Pubdate: Mon, 22 Sep 2008
Source: Summit Daily News (CO)
Copyright: 2008 Summit Daily News
Contact: http://apps.summitdaily.com/forms/letter/index.php
Website: http://www.summitdaily.com/home.php
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/587
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

CU STUDENT CAUGHT IN MEDICAL-MARIJUANA DEBATE

DENVER (AP) - A University of Colorado at Boulder student who is a 
medical-marijuana cardholder expects campus police on Monday to 
return marijuana that they had confiscated from him.

CU officials said student privacy laws kept them from discussing the case.

Edward Nicholson had threatened a lawsuit after he said campus police 
confiscated less than 2 ounces of pot from his dorm room.

Nicholson, 20, said he was holding the drug for his 23-year-old 
brother, a chronic-pain sufferer. State law allows marijuana to be 
used if recommended by a doctor for sufferers of debilitating medical 
conditions.

Patients' caregivers must carry state-issued medical-marijuana cards. 
Nicholson is a cardholder, he said, because he says pot is easier to 
buy in Boulder than in Aurora, where his family lives.

Nicholson said that after campus officers smelled pot coming from his 
dorm room last winter, campus authorities threatened to suspend him 
for a semester, to commit him to community service and drug and 
alcohol testing, and have him write a paper about the harmful effects 
of the drug on his schooling.

After Nicholson's lawyer Robert Corry threatened a lawsuit, CU 
officials abandoned the case.

Nicholson now lives off campus.

CU officials revised their policies this fall to ban students from 
storing marijuana in their dorms, even if they are medical marijuana 
cardholders. However, first-year students can be released from the 
on-campus residency requirement if they are cardholders, said CU 
lawyer Jeremy Hueth.

There are 1,955 cardholders in Colorado, according to last year's 
statistics from the state health department.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said in response to the CU 
case that the medical-marijuana law has become a "front for 
widespread marijuana distribution."

"The proponents of these laws make them intentionally ambiguous, 
causing significant problems for law enforcement in Colorado and 
elsewhere," he said Friday.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom