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In This Issue:
Strains: StarDog & Lambs Bread
Articles: Secret Life of Water, Little Black Book of Marijuana, CHAMPS preview Special, Releaf report, CannaBuzz, CannaChef Interviews: "Joey's Mom" Mieko Perez
HomeGrown Gadget: Compact Ebb & Grow System
Advertisers: 11th State Consults, 2k Diffuser Beads, Atmos Vaporizers B&D Glassworks, BeeLine, Big Tony's, CannaMaineia, Celebration Pipes, Dime Bags, Dinafem, From Creation Remedies, Glass Gripper, Green Candy Press, Growing Crazy, Growology, Herb Trader, Herbal Healing, Incredibowl, It's All Good, Know your Grow, Maine Expo, Medical Cannabis Journal, MMJ Bottles, Mother Nature, Mr. Kiefbox, Organic Grow Hut, Phunky Stuff, PureSel, Sequel, Silver Willow, TLess, Vaporfection, Vortex
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Colorado issues state licenses for medical marijuana dispensaries
Colorado has issued the first state-level business licenses for medical marijuana operations in the nation, even as the Obama administration has toughened its stance toward cannabis dispensaries.
Home to some of the nation’s most thorough cannabis regulations -- and an alternative weekly with a medical marijuana reviewer -- Colorado has issued 11 licenses to marijuana-related businesses around the state, the Denver Post reports.
Seven other operations have been told that they’re likely to receive a license, the paper said. State officials have also asked local officials whether 467 more dispensaries and cannabis product-makers have gained local approval, among the last steps in a yearlong application process.
Access to marijuana is among Colorado’s most hotly debated issues, with a group attempting to gather 86,000 signatures by January to place a partial-legalization measure on the ballot, the Post reported. (Among the foes of Colorado's Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol are legalization supporters who say the measure isn’t strong enough.)
Voters in California, the first state to decriminalize medical marijuana in 1996, defeated a similar measure last year.
This month, federal prosecutors in California sent letters to dispensary landlords telling them to stop selling marijuana within 45 days or risk the seizure of their property and criminal charges, a move that stunned the state’s legal-cannabis advocates.
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Bill eases Maine's medical marijuana rules to do away with patient registration
AUGUSTA, Maine — A bill to ease Maine's regulations on the medical use of marijuana faces a legislative hearing.
The Committee on Health and Human Services holds its hearing Monday. Supporters say it expands and protects the rights of patients and caregivers.
The bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Deborah Sanderson of Chelsea would eliminate a requirement that patients register with the state. It also would take the decision about whether marijuana is appropriate in a given situation out of the hands of the state and let doctors decide.
Sanderson's bill would also prevent cities and towns from placing unreasonable requirements on caregivers and patients.
A separate bill unveiled last week would legalize personal use and private and commercial cultivation of marijuana, and tax consumer purchases at 7 percent.
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Venice pot doctors shut down after raid by state medical board and police
One of the Venice boardwalk’s eye-catching only-in-California features, the storefront pot doctors who lure patients with barkers, was shut down Wednesday, when the state medical board and law enforcement officers raided three locations linked to Medical Kush Doctor.
Investigators carted boxes and at least two large plastic bags that appeared to contain marijuana out of the deep-blue building next to Muscle Beach that houses a doctor’s office, a smoke shop and a popular dispensary called the Medical Kush Beach Club.
Jennifer Simoes, spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California, said the warrant was sealed. She declined to discuss the reason for the board’s investigation, but said the warrant was served at 1313, 1811 and 2017 Ocean Front Walk.
Attorneys for Medical Kush Doctor raced to the beach, but said they were not allowed on the premises. Graham Berry, one of the lawyers, said the warrant authorized a search of the offices, vehicles and “anything else that your imagination could run to.” He said it also allowed officials to seize records related to the unlicensed practice of medicine. “Since all these doctors appear to be duly licensed, I don’t know what they are referring to,” he said.
Berry said that the raid started about 10:15 a.m. and that by the time he arrived at 11, he found a line of patrol cars, a crowd gathered outside, news cameras and a news helicopter fluttering overhead. “Once I arrived, they pulled the sliding gate door down,” he said.
The Medical Kush Beach Club was also shut down, but Berry said, “It appeared to me that the target was the doctors and the practice of writing recommendations and the collective was a collateral casualty.” The Medical Kush Beach Club is operated by Sean Cardillo, who is also the registered agent for Kush Dr., the limited liability corporation that runs the doctor’s offices.
Cardillo could not be reached for comment.
Stewart Richlin, another attorney who represents Cardillo, said that agents seized 5 pounds of marijuana from the dispensary but that he expected it to be returned. “They involved the Medical Kush Beach Club unfairly,” he said. He added that he did not know whether any cash or equipment was seized but said no one was arrested in the raids.
Richlin said Kush Dr. rents space and provides promotional services for medical marijuana doctors. He said he believed the doctors followed state law in issuing recommendations for marijana use.
“As far as I know, it’s by the book. I’m surprised that this is happening,” he said. “I have a feeling by the time the fat lady sings on this it will be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Simoes said the operation was conducted with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the Los Angeles Police Department, the county Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which provided search dogs.
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Two lawsuits challenge Los Angeles' lottery plan for medical marijuana dispensaries
Los Angeles' latest plan — to hold a lottery to allow 100 medical marijuana dispensaries to operate — meets resistance from shop owners, who say they've followed all the rules yet still face closure.
By John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times
April 21, 2011
The next round of the costly, drawn-out legal brawl over how to control medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles has begun with two new lawsuits challenging the city's latest ordinance.
The lawsuits, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, follow scores of other suits that stymied the city's fitful attempts to crack down on an unknown number of renegade dispensaries. The new ones could launch another series of judicial hearings and thwart the city's bid to enforce its ordinance.
Some of the oldest medical marijuana collectives in Los Angeles sued on April 13 to overturn the ordinance, which will choose the dispensaries to be allowed in a lottery, a process the lawsuit mocks as "a euphemism for a municipal game of 'Russian Roulette.'"
The 21 dispensaries suing the city are among those the City Council let operate when it adopted a moratorium on new stores in 2007. The city's first ordinance would have allowed them to stay open if they complied with restrictions on locations. But a judge ruled that key aspects of the law were unconstitutional, and the City Council passed a second ordinance that relies on a random drawing to select 100 dispensaries.
"We've done everything, everything that the city told us to do, and we're still sitting here looking at a lottery," said Yamileth Bolanos, the operator of PureLife Alternative Wellness Center, a dispensary on South La Cienega Boulevard. "We're fighting back. We have to fight back."
Bolanos, who also heads a coalition of the dispensaries the city allowed to operate during the moratorium, accused City Atty. Carmen Trutanich of creating an ordinance that could take her business away even though she said she has followed all city directives. "The city attorney has not acted in good faith," she said. "We don't believe that the things that he's done are fair."
House of Kush filed a separate lawsuit on March 21. The Eagle Rock dispensary and possibly hundreds of others were barred from participating in the lottery, which is limited to stores that were open when the city's moratorium took effect on Sept. 14, 2007. "This discriminatory treatment lacks a rational basis or compelling state interest," the lawsuit says.
A third lawsuit could be filed next week, said Stewart Richlin, an attorney who represents some of the dispensaries that successfully challenged the earlier ordinance. "We're going to bring it ASAP for multiple reasons," he said, "especially to stop any perception that this ordinance is constitutionally acceptable."
The city has appealed the judge's decision on its first ordinance, but has also taken steps to hold a lottery. It has accepted applications from 231 dispensaries and has told 206 others to close. Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney, said the city disputes the claims in the new lawsuits.
Aaron Lachant, an attorney who represents the 21 plaintiffs that sued last week, said he plans to ask for an injunction to halt the lottery. "We'll file it as soon as we can," he said.
Lachant said the lawsuit is intended to protect the rights of those dispensaries the city allowed to remain open in 2007. City officials estimate that about 135 are still in business. "They want to work with the city, but they have not been given a fair chance," Lachant said.
The lawsuit targets the lottery and the process of choosing locations for dispensaries. It describes the lottery as "discriminatory, arbitrary, capricious, confiscatory and oppressive," and it calls the process of allowing the winners to pick their locations in the order they are drawn "a game of musical chairs."
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Sometime next month two of eight medical marijuana dispensaries in Maine are expected to open: one in Ellsworth and one in Auburn. Two are already taking medical cannabis on the road and selling it to authorized patients. There have been some stumbling blocks. Several cities and towns have passed temporary moratoriums against dispensaries. And next week lawmakers will consider a bill to change some of the program rules. But the state is finding that interest in medical marijuana is growing every day.
Tim Smale and his wife Jenna looked at 35 locations before settling on a building in an Auburn shopping center to set up their non-profit medical marijuana dispensary, known as Remedy Compassion. They plan to include an on-site kitchen to make medical marijuana tinctures and edible as well as topical cannabis cream to treat arthritis and muscle spasms.
They are keeping secret the location of their medical marijuana cultivation site, but say they plan to offer high quality strains to treat a variety of ailments. They've already received a green light from the state and plan to open in the next 30 days.
Smale says the goal is to keep prices as low as possible. "I can't come out the door and offer $99 ounces," he says. "We wouldn't be here. But I can offer what the market price is. So, for example our price to our patients is $336 dollars. And I think the market price is up in the neighborhood of $400 or $350--or something like that."
The market price means the black market which many patients are already familiar with. Smale says he'll offer five percent discounts to veterans and patients on MaineCare and Social Security. He'll start out with a small staff. Right now there are just four employees, including his wife and himself, and fewer than 100 patients.
But Smale says he's anxious to get medicine to patients who need it. He says he knows what it's like to need pain relief. He's suffered from debilitating migraines for more than 20 years. At their peak he was getting them two or three times a week.
"These are very intense episodes with nausea and intense pain, and it just sends me crying like a baby sometimes," he says. "So my wife, Jenna, has actually had to give me some cannabis during these headaches when I'm literally crying on the ground in pain."
Over the years, Smale tried all kinds of medications but found them ineffective or with unpleasant side effects. He says marijuana is the only thing that works for him. He prefers to inhale it with a vaporizer so he doesn't have to smoke.
"I get probably two migraines a month now, and maybe one of them will be so devastating that I'm in a massive amount of pain. So it's changed my life," he says. "If I didn't have cannabis, shoot me, put me away. Life is not worth living without cannabis. I couldn't live without it. I would be disabled."
So many people are interested in medical marijuana that Catherine Cobb of the division of licensing at the Department of Health and Human Services says she and her staff are fielding 50 or 60 calls a day from prospective patients.
Cobb says the medical marijuana program has now registered more than 1,000 patients and 300 caregivers. "I predicted 1,200 patients and 300 caregivers in the first year and we have enough applications in the queue to exceed that 1,200 number."
Under the rules, patients with a doctor's authorization who register with the state have the option of growing their own medical marijuana, choosing a caregiver to grow it for them or signing up with a licensed dispensary. Cobb has been interested to see what patients are choosing.
"We have quite a few patients who are choosing to grow their own, but if they haven't previously used medical marijuana they're tending to choose a caregiver or dispensary because they don't want to start from scratch and wait for two or three months before their own marijuana starts producing buds," she says. "So I think for some of them it's an expediency."
According to a recent report by DHHS, Kennebec County has the highest number of qualified patients, followed by Cumberland and York. And Cumberland, Oxford and York Counties have the highest number of registered caregivers.
The report also finds that 118 doctors have agreed to participate in the program, although many express concern about potential liability attached to their recommendations. Some employers have also prohibited their physicians from recommending the use of marijuana.
And that's one reason Jonathan Leavitt of the Maine Marijuana Policy Initiative wants to relax some of the existing rules. "A lot of small adjustments that we think need to be made and will help the law work better for everybody, bring it on par with the relationship that doctors and patients usually have, where it is up to the physician to decide what the appropriate medication is, not the state," he says.
On Monday, lawmakers will hold a public hearing on a bill that would, among other things, eliminate the state's patient registry and the list of medical conditions that medical cannabis can be used to treat.
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