(SF Weekly) In a major victory for pot advocates, the California Supreme Court — right around harvest time! — has refused to review a landmark appellate court ruling protecting the right of medical marijuana patients and their caregivers to collectively grow weed.
The 2-1 ruling by California’s Third Appellate District Court also affirmed patients’ ability to take civil action when their right to collectively cultivate marijuana is violated by law enforcement. The case, County of Butte v. Superior Court, involved a private seven-patient medical marijuana collective in Paradise, California (oh! the delicious irony — props to God or whomever is responsible).
The court went further, stating that to deny medical marijuana patients protection from warrantless intrusions and seizures by law enforcement “would surely shock the sensibilities of the voters who approved [Proposition 215].”
The landmark decision said that the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 is not simply an affirmative defense to criminal sanctions, holding that it consisted of “…an opportunity for an individual to request the same constitutional guarantee of due process available to all individuals, no matter what their status, under state state Constitution. The fact that this case involves medical marijuana and a qualified medial marijuana patient does not change these fundamental constitutional rights or an individual’s right to assert them.”
AWESOME. Maybe they can do away with the dispensaries altogether and just do an Eddy Lepp style co-op or perhaps location-specific co-ops.. eh.. same thing, technically.