Whether you think of it as a gateway drug or miracle medicine, you have to admit: Marijuana has been in the news lately.
From the debate over a proposed marijuana dispensary in Orcutt, to the 30,000 plants found near the origins of the Los Padres fire in August, to the recent Santa Maria arrest of a marijuana delivery service driver, herb is in the air.
Arguably allowed at the state level, but still illegal in the federal eye, the green plant’s status in the Golden State is anything but easy to define.
Proposition 215 decriminalized medical marijuana in California in 1996. More recently, SB 420 further clarified that proposition and spelled out how medical marijuana could be distributed in the state. None of that changes the fact that the possession, cultivation, or sale of marijuana remains a federal offense, but recent developments from the Department of Justice seem to have signaled that change is in the air.
Or maybe not.
In a memo sent to United States attorneys on Oct. 19, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden made the following statement: “… prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law … is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.”
Does that mean we’re likely to see an influx of marijuana dispensaries in Santa Maria?
Not likely. While the prosecutorial focus at the federal level may be changing, the fact remains that marijuana is still considered a dangerous drug by the Controlled Substances Act.
The memo in question even goes on to state: “This guidance regarding resource allocation does not ‘legalize’ marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law.”
That, said Deputy City Attorney Wendy Stockton, is why you won’t be seeing a medical marijuana dispensary in Santa Maria just yet. For the city, it’s simply a matter of obeying federal law.
In 2008, Santa Maria passed an ordinance that, in effect, prevented marijuana sales inside city limits. Section 4-1.04 of the City Code now ends with: “… no business license shall be issued to authorize any activity in conflict with the law, whether federal, state, or local.”
Statements about limited federal resources aside, possession, sale, and use of marijuana is still a federal offense. As far as Stockton and the city are concerned, nothing
has changed.
“This [statement by the Attorney General] is a directive by the Obama administration that ‘it’s not a good use of federal resources to enforce that law,’” she explained. “The fact of the matter is that under no circumstances is [marijuana] legal under federal law.”
Still, there are other views. Dr. Wallace Marsh, a Lompoc physician who writes recommendations for medicinal marijuana, said the federal language is no reason to deny patients in need.
“I’m just interested in getting people relief,” he said. “I don’t believe [marijuana] is effective, I know it’s effective. I’ve seen far too many benefit.”
Marsh said he writes recommendations primarily for cases of chronic pain—not only as a pain reliever in itself, but also when the continued use of painkillers causes stomach-related side effects such as nausea and loss of appetite.
And Marsh said he won’t write a recommendation to just anyone. He figures he turns down one or two people every day.
“I screen before I see,” he said. “I want a history. If someone comes to me and says they have migraine headaches, I want to see a medical history showing migraine headaches.”
He also notes that a lot of his patients are “well beyond” 40, and that half of his patients are older than 50.
Read carefully
“Where are these patients?” asked Gene Baird, commander of American Legion Post 534 in Orcutt.
“If these people have an honest need—heavy on the honest—then why didn’t they show up to the planning commission hearings?” he said.
The hearings in question were the County Planning Commission hearings on whether to allow a marijuana dispensary in Orcutt. Baird, along with Post 534, opposes the dispensary. His reasoning is simple: Selling marijuana is against state law.
“I don’t think everybody realizes that,” he explained. “I was under the impression like everyone else that it was legal to sell.”
The wording of Proposition 215 offers exemption from prosecution to a patient or a patient’s caregiver “who possesses or cultivates marijuana for the personal medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician.”
The key words there are “possesses” and “cultivates”—there’s nothing about actually selling.
The bit of legislation known as SB 420 didn’t much help to clarify that fine point. Patients and their caregivers are, according to the text, allowed to “associate within the State of California in order
to collectively or cooperatively cultivate marijuana for medical purposes.”
Officials in Los Angeles County are using that specific wording as the basis for their plans to shut down hundreds of estimated for-profit dispensaries, according to the district attorney’s office there.
As of this printing, about a dozen dispensaries had been shut down in the area and officials were planning to eliminate every dispensary where medical marijuana was being distributed for profit. A spokeswoman for the D.A., Sandi Gibbons, said on Oct. 8 that law enforcement agents were preparing to go after all such dispensaries.
“It’s our contention and the contention of law enforcement that this is an illegal activity,” Gibbons told the Sun.
Former state senator John Vasconcellos, who wrote the state law, told the Sun how he felt about raids of dispensaries and medical marijuana patients: “It’s such a silly waste of public funds and public attention and cruel—silly and cruel.”
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Rob Bryn said profitable dispensaries encourage criminal activities. Regarding criticism of law enforcement raids, he said, “This is just such a joke, it’s pathetic.”
Dispensaries alone aren’t targets. According to a news release, Bruce James Guerin was arrested in Santa Maria on Aug. 25 for possession of about 156 grams of marijuana “packaged for sales.”
Guerin was the former operator of “Impressions,” a delivery service operating out of San Luis Obispo County. Guerin could not be reached for comment and every number associated with his name was disconnected or somehow unreachable, except one: “Hi, this is James,” a recorded voice says on the outgoing message. “Thanks for calling. Sorry I couldn’t get back to everybody last week—unavoidable.”
Such a taboo
There are plenty of people willing to go on the record about why marijuana should stay illegal, but trying to find someone willing to talk on the record about using medical marijuana was another matter entirely.
Chris (not his real name) is an area college professor who’s been using marijuana medicinally for the past year as treatment for pain relating from a stroke and a heart condition.
He said the stigma attached to marijuana is one of the reasons why most people, himself included, are afraid to come out in support of
the drug.
“It has such a taboo on it, and people will get labeled,” he explained. “No one wants to be labeled so fiercely at such a level. We have a tremendous fear of it: the criminality, the shame involved. It really overwhelms a lot of people.”
He said flat out he wouldn’t have gone to the planning commission hearing, even if he had known about it.
“It would have just reaped the wild wind,” he said. “There’s a tremendous amount of moral judgment. Nobody wants to be scapegoated; they’d be ridden out of town on a rail.”
Just because he won’t come out and publicly support marijuana doesn’t mean he’ll stop using it—in spray form. A couple of hits under the tongue acts as a substitute for the prescription painkillers and muscle relaxants he’d previously been prescribed
“There’s no question it’s given me a new lease on life,” he said. “Before, I was always hesitant to take pills, even when I was in pain. There were the residual effects of the pills; there was always something like a hangover, always something going on with it.”
People like Chris don’t just face the fear of social stigma. Even though Chris and other medical marijuana users are, in theory, protected from prosecution by state law, the law does nothing to protect him if his employer fires him over a failed drug test.
Change on the way?
Medicinal dispensaries, collectives, and vaguely worded laws may soon be a thing of the past. California Assembly Bill 390 would go right to the heart of the matter in clarifying marijuana’s status.
By legalizing it.
The Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act seeks to create a “regulatory structure similar to that used for beer, wine, and liquor, permitting taxed sales to adults while barring sales to or possession by those under 21,” according to a press release from Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-SF).
AB 390 won’t be voted on until the new legislative session next year, but discussion on the matter is already under way. On Oct. 28, the California Assembly Public Safety Committee planned to hold a hearing on the legalization of marijuana. Chaired by Ammiano, the hearing would mark the first time since 1913—when the drug was originally prohibited—that the state Assembly would consider re-legalizing marijuana.
Ammiano’s communications director, Quintin Mecke, said the hearing is about the broader topics of legalization: “This hearing is to start to acknowledge where we’re at, how we got to this conversation, and to start talking about all the conversations we need to have about legalization.”
One of the scheduled witnesses for the hearing is Dale Gieringer, director of the marijuana advocacy group California NORML, who said in a statement: “The state has wasted billions on counterproductive enforcement programs that wrongly criminalize millions of Californians. Taxpayers would do better to reap the benefits of a legally taxed and regulated market, a policy that has proven successful in the Netherlands, India, and elsewhere.”
Contact Staff Writer Nicholas Walter at nwalter@santamariasun.com. New Times Staff Writer Colin Rigley contributed to this report.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2009.