Some Say Prescription Marijuana Spray Could Defuse A Legal Standoff. Carol Rosenfield hurts. Pain and fatigue smother her, arriving without warning. Sometimes, the 58-year-old West Hollywood woman says, symptoms of her multiple sclerosis strike so hard she feels as if she's melting, "like the Wicked Witch of the West." What she wants - what she says she needs - is Dr. Geoffrey Guy's medicine. On the far side of the Atlantic, Guy and his fledgling British pharmaceutical company are poised to release a prescription drug packed with equal parts potential and controversy. Contained in a tiny spray bottle, the drug developed by GW Pharmaceuticals is named Sativex. Most know it by its street name: marijuana. [continues 1553 words]
Medical Marijuana Advocates Buoyed by December Federal Appeals Court Ruling SANTA CRUZ - On a wall in the back room of her Westside office, Valerie Corral points to pictures of her deceased friends. "She died just a few months after the raid," Valerie says, pointing to a photo on the wall of a woman smoking from a glass pipe. The raid that Valerie refers to, conducted by the Drug Enforcement Agency in September of 2002, shut down the marijuana farm that she and her husband Mike had operated in Davenport. The pictures that now hang in her office, at the Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, include photos of 20 people she says have died since the raid - after the couple could no longer provide marijuana from the farm to those who smoke the drug to help relieve various medical ailments. [continues 1401 words]
San Francisco - A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a congressional act outlawing marijuana may not apply to sick people with a doctor's recommendation in states that have approved medical marijuana laws. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that prosecuting these medical marijuana users under a 1970 federal law is unconstitutional if the marijuana isn't sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes. "The intrastate, noncommercial cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for personal medical purposes on the advice of a physician is, in fact, different in kind from drug trafficking," Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the majority. [continues 766 words]
In a move that emboldens California patients who rely on medicinal marijuana, a federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that those who grow their own crop or get it for free are exempt from a U.S. law that bans the drug. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the arguments of two seriously ill California women, including one from the East Bay, who said their private use in a state that passed a medicinal marijuana law should not make them vulnerable to federal raids. [continues 620 words]
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for physicians to recommend marijuana as part of a patient's treatment, but its decision Tuesday offers no protection for growers and sellers of "medical marijuana." The court decision not to take up the appeal of a federal court ruling on the issue was hailed by medical marijuana proponents as an important step for the nine states that have passed medical marijuana laws. It is seen as an encouragement to a handful of other states to pass similar laws. [continues 651 words]
White House Bid To Punish Physicians Is Rejected Deflecting what might have been a lethal blow to state medical marijuana laws, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a seven-year effort by the White House to punish physicians who recommend the drug to their patients under California law. The justices rejected without comment the federal government's appeal of lower court injunctions that have blocked it from threatening doctors with license revocation and other sanctions for advising pot use. [continues 649 words]
SACRAMENTO - In the seven years since California legalized marijuana as medicine, a vexing question has remained unresolved: How much pot should patients be allowed to possess? A bill that would limit the ill to six plants or a half-pound of pot is headed to the desk of Gov. Gray Davis. But the measure by state Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) has run into opposition from two groups on polar sides of the state's 1996 medical marijuana initiative. The California Narcotics Officers Assn., long opposed to medicinal pot, is staunchly against the bill. On the other side, a hard-core cadre within the deeply divided medical cannabis movement contends that the six-plant restriction is far too tight. [continues 1026 words]
Santa Cruz - Attorneys for an area medical marijuana cooperative will be in federal appeals court Wednesday, seeking return of more than 160 pot plants seized by federal agents in a September 2002 raid. The Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana filed the suit weeks after the raid, seeking return of the plants and other personal items. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel denied the request, except for return of a computer and other personal items that belonged to WAMM co-founders Valerie and Mike Corral. [continues 372 words]
One year after machine-gun toting DEA agents raided WAMM's garden at dawn, destroying the Alliance's 2002 medical marijuana crop, WAMM continues to challenge the notion that feds can invade medical gardens that have been deemed legal under state law. Sure, Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose's federal District Court did acknowledge medical marijuana's benefits, but this was in the context of dismissing the lawsuit that seven WAMM members and the city and county brought against the DEA as a result of the 2002 raid. [continues 127 words]
Advocates Plan Santa Cruz Festival While its lawyers gird for their next round in court, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana is planning a party in the park. Alliance founder Valerie Leveroni Corral said Sunday's WAMMfest -- billed as the "first annual'' -- has two functions: "to share with the community our gratitude for their support'' and "to show how we're regular people.'' But the WAMMfest posters and souvenir buttons make it clear there is a third aspect to it. They show a green ribbon decorated with marijuana leaves and the words, "Remember the Garden.'' [continues 682 words]
Jurist Dismisses Lawsuit But Leaves Plaintiffs A Chance To Amend And Re-File A federal judge has dismissed an effort by the city and county of Santa Cruz and a medical marijuana cooperative to get a court order halting federal raids against California's pot clubs. U.S. Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose wrote he's "acutely mindful of the suffering" patients have demonstrated, "and of the evidence that medicinal marijuana has helped to alleviate that suffering. As it commented at oral argument, the Court finds the declarations of the Patient-Plaintiffs deeply moving." [continues 214 words]
Ruling Says Santa Cruz Cooperative Fails To Show Federal Government A federal judge has dismissed an effort by the city and county of Santa Cruz and a medical marijuana cooperative to get a court order halting federal raids against California's pot clubs. U.S. Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose wrote he's "acutely mindful of the suffering" patients have demonstrated "and of the evidence that medicinal marijuana has helped to alleviate that suffering. As it commented at oral argument, the Court finds the declarations of the Patient-Plaintiffs deeply moving." [continues 213 words]
SANTA CRUZ - Medical-pot advocates say Thursday's U.S. District Court ruling against a local marijuana co-op leaves ailing members vulnerable to more federal raids and prosecution. But lawyers representing the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana say they will appeal the decision. On Thursday, the district court rebuffed the collective's attempt to bar federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents from carrying on more raids like the one last September when 160 plants in WAMM's Davenport pot garden were uprooted and its founders arrested at gunpoint. Charges were never filed against Valerie and Michael Corral. [continues 662 words]
Rules U.S. Drug Laws Prevail Over States In a blow to champions of medicinal marijuana and a key victory for U.S. government regulators, a federal court in San Jose ruled Thursday against restraining U.S. drug agents from raiding a Santa Cruz cannabis co-operative that helps the ill and dying. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel obliquely acknowledged that medicinal marijuana could alleviate pain but asserted that federal drug laws prevailed over the state's 1996 medicinal marijuana initiative. [continues 431 words]
Judge Rules U.S. Laws Prevail Over State's In a blow to champions of medicinal marijuana and a key victory for U.S. government regulators, a federal court in San Jose ruled Thursday against restraining U.S. drug agents from raiding a Santa Cruz cannabis co-operative that helps the ill and dying. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel obliquely acknowledged that medicinal marijuana could alleviate pain but asserted that federal drug laws prevailed over the state's 1996 medicinal marijuana initiative. [continues 430 words]
SANTA CRUZ - Thirty-five years after the "Legalize It" movement caught fire in America, a medical pot collective is throwing a public party in a city park next month. Expect live music, a fortune teller, "Have A Hempy Day" buttons and medical marijuana patients lighting up in a tent. "I remember the music festivals in the 1960s, and even now you can't go to a music festival without a little smoke in the air," said Jean Hanamoto of the local Wo/Men's Alliance For Medical Marijuana, which is staging the Sept. 14 event. "Well, ours will have a little more." [continues 607 words]
A county-operated program to issue identification cards to medical marijuana users was launched this week, and backers hope it will ease concerns of patients and police. The effort is aimed at helping police identify patients and caregivers legitimately using marijuana. County Supervisor Mardi Wormhoudt said the cards mean patients and caregivers will have less to worry about when they possess marijuana for medical use. "People feel very vulnerable," Wormhoudt said. "To add to that burden to people who are already suffering is adding another layer of difficulty that shouldn't be there." [continues 356 words]
With Key Local Backing, A Self-Help Group Aims To Make History In A Rights Lawsuit Against The U.S. SANTA CRUZ -- As another summer day fades, the sick and dying begin to gather. An elderly woman leans unsteadily on her walker. A hip young paraplegic fellow glides his electric wheelchair past a dapper old man clutching a cane. Men wiry with AIDS sidle into folding chairs in the cramped meeting hall. A blind man hunkers at the edge of the throng. There is talk of housing and finances, discussions of dipping health and impending death. [continues 1791 words]
PORTSMOUTH - On Sept. 5, 2002, federal agents swooped down on a clinic, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana operated in Santa Cruz, Calif., pointed automatic weapons at paralyzed and terminally ill patients, destroyed the clinic's records and arrested its operators, Valerie and Mike Corral, leading them off in handcuffs. This despite the passage of Proposition 215 by California voters in 1996, which exempts patients who possess or cultivate marijuana for medical treatment from criminal laws against marijuana use when the drug is recommended by a doctor. The law also exempts physicians who prescribe marijuana from prosecution. [continues 731 words]
