(Denver Post) Colorado’s top federal drug agent is defending his decision to raid a suburban house where marijuana was being grown but said he has no plans to start cracking down on the hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries that have popped up around the state.
Jeffrey Sweetin, Denver’s Drug Enforcement Administration special agent, said agents removed over 120 marijuana plants from the Highlands Ranch home of Chris Bartkowicz on Friday.
Sweetin said agents learned about the operation after seeing a story on KUSA-TV’s Web site about Bartkowicz and becoming suspicious, partly because he said he would like to earn around $400,000 a year from selling marijuana.
“Four-hundred-thousand dollars a year goes beyond ‘I’m just a caregiver for sick people,’” Sweetin said Sunday.
Colorado’s voter-approved law allows patients to possess up to 2 ounces of marijuana, or for them or their caregivers to grow up to six marijuana plants for each patient. However, the law also allows people to assert in court that they need more marijuana to treat patient ailments. [Attorney Robert] Corry said it’s possible that could be the case with Bartkowicz.
Sweetin also doesn’t think the state law allows people to sell marijuana, though Corry claims it does. The law doesn’t spell out how people who don’t grow their own marijuana get their pot. However, the law does make a reverse reference to it by prohibiting people from selling or transporting it for any reasons besides medical reasons.
I am having trouble forming my opinion on this story. When the media reports 120 plants, I get suspicious because I don’t know how many of those are seedlings and how many patients Bartkowicz was helping. At six plants per patient if he was caregiver for twenty patients, he’s well within the law. Even if he has five patients I can understand a need for 24 plants each, since that is what my state sets as a plant limit per patient.
But in Colorado, things get dicey for me because “caregiver” in their law doesn’t really mean a one-to-one relationship between a caregiver and the patients (though some Colorado officials have tried to define it that way). A “caregiver” can be a dispensary that is a caregiver for that guy right there who just walked in the door, oh, and her, too, and the next six people who walk in… So in that scenario, how do you argue that you need 120 plants because of the medical needs of your patients when you don’t even know who your patients are going to be from day to day? Or is that the point: that under the Amendment, you can grow as many plants as you like because you can’t meet the medical needs of an unknown patient/customer base from day to day?
Then there’s that TV news quip about making $400,000 a year selling medical marijuana. Should a marijuana grower really be making as much money per year as President Obama? (Well, you could make a case based on customer satisfaction…) Most doctors don’t make $400,000 per year. And it doesn’t seem like Agent Sweetin even perked his ears up until he heard “$400,000″. It’s going to be a tough sell to a skeptical public that a gardener who provides medicine to a patient should be earning more than the patient’s doctor and pharmacist combined.
My hope is that medical marijuana shows the public that a little bit of legalization works pretty well and we should legalize for everyone. My fear is that medical marijuana brings out the worst greed and exploitation of the black market, a skeptical public sees one too many $400,000 ganjapreneurs and twenty-too-many healthy-looking twenty-something young men frequenting dispensaries, and decides that a little bit of legalization is only one-tenth what it would be like under full legalization, and we should just clamp down on what little medical access there already is.
Sweetin also doesn’t think the state law allows people to sell marijuana, though Corry claims it does. The law doesn’t spell out how people who don’t grow their own marijuana get their pot. However, the law does make a reverse reference to it by prohibiting people from selling or transporting it for any reasons besides medical reasons.
like always I agree with Bluzguy. We need to be more politically involved. Most Americans might as well be zombies for how ingnorant they are on what is going on around them. My generation (22 yrs old) needs to start creating political capital because at the moment no one gives a shit what young people think and it is because most young are too concerned with television and material bullshit. Stand up for your rights!
$400K income? Sounds like a ton o’ money to me. So that makes it unacceptable? What if the guy was able to legally “grow” Oxycontin or Vicodin? The same kind of customers would be beating down his door…patients suffering intolerable symptoms. The problem with medical cannabis is it isn’t truly treated like medicine. It is demonized by both the uninformed and the folks in the chemical industry who see a threat to their bottom line. The FDA refuses to acknowledge its value, and while the AMA and other physician groups cry out for research (because, as we all know, so little is known about cannabis), the NIDA turns a deaf ear.
Little is said about the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs. It’s a “little problem” Big Pharma doesn’t like to talk about. They call cannabis “dope” when, in truth, its the prescription drugs that are responsible for doping up America. These are the drugs the DEA should be focusing on, the ones that harm and kill trusting patients every day. It’s a bizarre world that condemns a relatively safe and effective medicine while giving the true “dope dealers” the power and wealth to influence doctors, community leaders, and political office holders.
Perhaps it boils down to public fear. Those who voice opposition to cannabis law reform base their views on what they see on TV or read in the newspaper, and what their political leaders tell them. They will occasionally worry they’re being lied to, but the idea that these lies have been fermenting for over 70 years is far too unsettling for the average Joe Citizen. Who do we trust when we can’t trust our leaders?
Well, far too many of us bury our heads in the sand, refusing to admit the folks we elected don’t know what they’re doing or, worse, profit from promoting outright lies.
When I was a kid, my generation raised enough hell to get us out of Viet Nam, we helped bring more equality for women and minorities, and addressed a number of social injustices with some true success.
We’re just not raising enough hell these days. Many of us can’t pry ourselves from the latest episode of “American Idol” to even look our our windows and see what’s happening in our world.
It’s got to stop, but it won’t until we get up off our lazy asses, lift our voices, and stand up for ourselves. NORML, MPP, ASA, and other organizations are working hard, but logging on and shaking our heads isn’t going to do anything to solve our issue. It’s time we stop being anonymous supporters and have the courage to come out of our closets.
My name is Bobby Delaney, and I support the legalizaton of cannabis.