ELECTION SPECIAL FREE Center Spread Prop 19 Poster www.WestCoastLeaf.com ISSN 1945-221X • Volume 3 No. 3 Autumn 2010 ALL EYES ON CALIFORNIA VOTERS Important measures on state and local ballots across USA VA shifts course By Mary Jane Borden Media Awareness Project Dawn of a New Era? Voters will be deciding on a number of on cannabis use ground-breaking initiatives this Nov. 2. The most prominent is Proposition 19, to Directive protects vets’ use allow Californians 21 and over to tend a By Eugene Davidovich San Diego ASA small cannabis garden, possess up to one Undersecretary of Health for the Dept. of ounce, and give state and local govern- Veterans Affairs (VA) Robert E. Petzel, MD, ments the authority to control its sale. issued a July 27, 2010 directive to provide Other states and communities are con- Coverage of Prop 19 clarification and guidance on the use of and the November sidering cannabis initiatives. election inside and access to cannabis by veteran patients. Similarly to Prop 19, voters in Detroit, this issue. It states, “Patients participating in state Michigan may decide whether to allow medical marijuana programs must not be those 21 and older to legally possess less denied VA services.” than an ounce on private property. Although Directive 2010-035 prohibits However, as of this writing, the Detroit VA doctors from actually prescribing or Election Commission has rejected this pro- West Coast Leaf photo from recommending cannabis, veterans who use Seattle Hempfest 2010. posal, and the matter is back in Court. cannabis can now participate in VA sub- By approving Measure 74, Oregon state stance-abuse, pain-control, and other clini- voters could authorize opening state- cal programs where cannabis might other- licensed cannabis dispensaries. wise be considered inconsistent with treat- ment goals, without being denied services. Arizona (Prop 203) and South Dakota Hundreds of LA dispensaries fighting closures (Measure 13) have medical-marijuana ini- Prosecutor Cooley’s bid for attorney general worries patients The directive follows a letter sent to tiatives on their ballots. Michael Kravitz, executive director of Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access At the local level, proposals to permit By Jessica Gwyn Gelay, CannAssist.com 18 of 23 collectives are still open, in defi- (VMMA), in which Dr. Petzel wrote, “lf a or ban dispensaries will be voted on in the The glory days of dispensing medical ance of city law. These clubs began operat- veteran obtains and uses medical marijua- Colorado cities of Fraser, Granby, Loveland cannabis in Los Angeles are over. That’s a ing after the city declared a moratorium, na in a manner consistent with state law, and Paonia, as well as Colorado counties of get-tough theme that GOP candidate Steve and are dubbed the “post-ICO” clubs. testing positive for marijuana would not Alamosa, Garfield, Grand and Windsor. Cooley is running on in his bid for Some of the post-ICO groups have filed suit against the city. A first move failed preclude the veteran from receiving opi- An advisory referendum will ask Dane California state attorney general. when a District Court judge denied an oids for pain management in a Dept. of County, WI voters whether they think the The streets of LA tell a different story. In injunction preventing the law from taking Please turn to page 11 Please turn to page 21 one central-city neighborhood patients say effect. This decision has been appealed. The day after the ruling, June 7, LA Feds raid THC Ministry Few emergency room visits related to marijuana Municipal Code Ch. IV, Art. 5.1 governing cannabis collectives went into effect; since Christie arrested, denied bail New national study released use and injury risk, finding, “Self-reported marijuana use in the previous seven days then any entity in the city that is not part of By Don E Wirtshafter By Paul Armentano, NORML was associated … with a substantially the pre-ICO collectives is in violation of the Rev. Roger Christie, leader of the THC Lifetime use of marijuana is rarely associat- decreased risk of injury.” ordinance and may face stiff penalties. Ministry based in Hawai’i, is in jail without ed with emergency room visits, according Most recently, a RAND study pub- In late August, the city halted the entire bond. In the last issue of West Coast Leaf, an to an analysis of epidemiologic survey data lished in July reported that fewer than 200 process after only 41 collectives were found optimistic Christie said he had been raided published online by the American Journal of total patients were admitted to California eligible during pre-registration, and but not charged and felt safe. Early on the Emergency Medicine. hospitals in 2008 for “marijuana abuse or requested a judicial opinion on the consti- morning of July 8, agents from the Drug Investigators at the University of dependence.” By contrast, an estimated tutionality of the ordinance. City Attorney Enforcement Admin. stormed the THC Michigan reviewed the overall prevalence 73,000 annual hospitalizations in California Carmen Trutanich filed a complaint seek- Ministry and the homes of many of its of drug-related emergency department are related to the use of alcohol. ing a temporary restraining order and per- practitioners, and 14 were arrested. (ED) visits among lifetime users of illicit manent injunction to close 125 collectives These findings belie the myth that The Ministry, Roger and others had substances. Researchers analyzed national listed as ineligible on a “Preliminary adult cannabis use is a primary cause of sued in federal court in 2004 to establish data from the National Epidemiologic Priority List” published by the City Clerk’s hospitalizations or ED visits. The reality is their legal right as sincere believers to use Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, office Aug 25. Judge Anthony Mohr set a that few if any therapeutic or psychoactive their chosen sacrament. a representative survey of 43,093 residents hearing date for Sept. 21. substances possess a safety profile compa- age 18 or older. The government responded by arguing rable to that of cannabis. Please turn to page 8 that even though the Ministry was The study is the first to use nationally engaged in the production and distribution representative data to examine patterns of marijuana, it was not under federal and correlates of drug-related ED visits. Oakland mega-medical gardens plan approved investigation or prosecution. Since the Among those surveyed, subjects who Size worries small growers large corporate interests. Aside from the ministry could not prove that arrest and reported using cannabis were the least like- four licensed mega-grows, the ordinance prosecution for use of their sacrament was By Dale Gieringer California NORML ly to report an ED visit (1.71 percent). prohibits any other collective grows over imminent, the court ruled Christie did not Respondents who reported lifetime use of The Oakland City Council approved an 96 square feet indoors. have standing to pursue the suit. heroin, tranquilizers, and inhalants were ambitious ordinance July 20 to license four The plan calls for licensing four foot- Six years later, the government pulled most likely (18.5 percent, 6.3 percent, and commercial medical cannabis cultivation ball-field sized indoor grows, large enough out the big guns to bust Christie and his 6.2 percent respectively) to report experi- facilities of unprece- to supply up to 20 percent of the flock. Over a period of two years, countless encing one or more ED visits related to dented size. Licensed state’s medicinal pot, by January agent-hours were spent on round-the-clock their drug use. collectives will still be 2011. Each facility would pay a surveillance and wiretaps that captured able to buy from mem- Investigators concluded, “[M]arijuana $211,000 annual licensing fee plus a more than 17,000 telephone calls. The bust bers and do not have to was by far the most commonly used (illicit) business tax currently set at 1.8 per- was conceived as a big publicity stunt and rely on the large pro- drug, but individuals who used [it] had a cent of revenues, but likely to show of government power. The govern- ducers for a supply. low prevalence of drug-related ED visits.” increase to 5 percent under a pro- ment even used a huge Coast Guard C-130 A 2009 Swiss study published in the The proposal, co- posed November ballot measure. military plane to transport the 14 arrestees authored by Council journal BMC Public Health previously Councilmember Kaplan Proponents saw the proposal as a to their hearings in Honolulu. members Rebecca reported that the use of cannabis was progressive measure to keep Oakland on Now Christie’s prosecutors are using Kaplan and Larry Reid, sparked heated inversely associated with injuries requiring the forefront of the cannabis industry and their power to prevent his release on bond. debate among marijuana proponents, hospitalization. generate much-needed employment and Christie is a military veteran with a perfect- many of whom complained that it froze A prior case-control study conducted revenue for the city. “This is an industry ly clean criminal record. There are no alle- out small- and medium-sized growers by the University of Missouri also reported that’s going to grow,” said Councilwoman gations of violence at all in this case. while granting a monopoly to selected an inverse relationship between cannabis Please turn to page 6 Please turn to page 21 Autumn 2010 Page 2 West Coast Leaf Washington moves closer to collective model Evergreen State update two other employees for operating the West Coasterdam Report Tacoma Hemp Company dispensary. A By Martin Martinez Lifevine Foundation high-ranking officer allegedly told Prince, Even though Washington’s medical mari- “We aren’t going to have marijuana dis- juana law allows patients to possess up to pensaries here in Tacoma.” That same 15 plants and 24 ounces of processed med- week, three other Tacoma dispensaries icine, there is as yet no allowance for group were told to close.