COUNTY ADOPTS GUIDELINES ON MEDICINAL POT

Treatment: Supervisors On Tuesday Will Discuss Law Enforcement's Allowance
Of Six Plants Or 1 Pound Of Dried Marijuana Per Patient.

After six years of wrangling with medicinal marijuana users on a
case-by-case basis, Ventura County law enforcement officials have
officially adopted a set of guidelines that lay out how much pot a person
can legally possess.

The guidelines, which allow for six plants of any size or 1 pound of dried
pot for an approved patient, will be discussed publicly for the first time
Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors meeting.

"They are needed to give both front-line officers and narcotics officers
some parameters to work with," Undersheriff Craig Husband said Friday. In
1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, commonly known as the
Compassionate Use Act, which allows a seriously ill person to use marijuana
with a written recommendation from a physician.

However, the law does not include a provision for how much marijuana a
person can grow or possess, a decision that state leaders have said should
be left to individual counties.

In the absence of standards, police officers across the state were left to
guess what constituted a reasonable amount of marijuana. This, activists
said, led to unnecessary arrests and the seizure of legally grown pot.

"We had a couple of bad experiences where an arrest was made and people
alleged we had taken their plants and destroyed them," said Walter Wall,
assistant county counsel. "We needed something that gives people some
expectation on how we interpret the law."

For 66-year-old Jerry Wilbanks, the guidelines are a step in the right
direction, but far too restrictive for medicinal users who want to grow a
large crop that can yield several pounds of marijuana at once.

The Ventura man, who said he smokes marijuana for chronic pain resulting
from several back and heart surgeries, asked the Board of Supervisors two
weeks ago to outline and discuss the guidelines after officers came to his
home and confiscated 34 of his 38 marijuana plants. He was allowed to keep
several ounces of dried pot in his freezer.

A Decision After Nearly Two Years of Research

With little fanfare and no publicity, a panel of city and county law
enforcement leaders adopted the guidelines more than two months ago after
spending nearly two years conducting research on the issue.

Because this is a policy among law enforcement agencies, supervisors will
not vote on the rules, but only make the issue public.

Sheriff Bob Brooks, outgoing Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury and the chiefs
of police in Ventura, Oxnard, Simi Valley, Santa Paula and Port Hueneme
have all signed off on the guidelines.

Officials drafted the policy by studying guidelines in several Northern
California counties.

They opted to mimic Butte and El Dorado counties, which also allow for six
plants or 1 pound of dried pot.

Local law enforcement officials maintain one marijuana plant can produce
about 1 pound of dried pot, which can be used to make about 1,000
cigarettes. A patient could, therefore, smoke nearly three cigarettes a day
for nearly a year, the officials said.

The guidelines, in effect since late March, come in the wake of a lawsuit
filed by three unnamed activists in 2000 against the Ventura County
Sheriff's Department. The plaintiffs asked a judge to specify how much a
patient could possess.

The suit was dismissed when law enforcement leaders finished drafting the
guidelines.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Greg Totten, the incoming district attorney,
supports the new guidelines but said his office will continue to prosecute
people who are not legitimate medicinal users.

Totten and other officials said they supported the guidelines, but were
less than enthusiastic about the pending public discussion.

"I'm not advocating everyone using marijuana, and that's the problem with
bringing it up," said Supervisor John Flynn, but "we have to address the
issue and make people aware of the guidelines."