Santa Cruz officials have taken another pot shot at federal drug agents by deputizing two founders of a medical marijuana farm which was raided in September. Valerie and Michael Corral were deputized yesterday on a seven-oh council vote. The vote gave the Corrals the authority to cultivate, distribute and possess medical marijuana. Ben Rice is the Corrals' attorney. He says the council's action means the couple can carry the controlled substance because they are in effect enforcing drug laws. In this case -- the drug law is the city's ordinance regulating medical pot. [continues 73 words]
SANTA CRUZ -- The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to deputize the co-founders of a medical-marijuana club, symbolically making them officers of the city government. That doesn't mean Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana's Mike and Valerie Corral are actual deputies, have any special powers or will "need to show any stinkin' badges," said City Councilman Tim Fitzmaurice. Instead, their status means the council officially sanctions WAMM's activities. Council members said they hope the formal link between the city and the group will increase legal protections for the Corrals, who have not been charged with a crime in connection with a September raid by federal agents on their pot farm, but are wary of future prosecution. [continues 788 words]
Ram Dass Wraps His Expanded Mind Around The Last Of The Truly Taboo Subjects--death And Dying ON A MONDAY afternoon, I pick up the phone feeling horribly nervous. In a minute, I have an interview with Ram Dass--the guy formerly known as Dr. Richard Alpert before he, Timothy Leary and other Harvard faculty experimented with LSD and magic mushrooms and were famously expelled from the university. But while Timothy Leary continued to tune in, turn on and drop out, Alpert became a beloved spiritual luminary who writes bestsellers. [continues 902 words]
Medical Marijuana Pioneer Valerie Corral Talks About Her Struggle's Highs - -- And Lows The medical-marijuana debate is one I've always had a difficult time wrapping my head around. It seems, a priori, to be a nonissue. How is it possible that the government has no problem with doctors prescribing powerful drugs like Percocet, Vicodin, OxyContin, and morphine for folks to take home, but objects to doctors granting permission for very sick patients to grow and smoke a little dope -- even after states vote to allow it? [continues 2290 words]
U.S. Agents Seized Marijuana From Davenport Couple Arguing that drug enforcement agents had no authority to raid a Davenport medicinal marijuana farm, an attorney on Monday asked a federal judge to order the 167 plants be returned to the operators. Gerald Uelmen also asked for the return of a video, a photo album and documents taken during the Sept. 5 raid on a farm run by Michael and Valerie Corral for the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel heard arguments from Uelmen and Mark Quinlivan, a Washington attorney representing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which ordered the raid. The Corrals were never charged with a crime. [continues 392 words]
SAN JOSE - The Santa Cruz couple who ran a medical marijuana farm raided by federal agents in September argued Monday that their pot plants, as well as confiscated videos and photo albums, should be returned to them. Federal prosecutors said they need the seized items as evidence. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said he would make a ruling in a few weeks. Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested Valerie and Michael Corral and cut down the 130 plants they grew for the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. [continues 84 words]
The new front in the nation's drug war came into sharp focus at 7 a.m. on Sept. 5, when loud shouts and stomping woke Valerie Corral at her home north of Santa Cruz, Calif. Suspecting that the intruders weren't ordinary burglars, she snuck out a back entrance and walked around to her front door to tell them to leave. When she opened the door, stunned federal agents in flak jackets trained M-16s on the 50-year-old homeowner. When she asked to see a search warrant, the officers screamed at her to get down. They pushed her to her knees, then forced her to lie face down on the floor. With her hands handcuffed behind her back, an officer pressed his rifle muzzle to the back of her head. [continues 3069 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- Removing a major obstacle to implementation of state medical marijuana laws, a federal appeals court Tuesday prohibited the federal government from cracking down on physicians who recommend pot to their patients. The decision provides a missing link between patients and pot-access laws in states such as California, where marijuana is legal medicine only if recommended by a doctor. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resoundingly rejected a national policy adopted five years ago by the Clinton administration and retained under President Bush. [continues 553 words]
U.S. Can't Punish Physicians Who Recommend Drug A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected one of the U.S. Justice Department's primary legal assaults on medicinal marijuana laws in California and other states, finding it is unconstitutional for federal officials to punish doctors who recommend pot to the sick and dying. The federal government's policy of investigating and threatening to revoke a doctor's license for recommending medicinal marijuana violates the First Amendment and tramples on the doctor-patient relationship, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined. [continues 744 words]
Following A Raid In Santa Cruz, Medical Marijuana Supporters Trot Out An Unlikely Argument: States' Rights. SAN FRANCISCO -- Early in the morning of Sept. 5, Drug Enforcement Administration officials raided a small farm near Santa Cruz, Calif., that had provided marijuana for sick and dying patients under California's 1996 medical-marijuana law, Proposition 215. According to the DEA, the 100 to 200 plants seized at the farm confirmed that large-scale production, distribution and sale of marijuana was taking place, a charge that owners Valerie and Michael Corral deny. The Corrals -- who lead the Wo/men's Association for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) and helped craft a 1992 local ordinance in Santa Cruz that foreshadowed Proposition 215 -- were arrested following the raid and later released without being charged. [continues 1211 words]
As Maine continues to struggle with a medical marijuana distribution system, Valerie Corral -- a woman who has established a successful medical marijuana cooperative, and seen it attacked by John Ashcroft - -- offers some advice Valerie Corral speaks, at Luther Bonney Auditorium, on the USM/Portland campus, October 25. Call (207) 780-4289. The medical marijuana debate is one I've always had a difficult time wrapping my head around. It seems, a priori , to be a non-issue. How is it possible that the government has no problem with doctors prescribing powerful drugs like percocet, vicodan, oxycontin, and morphine for folks to take home, but objects to doctors granting permission for very sick patients to grow and smoke a little dope -- even after states vote to allow it? [continues 2493 words]
Why Waste Time Joining The Feds In Harassing Medical Marijuana Growers? SAN Jose Police Chief Bill Lansdowne has his priorities straight. Hounding people who grow marijuana for AIDS and cancer patients isn't -- and shouldn't be -- one of them. Last week, Lansdowne withdrew his police department's participation in a federal Drug Enforcement Administration task force. In doing so, he sent an important message to the feds: There are far more serious drug problems in our area than medical marijuana. [continues 219 words]
The war on drugs keeps getting bigger and meaner. Just when you think the tide is beginning to turn, someone in charge takes it a step further. What happened in California last month could happen in Washington soon. On Sept. 5, Drug Enforcement Administration agents armed with automatic weapons raided a hospice on the outskirts of Santa Cruz because it grew and used marijuana for its patients, most of them terminally ill. The founder and director, Valerie Corral, who uses marijuana herself to control debilitating seizures as a result of head trauma following a 1973 car accident, was taken away in her pajamas. Suzanne Pfeil, a paraplegic patient suffering from postpolio syndrome, was told to stand up and then handcuffed in bed when she could not. All the plants were destroyed. [continues 747 words]
Citing a "clear conflict between federal and state law," San Jose Police Chief William Lansdowne has pulled his officers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force that raided a medicinal marijuana farm in Santa Cruz County last month. "It's an issue of priority," Lansdowne said. "The problem in California and in San Jose is clearly methamphetamine, and that's where we intend to put our resources." San Jose's four officers and one sergeant on the DEA-led task force have been reassigned to the city's drug unit and to the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement task force. [continues 198 words]
Chief Doesn't Want Them Raiding Pot Clubs San Jose Police Chief William Lansdowne has yanked his officers off the Drug Enforcement Administration task force that raided a Santa Cruz medicinal marijuana club a month ago. Lansdowne said his four officers and one sergeant have better things to do - - - such as tackle the methamphetamine epidemic -- than harass local pot clubs, which are operating within state law. "I think the priorities are out of sync at the federal level," said Lansdowne, who said he agrees the state's voters made the right decision in legalizing marijuana for medical use under regulated circumstances. [continues 417 words]
DEA's Recent Raids on Small Medical Marijuana Cooperatives In California Are Rooted in Politics Just before 7 a.m. on Sept. 5, before the sun had risen over the slope above his house, Mike Corral awakened to the sound of vehicles driving over the narrow gravel road leading to his property. He peeked outside the second-story window and saw five U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, dressed in black combat gear and wielding automatic weapons, marching towards his door. Like an episode out of Cops, the agents busted in the unlocked house and screamed at Corral to hit the floor. "Stay calm, I'm not going to resist, you don't have to do this," he recalls saying before the agents pushed him to the ground, frisked and handcuffed him. [continues 2216 words]
I just finished reading an op-ed in the Sept. 21 New York Times titled "Why I'm Fighting Federal Drug Laws From City Hall." I find it strange that the Santa Cruz mayor's story is newsworthy in The New York Times but not in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. BILL HAY, SOQUEL [end]
Federal drug agents will continue to raid marijuana plots, medicinal and otherwise, the agency's director said in a letter to state Attorney General Bill Lockyer. "As long as marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance, (the Drug Enforcement Administration) will continue its enforcement efforts targeting groups and individuals involved in its distribution," agency head Asa Hutchinson wrote in a Sept. 30 letter. Hutchinson's letter, obtained by the Sentinel, was in response to a Sept. 6 letter from Lockyer in which he criticizes a DEA raid on the Davenport garden of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, an area medical marijuana cooperative. [continues 238 words]
SANTA CRUZ - Santa Cruz County could put any parent in a cannabis conundrum. Voters have embraced medical marijuana. Kids are more likely to abuse pot. Does this cause a gray area for parents? Santa Cruz County voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana, with 74 percent voting to approve Proposition 215 in 1996. That proposition was written in part by Mike and Valerie Corral, who find themselves at the center of the issue after a Sept. 5 raid by federal agents. Drug Enforcement Administration agents uprooted 167 marijuana plants belonging to the Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, which the Corrals co-founded.While medical marijuana generally has been well received in the county, there are concerns in some corners about teen marijuana use. [continues 333 words]
