crossposted to nothing, because I only blog here. Huffington won't pay me!
In Last Night's Friday News dump, WA Gov Gregoire made her move. In Overnight News Digest, we were discussing how this Democratic Governor was disingenuously using the DOJ as political cover for threatening veto of the legislation. Many activists are asking questions not only about the DOJ, but also about Gov. Gregoire. [She has fewer political problems to battle than POTUS, it's worth pointing out]
The ACLU has called shenanigans. Also, a simple Google search shows that this is NOT the first time Gregoire has misled the public on this issue....in Washington, no less, where a state-approved medical cannabis law was passed 13 years ago. Municipal govts, activists, and law enforcements agencies were looking to this bill as a way to regulate the statewide boom in dispensaries.
56% of Washingtonians, according to Survey usa, supported re-legalization 14 months ago. The number has probably edged higher, given the trendlines on this issue.
Seattle's only daily newspaper says: Legalize It.
Every Member of Seattle's Legislative Delegation Goes on the Record in Favor of Legalizing Pot [that's what courage looks like ]
Sweet democracy on a stick. As of yesterday evening, every member of Seattle legislative delegation to Olympia—all ten representatives and all five senators from the 34th, 36th, 37th, 43rd, and 46th Districts—had gone on the record to say that they support taxing, regulating, and legalizing marijuana. They join every elected official at City Hall (the mayor, the city attorney, and all nine members of the city council) and King County Executive Dow Constantine.
However, a bill in the state legislature that would have done just that (and probably been threatened with veto) died this past month.
More below the DK4 fold...
Did Gregoire even listen to anyone besides the agents at the DOJ that she dragged into this debate? Not to mention the elephant in the room: the DOJ has reneged on its verbal promise, via Holder and Obama, to stop raiding clinics/growers across the country.
State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, a prime sponsor of the legislation, said she was disappointed.
"Personally, I have a very difficult time envisioning federal agents coming to arrest and try to prosecute state employees who are sitting in office buildings processing licensing applications," she said. "I can't fathom that would happen."
"She's making a mistake," said Morgan Fox, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project. "The letter from the U.S. attorneys says that they can prosecute, not that they will prosecute. In Maine, in Rhode Island, in New Jersey, those states all went ahead and set up dispensary system. They haven't received any threats or reaction from federal law enforcement."
It's time for Gregoire to sit down with her colleagues, and get either this bill or something within same framework passed and signed.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington is urging state senators to ignore Gov. Chris Gregoire's threat to veto a bill that would set up a regulated medical marijuana dispensary system.
The House and Senate have passed legislation to license dispensaries.
But after a warning from federal prosecutors of arrest liability for employees who break federal law, Gregoire said she'd veto legislation that requires state workers to implement a licensing system.
The legislative director of the ACLU says the federal government has never prosecuted anyone who complies with state laws that license and regulate medical marijuana.
-snip-
He says Washington residents want the state, and not the federal government, to make medical marijuana laws.
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/...
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Supporters of the bill said the letter is no reason to kill the legislation. It is similar to ones sent out by U.S. attorneys in other states that allow medical marijuana, and contains no new information about federal drug-control policy, said Kathleen Taylor, executive director of the ACLU of Washington.
"It looks like a threat, but it hasn't played out in other states with medical-marijuana dispensaries on the books," she said. "The feds have to say what they've said, but it's all theoretical."
Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, the prime sponsor of the bill, said she was encouraged that the measure could still be passed after talking with Gregoire on Thursday evening. She said legislative staffers were working on alternatives. "We're looking at a brand new approach," she said, without elaborating.
-snip-
In addition to legalizing dispensaries, the bill would grant patients strong new protections from arrest and prosecution, a provision long sought by patient advocates. It also would allow community marijuana gardens for authorized patients.
If the Legislature were to rewrite it, one alternative could be to require dispensaries and growers to be nonprofits. But the Internal Revenue Service requires an organization to have a lawful purpose to qualify for nonprofit status.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law and cannot be prescribed because it, along with LSD and heroin, is classified as a Schedule I drug.
Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has a largely hands-off approach to medical-marijuana patients. An October 2009 memo, issued shortly after Attorney General Eric Holder took over, says patients who were in "clear and unambiguous compliance" with state laws were not a department priority.
-snip-
By some estimates, at least 129 dispensaries have sprouted statewide in the past year and a half, leaving cities and police uncertain whether to crack down on what appear to be illegal sales or to allow much broader access for sick patients who struggle to grow their own, legal medicine. As a result, enforcement varies by city, creating pressure on the Legislature to act.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/...
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Activist Steve Sarich of the group CannaCare pointed out a glaring flaw in Gov Gregoire's claims to the public about state employees facing prosecution, in addition to all of the other complaints quoted above in this diary.
CannaCare, a medical marijuana activist group in Washington state, is calling Governor Chris Gregoire "a liar" for claiming state officials could be arrested by federal agents if she signs a bill that would legalize medical marijuana dispensaries in the state.
"Under most circumstances, this would be considered a pretty brash statement," Sarich says in the release. "Frankly, if she wasn't an attorney, and the former Attorney General of the State of Washington, it might very well be. The fact is that she was the Attorney General of a state that has had a medical marijuana law for over a decade and has had to grapple with state versus federal law issues on numerous occasions."
"She can hardly claim ignorance of the federal statutes," Sarich said.
Sarich points to what he says is an applicable section of federal law which provides clear protection from prosecution of any duly authorized state employees in Washington
Here is the text of the statute in a screen-shot, rather than .pdf
Sarich seems to oppose the current bill, and I found a comment he made as elaboration in the posted story above:
When this debaucle finally plays out and, hopefully, the bill is dead, we can start writing really good legislation....and it won't come from the ACLU. We need regulation and we need licensing, but it needs to be common sense driven and not jobs program for the DOH that will cost the taxpayers $11,000,000. We also need to push for self-regulation as an industry. If we can establish standards and practices on our own, that actually work for everyone, including the state, this battle will be half won. I'll be working on that immediately after this session ends.
We need to introduce a bill in the 2012 session that will force the rescheduling of marijuana based on the actual medical and scientific evidence. Then once it's rescheduled on a state level, compel the State AG to inform the Feds that they must now reschedule it Federally because it now has accepted medical value "in the United States". We currently have two conflicting laws; RCW 69.50 that says that marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug with no medical value, and RCW 69.51A which not only says it has medical value, but states numerous conditions for which it has medical value. You can't have it both ways.
Rescheduling marijuana out of Schedule 1 has to be a goal in the next session so that we can quit hearing the tired excuses about it "being illegal Federally". We can and should stop that. The State of Washington can be the spear head for that effort.
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As to the link above, and reference, to Gov Gregoire lying in the past (2008 to be exact), here's some block text from that link:
I've been in communication with several people who were at these workshops and they can easily refute the Governor's claims here. One of them is third year UW medical student Sunil Aggarwal, who has done research and contributed to a peer-reviewed article on medical marijuana dosing. You can see him speaking at the Seattle workshop right here:
Some good blog work done here, more:
Aggarwal also sent me this list of three peer-reviewed papers on dosing:
Aggarwal SK, Kyashna-Tocha M, Carter GT. Dosing Medical Marijuana: Rational Guidelines on Trial in Washington State. Medscape General Medicine.2007;9(3):52. Epub 2007 Sept 11.
Carter GT, Weydt P, Kyashna-Tocha M, Abrams DI. Medical marijuana: rationalguidelines for dosing. IDrugs. 2004;7:464-470.
Russo E, Mathre M, Byrne A, et al. Chronic cannabis use in the compassionate investigational new drug program: an examination of benefits and adverse effects of legal clinical cannabis. J Cannabis Ther. 2002;2:3–57.
Contrary to Gregoire's claims, written testimonies were submitted to the workshops by Dr. Gregory Carter (here) and Dr. Ethan Russo (here). In addition to this testimony, several nurses also spoke.
An even bigger lie is about law enforcement officials not being present. At the Vancouver workshop, members of the Clark-Skamania Drug Task Force were present and even spoke. At the Yakima workshop, Yakima County Prosecutor Ron Zirkle was in attendance, but did not testify. The Governor is making it appear as if members of law enforcement and the medical community were left out of the process. They weren't. In addition, the law enforcement officials who did show up and testify (in Vancouver, at least) said that setting the limits shouldn't be up to them, but instead up to the medical professionals.
http://www.reload.ws/...
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For all of the trolls and prohibitionists who support Cannabis Prohibition, here's a tribute to the fine work that you're a part of:
After more than six years of litigation, and three years of appeals for manufacturing and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cannabis, Dr. Marion "Mollie" Fry and her husband of 25 years, civil attorney Dale Schafer, attended a hearing at the US courthouse in Sacramento Monday week, in which their bonds were revoked and they were given a the date of May 2 to surrender to serve five-year federal prison terms.
According to Schafer, the couple had never grown more than 44 plants in a given year. A little known fact, he explained, is that under federal law more than 100 plants grown in a five year period, accumulatively, is cause for the mandatory five-year sentence, overriding state laws.
Dr. Fry, who had gone through a radical mastectomy just three years prior, had made the decision to grow her own medicine, medicating through her illness, surgery and continued to medicate from myriad complications from chemotherapy until the arrest. Schafer suffers from hemophilia and failed back syndrome, is under constant care, and had also medicated with cannabis legally.
According to Fry and Schafer, prior to the arrest they had conferred numerous times with local officials, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, and El Dorado County Sheriff's Detectives Timothy McNulty and Robert Ashworth, regarding the legality of their cannabis production for their own use and for Fry’s patients.
The judge wouldn’t allow any medical evidence. They wouldn't let us tell the jury I was sick, or that I was a doctor," Fry said. "They wouldn’t allow that I was helping sick patients. Ironically, two years before the raid, local authorities asked me to tell them who of my patients were 'really' sick, and who wasn't." I told them it wasn't my job to police my patients, and that everyone who came to me had legitimate health issues. They have treated us like criminals."
Fry's lineage includes seven generations of doctors. Family notables include her grandfather, Dr. Francis Marion Pottenger, celebrated for being at the forefront of curing tuberculosis in the early 1900s, and founding the field of internal medicine in the process.
Her grandmother studied under Carl Jung in the 1950s, founding a Jungian institute in Houston in the 1960s, while her mother also became a physician in the 1950s.
"When I was young my mother told me I could do whatever I choose to do with my life. She told me the United States of America is a free country," Fry explained. "But, I was outspoken on this topic."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/...
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If you've made it this far, congrats. That was a long one. Thanks for reading.
-ctb