacy group that provides patients with starter plants, said the health department “has set up a law you can’t possibly follow.” He said the rule doesn’t take into account marijuana’s growing cycle, which exceeds 60 days, or the fact that someone would need to plant 60 plants in the hope that 15 or 20 of them might reach maturity.
Alison Holcomb, the drug-policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, said the new rule “is a step in the right direction,” even though it doesn’t begin to address the practical matter of accessing medical marijuana.
“Twenty-four ounces and 15 plants is a heck of a lot clearer than ‘60-day supply,’ ” she said. “It gives an average law-enforcement officer a very quick and easy way to determine if they’re in compliance, move on and leave that patient in peace.”
But Douglas Hiatt, an attorney who represents medical-marijuana patients, disagrees. He said he plans to file a lawsuit to have the limits thrown out.
“No one I know is in compliance with the number of plants. No one,” he said. “We will drown in cases if we can’t get this rule stopped and keep it out of the hands of law enforcement.”
Satterberg said that, at least in King County, he’s advised law-enforcement officers not to confiscate patients’ pot supplies on the spot, even if they seem questionable.
Essentially, Satterberg’s policy says, growers — including cooperatives — won’t be prosecuted unless prosecutors believe the operation is a front for distributing marijuana to those who are not ill. He said Thursday that his office hasn’t yet encountered any such illegal operation.
Satterberg said he’s told local police agencies and the sheriff’s office that “If there are any questions [about a patient's legitimacy], officers should take a small sample and some photos and give us a call.”
Source: Seattle Times
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: cannabis, ganja, hashish, hemp, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, seattle, skunk, weed
Tumwater, Thurston County — More than 100 activists who jammed a state Health Department hearing Monday to protest proposed medical-marijuana limits won at least a minor victory: getting more time to make their case.
Responding to concerns by advocates, Assistant Health Secretary Karen Jensen extended until 5 p.m. Friday the deadline for comments on a proposed rule to limit medical-marijuana users to possessing 24 ounces of cultivated marijuana, six mature plants and 18 immature plants.
The action came at a 2-½-hour hearing in which about 50 patients, doctors and other marijuana supporters blasted the proposal as unfair, unrealistic and unduly influenced by law-enforcement agencies.
“We’re not criminals. We’re patients,” said Melissa Leggee, of Spokane. “We just want to be left alone to do what we need to do to survive.”
Leggee said she uses marijuana to ease chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome and other conditions.
Dr. Karen Hamilton, of Redmond, who has treated patients helped by marijuana, said the proposal would “effectively take treatment out of the doctors’ hands,” adding that there is no “one-size-fits-all” appropriate marijuana dose.
Speaker after speaker said six mature plants can’t possibly provide the amount of marijuana most patients need to combat pain, nausea and symptoms of more than a dozen ailments the drug is used to treat. As a result, they argued, users would need to find drug dealers to augment their supply.
“You’re going to make everyone in this room a felon,” if the proposed limit is adopted, Steve Sarich, of Kirkland, told the panel of Health Department officials. Sarich is director of CannaCare, which provides legal assistance and starter plants to patients.
Lawsuit Filed
Sarich and another activist, John Worthington, of Renton, filed a lawsuit Friday in Thurston County Superior Court that they hope will force the state to reclassify marijuana, now on a list of “Schedule I” drugs deemed to have no valid medical use.
Sarich said the state’s old drug law, which contains that listing, should be superseded by Initiative 692, passed in 1998, which legalizes marijuana for medical purposes.
The initiative, approved by nearly 59 percent of Washington voters, said patients with valid certification by a physician should be allowed to possess a 60-day supply of marijuana but contained no definition of what quantity that is.
Last year, the Legislature directed the Health Department to spell out an acceptable amount.
Several speakers Monday criticized Health Department staffers for not sticking with an earlier draft proposal, which would have allowed a user 35 ounces of harvested marijuana and a 100-square-foot growing “canopy.”
That proposal was changed after Gov. Christine Gregoire’s policy analysts urged the Health Department to get input from law-enforcement agencies and medical experts, who were scarcely represented at the workshops on the draft proposal.
Staffers for Gregoire also told Health Department officials the amount appeared to be on the high side.
The change prompted Troy Williams, of Clark County, to remark that department officials should “stand up, have some courage, and tell the governor to shove it.”
Jensen said she expects the agency to take about a month to evaluate comments and come up with a rule set by Health Secretary Mary Selecky.
If substantial changes are made to the current proposal, Jensen said, a new round of comments would be solicited.
Target of Raids
Despite the Washington initiative, possession, cultivation and sale of marijuana remain illegal under federal law. Some advocates for medical marijuana have found themselves the target of raids by law enforcement, which they say violates their rights not just to legal pot but to freedom of speech.
The homes of both Sarich and Worthington were raided early last year. Marijuana plants were seized at each man’s home, but neither was formally charged.
Jeanne Ferguson, of Seattle, executive director of “Grammas for Ganja,” said the controversy would disappear if marijuana were legalized. “The plant should be free to be grown in your backyard, next to your broccoli and carrots.”
Outside the Health Department’s Tumwater offices during Monday’s hearing, marijuana backers set up a blue tent in which certified patients could “medicate.”
Activists said state staffers had asked them not to set up the tent but did not interfere once it was in place.
Information from The Seattle Times archives is included in this report.
To read & comment on the Health Department’s proposed limits for medical marijuana see: http://www.doh.wa.gov/hsqa/medical-marijuana
Complete Title: State Extends Time for Comments on Medical-Marijuana Limits
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, ganja, hashish, hemp, marijuana, pot, seattle, skunk, weed
Seattle, WA — Marijuana has an image problem. That’s not the only problem with it, but its image probably keeps it lurking in the shadows: People who smoke pot are unkempt, unruly, counterculture. Best just to drink scotch or pop OxyContin.
If marijuana had the ad agencies that cigarettes have had, it would be legal, too. I’m not craving a joint. It’s not my thing, but I noticed that Hempfest is coming up this weekend.
Speakers at the Seattle festival will try mightily to pull the weed from darkness.
I agree with them that it makes sense to decriminalize marijuana use.
Bring it out into the light, regulate it, tax it, put trafficking gangs out of business and let police and courts do more important work.
Rick Steves, the travel entrepreneur from Edmonds, will be one of the main speakers at Hempfest.
We had a story in our paper Friday about a television program he and the ACLU made to get people talking about marijuana laws: http://www.marijuanaconversation.org
Some local television stations were not willing to air the TV show, though I can’t think of a station that hasn’t carried entertainment programs in which weed played a part.
I guess it’s like sex, which you can display a bit, but not discuss seriously.
Outlawing grass doesn’t seem to have the intended effect, assuming the intent is to keep people from using.
According to the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, more than 83 million Americans older than 12 have used marijuana.
Marijuana production earns billions every year.
Think of what we could do with the taxes on legal marijuana. And we’d save the $7.5 billion a year the nation spends enforcing pot laws.
One of the big raps against pot is the idea that using it leads to using more dangerous drugs.
The other day, I asked a roomful of people about marijuana. One man, an educator, said that when he was in high school in 1972, he had a drug-education class.
The kids were told marijuana was the same as heroin.
The ones who experimented with it found out it wasn’t, and some went on to try heroin figuring that since marijuana hadn’t done them in and heroin was the same, it wouldn’t hurt either. How’s that for a gateway effect?
I’m sure arresting people for using pot has a gateway effect. A little time in jail gives a person the opportunity to learn more about other drugs and bigger crimes.
But if marijuana were legal, we could institute some controls and even have serious conversations about it.
I spoke with Steves, who is in Belgium. He said his interest started with “knowing so many people who were closet smokers but couldn’t talk about it. I thought, ‘What if everybody agreed [it should be decriminalized] but was too afraid to speak out.’ “
He figured maybe people would listen to a straight-laced businessman.
Steves is pushing democracy, not pot. It bothers him that Americans shrink from discussing drug laws.
That’s a truly sorry image.
Jerry Large’s column appears Monday and Thursday.
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, died, drug, ganja, hashish, hemp, law, marijuana, medical cannabis, seattle, Timothy Garon, transplant, USA
By Associated Press
SEATTLE (AP) – A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advanced hepatitis C died Thursday.
The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive care nursing center was confirmed to The Associated Press by his lawyer, Douglas Hiatt, and Alisha Mark, a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.
Dr. Brad Roter, the physician who authorized Garon to smoke pot to alleviate for nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, said he did not know it would be such a hurdle if Garon were to need a transplant.
The case has highlighted a new ethical consideration for those allocating organs for transplant, especially in the dozen states that have medical marijuana laws: When dying patients need a transplant, should it be held against them if they’ve used pot with a doctor’s blessing?
Garon died a week after his doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list because of his use of marijuana, although it was authorized under Washington state law.
“He said I’m going to die with such conviction,” Garon told an AP reporter at the time. “I’m not angry, I’m not mad, I’m just confused.”
Garon believes he contracted hepatitis C by sharing needles with “speed freaks” as a teenager. In recent years, he said, pot has been the only drug he’s used. In December, he was arrested for growing marijuana.
He had been in the hospice for two months and previously was rejected for a transplant at Swedish Medical Center for the same reason he later got from the university hospital.
Swedish said he would be considered if he avoided pot for six months and the university hospital offered to reconsider if he enrolled in a 60-day drug treatment program, but doctors said his liver disease was too advanced for him to last that long. The university hospital committee agreed to reconsider anyway, then denied him again.
Link http://www.komonews.com/news/18475224.html
Filed under: Hemp&Law, HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, ganja, hashish, hemp, King County, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, seattle, weed
Seattle, WA — Seattle police seized files on nearly 600 medical marijuana patients when officers searched the headquarters of a patient support group, activists said Wednesday.
The search occurred Tuesday after a nearby police bicycle officer reported the smell of marijuana. Martin Martinez, who runs the Lifevine cooperative as well as Cascadia NORML, the local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said no one was arrested but officers seized about 12 ounces of marijuana in addition to the patient files and a computer.
There were no marijuana plants growing there, Martinez said. He is a longtime advocate of legalizing the medical use of marijuana, following a severe motorcycle crash that left him with nerve damage in 1986. Three other patients authorized to use pot under Washington’s medical marijuana law were also present when officers arrived at the office, which does not dispense marijuana, he said.
Cascadia NORML has been issuing identity cards to medical marijuana patients, but before doing so, it requires the patients to provide their medical authorizations for verification. That’s why the patient files were in the office, Martinez said. The cards are not issued pursuant to the state’s medical marijuana law, but are designed to help identify the patient as legitimate if confronted by police.
Some of the nearly 600 patients are now dead, and some others are no longer actively using marijuana, he said.
The police “have a heck of a lot of patient records I don’t think they should have,” said Douglas Hiatt, a Seattle attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases. “For one thing, those records are protected under federal privacy laws. If you’re a medical marijuana patient, you don’t want the police to know who you are or where you live, and this is why – because you don’t get treated very well.”
Hiatt and Martinez said that before the search they tried to convince the officers as well as a deputy King County prosecutor there were no violations of the medical marijuana law.
The police department did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Wednesday.
Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County prosecutor’s Office, confirmed that officers consulted a deputy prosecutor before searching the office Tuesday, but he said police have not referred the case to his office.
Under Washington’s medical marijuana law, doctors can authorize patients to have as much as a 60-day supply of marijuana to treat symptoms of AIDS, cancer and other debilitating or chronic conditions. The law doesn’t define what a 60-day supply is, but the state Health Department proposed this month that it be defined as 24 ounces of usable pot, along with six mature plants and 18 immature plants. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
According to Hiatt, the seized documents included patient authorizations, full medical histories, and the names of doctors who authorized the marijuana use.
Alison Chinn Holcomb, who follows marijuana issues for the Washington state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that the group was providing or growing marijuana, and no information that has been revealed thus far would seem to justify seizing the patient files.
“These are very sick people with very serious conditions, and we’re sure none of them want the nature of those conditions made available to the public or to anyone who doesn’t have a valid need for it,” she said.
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
Filed under: HempTherapy, hemp in general | Tags: cannabis, ganja, marc emery, marijuana, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, pot, seattle, weed
Seattle, WA — A proposal by state health officials to limit medical-marijuana patients to a pound and a half of pot plus a scattering of plants drew heat from both advocates and law enforcement — but for different reasons.
Advocates had argued for more than 70 ounces of harvested marijuana and a 100-square-foot growing area; law-enforcement officials pushed for a limit of three ounces of harvested pot, three mature plants and six immature plants.
The official draft rule was released Tuesday by the state Department of Health. The department was directed by the Legislature last year to use medical and scientific information to define how much marijuana patients with certain chronic, fatal or debilitating diseases can possess under Washington’s medical-marijuana law.The rule would limit patients to 24 ounces of harvested marijuana, six mature plants and 18 immature plants for the “60-day supply” allowed in the law.
An earlier Health Department recommendation called for a limit of 35 harvested ounces and a 100-square-foot growing area. But it was headed off by Gov. Christine Gregoire, who thought the amount was too large and wanted more input from law enforcement and medical providers.
Although Tuesday’s filing starts a public-comment period, the Health Department, which already has gotten an earful from angry activists and worried law-enforcement officials, is hoping this draft will be the last.
The current proposal for a pound and a half of pot plus plants mimics a 2006 amendment to Oregon’s medical-marijuana law, also passed in 1998.
That amendment raised the amount of marijuana patients could possess from three harvested ounces and seven total plants, including no more than three mature plants.
The Washington rule, like the long, difficult process used to produce it, was immediately controversial.
“Why did they spend all that time and money and energy if we were just going to do the same as Oregon?” asked Joanna McKee of Green Cross Patient Co-op, a medical-marijuana patient-advocacy group. “If we wanted to be a part of Oregon, we wouldn’t be a separate state.”
And, she added: “What happened to the science?”
Steve Sarich, director of CannaCare, which provides legal assistance and starter plants to patients, said the low plant limits would force patients to obtain marijuana on the “black market” or to grow an illegal number of plants to get enough marijuana.
“This will create more patient felons in the state of Washington, because no one will ever be able to grow their own medicine and stay within those limits,” he said.
Cowlitz County Sheriff Bill Mahoney’s response to the proposed limits was terse: “Oh my.” Asked to elaborate, he said: “Well, obviously, I think it’s way too much.” But it’s a complex compromise, he added. “From an enforcement standpoint, some number is better than no number.”
Law-enforcement officials earlier said their main concern is being able to distinguish legitimate patients from those hiding behind the law to grow and sell large amounts of pot.
Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, who sponsored the bill to set the 60-day amount, said she was concerned the proposed limits are “more restrictive than what had been previously discussed.” She noted the “values of compassion and empathy that are at the basis of this law,” and urged all stakeholders to express their views to the Health Department.
Washington’s law, passed by voters in 1998, allows patients with certain diseases to possess a 60-day supply of marijuana with a doctor’s authorization. But the amount was never spelled out, leading to confusion and conflict between law enforcement and patients.
Karen Jensen, an assistant secretary for the Department of Health, said the task was “very difficult and challenging” because there was no definitive “FDA study” spelling out dosing amounts.
The draft filed Tuesday reduced amounts earlier considered by the Health Department and revealed to Gregoire’s office in February. At that time, health officials said they planned to recommend 35 ounces of cultivated marijuana plus 100 square feet of plant-growing area.
Staffers for Gregoire, a former state attorney general who is up for re-election this fall, told Health Department officials the amount appeared to be on the high side, and that law enforcement and medical providers should be consulted.
Last month, the Health Department convened an advisory panel that included law-enforcement officials, advocates and only one doctor — a public-health HIV/AIDS expert who does not care for patients directly.
Department of Health spokesman Donn Moyer said other medical providers did not respond to requests to take part. “It wasn’t for lack of trying” to engage them, he said.
The filing of the draft rule starts a rule-making process and a public-comment period. A hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 25 in Tumwater.
Note: Patients authorized to possess or grow marijuana for medical reasons under Washington law would be limited to 24 ounces of cultivated marijuana, six mature plants and 18 immature plants, according to a proposal filed by the state Department of Health Tuesday.
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/
