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1. Lake County rescinds recently passed medmj ordinance in wake of federal crackdown
2. Florida representative introduces referendum to legalize medical marijuana
3. Oakland county house fire illustrates dangers of poorly-wired indoor grow ops
4. San Diego activists protest California US Attorneys crackdown

Irie Wednesday: Brought to you by NorCalPurps in the California Bay Area

• Collie Buddz – “Finally the Herbs Come Around”

Grassroots Activism

• Richard Feldman, president of Independent Firearm Owners Association, on the need for gun rights and marijuana rights activists to come together

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Special Guest: Clint Werner, author of “Marijuana: Gateway to Health”

At the Wheeler Conference in Helena, Montana, former US Attorney for the state, William Mercer, serves as the perfect example of reefer madness tunnel vision. Sure, marijuana may be medical for six or seven really sick people, but it makes it harder to put the healthy pot smokers in a cage!

(Great Falls Tribune) The federal government has spent huge sums of money in its war on drugs but fears those efforts will be undermined in states where medical marijuana is legal, says a former federal prosecutor.

Since the 1970s when the federal government began its war on drugs, its main focus has been cutting off supply, not prosecuting individual users.

“The role of the federal government when it comes to drugs is not to go after users,” Mercer said. “The focus of the U.S. attorneys in the country and the focus of the DEA … is to go after those big organizations.”

Oh, that must explain why 88% of all marijuana arrests are for mere possession, not cultivation, trafficking, and sales.  To be fair, he’s not exactly lying; most of those arrests do take place at the state and local, not federal level.

Mercer believes the federal government would be comfortable with a medical marijuana system in a state if the law was written so a very narrow slice of people, only those who would truly benefit from it, could legally use marijuana.

“I think you’ve really got to tighten up those categories,” Mercer said.

Hmmm, only the people who would truly benefit… let’s see, those categories would include  Alzheimer’s disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Chronic pain, Diabetes mellitus, Dystonia, Fibromyalgia, Gastrointestinal disorders, Gliomas/other cancers, Hepatitis C, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Hypertension, Incontinence, Methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus (MRSA), Multiple sclerosis, Osteoporosis, Pruritus, Rheumatoid arthritis, Sleep apnea, and Tourette’s syndrome, not to mention PTSD, anxiety, depression, and cachexia.

Since those are all proven beneficiaries of medical marijuana and dwarfs Montana’s list of qualifying conditions, Mercer must have meant “tighten up those categories to just the most visibly sick people who’d make for bad visuals on the evening news if our automatic-weapon-toting body-armored SWAT police threw them to the ground for using marijuana.”

What Mercer and other law enforcement are fighting against is a growing realization by Americans that the toxic, side-effect-laden pharmaceuticals pushed on us by our TV’s and corrupted doctors are not the only option for personal healthcare.  They’re learning that cannabis is safe and effective for a wide variety of issues and provides better quality of life than being in a doped-out stupor on heavy pharmaceuticals.  They see growing patient rolls as “abuse” because they still see marijuana as a deadly dangerous Schedule I drug and its users as dirty stinky criminals who must be culled from society… unless they’re so sick that dragging them off in handcuffs appears cruel.

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1. US Attorney asks court to throw out AZ Gov. Jan Brewer’s lawsuit to halt medical marijuana program
3. Marijuana added to blame for man with 0.19 blood alcohol level plunging to his death at Coors Field
4. Obama 2012 re-election campaign advertises on NORMLtv

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• Electric Tuesday: Acid Elf – “Hamsterbation Acid”

Cannabis Conversations

• Archive: Bobbie Wooten, NM medmj patient evicted for using her medicine

Radical Rant

• The next DEA drug raid may be busting down your door… even if you don’t smoke pot!

(The Oregonian – “Seeing through the smoke” editorial) It’s about time someone took action on the increasing number of medical marijuana dispensaries. The dispensaries are ignoring both the law and the will of Oregonians, who voted in November to defeat Measure 74, which would have legalized state-regulated dispensaries.

Of course, technical violations of the law may not really be the issue here. The original medical marijuana law was full of flaws. Lawmakers who are inclined to try to fix it could start with age restrictions on who can hold a card. Right now, anyone, including teenagers, can apply. A study done by Oregon Partnership found, for example, that 35 percent of students at Wilson High School and 46 percent at Marshall High School knew someone with a card.

Holton has done a good job in pointing to the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries, which may help nip it in the bud, so to speak. But, if Oregon is to continue allowing medical marijuana, then, at least, legislators must work harder to tighten up the rules.

Shame on the Oregonian for parroting the baseless “What About the Children?!?” scare tactic of US Attorney Holton and the majority of Oregon law enforcement. “35 percent of students at Wilson High School and 46 percent at Marshall High School knew someone with a card.” Knew a fellow student or knew someone with an OMMP card? A friend’s parent? A local store clerk? Their own parent? Their parent’s friends? The Oregonian cleverly places the stat in the context of implying high schools are overrun with cardholding minor students.

Unlike the Oregonian editorial board, I check sources (I work for NORML: I have to.) The survey they refer to was addressed at a Marshall High community town hall meeting. The poll was conducted by students as part of a project called “SMASH” in a “confidential, random, peer-to-peer” survey – meaning one high school kid asking another high school kid. We have no control group, no control for confounding variables, not even a mention of the survey size or the randomness of those polled (maybe the SMASH kids are more likely to “randomly” speak to their friend, for instance, or stood in the hall and talked to anyone passing by who would answer.)

But besides all the methodological issues arising from trusting the polling data of high school kids talking to their friends, it’s important to note what their survey actually said:

PERCEPTION: Students surveyed believed that 8 out of 10 students smoke marijuana

REALITY: 7 out of 10 students DO NOT smoke marijuana

Kids surveyed thought 77.3% of others were smoking marijuana.  76.07% of kids never smoked marijuana, another 12.27% smoked it once or twice a month.  So, kids think 3 out of 4 other kids smoke pot when 3 out of 4 kids actually don’t.  Where, oh, where could the kids be getting the message that youth cannabis smoking is out of control, when, in fact, Oregon’s 12th grade monthly cannabis use rates have declined 14% (before | after) since 1999, when medical marijuana got underway in Oregon.

One could argue that when authority figures are telling kids youth pot smoking is rampant, kids believe “everyone’s doing it” and that peer pressure makes them more likely to want to try it.

REALITY: Almost 1 in 2 students surveyed knows someone who has a medical marijuana card.

Do you know anyone who is prescribed* medical marijuana? 46.63% YES

*Nobody is prescribed medical marijuana; it is “recommended”. Federal prohibition forbids “prescription” of marijuana.

Another REALITY? Of the 40,000 registered medical marijuana patients in Oregon, less than fifty are under the age of 18. That’s one-eighth of one percent of all patients in Oregon. I’ve met one minor on the program in all my six years working with patients in Oregon – a 16-year-old young man with a painful congenital disorder accompanied by his very clean-cut white-bread middle-class non-pot-smoking parents who only allow him to use medicated edibles; no smoking. There simply is no crisis of youth marijuana smoking in Oregon and certainly not one that can be attributed to a medical marijuana program with very strict requirements for qualification.

If the Oregonian is really concerned about the children, these existing cannabis clubs provide much more protection than the unregulated market they and US Attorney Holton seem to be advocating. I’ve visited a number of these clubs and each one – despite me being very well-known to them as a marijuana advocate at the national level – required that I show my Oregon ID and valid medical marijuana program card prior to entry.

US Attorney Holton and 33/34 county D.A.’s would like to you to believe that teens can walk into the state OMMP, complain about a headache, get an OMMP card, walk into a cannabis club and walk out with a pound and a half of marijuana. The truth is that the card is much more difficult to get here and the over 3,000 doctors who have recommended cannabis as medicine in Oregon are especially stringent in reviewing the records of minors for medical marijuana qualification.

Furthermore, these clubs pull the patient community away from the unregulated market’s back alleys, parking lots, and apartment living rooms. There is nothing that a prohibition profiteer hates more than regulated legal competition. Legality removes the prohibition risk tariff, drives down prices, and improves access and quality for patients. It creates jobs in the community, controls the distribution of cannabis far better than prohibition, contributes local tax revenue, and protects patients from unscrupulous growers taking advantage of their desperate need for medicine they can’t just buy at Walgreen’s or CVS.

If the Oregon county D.A.s outside of Multnomah are lacking for better things to do than harass sick and disabled adults trying to be legal consumers in a state with no legal retailers, perhaps they could work on the 72.4% of sex crimes and 80.4% of property crimes that didn’t lead to an arrest in 2009 in Oregon.

Russ Belville, OMMP Caregiver
Outreach Coordinator & Talk Radio Host
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Portland, Oregon

US Attorney Dwight Holton threatens Oregon cannabis clubs AND the First Amendment

Dwight Holton, the US Attorney for Oregon, tried to silence a lawful protest by marijuana legalization activists on City Hall steps in Portland this morning, according to attorney Paul Loney.

Holton recently authored a letter circulated to cannabis patients’ clubs threatening federal law enforcement action.  The letter was endorsed by 33 of the 34 Oregon county district attorneys.  Multnomah County D.A. Michael Shrunk declined to sign on, saying, “I don’t like to threaten things that we realistically are not geared up to do,” and “combating this cannot be termed a critical priority when balanced against others.”  From the Holton letter:

“Oregon and Federal law make it illegal to sell marijuana – period, end of story,” said Holton. “The breathtaking surge in manufacture and distribution of marijuana in Oregon is putting marijuana in the hands of more and more healthy kids — and dispensaries are fueling this crisis. We are confident that responsible landlords and property owners will remove the operators of illegal dispensaries and ‘cannabis clubs’.”

In response to the crackdown, Madeline Martinez, proprietor of one of the threatened clubs, the World Famous Cannabis Cafe, called a press conference Friday afternoon at the Portland City Hall steps.  The permit had been turned in on Monday, according to Oregon NORML Legal Counsel Paul Loney.

Speaking to NORML SHOW LIVE, Loney explained, “We got word that [US Attorney] Holton contacted [Portland City Councilman] Nick Fish and told him, ‘you shouldn’t let those guys [the marijuana advocates] have their press conference at City Hall.’”  According to Loney, “Fish told him that we turned in our permit on Monday and what they’re doing is perfectly legal.”

Loney continued, “I think this is more of a story than the letter – a US Attorney, sworn to uphold the Constitution, trying to squash the First Amendment rights of Oregonians!  We are going to be investigating this and bringing it up with his boss, [Attorney General] Eric Holder.”

Martinez, who also serves as director of NORML’s state affiliate, Oregon NORML, and on the board of directors of the national organization, stated, “Between the recent report from the United Nations recommending full legalization of cannabis, Eric Holder’s vague comments about working with medical cannabis states and the recent decree from the Oregon Department of Justice, many Oregon Medical Marijuana Program registrants are confused and worried for their safety.”

Loney told the assembled protestors, a crowd of roughly forty, that nobody has yet shown the cannabis clubs to be operating outside the law.  “Judges decide the law in this county,” said Loney, “not sheriffs, not district attorneys.”

Patients in Oregon are permitted to reimburse any cardholding grower for the supplies and expenses involved in producing medical marijuana, but reimbursement for labor is forbidden by law.  Cannabis clubs in Oregon claim to be operating on the principle of reimbursements and unsolicited donations.  Loney, speaking on local television news Thursday, said explicitly that these cannabis clubs are not selling.

Anna Diaz, a board member of Oregon NORML and NORML’s 2011 Pauline Sabin Award Winner, spoke to NORML SHOW LIVE and explained “Sensible Oregon”.  “It’s going to be an initiative like the ‘Sensible Washington’ one that will just remove marijuana from the criminal law, while still maintaining laws on DUI and not providing to children.”  Diaz said the initiative is still being conceived and written.  Once written, it will be circulated fo collect the one thousand signatures required in Oregon to begin official signature gathering.

If “Sensible Oregon” makes it to signature gathering, it will join the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act (OCTA) as initiatve petitions to legalize marijuana in Oregon.  OCTA has already completed the certification of ballot title and is currently gathering signatures.

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1. Oregon dispensaries threatened by US Attorney and 33/34 Oregon District Attorneys
2. Michigan judge rules patient records from dispensary turned over to feds
3. Arizona “medical marijuana death” a case of prohibition violence, not marijuana violence
4. California sheriff cleared in shooting death of man with pellet gun guarding an outdoor marijuana grow on forest land

Daily Toker Tunes

Brought to you by CannaBob and The Viper Hour on The NORML Network

• Roots Monday: Morgan Davis – “Reefer Smokin’ Man”

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Best of Interviews: Dr. Mitch on the CASA studies of teen availability of marijuana

Radical Rant

• Threatening Oregon dispensaries is a stunning ignorance of the law of supply and demand

Well, when you open a medical marijuana patient lounge in the most conservative, pot-hating county in the state, call it “Wake N Bake”, and get your picture in the paper brandishing a six-foot bong, there will probably be repercussions…

(Oregonian) Federal and state law enforcement officials put the owners of medical marijuana dispensaries on notice today, warning them that selling marijuana for any purpose, including medical use, was against both federal and state law.

“Are we supposed to believe that people go to places like “Wake N Bake” to get medicine?” said U.S. Attorney, Dwight C. Holton. “Oregonians, who adopted a medical marijuana law in good faith, deserve an answer—are these places where people go to get medicine, or are these just drug dealers hiding behind the medical marijuana law?”

Holton issued a joint statement today along with 33 Oregon district attorneys, Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Bergin, president of the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association; and Newport Police Chief Mark Miranda, president of the Oregon Association of Chiefs of Police.

The officials also warned people who knowingly financed a marijuana dispensary or allowed one “to operate on your property also violates federal law and could subject financiers and landlords to civil and criminal penalties–including forfeiture of any assets used in support of the criminal enterprise.”

One law that seems to always escape the notice of D.A.’s and Sheriffs on the marijuana issue is one that isn’t written down in any Oregon Revised Statutes:

The law of supply and demand.

This is the most expensive non-cannabis plant ounce I could find - $130 for a one ounce tin of Spanish saffron. To produce a pound of this, families work 20-hours picking three stamens out of 75,000 flowers once per year. One good outdoor cannabis plant produces a pound of bud, but an ounce costs $280?

There are close to 40,000 legal consumers (registered medical marijuana patients) of a product (cannabis). There will be someone to supply them that product. Econ 101 tells you when there is an inelastic demand for a product and an artificial restriction of supply, you get ridiculously high prices. Can you name another dried vegetable matter that retails for $280 an ounce?

Oregon crafted a medical marijuana law where the only legal means of supply are to (a) manufacture your own or (b) hire someone to manufacture it for you at a salary of $0.00. Option (a) does not work for the majority of the consumers because they’re busy or infirm or unskilled and manufacturing takes skill. How many aspirin would you consume a year if you had to skin the bark off your willow tree to make it?

Option (b) is the only choice for most. Say you’re a middle-aged person who just returned from the doctor with a diagnosis of cancer and your chemo begins Friday. Maybe you smoked a joint in college, otherwise your knowledge of cannabis plants and people who grow them is limited to Cheech & Chong movies. You don’t have the time to grow your own, even if you did, you don’t know how, and where do you get that seed or clone plant?

Maybe you’re one of the majority who are pain patients and you do have some time to establish your supply of medicine. Where do you find this kindly grower with expertise at producing medicine-grade cannabis who’s going to donate fifteen hours a week of his time tending to the manufacture of your product for the salary of $0.00? A posting on the bulletin board at work seems unlikely. Craigslist, sure that should be safe and easy, no way anybody would prey on someone in pain to make a buck.

"I'm sorry that you need milk to treat your condition, but I can't just sell you a glass of milk! I can give you one of my calves and in a few months you can milk her. Tell you what, you sign me up to be your dairy farmer and reimburse the cost of all my equipment, utilities, supplies, and feed. Then I'll give you a gallon of milk every month."

Take a minute, if you’re not a medical marijuana patient and don’t know one, and imagine if you’d put up with this system to get a gallon of milk, much less a medicine you need to live a decent life. Imagine raising and milking your own cow or telling the dairy farmer you’ll pay for the cow’s feed, water, and care if he gives you a free gallon of milk every month. Oh, and the dairy farmer is only allowed to give (not sell) that milk to four customers, he can only raise six cows and have at most eighteen calves (which become cows the minute they grow taller than three feet) and any extra must be immediately slaughtered.

Meanwhile, there are another 360,000 illegal consumers of the product and an entire illegal infrastructure of manufacture, delivery, and retail supporting it, largely thanks to the artificially high prohibition profits. Call it Option (c). Remember the law of supply and demand – those 40,000 legal consumers will be supplied. As options (a) and (b) are largely unworkable, option (c) has filled the void and tried to dress itself up in (b)’s ill-fitting clothing.  Yes, patients are getting their medicine at places like “Wake N Bake” because they can’t get it at places like “Walgreen’s”.

The crime wave sweeping Oregon that keeps 33 of 34 District Attorneys awake at nights

There are “cannabis clubs” where legal consumers pay money to get in and are given a freely given a small amount of cannabis that is donated by legal producers — but nobody is selling. There are “patient lounges” where legal producers are (out of the goodness of their hearts) freely donating carefully measured amounts of product to legal consumers, who are, in turn, freely donating cash at weight-based amounts to the legal producers — but nobody is selling. There are “farmer’s markets” where legal consumers are reimbursing legal producers to cover expenses; it just so happens that every different grower growing different strains with different yields in different mediums in different counties with different water and electricity rates discovers their expenses coincidentally and consistently match the prices offered by the illegal suppliers.– but nobody is selling.

Law enforcement’s reaction in the legislature was to fight to reduce the number of legal consumers and tightly restrict the producers. This is a colossal misunderstanding of the law of supply and demand. The legal consumers won’t stop now that they’ve discovered the one medicine that works for them; they will just be even more at the mercy of those who’d exploit them. The legal producers won’t stop supplying the medicine if they suffer a crackdown; they will abandon the well-lit relatively-safe clubs and return to alleys and parking lots and raise prices.

Oregon and America will simply have to come to the realization that cannabis is a popular consumer good and it will be bought and sold. We can allow it to continue as is, with patients struggling to get it and spending too much when they do, with police resources spent in futile attempts to stop healthy people from getting it, with state and local governments exercising no control over it and receiving no tax revenue from it, and with artificially high profits and lack of civil recourse leading to crime and violence. Or we can try something new (dare I say trail blazing?), and create reasonably regulated systems of production, distribution, and use that serve patients and recreational users while creating jobs, tax revenue, and improving public safety.

Russ Belville
NORML Outreach Coordinator

P.S. The clearance rate for sex crime in Oregon is 35% and for property crime it’s 20%. There’s also some kid tagging up my neighborhood with “SHIMR”. I’m much more concerned about those situations than whether one adult is selling pot to another adult in a place that checks IDs and valid medical marijuana cards, even if it is called “Wake N Bake”.  Can’t we end this silly charade of determining which pot smokers are healthy enough to put in a prison cell and work on catching real criminals?

To be fair, this ability is not uncommon among politicians.

Remember Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer saying “For the state employees charged with administering the medical marijuana program or the Arizonans who intend to participate as consumers, it’s important that we receive court guidance as to whether they are at risk for federal prosecution.”

Remember her concluding those official remarks by saying, “The State of Arizona has worked to follow the wishes of voters.  But I won’t stand aside while state employees and average Arizonans acting in good faith are unwittingly put at risk. In light of the explicit warnings on this issue offered by Arizona’s U.S. Attorney, as well as many other federal prosecutors, clarity and judicial direction are in order.”

We sure do.  What we don’t remember is any direct threat to state employees by the US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke… and neither does he!

(Yuma Sun) PHOENIX — The top federal prosecutor in Arizona said Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne are distorting the facts on the issue of medical marijuana and risks of federal prosecution of state workers.

Burke, in an interview with Capitol Media Services, said his letter simply spelled out the priorities his office has in going after those who sell, transport or use marijuana. More to the point, he said that letter never mentioned state workers.

“It’s fair to read into my letter what I included and what I didn’t,” he said. “And if I didn’t include state employees, I think that’s telling in itself.”

Gubernatorial press aide Matthew Benson said his boss does not believe that silence means state workers have nothing to fear.

“If that’s what he meant, why didn’t he say that?” Benson asked.

But Burke said there was a simple way of dealing with the question.

“You would think that a letter back from Attorney General Horne, as opposed to ‘I’m going to file a lawsuit and have a press conference’ might have been a better course of action,” he said.

Benson conceded that Burke’s letter never mentions state workers.

What Gov. Brewer was reacting to was the threat letters in Washington State over its proposed dispensary system.  So, a different state, different US Attorney, different governor, and a completely different law where the state employees would have had greater exposure to prosecution.  Sure, Gov. Brewer, you’re no trying to thwart the will of the people… you’re just scared of  threats a thousand miles away over some other law.

Funny how when it’s immigration, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer claims states rights and opposes federal interference, but when it’s the state voting for medical marijuana, she invites federal interference.

(East Valley Tribune) Saying she fears people could wind up in legal trouble, Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday ordered the state attorney general to get a federal court to rule whether Arizona can implement its medical marijuana law.

[S]he said a letter from Dennis Burke, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona, to her state health chief appeared to be a warning that anyone involved — from patients and dispensary operators to landlords and even state health officials — could wind up being prosecuted by his office.

To be fair, this ability is not uncommon among politicians.

Boo!  The scare letter tactic seems to be working.  Rhode Island balked, Washington balked, now Arizona.  Despite the fact that this medical marijuana has been federally illegal the whole time and New Mexico and Colorado have been licensing dispensaries for years with no federal interference

“I believe in the will of the people,” Brewer said, even though she personally opposed the initiative. “Unfortunately, with this piece of legislation, there are some pretty serious consequences if we don’t get them resolved,” she continued. “And I, as governor, am not willing to put those people at risk.”

Bull.  You opposed the initiative and you’re using the empty threat from a US Attorney to provide the cover for you to overturn what was only 50.13% of the people’s will.

Despite that, the state will continue issuing “qualified patient” cards to anyone who produces the required doctor’s certification that they have a medical condition which can be treated with marijuana.

Gubernatorial press aide Matthew Benson said the state really has no choice: The initiative approved in November says if the state does not accept applications, then anyone who has the doctor’s recommendation is automatically considered to have been issued a card.

That’s some pretty clever language drafting there.  I have to give props to the folks at MPP who came up with that one.  If you don’t get a card 45 days after turning in your recommendation, that recommendation is your valid card. Either the state controls who is a legal medical marijuana patient or thousands of doctors will.  You’d think if the governor wanted to have some control over this, she wouldn’t try to stop issuing the cards.

About 4,000 Arizonans already are certified under state law to be able to purchase up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks.

That’s a pretty rapid growth curve!  Remember, this initiative wasn’t even officially passed until December and the online-only registration system opened up just six weeks ago.

[Brewer] wants to know whether state officials who issue dispensary licenses can be prosecuted because they are “facilitating” the distribution of marijuana. And Brewer said she fears that the state Department of Public Safety could lose federal grants by refusing as a matter of policy to arrest those caught with the drug simply because they are complying with state law.

Now you’re really reaching, Governor.  You can’t name any one of the now 16 medical marijuana states over the past fourteen years that has lost a single federal grant for not locking up patients.

As for the dispensary licenses?  Remember how much I complained about the “25-mile halo rule”?  This was a part of MPP’s language that said you could only grow your own medical marijuana if you lived more than 25 miles from a dispensary.  Well, if Brewer gets the answer we know she’ll get, which is “hell, yes, the feds could go after state employees”, and she directs the state to issue no dispensary licenses, that means all those current 4,000 patients can grow their own dozen cannabis plants.  That could be over 30,000 patients within a year growing over 400,000 cannabis plants all over Arizona.

Again, you’d think if the governor wanted to have some control over this, she’d implement the law, issue dispensary licenses, and keep the vast majority of cultivation in licensed, inspected, secure locations.

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1. Oregon Supreme Court decides medical marijuana patients still have 2nd Amendment rights to concealed firearms
2. Maine receives its threatening letter from US attorneys over medical marijuana
3. Florida: new product, “Lazy Cakes”, chock full of melatonin and sold as an alternative to marijuana
4. Spokane’s MHP cannabis dispensary raided yesterday by Spokane PD and DEA, recount of live reports from yesterday

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