An Oakland woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges even though medicinal pot is legal in California, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The ruling in the ongoing legal debate over using marijuana for medical purposes was the latest defeat for Angel Raich, a mother of two suffering from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments who sued the federal government pre-emptively to avoid being arrested for using marijuana. On her doctor's advice, Raich eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster a non-existent appetite because conventional drugs did not work. [continues 512 words]
The Court Reaffirms The Right Of The U.S. Government To Prosecute Patients And Suppliers, Even In States Where Marijuana Is A Legal Medicine. SACRAMENTO -- Medical marijuana patient Angel Raich's latest bid to win protection from federal drug laws went down to defeat Wednesday in U.S. appeals court despite her claim that cannabis is the only medicine that keeps her alive. The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is the second big legal loss in two years for Raich, 41, an Oakland mother of two who suffers from more than a dozen chronic illnesses, including an inoperable brain tumor. [continues 752 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- A woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive can face federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The ruling was the latest legal defeat for Angel Raich, a mother of two from Oakland suffering from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments who sued the government preemptively to avoid being arrested for using the drug. On her doctor's advice, Raich eats or smokes marijuana every two hours to ease her pain. Angel Raich is seen with cannabis buds at her home Monday, June 6, 2005, in Oakland, Calif. Raich, the California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive, is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, March 14, 2007. (AP Photo/Ben Margot) (Ben Margot - AP) From FindLaw Opinion: Raich v. Gonzales (pdf) U.S. Supreme Court 2005 Opinion Save & Share ArticleWhat's This?DiggGoogledel.icio.usYahoo!RedditFacebook [continues 68 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - Angel Raich, whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive, is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled yesterday. Raich, 41, is an Oakland mother of two who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumour, chronic nausea and other ailments. On her doctor's advice, she eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster a non-existent appetite, because conventional drugs did not work. Raich began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug. "I'm sure not going to let them kill me," she said. "Oh my God." [end]
Program Finds Few Takers Statewide So few people signed up for California's medical marijuana cards that the state is now being forced to raise fees tenfold to cover the cost of running the program. The Medical Marijuana ID Card Program was meant to make life easier for the thousands who smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes, which is legal under California law. The state-issued photo ID cards, which are more likely than a doctor's note to be accepted by skeptical law enforcement officials, were designed to keep patients from being hassled or arrested. [continues 593 words]
Merced County Man Faces a Three-Count Case in Federal Court. Testimony began Wednesday in Dustin Costa's trial, with prosecutors portraying the Merced marijuana activist as a drug dealer who violated federal law. Costa, 60, is facing a three-count indictment charging him with growing more than 100 marijuana plants with the intent to distribute. He also faces a charge of possession of a firearm "in furtherance of drug-trafficking crime." In opening statements in U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii's courtroom, prosecutor Karen Escobar told jurors Costa had a "relatively sophisticated marijuana operation" at his Merced County home. She said Costa was robbed 13 times, but never called police because he knew he was in violation of the law. [continues 481 words]
A jury has been selected and opening arguments will begin today in the federal trial of Merced marijuana activist Dustin Costa, but it is unlikely there will be any debate on the hotly disputed issue of the drug's medicinal value. Before his arrest, Costa was president of the Merced Patients Group, a private cannabis club that claimed 230 members. The club helped connect people with doctors who give recommendations for marijuana and those who supply the drug. Costa, 60, is facing a three-count indictment charging him with with growing more than 100 marijuana plants, equivalent to nearly 9 pounds, in February 2004 with the intent to distribute. Costa also faces a charge of possession of a firearm "in furtherance of drug trafficking crime." [continues 420 words]
For 15 years, Joe Fortt has lived with the human immunodeficiency virus, staying healthy, he says, with a self-prescribed combination of garlic, walnut, wormwood, ginseng, ginko, aloe vera, multivitamins - and marijuana. Fortt, 43, has spent the last 11 months locked up in the Fresno County Jail, slowly dying from the ravages of the HIV virus, he said, because he has been denied his herbal treatment. "I can tell by the way I feel I'm not getting any better," he said in a jailhouse interview. "In another six months, I won't have an immune system left anymore." [continues 1126 words]
The "therapeutic ratio" of a drug compares the amount required to produce harmful effects with the amount required to provide benefit. The therapeutic ratio of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is about 2:1 -and even lower if your liver has been compromised by hepatitis or alcohol. An Extra-Strength Tylenol contains 500 milligrams of acetaminophen. The recommended daily maximum is eight pills -4,000 mg, or four grams. A person taking twice that much can incur severe liver damage -and people in pain sometimes lose perspective and gulp a handful. "Seven to eight grams a day for three or four days can be fatal," according to William M. Lee, MD, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. [continues 2036 words]
Has Medical Marijuana Burned Out? The Ouster Of A Popular Medical Marijuana Dispensary By Its San Francisco Neighbors Signals Growing Disillusionment With The Medical Marijuana Initiative. The unmistakable scent of burning marijuana lingered on the front steps of San Francisco's City Hall one cool night last September. Inside, more than 75 citizens murmured and jostled their way into the Board of Appeals chambers, there to decide the fate of the most popular medical marijuana dispensary in the city. At issue was the Green Cross-by all accounts a model pot club-which had operated for a little more than a year at the outer edge of the liberal, dog-and-stroller neighborhood of Noe Valley. Now, it appeared that the dispensary on 22nd Street had worn out its welcome. [continues 4600 words]
No one laughed when Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers opened on April Fool's Day. But of course, it wasn't a joke. People are serious about their right to use medical marijuana, and with the opening of SLO County's first and only city-sanctioned cannabis dispensary, Morro Bay City Officials have unequivocally stated that they're not playing around. Yes, this is the same dispensary that was run out of Atascadero in February, shortly after owner Charles C. Lynch opened up shop there. This time, though, CCCC is being welcomed with (mostly) open arms. Is this a medical triumph or a terrible mistake? Some people may already have their minds made up about this, but it looks like the rest of us will just have to wait and see. [continues 4011 words]
Drug Enforcement Administration narcos picked up where they left off just before Christmas, descending upon the small medi-pot growers collective run by Palm Desert, Calif., medi-mari patient Gary Silva in a March 14, early morning raid, seizing 80 pot plants and a cache of patient records, and sending Silva to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder. The feds reportedly burst through the door before Silva could get it open, knocking the medi-pot patient, who suffers from a degenerative disc disorder, tumbling to the ground. [continues 574 words]
Judges' Questions Hint They Won't Protect Medicinal Use. PASADENA - A frail medicinal pot user from Oakland took the federal government to court again Monday but left with little encouragement. Judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who had ruled in favor of Angel Raich in an earlier phase of the same case, sounded skeptical this time. They questioned repeatedly why she was seeking their protection when she's never been prosecuted for using marijuana, which her doctor swears she needs to stay alive. [continues 548 words]
Less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against her, Oakland medical marijuana patient and advocate Angel Raich will go back before a federal appeals court today with a different legal argument. Her lawyers will try to persuade a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Pasadena, that keeping her from using marijuana as medicine unduly burdens her fundamental rights to life and freedom from pain, as protected by the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause and the Ninth Amendment. [continues 659 words]
Oakland Cancer Patient Who Lost Last Year to Try Again With New Argument Less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against her, Oakland medical marijuana patient and advocate Angel Raich will go back before a federal appeals court Monday with a different legal argument. Her lawyers will try to persuade a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Pasadena, that keeping her from using marijuana as medicine unduly burdens her fundamental rights to life and freedom from pain, as protected by the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause and the Ninth Amendment. [continues 652 words]
Feds Arrest 12, Seize Marijuana Plants, Cash And Weapons From Massive East Bay Operation OAKLAND - It looks like candy, but check the label on the Keef Kat or the Pot Tarts: "This product contains cannabis and is for medical purposes only." Hundreds of boxes of such pot-laced candy, treats and soda pop - all with labels mimicking name-brand products - plus thousands of marijuana plants, $150,000 in cash and several weapons were seized Thursday in five simultaneous Drug Enforcement Administration raids in Oakland, Emeryville and Lafayette. Authorities called it the largest West Coast manufacturing and distribution operation of its type. Twelve people were arrested without incident, DEA Special Agent Javier Pena said as he displayed samples of the candy and sodas in DEA offices in the federal building in downtown Oakland. Suspect Kenneth Affolter, 39, of Lafayette was identified as the head of the candy-making operation. All 12 suspects will be arraigned today in San Francisco federal court on charges of distribution of marijuana. [continues 414 words]
Drug Agents Fear Candies Appeal to Kids - Medical Marijuana Users Insist They're Legal They had colorful labels and names such as Trippy, Stoney Rancher, Toka-Cola, Pot Tart and Budtella. To federal drug agents, they were dangerous marijuana-laced concoctions that could fall into the hands of children. But to sick patients who rely on cannabis to ease their symptoms, they were just tasty ways to get their medicine -- and legal under California law. Federal agents who converged on several of what they called "marijuana candy factories" in the East Bay on Thursday seized hundreds of sodas and candies laced with marijuana in what they said was the largest bust of its kind on the West Coast. [continues 641 words]
Last week C-Notes described the unmitigated gratitude with which pro-marijuana activists greeted an anti-prohibition op-ed by George Melloan in the Wall St. Journal. I questioned Melloan's motives and his decency, quoting a subsequent op-ed in which he made light of the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the U.S. bombing and embargo of Iraq between 1991 and 2003. I did not anticipate that knocking George Melloan in the Anderson Valley Advertiser would annoy "progressive" activists back East, but it did, thanks to the Internet. A participant in the Alliance of Reform Organizations' chatroom forwarded this sigh of contempt from Doug McVay, Director of Research, Common Sense for Drug Policy, and Editor/Webmaster, Drug War Facts: [continues 1654 words]
Recently, local news outlets have reported that Rawlins-area radio stations KIQZ-FM and KRAL-AM banned public service announcements dealing with medical marijuana from their airwaves after complaints from, among others, Rawlins Chief of Police Mike Reed. Censorship of information about medical marijuana helps no one. The three PSAs were produced by my organization, the Marijuana Policy Project. They do not advocate use of marijuana or any drug. They simply offer information, and present three individuals talking about personal experiences with medical marijuana: Talk show host Montel Williams, who suffers from multiple sclerosis; recent U.S. Supreme Court plaintiff Angel Raich, who suffers from a brain tumor and several other painful conditions; and novelist Tom Robbins, whose mother went blind from glaucoma. [continues 528 words]
In 1991 the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that Joe Hutchins, a Navy veteran with life-threatening scleroderma, could not use medical necessity as a defense to a marijuana cultivation charge, even if his marijuana use kept him alive. Within months the Legislature, led by members whose families faced similar health emergencies, became a national leader in trying to protect patients for whom cannabis has therapeutic value. That law unfortunately provides no comfort to patients. It requires the state Department of Public Health (DPH) to provide the medicine to patients from a source approved by the federal government. The Clinton and Bush administrations refuse DPH's requests for a supply. [continues 616 words]
