It’s been a while since I’ve updated you on the development of our NORML Affiliate network.  We are striving to place a NORML Affiliate in every US state (as well as a national affiliate in every country… but first things first…)

Today we welcome West Virginia NORML as our newest state affiliate.  Drew Stromberg, a graduate of NORML/SSDP at West Virginia State, has teamed up with David Dawson, a NORML Legal Committee attorney to form our first affiliate in West Virginia.  You can contact them at daviddawsonlaw ‘at’ gmail.com.

We also welcome back a chapter in the southernmost reaches of California.  San Diego County NORML has been formed by attorney Michael Cindrich and activist Craig Beresh.  We are thrilled to welcome back Beresh, who was a part of our attempts to form a San Diego chapter two years ago.  Since then, he has been instrumental in activism in San Diego, leading successful initiative campaigns and garnering significant media coverage.  Contact them at mike ‘at’ michaelcindrich.com.

These two orgs join NY Capital Region NORML and SE Wisconsin NORML as our new 3rd Qtr 2011 affiliates and chapters.  If you’re interested in forming a NORML chapter near you, just send an email to start ‘at’ norml.org and visit norml.org/chapters for more information.

Another example of San Diego County trying to circumvent CA Prop 215 and force dispensaries out of business.

San Diego Reader On Tuesday, January 25, San Diego County’s board of supervisors will discuss an ordinance that would require marijuana dispensaries to pay the county $11,017 a year, the sheriff’s alleged cost to regulate the facilities. The annual fee, according to county staff, will cover the cost of issuing operational permits, investigating applicants, and for inspections after shops have opened.  If approved, the ordinance will allow the county to collect fingerprints from those looking to open dispensaries and establish more regulations for off-site deliveries.

I have been a business owner for 11 years and in my experience you pay for a permit when you get the permit and you pay for the application when you submit the application.  This sounds like their trying to discourage anyone from even starting the process.

But for advocates of medical marijuana, the fees and added regulations are more examples of the county supervisors’ tendency to thwart the distribution of the drug.  “Whether it is $11,000 or $100,000 is irrelevant,” writes Eugene Davidovich, coordinator for San Diego’s chapter of Americans for Safe Access. He says the county supervisors already placed a “de facto ban” on dispensaries last year when they outlawed pot shops in unincorporated parts of San Diego County.  “Although the ordinance does not specifically say the words ‘ban,’ the intent and outcome is such,” adds Davidovich in a January 24 email. “Not a single place has been able to obtain a permit to open in the county since the ordinance was adopted, mainly due to the fact that there are no properties where one could exist.  “The purpose of zoning regulations is to ensure that businesses in the county are located in appropriate areas. They should not be used as a tool to go around the will of the voters and enact a ban.”

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.

(Last Blog on Earth – San Diego City Beat) The San Diego Police Department and other county law-enforcement agencies are conducting a sweeping raid on marijuana dispensaries this afternoon. As of this writing, CityBeat has heard that Green Kross Collective, Total Care Collective, San Diego Discount Caregivers, Hillcrest Compassionate Care,  Downtown Kush lounge, Top Quality Collective, Medical Cannabis Providers, and Nature’s Rx Collective have been shut down by the San Diego Police Department and their owners arrested if they were present. Sources tell CityBeat that the owners have been given 48 hours to provide proper paperwork for their shops, but everything is very tentative at the moment.

Amy Roderick, a spokesperson for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, says  the DEA is involved in the raids currently being conducted by the San Diego Police Department and the San Diego Sheriff’s Department on medical marijuana dispensaries. She said DEA is involved “in a support role,” but she said she didn’t know if DEA agents were actually making arrests.

Randy Wall is a 52-year-old AIDS patient and volunteer at Hillcrest Compassionate Care, one of the medical marijuana dispensaries raided today by the San Diego Police Department.  Wall said he has been a member and a greeter for the store for a year, about as long as the place has been in business. Wall said they were preparing to shoot a TV commercial at about 11:30 a.m. when police arrived. Wall had been cleaning a back office.

“When I walked out, we heard the cops were coming, but we said, ‘Be cool, be cool,’” he said. “We thought they were going to check our permits. But there was like 20 cops with guns drawn and battering rams. We told them we would unlock the door if they gave us a second.”

“We said, ‘Hold on! Hold on! We’ll let you in,’ but they busted the door open,” he said. “Then they busted down another door that was locked. There was nothing in there; it’s a bedroom where someone sleeps. We have one person stay there; we have to have a security guard in there 24-hours a day.”

“It seems to me that everybody that worked there got arrested today. They handcuffed everyone—everybody that worked there was in handcuffs that I saw,” Wall said.

We all know the San Diego DA and Sheriff’s Office have made overturning Prop 215 their reason for living, so police and sheriffs raiding dispensaries isn’t surprising.  But the DEA was involved “in a support role”?  Didn’t the president say that there were much more pressing issues for his Justice Department to deal with?

Click here to view the embedded video.

“What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on [medical marijuana]…” – Barack Obama, May 2008

And didn’t the Attorney General say that Mr. Obama’s campaign promise was now Justice Department policy?

Click here to view the embedded video.

“What the President said during the campaign [about ending raids] … is now American policy.”

The new Southern California NORML is following the raids.  Contact Craig Beresh at craigberesh@normlsc.org if you have any news to report.

We’re proud to announce the formation of a new chapter, Southern California NORML, which will serve the San Diego / Riverside / Imperial county area of the state. Contact Craig Beresh, executive director, at craigberesh@sbcglobal.net to get involved.

I’m excited because San Diego is ground-zero in the backlash against medical marijuana in America.  A strong chapter there can help us to fight back against the reefer madness that’s leading to the persecution of Eugene Davidovich and Donna Lambert, among others, in Operation Green RX, where San Diego County officers are lying to doctors to get legit recommendations in order to entrap legit dispensary owners.

Many people think that California is pot paradise and compared to most areas of the world, it is.  But it is a huge state where outside of the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, the acceptance of marijuana is sometimes less than outside the state.  We need active NORML Chapters all around California and even in places where we have chapters the population is so large that more chapters could be formed.

In case you’ve not been tracking it, the following new NORML Chapters have been recognized in 2009:

1. Kansas City NORML (Missouri)
2. Upper Peninsula NORML (Michigan)
3. High Sierra NORML (Paradise California)
4. Columbia College NORML (Chicago Illinois)
5. Mile High NORML (Denver Colorado)
6. San Luis Obispo NORML (California)
7. NORML of Waco Inc (Texas)
8. US Virgin Islands NORML
9. Salt Lake City NORML (Utah)
10. Pikes Peak NORML (Colorado)
11. Cal State Univ Monterey Bay NORML (California)
12. Pittsburgh NORML (Pennsylvania)
13. Georgia NORML
14. Oberlin College NORML (Ohio)
15. NORML Nebraska
16. Milwaukee Area NORML (Wisconsin)
17. Southern California NORML (San Diego California)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico now has one of the world’s most liberal laws for drug users after eliminating jail time for small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and even heroin, LSD and methamphetamine.

But stunned police on the U.S. side of the border say the law contradicts President Felipe Calderon’s drug war, and some fear it could make Mexico a destination for drug-fueled spring breaks and tourism.

Tens of thousands of American college students flock to Cancun and Acapulco each year to party at beachside discos offering wet T-shirt contests and all-you-can-drink deals.

“Now they will go because they can get drugs,” said San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne. “For a country that has experienced thousands of deaths from warring drug cartels for many years, it defies logic why they would pass a law that will clearly encourage drug use.”

That’s strange.  I don’t recall the police chiefs calling on Mexico to raise their drinking age from 18 to 21.  One major reason American college kids flock to Cancun is because under age 21, they can’t go to clubs and can’t easily acquire alcohol in America.  Prohibition of alcohol for adults who can vote, smoke, and join the military is what makes those adults fly to Mexico.

Decriminalization does not encourage drug use.  In the thirteen US states that have decriminalized marijuana use, the perceptions of risk and the rates of use remained virtually unchanged.  Countries that have decriminalized have lower drug use rates than the US and lower rates than before they decriminalized.

Laws don’t encourage or discourage drug use.  Drugs encourage drug use.  Drugs have their own built-in public relations and advertising campaign – when you take them, you get high.  The only things that discourages drug use are education prior to drug use and health care after drug use.

Supporters of the change point to Portugal, which removed jail terms for drug possession for personal use in 2001 and still has one of the lowest rates of cocaine use in Europe.

Foreigners caught with drugs still face arrest in Portugal, a measure to prevent drug tourism.

The same is not true for Mexico, where there is no jail time for anyone caught with roughly four marijuana cigarettes, four lines of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine or 0.015 milligrams of LSD.

That’s what concerns U.S. law enforcement at the border.

“It provides an officially sanctioned market for the consumption of the world’s most dangerous drugs,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said. “For the people of San Diego the risk is direct and lethal. There are those who will drive to Mexico to use drugs and return to the U.S. under their influence.”

So you’re telling us that someone who could easily score pot, coke, heroin, meth, or LSD right in downtown San Diego is instead going to get a passport, drive to Tijuana, try to find a dealer, avoid cartel violence, score some drugs, get really high, and drive back across the heavily-fortified cop-laden inspection-ridden US border?  Wow, Reefer Madness is so much more mind-altering than anything Mexico decriminalized.

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2009-07-10.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

1. New Hampshire Gov. Lynch vetoes medical marijuana bill
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3. Michael Phelps sets new world record
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High Times Magazine preview with Senior Editor Dave Bienenstock, author of The Official Pot Smoker’s Handbook

• Gear of the Year
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Daily Toker Tunes by Marijuana Music Awards

• 2009 AMMA Best Rap Song – ‘Posted on the Corner’ by DJ Mercenary

Cannabis Conversations

• Eugene Davidovich, facing four felony counts in a San Diego courtroom on Monday, after a San Diego county cop lied to a doctor, presented a fake ID, and purchased from Davidovich’s legally-operated collective. Visit EugeneDavidovich.com to support and be at San Diego Superior Court Dept 11, 220 W. Broadway in San Diego on Monday at 8am if you can.

(FOX News) The Supreme Court announced Monday it will not get involved in a dispute over California’s medical marijuana law.

The case presented a direct conflict to the justices of California’s Compassionate Use Act which its detractors say contravenes federal laws prohibiting drug use. A California appeals court ruled last summer that the state’s medical marijuana law does not preempt a federal drug ban.

Monday’s decision by the high court effectively affirms that ruling.Thirteen states have laws allowing for the limited use of marijuana. California’s law allows for individuals and their caregivers to “possess, cultivate and transport” marijuana as long as it used for medical purposes. Local officials in San Diego objected and filed a lawsuit saying the state law violates the federal Controlled Substances Act.

In its argument to the Court, the local officials said the California law is contrary to federal efforts to limit drug use. They argued “it is inevitable that marijuana originally grown for medicinal use will fall into the hands of recreational drug users.”

California joined a handful of pro-Marijuana groups in asking the Court to not take the case. They argued the specifics of this case made it a “poor vehicle” for the high court to use in deciding such a controversial issue.

San Diego county, San Bernadino county, guess what?  You lost!  Your silly little argument that you have lost at every trial and appeals court level has finally been declared over by the highest court in the land.  The people of California want medical marijuana, the state has made it legal, and your little conservative enclaves have to obey the laws just like everyone else… even the laws you don’t personally like.  You have to issue medical marijuana ID cards to patients that want them.  You have to allow patients to grow and possess and use their natural medications.  You have to be obedient counties in the state of California!

Now, will someone will press a Freedom of Information Act request to determine how much taxpayer money these two counties wasted in the continued pursuit of a dubious legal strategy that had tasted defeat at every judicial level?

San Diego County filed papers this week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to erase California’s medical marijuana law, arguing that federal prohibitions outlawing the substance supersede California’s law allowing sick people to use it.

County officials sued the state in 2006, arguing that federal law that makes marijuana illegal should trump the 1996 passage of state Proposition 215, which legalized it for patients to use with a prescription. Patients who use marijuana say it helps them treat chronic pain.

In July, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal handed medical marijuana users a victory when it rejected the county’s contention that the state law flies in the face of federal pot prohibitions. The appellate court found that the purpose of the federal law “is to combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state’s medical practices.”

In October, the California Supreme Court rejected the county’s request that it review the ruling. That left the county with the option of asking the nation’s highest court to step in.

San Diego Deputy County Counsel Tom Bunton said the U.S. Supreme Court might decide by June if it will take the case.

The county’s filing was met with a thumbs down but no surprise from Adam Wolf, the lead attorney for medical marijuana patients opposed to the challenge. Wolf on Friday called the county’s request “a waste” of taxpayers’ money.

Wolf, with the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the San Diego chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. NORML is a defendant in the county’s suit.

via REGION: County asks U.S. Supreme Court to erase state’s medical marijuana law : North County Times – Californian 01-17-2009.

How weird is it that the people of California came up with medical marijuana, the people of California voted for medical marijuana, the California legislature has amended medical marijuana, and the California courts have supported medical marijuana, but since five county supervisors in one county don’t like medical marijuana they want five judges in Washington DC to declare the will of the people null and void?