Pubdate: Sun, 21 Feb 2010
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2010 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Vincent Carroll
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Chris+Bartkowicz
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?253 (Cannabis - Medicinal - U.S.)

A PLACE FOR POT GROWERS

The e-mail landed in my inbox last Saturday morning, shortly after 
Coloradans learned of a federal raid in Highlands Ranch on a medical 
marijuana growing operation. It was a plea from another growera 
fellow whose operation I'd visited a few days before.

"Please don't use my name or our location," my correspondent wrote. 
"I don't believe it is a good idea to rub what we are doing in the 
feds' faces."

No kidding. Jeffrey Sweetin, the Drug Enforcement Administration's 
agent in charge of the Denver office, seems to take public 
declarations by medical marijuana growers as a personal affront. When 
Chris Bartkowicz invited KUSA-TV to his suburban home and clownishly 
bragged about how much money he hoped to make from his basement pot 
garden, Sweetin decided it was time to show Coloradans who was boss. 
His agents swooped in and arrested Bartkowicz, who has been charged 
with distributing illegal drugs and could face up to 40 years in a cell.

"It's not medicine," Sweetin insisted after the Feb. 12 raid -- 
except that in Colorado under certain conditions, marijuana is 
medicine, as declared by voters who put that judgment in their 
constitution. If Sweetin wishes to sneer at the opinion of a majority 
of his neighbors, so be it. But federal officials are usually 
well-advised to disagree respectfully when most law-abiding citizens 
dispute Washington's imperial wisdom.

Sweetin was on a roll, however, and would not bite his tongue.

"Technically, every dispensary in the state is in blatant violation 
of federal law," he said. "The time is coming when we go into a 
dispensary, we find out what their profit is, we seize the building 
and we arrest everybody. They're violating federal law; they're at 
risk of arrest and imprisonment."

What does he mean, "We find out what their profit is"? What business 
of Sweetin's is the profit so long as a dispensary sells to patients 
on the state registry and is able to document as much? Every 
dispensary that complies with those standards meets the rules laid 
down by Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden last year when he 
said federal agents should not target such establishments.

If Bartkowicz gets 40 years, or any years, it will be a miscarriage 
of justice given the selective manner in which the Justice Department 
has chosen to enforce federal law -- unless, of course, it can be 
shown he was selling on the black market, too. To add to the 
travesty, Bartkowicz's days as a grower were almost certainly 
numbered anyway, since state lawmakers will never authorize large 
growing/dispensing operations in residential neighborhoods when they 
decide in upcoming weeks on a regulatory framework. Nor should they.

The marijuana growing facility I visited is not in a residential 
neighborhood. It is in an industrial corridor in Denver, in a 
building without so much as the tiniest sign to betray its mission. 
The owner says his landlord, banker and insurer know what he's doing, 
as does the city itself. "I don't come out of the marijuana culture," 
he told me. "I come out of the business culture" -- specifically, a 
privately held real estate firm that was liquidated during the recent 
housing debacle.

"I think marijuana should have a place in our society but it 
shouldn't be everywhere," he added. He objects, for example, to one 
of his residential neighbors growing marijuana.

"I don't want this guy growing marijuana in his basement near my 
kids' school. And I do believe the people of Colorado are better off 
buying marijuana from the likes of me than they are buying it from 
the Mexican drug cartels or stuff grown in basements around town, by 
guys like my neighbor."

The owner and an employee grow four different varieties at any given 
time, although they keep on hand a total of 20 strains in the form of 
"mother plants." The hydroponic gardening method relies upon an 
infusion of nutrients, bright lights and even a boost of carbon 
dioxide to enhance the growth rate.

So where does this marijuana go? My host brandished a sheaf of papers 
representing "dozens" of patients for whom he is the official 
caregiver. And since he isn't permitted to operate a retail 
dispensary in an industrial zone, he says, he takes the drug to them.

If we're going to allow medical marijuana in Colorado, doesn't this 
sort of growing operation -- efficient, secure and subject to 
potential inspection by government officials -- make sense? In recent 
months, I've come to believe that any scheme to regulate medical 
marijuana ought to ensure that it is produced right here, mainly by 
serious authorized growers, rather than provided by a mix of local 
amateurs and blood-soaked kingpins.

To be sure, hundreds and maybe thousands of so-called patients are 
gaming this state's medical marijuana rolls to obtain a recreational 
drug. That's why lawmakers need to approve regulations that limit 
(they can't eliminate) the abuse. I've communicated with too many 
credible patients, however, to meekly accept Sweetin's dictum that 
marijuana doesn't qualify as medicine.

Consider the plight of Cathy Donohue, a former Denver city 
councilwoman whom I've known for nearly 30 years. Some years ago she 
had her lumbar disc removed, as well as parts of two others. "I wore 
an iron and plastic brace for three years and have worn elastic 
braces with pieces of steel stays in them since then," she tells me. 
"Over time, the effectiveness of the drugs I was using for pain 
relief became less effective."

A few months ago, her frustration prompted her to apply to the state 
registry and eventually to try a marijuana tincture, "which is a 
syrupy liquid," for pain relief. The upshot? "It has lessened my pain 
so significantly that I pray the legislature will not make it too 
difficult for people like me to buy it."

I realize that the scientific verdict -- as opposed to the verdict by 
anecdote -- remains out as to the effectiveness of marijuana for pain 
relief, at least as compared to other, more readily available drugs 
that don't exist in a legal twilight zone. But so long as suffering 
patients like Donohue swear by marijuana and prefer the dispensary 
model of acquiring it, the state ought to find a responsible way to 
accommodate them.

Sweetin, meanwhile, might consider reserving his tough guy talk for 
genuine threats to public safety. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake