Government Shows No Compassion for Medical Pot Consumption (AlterNet)

[marmar]

Government Shows No Compassion for Medical Pot Consumption

By Patrick McCartney and Paul A. Lee, AlterNet. Posted June 16, 2007.



More than ten years after California's Compassionate Use Act was passed by voters, state and local officials are still collaborating with federal law enforcement to undermine it.

On the morning of January 13, 2004, Tehama County prosecutor Lynn Strom unexpectedly announced that the state of California was dropping charges against Cynthia Blake and David Davidson for possessing and growing cannabis with the intent to distribute. While the two medical marijuana patients waited in the courtroom, Strom and the defense attorneys disappeared inside the judge's chambers to discuss the motion to dismiss. Moments later, more than a dozen sheriff's deputies pounced on the hapless couple, handcuffed them, and shoved them into an unmarked police car waiting outside the courthouse in the Sacramento Valley town of Corning. They were already en route to jail in Sacramento when Strom informed their lawyers that the state was bowing out because the Feds were taking over the case.

It was a devastating blow for Blake, a retired Federal Reserve employee, and her sweetheart, Davidson, a retail shop owner. Both in their early fifties, they were booked on federal drug charges and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Eastern District office of US Attorney McGregor Scott. If convicted, they each faced a mandatory minimum of ten years to life in prison for exercising a right they thought they had gained with the 1996 passage of Proposition 215, the California ballot measure that legalized cannabis for medical purposes.

Both had a physician's recommendation to ease their ailments with marijuana, and neither had a criminal history. They had been tending three dozen pot plants in a remote garden, which they shared with other patients; their attorneys insist that no money had exchanged hands for the herb. But none of this would matter in federal court, which treated all marijuana as equally illicit, making no exceptions even for the seriously ill.

The well-coordinated Blake-Davidson hand-off was not the first time local authorities in California had turned over a medical marijuana case to federal authorities. But it is perhaps the most dramatic example of ongoing, secret collusion between various levels of government to prevent the implementation of the Compassionate Use Act, as Proposition 215 was called on the ballot.

For the past ten years, state and local officials sworn to uphold the state ballot measure have instead proven to be willing -- sometimes eager -- accomplices in a concerted U.S. attack on a state law. Now, a half year past its tenth birthday, the landmark California law remains under siege.

...(snip)...

Targetting the Pot Docs

Drug War strategists had pegged physicians as the weakest link in the med cannabis supply chain. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's drug czar, took aim at the doctors first, threatening to revoke the licenses of those who approved cannabis use by patients. A group of physicians and patients, with help from the ACLU and the Drug Policy Alliance, promptly sued the U.S. government on free speech and privacy grounds. The suit, called Conant v. McCaffrey, resulted in a federal injunction issued on First Amendment grounds upholding the doctors' right to discuss cannabis as a treatment option.

So the Feds passed the baton to the California Attorney General's office, via its agents in the state medical board's enforcement division, to crack down on physicians specializing in cannabis consultations. Despite specific language in Proposition 215 exempting doctors from retaliation by state officials, the Medical Board launched legal proceedings against several physicians based on evidence gathered by local undercover narcs who feigned symptoms to obtain a medical recommendation.

Unable to gag the doctors, the Clinton administration paid for anti-marijuana advertising and filed federal civil actions against a half dozen cannabis dispensaries in Northern California. It was the opening salvo of a seesaw legal battle, which culminated in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision against the Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperative (OCBC) in April 2001. As a result, some of the six clubs stopped selling medical marijuana, but others remained in business in open defiance of federal law.

The OCBC ruling gave the Bush administration its first chance to escalate the federal assault on California's fledgling medical marijuana infrastructure. Assisted by local narcotics units, the Ashcroft Justice Department went after dispensaries, medicinal grow-ops and high-profile activists up and down the state.

...(snip)...

As the drug warriors wage their war of attrition against medical marijuana, the human toll continues to rise. Facing the prospects of a decade in federal prison, David Davidson left Cynthia Blake and is now a fugitive. She agreed to plead guilty to a single felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in custody. Prosecutors offered leniency provided she testify against Davidson and reveal her erstwhile partner's whereabouts. In September, Blake was sentenced to 18 months in federal custody. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/54183/?page=1

[Trillo]

1. SB 420 must be a mass hallucination....

Even today, the California Narcotics Officers Association features on its website a position paper asserting: "There is no justification for using marijuana as a medicine."

[Q3JR4]

2. This whole thing makes me angry.

In fact their are 7 patients who get marijuana from the FEDERAL government for MEDICAL purposes. The program, called the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program, was ended in 1991 by G.H. Bush.

Each of these people can legally smoke marijuana anywhere in the country. It's bullshit that people are fighting so hard against the application of medical marijuana.

Complete and utter bullshit.

On edit:
Forgot my link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassionate_Investigational_New_Drug_program