MEDICAL MARIJUANA TOO EASY?

In between Jay-Z and Lady Gaga songs on Redding's hip-hop and pop
music station, an advertisement proclaims that for just $149, a new
doctor in town will evaluate a patient for medical marijuana.

Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai's advertisement would have been unthinkable
until nine months ago, when President Barack Obama directed federal
authorities not to prosecute people if they're complying with states'
medical marijuana laws.

Ever since, what were once quiet medicinal marijuana clinics working
on the fringes of medical communities up and down the state have
rapidly become more mainstream.

They've also become more common locally.

In the past year, two clinics, including Sumchai's on Bechelli Lane,
have opened in Redding, bringing to five the total number of doctors
who regularly travel to Redding to see patients seeking medical
marijuana recommendations. Only one of the doctors practicing at the
clinics actually lives in the north state.

Police, members of the local medical community, advocates for the
legalization of marijuana and the doctors at Redding's
longest-running cannabis clinic say they have doubts about the
legitimacy of some of the new traveling medical cannabis doctors.

Critics say California's voter-approved medical marijuana laws give
doctors broad discretion as to whom they can recommend marijuana,
making it easy for an unscrupulous physician to make huge profits
giving marijuana recommendations to anyone willing to hand over enough cash.

"I would guess if they had $150, they would come away from there with
a recommendation for medical marijuana," said John Thulin, who heads
the Shasta County Interagency Narcotics Task Force.

New cannabis doctors in town

The new cannabis doctors who recently have arrived in Redding aren't talking.

A woman behind the counter Thursday at Sumchai's clinic in the
Mission Square shopping center said Sumchai doesn't give interviews,
but the clinic's manager would respond to questions by e-mail.
E-mailed questions weren't answered.

Green Relief Management Services, a San Francisco-based company,
manages Sumchai's other two medical marijuana clinics in San
Francisco and in Sacramento.

Sumchai, one of at least 13 people to run against San Francisco Mayor
Gavin Newsom in 2007, is a general practice physician who also
specializes in sports medicine, according to the Medical Board of California.

For 20 years, Sumchai had practiced emergency medicine, general
surgery and neurosurgery at San Francisco Bay Area hospitals.

At one time, she also was the emergency physician for the San
Francisco Giants, according to medical board enforcement documents.

Sumchai surrendered her license in 2001, and it was revoked outright
in 2004, after a bout of post-traumatic stress disorder and three
criminal convictions left her unfit to care for patients, according
to the documents.

Her license was fully reinstated in 2009 under the condition that she
continue to a see a psychiatrist.

The other newcomer to open a clinic in town in the last year is Dr.
Cristal Speller, a Glendale-based physician who holds clinics in
Redding, Chico, Santa Barbara, Palmdale and Northridge, according to
her website, naturalcare4wellness.com.

She didn't respond to an e-mail request for an interview. Efforts to
reach her by phone this week and at her practice on Friday, the only
day she's in Redding each week, were unsuccessful.

Speller, whose medical board license says she specializes in
pediatric medicine, told the Record Searchlight last fall that she
abides by all California laws. All of her patients must bring a note
from a doctor, medical records or a radiology report before she will
write a 12-month recommendation.

Just minutes after the clinic opened Friday, there were about 10
people hunched over clipboards filling out paperwork inside her
office in the Market Street Promenade, formerly called the Downtown Mall.

While Sumchai charges $149 for an initial consultation, Speller
charges $170. A follow-up visit is $150, she said in September.

Speller said in the earlier interview that she has written thousands
of recommendations since 2005.

'They don't have our standards'

Dr. Michael Gitter, the 66-year-old owner of Redding's
longest-running medical cannabis clinic, on Charles Drive in north
Redding, said he has his doubts about some of the traveling
physicians working out of multiple clinics around the state.

"They don't have our standards," Gitter said without naming whom he
was criticizing.

Two years ago, Gitter, who is based in the Los Angeles area where he
runs a traditional medical clinic serving poor, inner-city residents,
bought the Redding practice from his business partner, Dr. Philip
Denney, an iconic figure in the medical cannabis community.

Gitter shares the practice with two doctors, Dr. Terrence Malee, a
retired emergency room and urgent care physician from Junction City,
and Dr. Gary Taff, a doctor and health care system administrator
who's based in Mendocino County.

When a patient comes in, they must have an appointment and
documentation from their physicians before receiving a
recommendation, Gitter said. They also must undergo a complete
physical examination. The cost for an exam is $200. Most exams last
around 15 minutes.

Malee, a spry 70-year-old physician of 43 years, ran St. Joseph
General Hospital's emergency room in Eureka for five years. He said
Thursday that in his exams, he's found undiagnosed physical problems
like tumors that his patient's regular doctor had missed.

He said the doctors at his clinic strive to winnow out those looking
to abuse the system.

He gave the example of a cage fighter who came in to his office
trying to intimidate him into getting a recommendation that allowed
him to have 7 ounces of marijuana in a week, when most patients are
only recommended 2.

"I said, 'Look, bud, the last time you went to the doctor and asked
him for 1,000 Vicodin, did he give it to you? No. Well, I'm not going
to give you 7 ounces either," Malee said, laughing.

Indeed, later on Thursday a man entered the clinic carrying a
doctor's recommendation a friend had let him borrow. The
recommendation from a Southern California physician said the patient
could legally grow 100 plants.

The man was hoping Malee would recommend he could grow the same
amount. Malee quickly denied his request for so many plants.

Gitter said his office staff takes further efforts to stop people
looking to abuse California's "wonderful" medical marijuana laws.

In the history of the clinic, only about three people under 18 have
ever been given a doctor's recommendation for medical marijuana. Each
of them were "very sick kids," and they where directed not to use
cannabis without a parent present, he said.

Gitter said patients between 18 and 21 years old who still live with
their parents also must bring their parents with them.

Malee said he'll see 30 patients a day. He works four days a week
every other week.

Huge financial incentives

Critics say the financial incentive is clearly there for an
unscrupulous doctor to abuse the system.

If a doctor sees 30 patients a day at a minimum of $150 a patient,
that's $4,500 per day, or more than $1 million a doctor can make in a
normal working year.

"It's easy money," said Dr. Craig Kraffert, a Redding dermatologist
and real estate developer, noting that the physicians running these
clinics face very small overhead costs and don't actually have to
perform procedures on patients.

Kraffert said that as an entrepreneur, he could see the appeal of
starting such a moneymaking practice, but he decided it would be
unethical to do so.

He said he believes the majority of patients seen by the doctors are
those hoping merely to legalize their recreational marijuana use.

Redding Police Chief Peter Hansen agreed. He said the cannabis
doctors are practicing what he believes amounts to medical fraud.

He contends that when his officer conducted an undercover sting on
Denney's practice in Redding, he was given a recommendation for
medical marijuana for a vague complaint of insomnia.

He said that doctors will give marijuana for any malady, however
imagined. In fact, a Redding teenager obtained a marijuana
recommendation after complaining that her braces hurt her mouth, he said.

"'You have a hangnail. Does smoking marijuana help you with your
hangnailUKP' 'Well, yes it does.' 'Here's a recommendation.'" Hansen
said. "It's fraud. It's a scam."

Dr. Dan Lensink, immediate past president of the North Valley Medical
Association, said doctors in his medical association haven't taken an
official position on marijuana clinics.

Although they appreciate the will of the voters in passing the
state's medical marijuana laws, they, too, have their doubts about
the cannabis clinics.

"It's my anecdotal experience that there is a rather freewheeling
willingness by doctors not part of our established medical community
to swoop in and prescribe marijuana in an environment where 'medical
purposes' appears to be interpreted very liberally, well beyond the
best interest of the patient without appropriate medical work-up for
underlying conditions, and without due consideration for other
medications with a better side-effect profile," Lensink said Thursday
in an e-mail. He said he has concerns that there are no real
standards of care by which cannabis doctor must abide.

'Harm reduction clinic'

Malee, Gitter and Denney, who still runs a medical cannabis clinic in
Carmichael, countered that their clinics are filling a much-needed
void in the local medical community.

Gitter said he and his two fellow physicians in Redding have around
130 years of medical experience between them.

They're legitimately giving medicine to patients who need it, they say.

Too many doctors, they say, are unwilling to provide or have outright
shunned cannabis as medicine.

Malee calls his practice a "harm reduction clinic," geared toward
weaning patients off much more dangerous pharmaceutical drugs.

Malee said he's being smoking recreational marijuana since he was an
air combat surgeon and helicopter door gunner in Vietnam. It was only
in the past three or four years that he came to realize how
beneficial cannabis is medically, he said.

He rapidly listed a broad array of maladies cannabis treats, ranging
from cancer to back pain to nausea to restless leg syndrome.

"Most doctors think it's a recreational drug with few or any
medicinal properties," Malee said. "What I've found since I've been
doing this is that cannabis has more medicinal properties than any
other drug I've ever prescribed in over 43 years of medicine."

Malee, Gitter and Denney say they're worried that unscrupulous
doctors might harm the medical cannabis movement they've worked so
hard to further.

"These sort of traveling road shows don't really help us," Denney
said. "This just plays right into the hands of those who oppose us.
They say, 'See, I told you it's a sham.'"