WASHINGTON - The government is violating federal law by obstructing medical marijuana research, scientists contend in lawsuits seeking action on applications to grow the drug. In lawsuits to be filed today, researchers assert that Washington is refusing to act on legitimate research projects and delaying studies that could lead to marijuana's use as a prescription drug. "There is an urgent need for an alternative supply of marijuana for medical research," said Lyle Craker, director of the Medicinal Plant Program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the main force behind the lawsuits. [continues 339 words]
S.F. Cops Keep Busting Medical Marijuana Growers. One Prosecutor Is Trying to Develop Less-Arbitrary Guidelines. So Where Are the City's Political Leaders on an Issue They Claim to Support? GROWING MEDICAL MARIJUANA in San Francisco these days means never knowing when or if you'll get busted. State law and city policies purport to allow and even encourage growers like Patrick White to cultivate marijuana for the city's estimated 6,000 authorized users and 18 dispensaries. Yet the lack of clear guidelines defining when legal medicines become illegal narcotics has allowed the San Francisco Police Department - led by zealous narcotics officer Sgt. Marty Halloran - to decide when to destroy the garden and jail the gardener. [continues 3153 words]
Proponent Fights To Help Patients SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- What do you do when you sue U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and win? Fifty-one-year-old Valerie Corral, a 5-foot tall great-granddaughter of Italian immigrants, throws back her head laughing, her hands reaching to the clouds, hips wiggling, feet stomping. "It's my happy dance!" she says, throwing her arms around her husband, Mike. She has also planted an acre of marijuana. The decision that lets the crop remain is just one round in a long legal battle. [continues 322 words]
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- What do you do when you sue U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and win? Fifty-one-year-old Valerie Corral, a sinewy 5-foot-tall great-granddaughter of Italian immigrants, throws back her head, laughing, her hands reaching to the clouds, hips wiggling, feet stomping. "It's my happy dance!" she says, throwing her arms around her husband, Mike. She has also planted an acre of marijuana. The decision that lets the crop remain is just one round in a long legal battle. [continues 1104 words]
Santa Cruz -- County officials are seeking doctors' advice on how much medical marijuana is enough. The county Board of Supervisors this week named George Wolfe, a former county health officer, to convene a group of doctors to develop guidelines for the quantity of pot that patients might need for treatment and how much they should be allowed to possess. The group is to report back to the board Aug. 17. A state law passed last year provides some guidelines on how much marijuana, or how many plants, patients or caregivers may keep on hand. But the law allows cities and counties to set their own limits. [continues 348 words]
Thousands of seriously ill Californians who rely on medical marijuana to relieve their pain, restore their appetite, treat their nausea or help with a slew of other symptoms are breathing a little easier this week as a result of a federal court order. In the case of County of Santa Cruz et al. v. Ashcroft, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel issued a temporary injunction barring the federal government from raiding the gardens of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, or WAMM. The ruling allows the collective to resume cultivation free from the fear of further federal prosecution. This relief comes 18 months after a brutal Drug Enforcement Administration raid on WAMM in Santa Cruz, and a year after the collective's seriously ill members filed suit against the federal government to stop the law enforcement harassment. [continues 552 words]
Some 300 foes of marijuana prohibition attended the NORML Conference in Washington, D.C. last week. The crowd seemed younger (at least 50 students) and more soulful than in past years, and the mood more positive, thanks in part to the news from Santa Cruz. On April 21, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel issued an injunction that will allow the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana to cultivate! The ruling stems from a civil suit by WAMM after DEA agents raided their garden in September 2002. Judge Fogel relied heavily on the Raich decision -an October 2003 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordering the feds to respect state law when patients obtain cannabis in ways that don't affect interstate commerce. [continues 1803 words]
Whenever folks over at the U.S. Justice Department were feeling blue about anti-American terrorists, uppity librarians or naked statues standing behind the attorney general, they could always take a deep drag on the anti-drug drug by busting a few terminal cancer patients in California. But now some derned activist federal judge has taken that simple pleasure away from them. Some days it just doesn't pay to be a jack-booted thug. It will be of great comfort to a few people, at least for awhile, to be members of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz, Calif. That's because a federal judge Wednesday ordered the feds to stay away while the dispute over California's medical marijuana law plays out in the courts. [continues 209 words]
Valerie Corral had just finished a conversation with an ill friend Wednesday when the phone rang. This time there was good news, unlike much of what had come over the past two years. In September 2002, her medical marijuana garden was raided by federal agents who confiscated 167 plants. This was followed by months of scrapping together marijuana for the 250-member Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. This week's news: U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel issued the injunction that WAMM had sought barring future raids by the federal government like the one that occurred that September morning at her Davenport garden. [continues 569 words]
Within hours of a decision by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel allowing the Santa Cruz, Ca.-based Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana to resume growing marijuana and distributing it to its patients, Attorney General John Ashcroft took time away from fighting the war on terrorism to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the federal appellate ruling underlying the judge's decision. Judge Fogel's ruling was based on Raich v. Ashcroft which, explains Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, was "a case won by patients Angel McClary Raich and Diane Monson and their caregivers who argued that because their medical marijuana activities were completely non-commercial and conducted entirely within California, the Commerce Clause as well as the Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution give the federal government no right to intervene." [continues 838 words]
A federal judge in California has ordered the federal government not to raid a farm where marijuana is grown for medicinal purposes. ANOTHER court victory by patients seeking relief from pain by smoking marijuana has brought them closer to gaining legal access to the cannabis. While the U.S. Supreme Court considers the government's appeal of a ruling that forbids federal prosecution of patients using marijuana, a judge in California has temporarily blocked the government from raiding gardens where medicinal marijuana is grown. The ruling eventually should be made permanent and extend to Hawaii. [continues 324 words]
In Rebuff to the Bush Administration, a Judge Lifts a Ban on The Growing of Medical Cannabis by a Collective, Pending Trial. A federal court ruling Wednesday will allow the patients of a Santa Cruz medical marijuana collective to at least temporarily begin cultivating and using cannabis without fear of raids by drug agents. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel granted a preliminary injunction to the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana and denied a Bush administration attempt to dismiss a civil case brought by the collective to halt federal interference in their operations. [continues 398 words]
DEA Can't Raid Local Group's Marijuana Garden, Judge Rules A judge ordered the federal government Wednesday to keep away from a California medical marijuana group that grows and distributes cannabis for its sick members. The decision from U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose was the first interpretation of a federal appeals-court decision here last year that ordered the federal government not to prosecute a sick Oakland woman who smoked marijuana with a doctor's recommendation under a 1996 California medical-marijuana law. [continues 827 words]
Ruling Allows Medical Marijuana Distribution A Santa Cruz medical marijuana collective shut down by federal agents two years ago can grow and distribute marijuana for its patients while its civil lawsuit against the federal government is decided by the courts, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose marks the first time a court has granted a medical marijuana organization the right to grow the federally outlawed herb without interference from federal drug agents. [continues 597 words]
Federal Judge Sides With Movement for Its Medicinal Use Adding another puff of hope to the medicinal marijuana movement, a federal judge on Wednesday sided with a Santa Cruz cannabis cooperative, issuing an order allowing pot to be grown for the sick and dying without fear of a raid by federal drug agents. San Jose U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel blocked federal agents from enforcing drug laws against the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Davenport, prompting founders Valerie and Michael Corral to immediately begin planting marijuana seeds for a fall harvest. [continues 445 words]
SAN FRANCISCO, April 21 (AP) -- A judge ordered the federal government on Wednesday not to raid or prosecute a California group that grows and distributes marijuana for its sick members. The decision, by Judge Jeremy Fogel of Federal District Court in San Jose, was the first interpretation of an appeals court's ruling in December that federal prosecutions of medical marijuana users were unconstitutional if the marijuana was not sold, transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes. Nine states, including California, allow medical marijuana use, but the Justice Department contends that federal drug laws take precedence. [continues 438 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - A judge on Wednesday ordered the federal government to keep away from a California medical marijuana group that grows and distributes cannabis for its sick members. The decision from U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose was the first interpretation of a federal appeals court decision here last year that ordered the federal government not to prosecute a sick Oakland woman who smoked marijuana with a doctor's recommendation under a 1996 California medical marijuana law. Fogel ruled that the Justice Department cannot raid or prosecute the 250 members of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, which sued the government after the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2002 raided its Santa Cruz County growing operation and seized 167 marijuana plants. [continues 637 words]
SANTA CRUZ -- Members of an area medical-marijuana cooperative return to federal court today seeking an end to drug raids like the one that decimated their pot garden in September 2002. Joining the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana as plaintiffs in the suit are the city and county of Santa Cruz. They will, once more, ask U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel to outlaw future raids. "We have a lot of reason for optimism," said Mike Corral, who along with his wife, Valerie, is a co-founder of the collective. [continues 505 words]
The 2002 federal raid on the headquarters of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz has faded into the background, but it won't stay there for long, if HOWARD DOVER has any say in the matter. Dover, a native Canadian who is now a Los Angeles standup comic, will perform in Santa Cruz for the second time in a benefit show for WAMM. Dover has invited a number of other comics to appear with him, including ROB BRACKENRIDGE and ROBERT HAWKINS, as well as folksinger DIANE PATTERSON, all to raise awareness and funds for WAMM's ongoing legal defense. [continues 195 words]
