Legal Cannabis is the Best Thing for Medical Marijuana Patients Since Prop. 215

[RainDog]

In recent weeks some people in California have spoken out against Prop. 19 by declaring it hurts medical marijuana patients. This claim has been made on DU.

A medical marijuana and Prop. 19 supporter asked California attorney David Nick to comment.

For 18 years, David Nick has successfully litigated a cornucopia of issues regarding cannabis and the applicable laws in both trial and appellate courts. He has not confined his practice to marijuana law, but also litigates cases involving constitutional rights and criminal procedure.

David Nick has never lost a jury trial in a state marijuana case including many precedent setting trials involving some of the most revered figures in the medical marijuana movement such as Brownie Mary, Dennis Peron (Nick has been Peron’s sole attorney since 1994) and Steve Kubby.

Here's what Nick has to say:

PROP. 19 IS THE BEST THING TO HAPPEN TO MMJ PATIENTS SINCE PROP. 215

Anyone who claims that Proposition 19 will restrict or eliminate rights under the Compassionate Use Act (CUA) or the Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) is simply wrong. If anything, Proposition 19 will permit individuals to grow and possess much more than ever before with patients, coops and collectives still receiving the same protections they are entitled to under the CUA and MMP.

Here is why.

The legal arguments claiming the "sky will fall" if Prop. 19 passes are based on the fallacious conclusion that the Initiative invalidates the CUA and MMP. This baseless fear stems from a flawed legal analysis which focuses on just about every portion of Prop. 19 EXCEPT the relevant portions. This flawed legal analysis is driven by an incorrect understanding of the rules of statutory construction.

PROP. 19 PROVIDES ADDITIONAL PROTECTIONS TO PATIENTS FROM THE ACTIONS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

Section 2B presents the controlling and relevant purposes for understanding what Prop. 19 can and cannot do. This section EXPRESSLY excludes the reach of Prop. 19 from the CUA and MMP. Sections 2B (7 & 8) specifically state that the purpose of this initiative is to give municipalities total and complete control over the commercial sales of marijuana "EXCEPT as permitted under Health and Safety Sections 11362.5 and 11362.7 through 11362.9.”

This is an email from the attorney. You can read the rest of it here

David Borden, Exec. Director of Stop the Drug War, brings this email to the attention of the larger public and notes that opposition is not across the board among those currently involved in the medical marijuana community.

Fortunately, only some medical marijuana people are so shortsighted as to oppose this historic and important measure. Harborside Health Center in Oakland, and the Berkeley Patients Group are among the top quality groups lending their support to Prop 19. But it's still worth asking, why are some other medical marijuana providers opposing it?

Famed Canadian Marc Emery, from his US prison cell offered the obvious explanation: money.

Of course, the answer could also be a misreading of the current Proposition or simply failing to read the language and arguments themselves among those who have joined those who put their financial gain above every person in this nation who stands to benefit from an end to the war on cannabis.

[RainDog]

1. I want to add a link to Fly by night's post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9186484

and highlight this quote from Bob Koehler:

Our country’s anti-pot bureaucracy is wreaking harm and punishing the innocent beyond our borders as well as within them — all the while turning a plant with extraordinary medicinal and other highly useful properties into our arbitrary enemy, “devil weed,” to no serious end except to waste law-enforcement resources and keep our prisons full to bursting.

Indeed, in 2009, police busted 858,408 people for pot violations, according to the FBI’s recently released Uniform Crime Report. This is the second highest total ever, and just shy of the record set in 2007. What gives? Even as the country inches its way toward marijuana sanity — medical marijuana is now legal in 14 states and two more (Arizona and South Dakota) have the issue on the November ballot — a “stoned righteousness,” you might say, seems to be fighting back and punishing people when and where it can.

My friend Bernie Ellis, who was arrested eight years ago for growing medical marijuana on his farm near Nashville, Tenn., calls it “the farces of evil” — which have not stopped harassing him even though he has served 18 months in a halfway house run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Last month, the final hideous ritual of false justice was enacted, as the feds auctioned off the 25-acre piece of his farm they had confiscated in a plea-bargain arrangement that allowed him to keep the other 147 acres. Originally they were going to take the whole thing.

All of this, as Ellis wrote recently, was “for the crime of growing seven pounds of pot and giving it away to four terminally ill neighbors, a crime that I never denied I committed from the moment that two helicopters and ten four-wheelers descended on my farm.”

And in the three weeks before the auctioning of his land, he wrote, his farm was buzzed three times by pot-seeking government aircraft, “low enough to rattle my windows and blow down my late summer sweet corn.” What it sounds like is governmental stalking.


This is what Prop. 19 is also about.

[RainDog]

2. night crew kick n/t

[Duer 157099]

3. Kicking because I want this to be true

I need to read further but I hope hope hope that it is so.

[RainDog]

4. you and me both

I'm sure the proposition isn't perfect - nothing is. the law will take time to implement, as well - but this law will force a moment of some kind of truth in this nation that is long overdue.