SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- The city and county of Santa Cruz has sued Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Drug Enforcement Administration, demanding that federal agents stay away from a farm that grows marijuana for sick and dying people. "This is an opportunity for us to stand behind the people in our community who are the most needy," said Santa Cruz Mayor Emily Reilly. "This is what we do well in Santa Cruz." The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose, comes in response to a DEA raid last September at a small pot farm located on a quiet coastal road about 15 miles north of town. Agents uprooted about 165 plants and arrested the owners, Valerie and Michael Corral. [continues 552 words]
Today the city and county of Santa Cruz, along with six patients, will file suit in federal district court against Attorney General John Ashcroft, "drug czar" John Walters and acting Drug Enforcement Administration honcho John Brown to prevent them from carrying out future raids on a local medical marijuana garden. The suit is unique in several respects and should raise enough substantive issues to prevent the federal officers who raided the garden last September from future aggression against sick and dying people. [continues 266 words]
SANTA CRUZ -- An area medical-marijuana cooperative is fighting the feds with a little help from its friends. The Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana plans to sue the federal government Wednesday -- and the city and county of Santa Cruz are joining in the lawsuit. The suit, which has been planned for months, is expected to be filed in federal court in San Jose following a 10 a.m. press conference at the Santa Cruz County Government Center. The suit, which has ramifications for all medical marijuana groups in the Golden State, will name Attorney General John Ashcroft, federal drug czar John Brown and acting Drug Enforcement Administration chief John Walters. [continues 520 words]
SANTA CRUZ - An area medical-marijuana cooperative is fighting the feds with a little help from its friends. The Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana plans to sue the federal government Wednesday - and the city and county of Santa Cruz are joining in the lawsuit. The suit, which has been planned for months, is expected to be filed in federal court in San Jose following a 10 a.m. press conference at the Santa Cruz County Government Center. The suit, which has ramifications for all medical marijuana groups in the Golden State, will name Attorney General John Ashcroft, federal drug czar John Brown and acting Drug Enforcement Administration chief John Walters. [continues 520 words]
Santa Cruz Seeks Halt To U.S. Raids On Medicinal Pot In what backers of medicinal marijuana say is a legal first, the city and county of Santa Cruz are planning to sue the federal government to stop it from raiding pot collectives. The suit is expected to be filed Wednesday in San Jose and to seek an injunction against raids such as the one the Drug Enforcement Administration staged in September against the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), near Davenport. [continues 537 words]
In hopes of stopping federal agents from again raiding a farm that provides marijuana to sick and dying people, Santa Cruz officials said they will file a lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Attorneys representing the city and county of Santa Cruz, as well as seven medical marijuana users, said Monday they plan to file the papers Wednesday in San Jose federal court. "The city of Santa Cruz wants to prevent raids on medical marijuana. This is a public health issue to this community," said Santa Cruz City Attorney John Barisone on Monday. [continues 439 words]
In the wake of federal agents' widely publicized raid on a Santa Cruz-area medical marijuana operation, U.S. Rep. Sam Farr is introducing a bill Thursday to legalize medical need as a valid defense in federal prosecutions. The bill's co-sponsors are two congressmen rarely found on the same side of an issue -- Massachusetts liberal Democrat Barney Frank and Huntington Beach conservative Republican Dana Rohrabacher. The bill by Farr, a Carmel Democrat, applies only to federal trials in states that have passed laws allowing the distribution and use of marijuana, under a doctor's prescription, for medical use. [continues 204 words]
In the wake of federal agents' widely publicized raid on a Santa Cruz-area medical marijuana operation, U.S. Rep. Sam Farr is introducing a bill today to legalize medical need as a valid defense in federal prosecutions. The bill's co-sponsors are two congressmen rarely found on the same side of an issue -- Massachusetts liberal Democrat Barney Frank and Huntington Beach conservative Republican Dana Rohrabacher. The bill by Farr, a Carmel Democrat, applies only to federal trials in states that have passed laws allowing the distribution and use of marijuana, under a doctor's prescription, for medical use. [continues 133 words]
Six months after the DEA raided their land and left the threat of incarceration and forfeiture hanging over their heads, medical marijuana activists Valerie and Michael Corral are making plans for the future. It's not easy to find the way to WAMM's garden. First, someone has to tell you where it is--and for them to tell you where it is, you have to earn that someone's trust. Then you have to climb a long and winding road. And when you finally round the last bend in this rite of passage, you don't even get the skunky scent of marijuana to let you know that you've arrived. [continues 2389 words]
Medical marijuana users and growers in California could cite state law as a defense against federal prosecutors who criminalize their actions, under a bill planned by three federal lawmakers. U.S. Reps. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, and Lynne Woolsey, D-Petaluma, plan to co-sponsor the bill next month with Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, an Orange County Republican. The proposed legislation comes in the wake of stepped-up federal raids on medical marijuana gardens over the past year, including one at a Santa Cruz County cooperative last September. [continues 386 words]
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- The line began forming 45 minutes before the doors to the meeting hall opened, with those who could stand on their own making way for those with wheelchairs, walkers, crutches and canes. A favorite weekly ritual, small talk and political debate, had barely started before word of an unexpected death began to spread. As the news rippled through the line, nearly everyone was shaking. "I thought I'd go long before she did," a gray, twig-skinny man of late middle age said with a cough. [continues 1077 words]
In California, Prop. 215 was passed in 1996, making it legal for people suffering from AIDS, cancer and other serious diseases to use marijuana if they have a doctor's prescription. But since 9/11, the war on drugs has been subsumed by the war on terrorism. In the last year, with the rationale that the drug trade may fund terrorism, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency has taken action against more than 35 medicinal marijuana patients, cooperatives and providers in California. The most recent incident in September pitted Santa Cruz pot growers Michael and Valerie Corral, who run the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, against federal agents with assault rifles and ended up with City Council members handing out joints on the steps of City Hall in defiance. [continues 558 words]
What should law enforcement officers do, if they find a bunch of towering marijuana plants growing in your backyard? A) Destroy all the plants and arrest you on sight? B) Destroy only some of the plants, if you can prove that you really are a medical marijuana patient? C) Count and photograph the plants, take some samples, and ask you to show a medical marijuana recommendation, ASAP? Sheriff's deputy Kim Allyn says C is the preferred option in liberal ol' Santa Cruz County. (Let us not forget that it was machine gun-toting feds, not the Sheriff's Department, that whacked WAMM's 167 plants back in September 2002.) [continues 565 words]
"House Republicans Thursday unveiled a package of bills to combat drug abuse and vowed to make America virtually drug-free by 2002."- Reuters, May 1998 Welcome to America, 2002, Land of the Virtually Drug-Free where President George Bush insists that casual drug users are financing terrorism, while his niece is caught with crack cocaine in drug rehab. Where one person is arrested approximately every 44 seconds on a marijuana charge. Where 77% of Texas drug convictions are found to involve less than one gram of a drug. [continues 3852 words]
S.C. Mayor Made National Splash About Iraq and Pot As mayor of Santa Cruz, Christopher Krohn faced the national media to speak out for medical marijuana and rally against a U.S. war on Iraq. Every time he faced the TV cameras -- and millions of viewers -- his City Hall answering machine lit up. People cheered and sneered. One national pundit, replying to Krohn's comments, snapped back: "Don't smoke pot. Smoke Saddam." It was a brief bit of national fame for Krohn, a soft-spoken mayor who seemed genuinely befuddled by all the fuss. But he also made a stir locally. [continues 397 words]
Raid Reinvigorates WAMM, Medical Pot Debate DANENPORT -- Sept. 5 was a nightmare for Valerie and Mike Corral. Just before dawn, federal agents stormed their Davenport-area home, ordering them and friend Suzanne Pfeil to the floor. In the hours that followed, about 167 marijuana plants the Corrals say were destined for members of the Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana would be plucked from the ground and the Corrals would find themselves in a federal jail. The raid drew national publicity and put Santa Cruz front and center on the media map for two weeks, reigniting the national debate over medical marijuana and whether states have the power to enact laws the fly in the face of laws adopted by the federal government. [continues 770 words]
On Dec. 4 the Marijuana Policy Project - the advocates behind a number of November's failed drug-reform ballot initiatives - filed a formal complaint with the federal Office of Special Counsel, calling for the ouster of drug czar John Walters, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In the three-page complaint, the MPP alleges that Walters was in "gross violation" of both federal and Nevada state law when he traveled to the Silver State in October to campaign against Question 9 - a sweeping drug-reform initiative that would have both decriminalized marijuana possession and provided for the drug's legal sale. The MPP charges that Walters inappropriately acted in his official capacity to affect the fate of the defeated ballot initiative - a clear violation, the group says, of the 1939 Hatch Act, which regulates the political activities of government officials and employees. [continues 706 words]
Fodor's 2002 described Santa Cruz as "a haven for those opting out of the rat race" and "a bastion of 1960s-style counterculture." But since housing prices aren't stuck in a '60s time warp, who can opt out of even the hamster wheel of life? And with the City Council set to regulate that holiest cow of Santa Cruz counterculture--the street performers--will Fodor have to classify SC as "no longer nearly so weird?" Not if BOOKSHOP SANTA CRUZ owner NEAL COONERTY can help it. Coonerty, who says the current council's decision to reduce limits from 14 feet to 10 feet "is a fairly good compromise," is selling "Keep Santa Cruz Weird" T-shirts and stickers at his bookstore. [continues 948 words]
A Santa Cruz couple backed by civic leaders after federal drug agents busted their medical marijuana operation have earned a new distinction. They've been named city deputies. In a direct affront to the federal government, the City Council voted unanimously this week to deputize Mike and Valerie Corral, co-founders of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, and authorized them under city law to cultivate, distribute and possess marijuana for medicinal purposes. "We're just trying to give them a little bit more support and legitimacy," Vice Mayor Scott Kennedy said Thursday. "We don't support drug trafficking. We don't support marijuana. But we do support what they're doing for the terminally ill and terribly suffering." [continues 533 words]
Valerie and Michael Corral, the founders of a medicinal marijuana farm that was busted in early September, are now Deputy Valerie Corral and Deputy Michael Corral by order of the Santa Cruz City Council. Taking another pot shot at the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the council voted 7-0 Tuesday to give the Corrals the "authority to cultivate, distribute and possess medical marijuana." The Corrals' attorney, Ben Rice, maintains that the "deputy" status allows the Corrals to carry a controlled substance because they are enforcing local drug laws -- in this case, the city of Santa Cruz's ordinance regulating the way medicinal marijuana can be distributed. [continues 155 words]
