As promised, attorneys for a local medical marijuana cooperative whose garden was raided by federal agents Sept. 5 will be in court today to try to get its pot plants back. Ben Rice and Gerald Uelmen, attorneys for the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, plan to file a motion this morning in U.S. District Court in San Jose. A hearing date will be set after the motion is filed. The motion will seek the return of at least 130 marijuana plants seized by the Drug Enforcement Agency, as well as personal items belonging to alliance co-founders Mike and Valerie Corral that were taken during the raid, attorneys said. The U.S. Attorneys Office has not filed criminal charges against the Corrals, and has not said whether any are planned. [continues 271 words]
SANTA CRUZ - Federal prosecutors might not respect the state law that allows people to grow marijuana for medical use, but a judge in Santa Cruz County does. Medical-marijuana user Greg Brown walked out of the courthouse Wednesday a free man with a legal bag of marijuana. Superior Court Judge Kathleen Akao threw out two felony charges against the Santa Cruz man after he proved he had a doctor's recommendation to use medical marijuana. She ordered police to return Brown's pot. [continues 470 words]
Raids On Medical Marijuana Are Reefer Madness. The leaders of the federal war on drugs are upset. At the very moment they were launching a multimillion-dollar media campaign to educate parents and kids about the risks of marijuana, the city fathers of Santa Cruz gathered on the steps of City Hall to witness the distribution of marijuana to the patients of a medical marijuana collective. A representative of the Drug Enforcement Administration decried the confusion this will create among our adolescent population: The Santa Cruz festivities sent "the wrong message." [continues 598 words]
Medical Mary Jane has legs, long distracting legs, especially when the only other news story is Dubya trying to get his war on Saddam. Or is medical marijuana really the big story we should be tracking, yet another example of the struggle that states and individuals face in fighting the überfeds, a fight Bush would rather we forget (along with the energy crisis) as we watch him play at being a God of War? These questions were on Nüz's mind as every media outlet in the known universe converged on Santa Cruz last week to witness the green stuff being given away outside City Hall to members of WAMM, whose medical marijuana crop was destroyed by chain saw-wielding DEA agents Sept. 5. [continues 357 words]
A Santa Cruz County couple whose medicinal marijuana farm was raided by federal drug agents earlier this month have filed suit in federal court to get back their confiscated cannabis, launching a case that could challenge the federal government's right to regulate medicinal marijuana. Michael and Valerie Corral, who run the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, argued the Sept. 5 seizure of 167 marijuana plants from the farm near Davenport was unconstitutional and needlessly brutal. A spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said the agency's raid was legal and reasonable and that it had no intention of returning the marijuana. [continues 151 words]
SACRAMENTO - A medical marijuana collective near Santa Cruz went on the offensive Tuesday, asking a federal judge to order the return of 167 marijuana plants seized in a raid by federal drug agents. The unusual legal motion, filed in San Jose, was based on a states' rights constitutional defense of California's medical marijuana law that is expected to find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The federal government will fight the motion "tooth and nail," said Richard Meyer, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who said he believed the request to be the first of its kind. [continues 342 words]
The founders of a beleaguered Santa Cruz medical marijuana cooperative filed suit in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, demanding the return of items seized in a Sept. 5 bust by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Valerie and Michael Corral accuse the DEA of trampling the U.S. Constitution in an effort to shut down their group, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. Their attorneys called the suit an "opening salvo" in a larger effort in challenging the federal government's authority to prohibit the medical use of marijuana. [continues 298 words]
SACRAMENTO -- Declaring that the war on drugs has unjustly been extended to the seriously ill in California who use marijuana at the advice of their physicians , hundreds protested at the state Capitol on Monday, calling on the federal government to leave people's medicine alone. The estimated 500 demonstrators, which included public officials from around the state, came here by the busloads, including a caravan from Los Angeles County all to urge federal officials to respect California's landmark, voter-approved medical marijuana law. [continues 1036 words]
Raids On Medical Marijuana Are Reefer Madness The leaders of the federal war on drugs are upset. At the very moment they were launching a multimillion-dollar media campaign to educate parents and kids about the risks of marijuana, the city fathers of Santa Cruz gathered on the steps of City Hall to witness the distribution of marijuana to the patients of a medical marijuana collective. A representative of the Drug Enforcement Administration decried the confusion this will create among our adolescent population: The Santa Cruz festivities sent "the wrong message." [continues 598 words]
The federal government and a local couple will be in court Nov. 5 to discuss the possible return of 167 pot plants seized earlier this month by drug agents. Mike and Valerie Corral filed a motion on Tuesday that seeks the return of the plants grown by the 238-member Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, an area cooperative that provides marijuana to people with medical conditions. Attorneys Ben Rice and Gerald Uelmen filed the motion Tuesday morning in U.S. District Court in San Jose. [continues 64 words]
A medical marijuana collective near Santa Cruz went on the offensive Tuesday, asking a federal judge to order the return of 167 pot plants seized in a raid by federal drug agents. The unusual legal motion, filed in San Jose, was based on a states' rights constitutional defense of California's medical marijuana law that is expected to find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The federal government will fight the motion "tooth and nail," said Richard Meyer, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who said he believed the request to be the first of its kind. [continues 318 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. Last week, DEA 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 was handcuffed in bed when she could not. All the plants were destroyed. [continues 763 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. Early this month, DEA 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 to control debilitating seizures as a result of head trauma following a 1973 car accident, was taken away in her pajamas. [continues 774 words]
SACRAMENTO - Declaring the war on drugs has unjustly been extended to the seriously ill in California who use marijuana on the advice of their physicians, hundreds protested at the state Capitol on Monday, calling on the federal government to leave people's medicine alone. The estimated 500 demonstrators, who included public officials from around the state, came by the busloads to urge federal officials to respect California's landmark, voter-approved medical marijuana law. Aboard one of those buses, Marie Santiago, 56, said she made the eight-hour trip from Los Angeles to protest the federal government's recent crackdown against medical marijuana growers and those seriously ill and injured patients who, like herself, smoke pot "so life is worth living." [continues 1116 words]
How did I, a mayor of a small town in California, wind up in a tug of war with the Drug Enforcement Agency? This week, I stood in front of Santa Cruz's city hall as a local group that provides medical marijuana went about its weekly task of distributing the drug to the sick and dying. My story begins on the morning of Sept. 5 when approximately 30 men, dressed in military fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, descended on a small cooperative farm run by the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in northern Santa Cruz County, about 65 miles south of San Francisco. They were pulling up organically grown marijuana plants. [continues 674 words]
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - Suzanne Pfeil understands why federal agents burst in just after dawn with guns drawn and handcuffed her. That's routine in drug busts. What she can't understand is why agents kept ordering her to stand up after they saw her crutches and leg braces next to the bed. Then when her blood pressure spiked and she felt chest pains, the agents refused to call an ambulance, says Pfeil, 42, disabled by polio. That she can't forgive. "Totally unprofessional," she says. "They were brutalizing us." [continues 1115 words]
Those of us who are outraged by the DEA's raid on Valerie and Michael Corral's property and the destruction of WAMM's medical marijuana garden, please let's help support WAMM during this crucial time for the reform of this outdated federal legislation. As Valerie so eloquently said, let's leave the anger, fear and the negative feelings behind us. Let's turn this into something positive, into an opportunity to make a positive change. Federal law still prohibits marijuana for any use. Such cruel raids demand that a law which can be used to terrorize sick people is in urgent need of change. [continues 158 words]
It really saddens me to hear about the Corral family being harassed. These people are helping with life-or-death situations, not downtown passing this plant for recreational use. As a person with seizures, I don't see anything wrong with the plant. I watched my mother die slowly of cancer. Morphine eased the pain. Would marijuana have helped her? I'll never know. Nancysue Kensinger SANTA CRUZ [end]
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. How did I, a mayor of a small town in California, wind up in a tug of war with the Drug Enforcement Agency? This week, I stood in front of Santa Cruz's city hall as a local group that provides medical marijuana went about its weekly task of distributing the drug to the sick and dying. My story begins on the morning of Sept. 5 when approximately 30 men, dressed in military fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, descended on a small cooperative farm run by the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in northern Santa Cruz County, about 65 miles south of San Francisco. They were pulling up organically grown marijuana plants. [continues 664 words]
The crowd at the medical marijuana giveaway outside city hall in Santa Cruz Tuesday was light-hearted, but the message given by the speakers was not. They spoke of pain, muscle spasms, severe weight loss and the trauma of having the federal government raid the farm where they grow the one medicine they say takes care of all of those symptoms without the side affects of conventional drugs - marijuana. "I was in a surfing accident about two years ago," said 23-year-old quadriplegic Levi Castro, who is a member of the Wo/men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, which was raided Sept. 5 north of Santa Cruz. "I have involuntary muscle spasms, I lost about 50 pounds when I was in the hospital and I have a lot of nerve pain. It helps with all that." [continues 698 words]
