Pubdate: Thu, 06 Oct 2011 Source: Denver Post (CO) Copyright: 2011 The Denver Post Corp Contact: http://www.denverpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122 Author: John Ingold, The Denver Post MARIJUANA ACTIVIST SUES COLORADO IN FEDERAL COURT Say this about marijuana activist and cannabis spiritualist Brandon Baker: The guy is an optimistic fellow. Last week, Baker - a medical-marijuana patient and the founder of a cannabis church called Greenfaith Ministry - filed suit against the state of Colorado, arguing that many of the state's medical-marijuana laws are illegal. That isn't so surprising, given that other cannabis advocates have done the same. What is surprising is the venue Baker chose to file his complaint. The lawsuit (PDF) is filed in federal court, an arena in which all marijuana use and distribution is as legal as a monkey knife fight. Baker is arguing that Colorado's laws regulating medical-marijuana dispensaries - and allowing local governments to ban the businesses altogether - are an unconstitutional violation of medical-marijuana patients' life and liberty. Baker, who is representing himself in the lawsuit, writes: [A] denial of medical care is a deprivation of an interest in liberty or life that implicates rights to due process under U.S. Const. (sic) and Colorado Constitution. . [T]hese vested interests extend to the care-givers who provide medical marijuana patients with medication under the Colorado Constitution. This actually isn't the first time someone has filed a medical-marijuana-related complaint in Colorado federal court. Earlier this year, a Missouri man sued (PDF) two would-be business partners over money he claimed he was scammed out of in a deal to start a dispensary. The man, Mikhail Mats, says he was defrauded out of more than $140,000 by David and Jacob Mazin, two brothers who run the CannaMed chain of medical-marijuana referral clinics. That case was filed in federal court because of the different home states for the plaintiff and the defendants, a common practice. But how a federal judge would have handled the elephant in the case - after all, the business involved was essentially a federally criminal enterprise - is unknown. A few months after filing, Mats voluntarily moved to dismiss the case, indicating a settlement was reached, before anything substantive happened. That's unlikely to happen with Baker's suit, which seeks to have many of Colorado's recently enacted medical-marijuana laws thrown out. In other words, this should get interesting. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.