Gilbert's Green Cross Patient Center Assists Applicants With Recommendations, Filing

Although the status of medical marijuana remains a bit hazy in Arizona, facilities that help people apply for patient cards continue to spring up, including in Gilbert.

The Green Cross Patient Center opened in town nearly two months ago in a small strip mall on the southern side of Baseline Road, between Gilbert and Lindsay roads.

Owner and Director Charles "Chuck" Hall made it clear that the facility is not a dispensary and that there is no marijuana on site.

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What began as an ordinary traffic stop in Tempe instead turned into a 15-month drug trafficking investigation and the arrest of 203 suspects linked to the notorious Sinaloa cartel.

But after seizing $7.8 million in cash and $12 million worth of drugs, police said on Tuesday that they're not done. The suspects arrested have ties to cartel operations in several other states including Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Missouri and Kansas.

The massive drug case began with a patrol officer in Tempe who pulled over a known drug user at McClintock Drive and Elliot Road. The officer quickly realized there was more than what would have otherwise been a $100 meth deal, Tempe police said.

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Back in the day, there was a game called Tip It.

It had this 4-inch-tall plastic man perched precariously on his nose, with his arms and legs extended, atop a foot-tall frame balanced on a tabletop base. Players took turns carefully placing little plastic discs on the teetering frame, tipping it back and forth, tilting the little man bit by bit until he fell.

If you topple the man, you're out.

Well, it seems Gov. Jan and her crew may have toppled their medical-marijuana man, and they might be out of the game. A federal judge seemingly ripped the state a new one on Dec. 12 in the first oral arguments in the governor's lawsuit that stalled Arizona's MMJ program.

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Not only should medical marijuana be made available to patients in need, but adult recreational use should be regulated ("Off Schedule," Medical MJ, Dec. 8). Drug policies modeled after alcohol prohibition have given rise to a youth-oriented black market.

Throwing more money at the problem is no solution. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug-trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity. The drug war doesn't fight crime; it fuels crime.

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The following is from a recent paper published by the Institute for the Study of Labor:

To date, 16 states have passed medical marijuana laws, yet very little is known about the law's effects. Using state-level data, we examine the relationship between medical marijuana laws and a variety of outcomes. Legalization of medical marijuana is associated with increased use of marijuana among adults, but not among minors. In addition, legalization is associated with a nearly 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalities, most likely because of its impact on alcohol consumption (emphasis mine).

Alan Dean Foster

Prescott

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There Are Indeed Local Businesses Where You Can Buy Presents for Your Medical-Marijuana-Using Loved Ones

In the wake of my disgust at the ShopFuck Fest happening all around us--the annual bankmall orgy that leaves medical marijuana horny and alone at the bar at closing time, scanning the crowd for someone to take home--I realized I had make a mistake. (See "Ban on Business," Dec. 1.)

Not being in the mood for casual shopsex and bitter over our culture's imposed financial Holiday Stress, I overlooked an important fact when I wrote about the jizz at the mall: Pot might not be in the bankmall party, but it turns out there's plenty of medical-marijuana shoplovin' out there if you know where to look. So I looked a little.

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Gov. Jan Brewer is altering her position on the state's medical-marijuana legal case. She will now argue that the portion of the law that authorized pot dispensaries is superseded by federal drug law.

Brewer's new tactic comes two days after U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ripped apart the state's medical-marijuana lawsuit, saying that the state had to pick a side in the dispute and that it wasn't enough to merely acknowledge that state and federal laws conflict.

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PHOENIX - Gov. Jan Brewer decided Wednesday to ask a federal judge to overturn a key portion of the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law.

Press aide Matthew Benson said his boss is now taking the position that federal law preempts a provision in last year's initiative which requires the state to issue permits for about 125 dispensaries where medical marijuana users can legally purchase the drug. She wants U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton to rule that Arizona cannot process the applications from would-be dispensary owners.

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Kirk Muse ("Getting an MMJ Card Should Be as Easy as Getting a Handicap-Parking Placard," Mailbag, Nov. 24) didn't pay $150 for a "privilege." Muse paid extortion money to the government for protection from police for using a plant that God already gave permission to use on the very first page of the Bible. Every citizen that supports and enables cannabis prohibition, persecution and extermination should be ashamed.

Stan White

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Law Brings Job and Education Concerns

Amid ongoing legal battles over Arizona's new medical-marijuana law, school districts face several conundrums.

Can school employees be medical-marijuana cardholders, as state law allows, even though school districts receive federal funding and federal law considers marijuana illegal?

How do districts determine if an employee is under the influence of marijuana, which state law prohibits?

And, should the new law affect how schools teach drug prevention to students?

Dawn McKinley, a parent in the Deer Valley Unified School District, said it does not bother her that some teachers may have medical-marijuana cards.

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PHOENIX -- A federal judge chided Attorney General Tom Horne Monday, saying he was asking her to do his job: advising state agencies on the law.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton said the state wants her to rule whether Arizona can issue licenses to dispensaries to sell marijuana to medical users without its workers being prosecuted for violating federal laws that make any use of the drug illegal. Gov. Jan Brewer has refused to process applications for dispensaries until she gets an answer.

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The claim of a former nurse at a Cottonwood hospice could become the first case to test the limits on employers under the state's year-old medical marijuana law.

Attorneys for Esther Shapiro contend she was fired from Verde Valley Community Hospice because she is a medical marijuana user. They want Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael McVey to award her damages.

Repeated calls to the facility seeking comment were not returned.

Arizona is one of several states where voters have approved laws allowing those with a doctor's recommendation to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes.

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Arizona has earned a well-deserved reputation as a nationwide hub for marijuana smuggling and distribution, with nearly 50 percent of the pot smuggled into the U.S. coming through the state, but authorities say smugglers are increasingly adding heroin to the mix.

The results of that shift are starting to show up in hospitals and emergency rooms around the state.

The trend was enough to catch the attention of federal authorities, who noted in the Justice Department's annual drug-market assessment that estimates of Mexican heroin production rank that country behind only Afghanistan as the top producers in the world, leading to an increase of Mexican heroin in U.S. markets where the drug had never before appeared.

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I am not a huge fan of schedules, as my editors can attest.

Schedules by their nature restrict and squeeze and coerce us, sometimes in uncomfortable ways that we didn't really think about when we penciled in the appointments. I avoid them when I can.

So when two governors--Christine Gregoire of Washington, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island--petitioned the Drug Enforcement Administration on Nov. 30 to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act, I cringed a little.

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Saturday is the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.

There was recently an outstanding Ken Burns documentary on PBS about the struggles before, during and after Prohibition that caused me to draw continual parallels to the way we treat marijuana today.

The violent crime, the hypocrisy, the ruined lives, the corruption of our political system, the negative spillover effects on neighboring countries and many other parts of the documentary all remind me of what is being replayed today with respect to marijuana.

I can't help recalling the lines of a familiar song: "When will they ever learn? When will they ... ever ... learn?"

- -- Roy Miller, Phoenix

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PHOENIX - Border Patrol agents pursue smugglers one moment and sit around in boredom the next. It was during one of the lulls that Bryan Gonzalez, a young agent, made some comments to a colleague that cost him his career.

Looking for signs of smugglers near Nogales, Ariz., alongside the fence that now marks part of the nation's border with Mexico.

Stationed in Deming, N.M., Mr. Gonzalez was in his green-and-white Border Patrol vehicle just a few feet from the international boundary when he pulled up next to a fellow agent to chat about the frustrations of the job. If marijuana were legalized, Mr. Gonzalez acknowledges saying, the drug-related violence across the border in Mexico would cease. He then brought up an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition that favors ending the war on drugs.

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KINGMAN - Another former county employee is suing the county. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona released a statement Nov. 17 saying it was representing former County Probation officer Joe Miller who was allegedly fired for signing a letter in support of a California ballot measure to decriminalize marijuana.

In June 2010, Miller was one of 32 current and retired law enforcement officers who signed their names to a letter from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition endorsing Proposition 19, an initiative that would have allowed adults over the age of 21 to legally possess and grow small amounts of marijuana for personal use. The letter was released to the press on Sept. 13, 2010.

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Regarding J.M. Smith's "Examining the Exam" (Medical MJ, Nov. 10): Getting a medical-marijuana card should be no more difficult than obtaining a handicap-parking placard.

I received my handicap-parking placard in about two minutes (after waiting about 20 minutes for my number to be called). I just handed the clerk the form filled out by my doctor, and two minutes later, I received my handicap-parking placard. No money was requested. My placard expires in five years.

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A Surprising Thing Happens After the VA Takes Away a Veteran's Narcotics Because He Used Pot

When the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive in January 1968, Tucsonan Dwight Graves was a Navy Seabee with the 1st Marine Division, building bunkers for the U.S. Army near the demilitarized zone.

His compound 10 miles from the border between North and South Vietnam came under heavy attack, as did scores of other U.S. bases throughout South Vietnam. But the Seabees of the sea-to-ground I Marine Expeditionary Force weren't deterred.

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PHOENIX - The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona today filed a lawsuit in federal district court on behalf of a former Mohave County probation officer who was fired after adding his name to a Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) letter in support of a California ballot measure to decriminalize marijuana.

"More and more members of the law enforcement community are speaking out against failed drug policies and they don't give up their right to share their insight and engage in this important debate simply because they receive government paychecks," said ACLU of Arizona Legal Director Daniel Pochoda. "In this case, Mohave County Adult Probation officials decided to punish a public servant who works on the front lines with communities most affected by drugs, rather than respect his right to speak out on his own time about the need to reform marijuana laws."

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