Pubdate: Thu, 20 Jul 2000
Source: Times-Standard (CA)
Website: http://www.times-standard.com/front/frontpage.html
Address: 930 Sixth St. Eureka, CA 95501
Email:  2000 The Times-Standard
Fax: 707-441-0501
Author: Carla Martinez & Jacob Lehman

OFFICIALS ISSUE MEDICAL MARIJUANA STATEMENTS

On Wednesday, the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office and Sheriff's
Department publicized written guidelines regarding the medical use of
marijuana. When California voters approved Proposition 215, the medicinal
use of marijuana became legal in the state. However, 215 left it up to law
enforcement agencies and prosecutors to decide how and if to make allowances
for medical marijuana use.

Under federal law, marijuana cultivation and use are illegal.

A qualified medical marijuana patient, the district attorney's statement
said, may possess or cultivate a combination of 10 marijuana plants or two
pounds of processed marijuana without being prosecuted.

"Each jurisdiction has the right to their own enforcement guidelines,"
District Attorney Terry Farmer said. "It's important to us to comply with
the spirit of the law."

Wednesday's statements will not cause any change in the way deputies act in
the field, Sheriff Dennis Lewis said, but will formalize and publicize what
has been the unofficial policy in Humboldt County for years.

Farmer drafted the original policy as a memo for law enforcement agencies
about what medical marijuana cases his office would and would not prosecute.

Law officers can seize plants they believe to be in excess of a person's
needs without pursuing a criminal drug conviction. Lewis said that deputies
must make a judgment call when they encounter a medical marijuana garden,
based on the person's illness and on how much the deputy thinks the plants
will yield.

Lewis expressed hope that the state Legislature will soon pass laws
clarifying the vague wording of Prop. 215, lifting responsibility from his
deputies.

"I have some very fine officers, but I don't think any of them are licensed
to practice medicine," he said.

Lewis said that he did not think that a medical marijuana ordinance drafted
for the Board of Supervisors, by a board-appointed committee, would help the
issue.

"The county does not have any authority to set policy for the Sheriff's
Department," he said.

Lewis was one of the original members of the ordinance-drafting committee,
but stopped attending meetings after differences of opinion.

County Counsel Tamara Falor said that her office is researching the
ordinance's legality. She declined to comment on the ordinance's future
until the research into the thorny and contradictory world of medical
marijuana law was finished.

In its present wording, the ordinance is a more comprehensive and defined
standard than the guidelines made public on Wednesday, Supervisor John
Woolley said.

The ordinance will be discussed by the board next Tuesday morning. The
formal statements made a distinction between medical and recreational use of
marijuana.

"We have more important things to do than prosecute cancer patients for
smoking dope," Farmer said.

Also, the District Attorney's Office takes into consideration a person's use
of medical marijuana when a local, primary-care physician makes the
recommendation.
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