Pubdate: Thu, 17 Dec 2009
Page: Cover story
Source: Monterey County Weekly (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Milestone Communications Inc
Contact:  http://www.montereycountyweekly.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3959
Author: Robin Urevich
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis - Medicinal - United
States)

Elevating The Debate

WHEN WILL MEDICAL MARIJUANA GET THE HIGH SIGN IN MONTEREY COUNTY?

Tall, freckle-faced Daniel Maniscalco swings open the door of his black
1992 BMW and the pungent aroma of fresh Grapefruit Kush and Purple Haze
fills the air.

Maniscalco, 26, runs a fledgling medicinal marijuana delivery service
called Monterey Bay Alternative Agriculture, and this neatly kept compact
car is his mobile office.

On most days, he's on call, iPhone at the ready, or on the road, hauling
green pain relief to customers from Big Sur to Prunedale.

A couple of months ago, Maniscalco hung out a virtual shingle on
Craigslist and has gathered a handful of clients, including a stay-at-home
mom in Prunedale, a Monterey college student and 20-something father in
Pacific Grove.

But Maniscalco, a Pacific Grove High grad, dreams of getting off the road
and opening Monterey County's first medical pot storefront.

"I want to provide medical marijuana patients the medicines their doctors
recommend," he says. Even though Californians with recommendations from
their doctors have a legal right to use the stuff, many in the county have
to travel miles to get it.

Maniscalco is one of hundreds of newly minted entrepreneurs hoping to join
California's green gold rush. Proposition 215 made medical pot legal in
1996. But dispensaries have sprung up like, well, weeds, since the Obama
administration announced this year that it would no longer prosecute
medical marijuana users and sellers who abide by state laws.

California requires medical marijuana facilities to be nonprofit
organizations, but they still make boatloads of money -- as much as
$10,000 a day according to Bob Calkins, who runs a how-to course for
would-be marijuana millionaires at his Cannabis Career Institute in Los
Angeles, where Maniscalco picked up the basics of the trade a couple of
months ago.

The Bay Area's Oaksterdam University, which offers a more comprehensive
13-week course in the history, sale and cultivation of marijuana, is also
turning out hundreds of graduates eager to try their hands at growing the
herb, distributing it or cooking up pot-laced brownies and cheesecakes
while cities and counties scramble to determine how best to handle the
growing industry.

In Monterey County, Seaside and Marina have banned pot dispensaries, while
Salinas has placed a moratorium on them. Neither the county government nor
Monterey County's other cities have any rules in place on how to govern
cannabis clubs.

Maniscalco has had his sights on Sand City where, at an early November
City Council meeting, he rose to the podium to deliver an
attention-grabbing declaration: "I'm Daniel Maniscalco, and I want to open
a medical marijuana dispensary in your town."

Maniscalco shared the spotlight that night with a pack of local Cub Scouts
who picked up honors for their beach clean-up efforts.

Maniscalco says he felt a bit uneasy discussing medical pot in a roomful
of school-aged children, but he is so clean-cut, polite and confident in
the righteousness of his mission that he could pass for an Eagle Scout, or
a troop leader, himself. He says he wants to run a by-the-book operation
that would dispense medical marijuana under 24-hour guard and in keeping
with state law. What's more, he says he's already cut prices in the
nonprofit spirit.

Sand City Mayor David Pendergrass and the City Council were unimpressed.
Within two weeks, they'd proposed an emergency 45-day moratorium on pot
clubs in the city, and voted unanimously to shut Maniscalco out -- at
least for the time being.

"I personally told him, under no uncertain terms, I would not allow it,"
Pendergrass says. "I put it on the agenda because I don't want it in the
city."

Local news cameras immediately descended on Sand City. Although Maniscalco
is a political novice with only a high school education, he appeared calm
and unflappable, telling a reporter: "The mayor -- he's not too friendly
about this and is not supportive at all, so I'm really hoping [for] some
more support from other patients.

If I just open his mind a little bit, it'll make me feel better."

Ever since Maniscalco began to grow into his 6-foot-2-inch frame at 13, he
has suffered from back pain. It has been so severe that he recalls
dragging himself to local hospitals, barely able to walk. For years
doctors prescribed Vicodin and Valium, and even Oxycontin -- heroin in a
pill, as his father, David, calls it.

"They made me feel nauseous and laid me out, and made me incapable of
functioning," Maniscalco says. For years, he'd smoked pot occasionally to
relieve the pain, but six months ago, he got a doctor's recommendation,
and now, he often wakes to a cup of marijuana tea -- equal parts weed and
black tea with lots of cream and sugar -- in the morning and smokes as
needed throughout the day. "I haven't experienced a spasm in my back since
I've been taking it."

But Maniscalco hadn't thought of a career in pot until his father called
one day last spring.

The elder Maniscalco was at home on his Arizona ranch when a CNN program,
blaring from a big screen TV in the background, caught his ear.

"The federal government was no longer going to waste my tax dollars" by
prosecuting medical marijuana buyers and sellers who follow state law,
Maniscalco's dad says. Cartoon-like, a light bulb popped on in his head.
More people would use marijuana, making dispensaries cash cows that could
provide his son the things his father wanted for him -- property and the
means to raise a family.

Plus, he thought, this was a cause Daniel could believe in, and he was right.

Maniscalco thought his dad was onto something.

He plunked down $250 and headed south to Calkin's Cannabis Career
Institute's weekend seminar in L.A., where students ranged from 18 to 70.
The crash course offers business basics as well as tips on growing and
baking, and navigating the still-uncharted legal and regulatory waters in
many California cities.

Entrepreneurship was something Maniscalco had never considered. When he
was younger, he thought he might be a firefighter or a bus driver. "I
always wanted to be everything," he says. As an adult, he taught at his
grandmother's pre-school in Marina, worked for his father, and served as
houseparent for a half-dozen troubled kids at a Prunedale group home.
Between jobs, he'd take off for months at a time to travel the world,
hostelling through Europe and Australia. But these days, he has a newfound
focus.

On a recent sunny Wednesday afternoon, Maniscalco, in polo shirt and
shorts, is at the wheel of his Beemer, with the tools of his trade neatly
stowed in the trunk.

He is fresh from a run to Pacific Grove, where he exchanged a fourth of an
ounce for $85 plus $7.40 in sales tax he'll send off to the state of
California.

Maniscalco has immersed himself in a new world of business registrations,
taxes and regulation. Although he pilots his car as if a DMV examiner were
riding shotgun, in his line of work, Maniscalco still lives on the edge.
If he got pulled over, he would have some explaining to do, given the
pervasive odor inside his vehicle.

No problem, Maniscalco says. "If they're going to take me in, they're
going to take me in=85 I'm not doing anything illegal." By law, he can
carry eight ounces for each of his customers, or "patients," in the
language of the law. That's five pounds, or more than $25,000 worth of
marijuana.

He carries a metal case that opens to reveal several dozen plastic
baggies, each with a neatly printed warning label: "For Medical Use Only.
California Health and Safety Code 11362.5." On this day, Maniscalco
carries Blue Himalayan, a calming cannabis indica, and an energizing
sativa called Purple Haze. The names of the various strains of
Maniscalco's pot, which seem to have time-traveled from the 1960s, along
with the smell of the stuff, make for a surreal scene.

But for Maniscalco, it's all in a day's work. He explains that Purple
Haze, Blue Himalayan and other strains each contain different levels of
THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, so that a user can pick one that
fits her needs.

He's weighed each $40 packet using a small digital scale -- purchased at a
local smoke shop -- that's accurate down to a tenth of a gram.

His two-month-old start-up is barely paying for itself, but Calkins of the
Cannabis Career Institute says he tells students with delivery services
like Maniscalco's to aim for $500 to $1,000 a day in sales.

"You're shooting for maximizing those interactions," he says, adding that
business-wise, selling medical marijuana is no different from peddling
shoes: "It could be any other product.

It's all about customer relations. It's all about creating a brand and
marketing that brand." The market is growing, especially among aging baby
boomers, says Calkins, because many of them are familiar with the
recreational aspects of marijuana and are open to its pain-relieving
possibilities.

Calkins, 46, who runs his own delivery service, is a role model for
Maniscalco. He's the kind of guy who will move a heavy box for a cancer
patient, Maniscalco says, or pick up a loaf of bread for a house-bound
customer.

On the phone from Los Angeles, Calkins takes a long gurgling pause to inhale.

Yeah, he says, in a hoarse croaking voice, he's sampling the product as he
talks.

Calkins began to research how to run a legal pot business, and to teach
others how it's done after years working underground. He began selling pot
in the 1980s, years before it was legalized for medicinal use, to help
break into the music business with his band, Rude Awakening, which ended
its more than 20-year run last July. "I figure I'm going to get to know
everyone in the record industry -- just go infiltrate."

Today, Calkins is at the forefront of California's burgeoning
canna-business. The state Board of Equalization estimates that $200
million in medical marijuana was sold last year, bringing $18 million in
sales tax to government coffers. Profits from dispensaries, training
courses and grow operations fuel activism in the courts and at all levels
of government, including a growing push for marijuana legalization, says
Richard Lee, who runs Oaksterdam University.

Lee reports that he has gathered nearly 700,000 signatures -- more than
enough to qualify to put his Tax Cannabis 2010 initiative on the November
ballot. He's hired self-described Internet hellraisers, Watershed, a San
Francisco-based consulting firm, to build his war chest and plans to spend
up to $20 million on the campaign.

The state legislative analyst estimates passage of the initiative would
mean tens of millions of dollars in savings for local and state government
in incarceration and parole and probation costs, and potentially huge tax
receipts at a time when the cash-strapped state badly needs revenue.

In Oakland, the proprietors of the city's medical marijuana dispensaries
spearheaded a push for a 1.8 percent municipal pot tax, which was approved
by voters last July. It's expected to raise $300,000 for the city next
year.

But none of this activity has convinced tiny Sand City to roll out the
municipal welcome mat for the dispensary Maniscalco envisions.

He has his eye on a neighborhood sandwiched between a strip of beachfront
homes and a jumble of warehouses, shops, and small factories near the Sand
City police department. A California bungalow on Orange Street is just
what Maniscalco has in mind. Ideally, he'd carve out a living space above
the storefront, with 24-hour security, where clients could enter an intake
area, show medical marijuana ID, and proceed to a homey shop to browse all
manner of smokable pot, teas and edibles like butter, honey and baked
goods, along with THC-rich oils and lotions.

Mayor Pendergrass, a retired Army employee who has led Sand City for 31
years, says he thought it might only be a matter of time before medical
pot dispensaries came calling, but emphasizes, "The city is not a
pushover." On the night of the moratorium vote, Pendergrass got support
from Sand City residents who said "not in our town," and an earful from
first-time-ever patient activists like Tammy Jennings.

"I've been a law-abiding, taxpaying, worked-my-whole-life person," says
Jennings, a 50-year-old former office manager who lives in Monterey. She
recalls choking up with emotion as she told council members she was tired
of feeling like an outcast and a "dope fiend" because she uses marijuana
to ease the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Marijuana calms her leg spasms
and helps her sleep, but she says she can't always make the 45-minute
drive to Santa Cruz to get it. "Sometimes my legs aren't working and it
isn't safe to drive, but that's when I need the medicine to relax the
muscles in my legs," she says. "Part of me feels like I'm doing something
wrong, but I have to do it to survive."

Jennings came to the meeting with Carrieanna Hess, a 27-year-old grad
student specializing in vocational rehabilitation, who found out she had
multiple sclerosis five years ago when she was a CSUMB undergrad.

At her small Monterey bungalow, Hess clutches a cobalt blue bong, her
light brown shoulder-length hair falling into her face as she takes a long
drag.

"Being diagnosed with MS is a huge emotional loss," Hess says. "There were
times when I wanted to kill myself, and I know a lot of people with MS who
feel the same way. It's just -- why did this happen to me? How am I going
to handle this? I can't go and walk down the street and get an ice cream
cone anymore."

Hess says pot brings her anxiety down and helps her look at life
differently. "Sometimes if you smoke a sativa, you get giggly," she says.
"You know, laughter is the best medicine."

Not only that, Hess says, but she can smoke, and still get on with her
life -- unlike when she took the laundry list of pharmaceuticals her
doctors prescribed for pain, sleeplessness and depression. "God made
grass, man made booze -- who do you trust?" Hess queries with a
mischievous glint in her eye. "That's what I should have said to [the Sand
City Council]."

"Your heart has to pour out for those who spoke," says Don Orosco, whose
Orosco Group developed the Target shopping plaza and owns a lot of Sand
City property. "But I don't think it's something the community needs.

There could be potential abuses." He adds that it wouldn't be fair to the
nearby cities of Seaside and Marina, both of which have banned
dispensaries.

Orosco, who lives in Carmel, had joined several dozen Sand City dwellers
on a chilly Friday night, many of them clutching cups of cocoa and keeping
an eye on small children as Santa Claus arrived on a fire truck to light a
tall skinny cypress tree next to city hall.

Just before leading the crowd in a spirited rendition of Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer, City Councilman Craig Hubler added that he'd worry
about a medical marijuana facility bringing crime to the community.

Medical marijuana opponents like the California Police Chiefs Association
point to dispensaries -- cash business with rich profits and a high resale
value product -- as easy targets for armed robberies and burglaries. And
with doctors' recommendations for pot arguably easier to score than flu
shots, dispensary opponents argue that they are hang-outs for unsavory
recreational pot-heads.

Ahead of a Dec. 15 vote, in which the City Council extended the temporary
ban for a year, city officials polled residents on the medical pot
question.

Libby Sofer echoed the sentiments of many when she suggested that
Maniscalco establish his dispensary in Monterey's Ryan Ranch, along with
the area's many other medical facilities. But Monterey City Manager Fred
Meurer says he's not welcome. Pot dispensaries aren't permitted under the
city's zoning laws.

Still, Maniscalco is preparing the ground -- literally -- for the day when
his dispensary finds a home. On a recent Wednesday, he headed for the
rolling hills of North County, where a 34-year-old mom is tending his
first crop of 12 seedlings in exchange for the marijuana she uses for pain
associated with Raynaud's disease, a rare disorder that constricts blood
flow to her hands and feet.

As he heads up a narrow gravel road to her property, Maniscalco says,
"This is highly classified. It's definitely not normal business practice
for a grower to show someone where their grow site is." If word gets out,
poachers and thieves, or thrill-seeking high school kids, could make off
with the profits.

Ellen (not her real name) is waiting outside the battered mobile home she
shares with her husband, two daughters, a cat and a 17-year old green
Macaw parrot, JJ, who is just learning to talk. She is rail-thin with long
reddish hair and a soft, high-pitched voice.

She leads Daniel behind the house to the shed where a dozen tender green
shoots -- the tallest is about 8 inches high -- bask in the glow of a
light specially designed to mimic the sun's rays. If all goes well, the
plants will begin to flower in four weeks.

A month after that, Maniscalco could harvest as much as four and a half
pounds, worth more than $20,000.

With local cities slamming doors in his face, Maniscalco is considering a
guerrilla-style move into Monterey. He would rent a storefront, and
challenge city officials to take him to court if they want him out. A
similar battle is underway in Gilroy, where a Santa Clara County judge
this week rejected the city's request for a preliminary injunction against
a rogue dispensary, MediLeaf, that opened without a permit.

Meantime, many municipal eyes are fixed on the Fourth District California
Court of Appeals, which is set to decide in less than a week whether the
city of Anaheim was within its rights when it permanently banned medical
marijuana dispensaries. "It's fair to say that cities are watching very
closely," says former Napa City Attorney Tom Brown, of the San Francisco
law firm Hanson and Bridgett, which represents a number of cities in land
use and other matters.

"We're pretty confident," says Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for
Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group.

The state law was passed to allow pot clubs to operate and to apply the
law uniformly across the state, Elford says. "If you have a bunch of
localities in Southern California that ban dispensaries, and they're
allowed to operate in Northern California, it seems that that offends both
of those purposes, and that's why we're confident the court will rule with
us."

If the court finds Anaheim's ban illegal, more than 100 California cities
with moratoria or bans on medical marijuana facilities could be forced to
change course and allow them to operate.

"It's an issue," says James Heisinger, Sand City's attorney. "My
recommendation is to continue the temporary ban until people can better
understand the rules.

Sand City doesn't have the resources to be the lead horse on this."

As for Maniscalco, he promises he'll likely move on to another Monterey
County city -- this time with a lawyer by his side so, as he says, he
won't be viewed as just a 26-year old opportunist who wants to sell pot.
"This is my legal right," he says. "I'm going to fight this in court, and
I'm going to win."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Doug