A medical marijuana co-op won a huge battle in court after two years of claiming its innocence.
The California Compassionate Co-Op on north Chester Avenue was shut down in May 2009 by authorities.
The defendant’s attorney said the judge ruled that the Kern County Sheriff’s Office suppressed evidence in the case.
The judge dismissed the case after attorney H. A. Sala showed evidence that the Sheriff’s Office held back.
The department obtained a search warrant two years ago, claiming the co-op was operating illegally.
The judge ruled on Friday that the information provided by the sheriff’s department to obtain that warrant was misleading and contained omissions.
That search warrant was used to seize evidence based on the belief the co-op was not registered, making a profit and selling pot to non-members.
“They would have never been able to shut them down; they never would have sized the medical cannabis; they never would have seized their bank accounts. The judge said ‘If I had all the evidence, I would have never authorized the search warrant,’ “said Sala.
Sala also said the judge’s decision stems from a tape recording made by deputies prior to obtaining that search warrant. The tape, Sala added, contained information showing the cooperative was innocent.
The owners of the co-op have filled a civil case claiming that their rights were violated.
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Arizona on track to ‘get it right’ on medical marijuana
Now that Arizona is getting into the medical marijuana business, can we expect the same problems dispensaries face in Los Angeles?
We went to LA to find out.
Some of the problems appear to be self inflicted. A walk down Venice Beach shows why.
The smell of marijuana smoking permeates the air. Signs being carried by people wrapped in green promise a medical marijuana evaluation for $40 - in other words get your card for signing your name and paying a fee.
Another sign in front of a store shows 20 or so “ailments” for which a card can be issued, including “pain.”
The “doctor is in” signs line the sidewalk, a wink and a nod to the law. Medical marijuana is flaunted here it seems.
“In California you can see the problem that there’s no sharp line between recreational use and medicinal use,” says Dr. Andrew Weil, a proponent of medical marijuana for decades. He is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson.
Weil believes Arizona may be the best hope for medical use.
“It’s a more thought-out attempt to regulate it than has happened in other states,” he says. “Especially, there’s a more careful evaluation process.”
Some dispensary proprietors agreed that California has some problems.
“Safe access is a Russian Roulette game in Los Angeles,” says Yami Bulanos owner of the Pure Life dispensary in West Los Angeles. “They’ve created a hell hole.”
The “they” she’s referring to is the city of Los Angeles, which has been trying to get a handle on medicinal facilities without much success. The law was not well written, she says “and is open to interpretation”
That’s caused dispensaries, or collectives as they are called, to proliferate, sometimes into a 1,000 or more. Some of them legal, some not.
“They’re attacking us from every angle, the ones which are legal,” she says. “Thank god there’s sensible people in Arizona that know how to write a better law than what was written here.”
A liver transplant and two time cancer survivor, Bulanos uses as well as sells. It’s what got her in the business in the first place. But its been a struggle.
“It’s not profitable in Los Angeles and never will be,” she says.
Politics also can play a part.
“It’s very political,” says Joanna LaForce, a pharmacist at The Farmacy in upscale Westwood in Los Angeles. “Depending on who gets in office, one day you think you’re safe, and the next day you’re not.”
But the Farmacy is taking a different track, selling much more than marijuana.
“You want it to be a comfortable experience,” says LaForce.
And it is very comfortable inside The Farmacy.
It looks like the corner drugstore we remember as kids, with bottles of potions, lotions and sprays lining the very neat shelves.
Driving buy it looks like any other store, including Whole Foods, which is right across the street.
“This is Maui and this is Purple Goat. This is Love,” LaForce says as she shows us some of the 30 varieties of marijuana they carry, all organically grown.
It’s generally sold in 1/8th jars, or about 3.5 grams, enough to roll four joints. It costs $25 to $75.
Here the “door is always open” and anyone can walk in off the street.
But it doesn’t mean they can buy marijuana. There’s a process.
“You do everything possible to have it as legal as possible,” she says. “Everything is quasi-illegal so you have to be real careful.”
But even with the utmost of care, there’s always a cloud overhead.
“On my birthday in 2007, DEA agents raided the store. About 15 of them came in with their AR-15’s. It was very scary,” she says.
They even made a wheelchair patient lie on the floor. Since then, things have gone more smoothly.
Part of the reason is, it’s becoming more accepted, at least in her store.
“The average age of our patients is 42. Our oldest patient is 107,” she says with a smile.
Many of those older patients won’t or don’t want to smoke a joint, but they will eat a brownie, caramel corn, fudge, oatmeal cookies, or drink tea laced with cannabis.
“In the old days about 10 percent of our customers would use the edibles. Now it’s about 25 percent,” she says.
There’s a very nice display case with a wide range of edibles just inside the front door.
They also take great care for those who are eating cannabis for the first time.
“We tell them to eat a quarter. Wait an hour to see how they feel before eating anymore,” she says.
As more older people become accustomed to the benefits of marijuana, we are told, the more likely it is to move into the mainstream.
“It’s not a magic bullet,” Weil says. “Some people respond very well to marijuana and other people may not react to it well.”
Weil believes Arizona offers the best chance of moving the medicinal use forward.
“We have a chance to get this right,” he says.
There will be a doctor on the premises during business hours. That’s a different approach than other states and gives it an air of legitimacy.
But Weil has concerns too.
“I don’t want to see a rabid business model develop here,” he says. “I would like to see this more medically directed than business directed.
He did the first blind human experiments on marijuana back in the 1960s. He’s also a licensed practioner in California and has recommended it for patients.
He’s seen it work for some patients and is a firm believer.
He says “we’ve deprived ourselves” from something that works and stupidly so.
“Cannabis is the least toxic drug known to medicine,” he says. “It has a cultural bias that has little to do with science.”
When he conducted his experiments nearly a half century ago and saw the benefits, he thought it was just a matter of time.
“I thought marijuana would be legal in 10 years,” he says. “Boy, was I wrong.”
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WHITTIER - When Whittier police raided two unlicensed medical marijuana dispensaries Wednesday, they used a more aggressive approach than the city of Pico Rivera and Los Angeles County.
Instead of providing a notice of violation and threatening to sue if they didn’t close, a dozen members of Whittier police and L.A. Impact Task Force officers came down on the two dispensaries, leaving shattered glass and bitter feelings.
Both medical marijuana dispensaries are located outside the area allowed by city ordinances.
“They broke in the glass door and shattered it when they came in,” said Laura Kaplanian, owner of GreenReleaf Healing Center, 8645 Greenleaf Ave.
“They trashed our place,” Kaplanian said. “They took all of the patients’ medicine (marijuana) from their hands. It was inhumane. We’re not animals.”
Kaplanian, whose dispensary opened in February and was not in area the city allows for such uses, said she never received any letter or order from the city to close.
Michael McGehee, owner of the Apex - Alternative Patient Dispensary - at 14440 Whittier Blvd., said he, too, never received any such notice from the city.
“Why not give us a cease-and-desist order?” McGehee asked. “We would have just packed up and left. This was a huge raid.”
McGehee said he was surprised by the tactics, saying the police had a battering ram but didn’t use it because their front door was unlocked and he unlocked the other door.
There were three patients at his location when the police came, he said.
“They had all of their guns pulled, screaming, `Get down,”‘ he said. “The patients didn’t even know what was going on.”
Chief explains approach
Whittier Police Chief Jeff Piper on Friday agreed the police used a different approach.
“It’s because they were committing criminal violations,” Piper said of the dispensaries.
“They were acting as for-profit organizations essentially selling drugs,” Piper said.
“They’re outside the scope of the Compassionate Use Act,” he said, referring to the voter- approved Proposition 215 that legalized medical marijuana in California. “We were conducting an investigation and determined there were criminal violations.”
Both Kaplanian and McGehee say their collectives are nonprofit.
The police arrested five people - one of whom remains in custody.
Three of the individuals were involved in a third raid at a medical clinic in the 7200 block of Greenleaf Avenue.
Dr. Arun Sherma, 32, of Los Angeles was arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting an unlicensed medical practice.
Janna Li, 41, and Andrew Ligay, 45, both of Hollywood, are accused of owning that same practice and practicing medicine without a license.
Under California law, only physicians can own a licensed practice, said Carmen Aguilera-Marquez, supervising investigator for the California Medical Board.
All three posted $20,000 bail and were released Wednesday.
A fourth person arrested, Ryan Lockridge, 20, of Norwalk, remains in custody. He was turned over to sheriff’s officials on suspicion on violating his county probation.
McGehee, who is on federal probation for narcotics trafficking, was taken into custody but released Thursday with no bail required.
Tactics criticized
Police seized more than 13 pounds of marijuana at Apex, worth $32,500 to $39,000 on the street, said Whittier police Sgt. Kevin Ramos.
They seized 6 pounds of marijuana, including 44 plants, at the GreenReleaf Healing Center. The drugs were worth $16,000 to $18,000 on the street, Ramos said.
However, the Whittier owner of a legal medical marijuana dispensary and a spokesman for a national medical marijuana organization criticized the police tactics.
“I’m really surprised that it got to that point,” said Robert Ortiz, director of Whittier Hope Collective, which has a permit from the city.
“A simple letter to stop the operation would have been sufficient,” Ortiz said. “You won’t see a lot of violent angry people within the medical marijuana community. A lot of people are trying to do this for the compassionate side of it.”
Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, which promotes safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research, wouldn’t comment on Whittier’s tactics but said he doesn’t believe an aggressive law enforcement raid is needed.
“I just read the other day that someone was forced from a wheelchair onto the floor,” Hermes said.
“Much of the time police are armed to the teeth and there’s no threat to law enforcement,” he said. “There’s no reason to barge in and smash things.”
Pico Rivera uses letter
Pico Rivera shut down a medical marijuana dispensary this week by issuing a cease-and- desist letter.
Marijuana dispensaries are banned in Pico Rivera.
Assistant City Manager Jeff Prang said a building inspector discovered that EB Family Health Group Inc., 9425 Telegraph Road, was operating as a medical marijuana dispensary.
After an investigation by a building inspector, Pico Rivera’s city attorney was contacted, Prang said.
The dispensary closed after receiving a letter threatening court action.
Los Angeles County typically sends someone from its zoning enforcement staff - often with a sheriff’s deputy for security - to check potential dispensaries out, said Alex Garcia, supervising regional planner for the county.
If necessary, they get an inspection warrant. If the location is an illegal dispensary - the county allows none now - a notice is issued warning of fines of $1,000 a day, Garcia said.
Staff Writers Ruby Gonzales and Hector Gonzalez contributed to this report.
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The Obama Justice Department Is Forcing Legal Medical Marijuana Patients Into the Illicit Market
In February, Oakland City Attorney John Russo asked the Obama Justice Department whether his city’s plan to regulate large-scale medical marijuana cultivation would get the approval of the federal government. As expected, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag responded to Russo with a declarative “No!” Little did patient advocates realize, though, that Haag’s letter would begin a trend resulting in similar U.S. Attorney letters sent to local and state officials in at least 9 different medical marijuana states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
This cynical tactic of sending letters that threaten public officials with criminal prosecution is not new — the Bush Justice Department made similar threats against New Mexico officials in 2007 — but it’s now being used by Obama to obstruct the democratic process and impede the development of local and state laws regulating cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana.
In Montana, more than 8 federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the criminal division of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),executed 26 raids on the same day the senate was due to vote on a bill repealing the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law. The bill was ultimately passed by the legislature, but was later vetoedby Governor Brian Schweitzer. Then, in April, U.S. Attorney Michael Cotter sent a letter to the state legislative leadership urging them not to pass a law that would regulate medical marijuana production and distribution. This federal action contributed to the development of a bill that not only criminalizes this activity but also is expected to drastically and arbitrarily reduce the number of patients in Montana. That bill was not vetoed by Schweitzer and has since become law.
At the end of April, a day before the Washington State legislature put a bill on Governor Christine Gregoire’s desk that would have regulated medical marijuana production and distribution, the DEA raided three distribution centers in Spokane. The raids came two weeks after U.S. Attorney Michael Ormsby sent a letter to Gregoire threatening criminal prosecution if the law was passed. These actions compelled the governor to veto portions of the bill that would have licensed the same facilities raided a day earlier. The Associated Press reported at the time that Gregoire said “she could not approve a measure that might put state workers at risk of federal criminal charges.” Just as in Montana, the bill passed in Washington represented a serious erosion of patients’ rights.
A threatening U.S. Attorney letter sent to the governor of Rhode Island has resulted in the suspension of its recently passed, but not yet implemented, medical marijuana production and distribution law. Thousands of patients have been negatively affected by this suspension. Every time there’s a raid, or a threatening letter is sent to an elected official, hundreds if not thousands of patients are left wondering where they’re going to get their medication. The federal government gets a lot of mileage from saying itdoesn’t target patients, but the reality is that large numbers of us are directly impacted by these federal actions. ASA has argued that such tactics have forced untold patients into illicit markets, thereby jeopardizing their safety and making them more vulnerable to arrest and prosecution.
Fortunately, not all politicians have buckled under federal pressure. The Delaware legislature recently passed and Governor Markell signed a bill that made Delaware the 16th medical marijuana state. In spite of recent threats to its neighboring states, Delaware boldly included a production and distribution plan for patients across the state. In similar defiance of federal intimidation, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin is expected to soon sign into law a bill that will license four medical marijuana distribution sites, despite a Justice Department letter sent to public officials in that state. Patients commend Markell, Shumlin and all of the local and state officials who are standing up to federal interference. We need more of that kind of leadership.
The letters come nearly two years after the Obama Justice Department issued a memorandum in October 2009 to these same U.S. Attorneys, signaling a different policy from the prior administration. Even before becoming president, then-Senator Obama campaigned on the promise that he would not use “Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws.” However, today his administration is not only circumventing these laws, it is undermining the right of cities and states to implement their medical marijuana laws accordingly.
Patients are sick and tired of broken promises and half-measures from the Obama administration. The president must answer for his inconsistent and harmful policies and work with us to address medical marijuana as a public health issue. Americans for Safe Access recently launched its “Sick and Tired”campaign to bring attention to the continued harassment, discrimination, and stigmatization of patients, and the need for a comprehensive federal policy.
Patient advocates are also seizing on a comment made by Governor Gregoire as she was vetoing parts of Washington’s medical marijuana bill. According to the Seattle Times, Gregoire said she would “use her position as chair of the National Governor’s Association to lead an effort to change marijuana federal classification.” This presents a ripe opportunity to take the next step toward addressing medical marijuana as a public health issue. Join us as we work with governors and other key officials from medical marijuana states to take this fight to the next level!
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