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Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Gov. Cuomo shifting his stance on medical marijuana in New York
2. Washington dispensary owners indicted on federal charges
3. “Weed Wars” show on Discovery Channel will profile Harborside Health Center’s Steven DeAngelo

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by John Doe Radio.com

• Groovin’ Thursday: Kottonmouth Kings – “Ganja Daze”

Southern California Scene with Hollywood Hemptress Tere Joyce

• Eric Matuschek from Starbudz Collective, denied a jury trial

Cannabis Conversations

• Cannabis Cure UK and Adam Hand from Hand Made Apparel live in studio

Some quick notes from the first day of the Aspen Legal Seminar.  But first… venting!

My morning began with a hotel staff person who shall be known only as SDB.  This is my 3rd seminar so I’ve dealt with him before, but today was special.  In short, he would not allow me to run a line out from the hotel sound board to our board for the recording and live stream.  He told me last year somebody (me) ran it “too hot” and it burned out and cost him $200.  (Burned out the next weekend, I find out later, during some other groups’ presentations.)  I replied that (a) I was running an un-powered line out, which could not burn out a power amp, (b) I ran far more sophisticated sound systems professionally for two decades and know how to run them, and (c) your 20-year-old power amp burned out because it is dusty and stored in the top shelf of an unventilated closet next to similar closets for food warming.  (Kind of… that’s the gist of what I said.  I was a tad bit more emotional than that.)

I worked around SDB and used my microphone that costs more than his power amp to get recordings, which I’ll have posted here for you later tonight.  So the audio is not pristine-direct-from-mic, but is pretty good open room recording (except when the lecturers stepped away from the podium… arrgh!)

Anyway, quick notes:

Our NORML speakers are not afraid of exercising the First Amendment right to the f-bomb.

Love Warren Edson in the suit, tie, and flip-flops.

Let me get this straight: In Colorado now, you can form a collective dedicated solely to producing medicine for “infused” items, things like brownies or tinctures.  You’ll have no plant limit, so long as it all goes into “infused” items.  Oh, and also counted as “infused” items are hashish and hash oil.  Really?

Lee Berger in the tie-dyed tank top… mmm… not so much.

Bruce Margolin and LA NORML are rarin’ to go – look for much more promotion and activity in the Los Angeles area.

Ahhh… one crow-eating mea culpa accomplished, one to go.

Bill Panzer would like us all to remember that Marijuana is Still ILLEGAL.

Doug Hiatt, Bill & I will likely be jamming at Hunter’s place on Saturday.

You know you’re in Aspen when… the ATM spits out a $100 bill instead of five $20s.

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Download audio file (norml-show-live-3.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. LA Judge requires police to return 60 lbs of medical marijuana to collective member
2. Bill Bradbury touts the benefits of hemp and legal marijuana
3. Colorado State Sen. Romer drops restrictive medical marijuana bill, pledges two more-restrictive bills soon

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

• Vic Chesnutt – Weed (To the Rescue)

Government at Work

• Brandon Ryan from KC NORML on Missouri medical marijuana
• Alison Holcomb from Washington ACLU on decrim and legalization bills
• Paul Armentano with update on New Jersey medical marijuana vote

SAN DIEGO (760 KFMB) – The manager of a San Diego medical marijuana collective was acquitted Tuesday of possessing marijuana and selling the drug for profit.

The jury, however, convicted 31-year-old Jovan Jackson of possession of ecstasy and Xanax. Jackson cried when he heard the not guilty verdicts being read.

Jackson’s case was the first to go to trial in the wake of law enforcement raids in September which resulted in 31 arrests and the shutting down of 14 medical marijuana storefronts in San Diego.Jurors who spoke to reporters after the verdicts said the laws on medical marijuana sales from collectives were vague, prompting them to find the defendant innocent.

“On a personal level, if you’re going to hold somebody to a law, you have to define that law,” said juror Perry Wright.

The number of medical marijuana dispensaries rose recently, in the wake of San Diego County’s failed attempt to overturn the state’s 1996 medical marijuana law and U.S. Attorney Eric Holder’s directive that federal agents will only target medical marijuana storefronts when operators violate both state and federal laws.

What a wonderful victory for the patients and a stunning defeat for District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ crusade to overturn Prop 215.  This was another case where law enforcement used undercover officers to pose as sick or disabled persons, using a fake identity while lying to a doctor to receive a medical marijuana recommendation.  Then, under those assumed identities, the undercover officers take the very real recommendation and their very real-looking state ID cards to these legal collectives, join them, and set up marijuana purchases as a sting.

Does it bother anyone else to imagine the planning, coordination, strategy, time, and money San Diego is expending on trying to bring down collectives of growers and patients?  Could they work this hard to bring down some human trafficking ring or maybe a corrupt banker or two?  Police and prosecutorial resources are finite; every minute and dollar used to fight medical marijuana, DA Dumanis, is time and money diverted from protecting us from actual crime.

(Santa Fe Reporter) New Mexico’s Medical Cannabis Program coordinator has resigned and, due to budget constraints and a hiring freeze, the state Department of Health has not refilled the position yet.

Melissa Milam, who had served as the program’s administrator since the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act went into effect in 2007, left the position in mid-July.Milam cites the recent birth of her daughter as one reason for leaving her position. Another is she hopes to form a nonprofit to produce and dispense medical cannabis.

So far, 540 patients have received licenses, but only one nonprofit—Santa Fe Institute for Natural Medicine—has been approved. As a result, the majority of patients can only acquire cannabis through illicit means.

This is part of Milam’s motivation to form a nonprofit.

“The program has been slammed so hard, but I really am proud of it,” Milam tells SFR. “I want to make it better and that’s why I’m interested in taking care of patients on the nonprofit side. I feel like I’ve done all I can do for them on the government side.”

While proud of the structure of the program, Milam says she is disappointed in the practices exhibited by the single licensed producer.

For one thing, Milam says, SFINM’s prices are comparable to what would be paid on the street. More disturbing, she says, are reports that SFINM requires patients to meet delivery drivers in parking lots in order to obtain their medication.

“Asking people to meet you in a parking lot, I mean, how is that any different from a drug deal?” Milam says.

Las Vegas, NM-based cancer patient and medical cannabis license-holder Robert Jones tells SFR he agrees with Milam’s evaluation of SFINM.“They said it’s going to cost $400 an ounce and they won’t be delivering to Las Vegas, so you’d have to meet them somewhere else,” Jones says. “I’m not capable of driving to Santa Fe and I can’t afford $400.”

Dispensaries exist in California, Colorado, Washington, Rhode Island, and New Mexico, operating collectives, co-ops, and in the case of the latter two states, state-licensed non-profits.  Dispensary supporters often proclaim they are providing safe access to patients to acquire medicine without dealing with the dangerous and unpredictable black market.  For that, they should be commended.

However, if you can’t afford $400/ounce for plant material that costs $1-$2 to produce outdoors or $10-$20 to produce indoors when grown in volume, it doesn’t matter if it’s sold by the Santa Fe dispensary or Sam the weed dealer in the park, you have no access to medicine.

To be fair, the dispensaries’ economics are dictated by the black market.  They can’t sell marijuana at less than street value, or buyers will sell it on the street for profit.  They can’t buy the marijuana at less than street value, or the sellers won’t sell to the dispensaries when they can make more on the street.  The notion that more dispensaries will lead to more competition is also ludicrous, not only based on the evidence of 600+ Los Angeles dispensaries not leading to a reduction in price there, but also because no matter how many dispensaries and patients there are, there are ten to twenty times that many black market buyers and sellers.

Only when marijuana is fully legal; when all sellers are in open competition; when all buyers can avoid high prices by growing their own; when all growers are able to grow huge outdoor fields; only then will patients truly have safe and affordable access to medicine.

This week brings more harassment to collectives and patients in San Diego by our local law enforcement. There are now reports from patients that police officers are parking their squad cars outside of collectives to intimidate the members as they go inside to get their medication. This, just weeks after Pierre Tiberius Uggla (a.k.a. San Diego Green Rx Detective Mike Mendez) was caught trying to join two collectives in town and months after Jamie Conlan (a.k.a. San Diego Green Rx Detective Scott Henderson) went to a local doctor and lied to obtain a valid recommendation for medical cannabis then joined all the collectives he could reach listed on the CA NORML.

All this for Operation Green Rx; the intent to target and eliminate all medical cannabis related activity in San Diego as well as help overturn Proposition 215 voted in by the people of California. Operation Green Rx was organized by detectives from the San Diego Police Department’s Narcotics Task force in collaboration with the District Attorney’s office and has been ongoing under one name or another for years in order to thwart the will of the people.

In this operation, detectives go to local doctors, lie about their symptoms, conditions and identities to obtain recommendations for medical cannabis. With these recommendations in-hand, detectives join as many of the collectives and cooperatives they can. The operation usually includes the detectives phoning collectives, providing all pertinent information to prove their status as legitimate patients, and then requesting to join each individual collective. Keep in mind, these collective and their existence is legal under California law.

The undercover officers proceed to request deliveries, make contributions, or pick up medicine form the collectives themselves. Last November the Operation Green Rx team rented and occupied a house in Pacific Beach for this purpose, (I wonder how much that cost the taxpayers?), then three months later, raided over 15 houses, sticking true to their motto of “Let the courts sort it out” at more cost, I might add.

Please visit Eugene’s blog at http://www.operationgreenrx.blogspot.com to follow this case.  These rogue cops and DA’s must be forced to obey the will of the California voters who approved Prop 215 and who overwhelmingly support access to medical marijuana.

The hearing will be Monday June 29, 2009 at Los Angeles City Hall, 200 N Spring St in room 260 and the special meeting begins at 8:30 AM and if you are unable to attend you listen live online at http://lacity.org/lacity/YourGovernment/CityCouncil/CouncilCommitteeMeetings/index.htm

Hearing notice and official meeting agenda will post on the Los Angeles City website (http://www.lacity.org) sometime on Thursday 6/25/09.
List of hardship application hearings tentatively scheduled for Monday 6/29/09

• Jose Lopez, 215 W 6th St
• North East Collective, 120 So Ave 54
• Organic Healing, 1733 Colorado Blvd
• Fantastic Healing Plants, 2272 Colorado Blvd
• Universal Caregivers, 4157 Eaglerock
• Green Guild, 1640 Cahuenga
• Advanced Patients Collective, 6410 Hollywood Blvd
• City Of Angels Wellness Center, 6435 Sunset Blvd
• Organic Living Center, 11600 San Vicente
• Green Oasis, 11924 Jefferson Blvd
• Best Bud, 12515 Venice
• The Hills Caregivers, 20000 W Ventura
• 18375 W Ventura Blvd
• 19528 W Ventura Blvd
• Green Healing Group, 19513 Ventura Blvd
• Wilshire Compassion Collective, 3008 Wilshire Blvd
• Relax Herbal Place, 5427 Pico
• Helping Hand Network, 9636 Venice
• Holistic Harvest, 9636 Venice
• Pot of Gold, 5591 Pico
• Green Care, 5591 Pico
• 420 Wellness, 2126 S La Brea, #104
• Blue Moon Collective, 5155 Washington
• Canna Health, 5208 Pico
• Holistic Harvest, 3511 Olympic
• LA OG, 7350 Melrose
• Buds on Melrose, 7418 Melrose
• Encino Discount Collective, 15826 Ventura
• Fairfax Organic Farm, 800 Fairfax Ave

The

A medical marijuana dispensary at South Lake Tahoe has reopened, three months after shutting down following a raid by federal agents.

Patient to Patient Collective last week reopened next to its previous location, and plans to offer a full line of marijuana products to eligible patients.

Federal agents seized about 10 pounds of processed marijuana and a small amount of cash during January’s raid, but no arrests were made.

This is akin to the turtle poking his head out of his shell to look around and see if that little boy is going to try and cut it off again. In this metaphor, the little boy, Attorney General Eric Holder, promised not to target medical dispensaries, with provisions, and we are all waiting to see if he keeps his promise. With one exception, there have not been any further raids on dispensaries by federal troops.

But, therein lies the problem. The prohibition continues to fuel the black market, and the government has their finger on the grenade pin 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At any time, the government can pull the pin and blow up every life involved in the legitimate cannabis industry in every medical marijuana state and people are scared.

[Therein lies another problem: the feds will only bust dispensaries that break state law, but the feds, not the state, get to decide if you broke state law.  There are no state charges filed for breaking that state law, whatever it was, only federal charges.  When you're facing federal charges in a federal court, you're not allowed to mention that you were following a state medical marijuana law. -- "R"R]

People are legitimately afraid of the federal government, and there are no protections for them. With only a small handful of congressional leaders willing to champion the cause, the entire House of Representatives have become a sniveling group of cowards afraid to lead their country because they believe their constituent support may suffer.

Contact your elected representative and let them know if they support medical marijuana laws then you will support them. They need to know who their support base is, then get active and get involved.

SAN FRANCISCO – One might guess that tough economic times would only fuel the desire for mind-altering substances. For San Francisco’s cannabis clubs, however, nothing could be further from the truth.The deepening economic crisis has hit the dispensaries hard, forcing the nonprofit collectives to cut staff, business hours and donations to charities.

Charlie Alazraie, manager of Bay Area Safe Alternatives, said business has dropped about 60 percent since summer, as the economy forces patients to buy smaller quantities. Alazraie had to let go of one full-time employee and two part-time workers at the small Western Addition collective.

Kevin Reed, founder of the Green Cross, which delivers medical marijuana to patients in San Francisco, said his sales are down 25 percent in the past 40 days, and dropped 45 percent in the past two weeks.

To survive, the collective cut its hours and cut its 12 employees’ pay by $2 an hour.

The cost of the pot hasn’t risen, but the $300-an-ounce price tag has become a heavy burden for people who have lost their jobs and cut back on expenses. Insurance does not cover medicinal marijuana.

Well, imagine that.  In tough economic times that $45/eighth or $15/gram price is just a bit too steep, huh?

Some supporters of medical marijuana do not like us “legalizers”.  They may feel that we confuse the issue of medical marijuana, that they want to be known as “patients not potheads”.  Some even truly believe that while sick and disabled people should have access to marijuana, healthy people like me should not because we’re just “abusing” the medicine.

As long as marijuana is prohibited for the vast majority of its users who use it socially, this price problem will always exist for the medical users.  Prohibition is what prevents insurance from covering medical marijuana.  Prohibition is what prevents commercial growers from planting cannabis in massive outdoor fields and reaping such yields that would drop the price of retail cannabis from $15 per manicured gram to $15 per half-pound.

This is where I worry about the dispensary model.  I completely support patients’ access to medicine and will never oppose any effort to achieve those ends, even dispensaries.  But what I fear about dispensaries is they legitimize black market pricing for marijuana.  People begin to get the idea that $45 is a fair price for 3.5g of an herb, which is only reasonable if you’re talking about saffron.  Then once these businesses are set up on a black market pricing model, they are crushed when hard economic times cause patients to reevaluate their “luxury” spending (medicine shouldn’t be a luxury, but anything that costs $15 per gram is “luxury priced”).

When dispensaries can’t survive hawking $45 eighths, what incentive do they have to lobby for dropping that to $2 per ounce by ending prohibition?  With prohibition, not only is there an artificially high prohibition price support, but also dispensaries don’t have to compete with Walgreen’s, CVS, and every little local farmer’s market in existence.

In a question sponsored by NORML, voters were asked:

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would stop federal raids against medical marijuana providers in the 13 states where medical marijuana has become legal. Should President Obama keep his word to end such raids?

Response: Yes – 72% No – 21% Not sure – 7%.

Yes votes outnumbered No by over 2 to 1 in all geographic, political, and demographic groups. The poll, conducted Jan 29-31, had a margin error of +/-3.1%.

In view of Obama’s pledge to end federal medical marijuana raids, advocates have been disappointed by the fact that they have continued since Jan. 20th. Yesterday, the DEA raided four LA-area medical marijuana dispensaries: Venice Alternative Healing, Marina Caregivers, Alternative Caregivers Discount Dispensary, and the Beach Center Collective (contrary to initial reports, a fifth dispensary wasn’t raided). The raids were all “smash and grab” operations, in which agents took medicine and cash, destroyed surveillance cameras, and grabbed computers, but did not arrest anyone.

California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer denounced the DEA for “unprofessional and piratical conduct” and is calling on supporters to urge President Obama to end the raids. A rally to protest the DEA raids will be held on Thursday, Feb 5th at noon at the LA federal building, 255 E. Temple St.