COUNTY SETS RULES FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Ending long dispute, advocates, law enforcement agree on limit of 3
pounds per year per patient

Medical marijuana advocates and law enforcement leaders struck an
accord on Sonoma County's first guidelines for how much marijuana an
eligible patient may grow.

The new rules allow patients with doctor approval to grow enough
plants -- up to 99 -- to produce a maximum of three pounds of
processed marijuana a year. Most other California counties that
specify an allowable quantity of marijuana limit production to smaller
amounts.

The guidelines seek to settle a years-old argument over how much
marijuana is enough for a patient. In the absence of guidelines on
quantity, patients or people growing marijuana for them have risked
arrest and confiscation by officers who suspect a collection of plants
is too large for personal medical use.

The three-pound annual limit was proposed by the Sonoma Alliance for
Medical Marijuana and approved by District Attorney Mike Mullins and
the county law enforcement chiefs association.

Mullins said Wednesday the guidelines should help officers and
patients by bringing clarity to an issue muddled by the wording of
Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot measure that legalized
doctor-approved marijuana in the state. The measure doesn't specify
how patients can legally obtain marijuana, a federally outlawed
substance, or how much they can legally grow or possess.

Ernest "Doc" Knapp of Sebastopol, an alliance member who uses
marijuana for relief from anorexia, muscle spasms and pain, said the
new, relatively liberal allowance makes Sonoma County a leader among
counties seeking workable implementation of Proposition 215.

"It's a good time for medical marijuana patients in Sonoma County," he
said.

Alliance members praised Mullins, who in recent years drew scorn from
medical marijuana advocates across the state and nation for
prosecuting marijuana growers who claimed to be helping seriously ill
people.

Mullins recently lost a major jury trial against two men arrested for
growing 600 marijuana plants in Petaluma that they said were to become
medicine for 1,280 members of a San Francisco buyers' club. Also this
year, a jury acquitted a Santa Rosa man who claimed his 110-plant pot
garden was for personal use.

Sonoma County Sheriff Jim Piccinini said those not guilty verdicts and
others like it up and down the state demonstrated that the county
needed to ease its standards on the growing of marijuana as medicine.

Still determined to discourage large-scale cooperative marijuana
gardens, Piccinini and Mullins supported the new guidelines in hopes
of making patients feel more comfortable growing their own marijuana.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week also encourages personal gardens
by keeping large-scale distribution operations subject to federal
prosecution.

Piccinini said it's sad that local authorities, whose job is to
enforce laws, found it necessary because of inaction from Sacramento
to write their own local guidelines on medical marijuana.

"We shouldn't be the ones writing laws," he said. "We still maintain
(Proposition 215) was an ambiguous law from the very beginning."

The county guidelines may help police and sheriff's deputies more
readily distinguish a small, medicinal garden from a for-profit patch.
Piccinini said that despite all the public debate about medicinal
marijuana, illicit growers still are making money growing commercial
pot gardens.

"Forty thousands pot plants were recovered last year in Sonoma County,
and few if any of those were medical," he said. "We're talking large
groves, people growing it for money. And that is still flat against
the law."

In forging the new guidelines, marijuana advocates and county
authorities agreed that an average patient using marijuana for relief
from illness or injuries smokes about three pounds a year.

A sticking point in the medical marijuana debate has been how many
plants are necessary to produce a pound of marijuana. Cazadero
resident Mary Pat Beck of the Sonoma Alliance said individual
marijuana plants produce wildly different numbers of buds, depending
on variables such as lighting, soil and the skill of the grower.

Some counties limit growers of medicinal marijuana to six or 10 or 12
plants, a restriction Sonoma County advocates argued is unreasonable
because it is quite possible that many plants will produce only a tiny
amount of usable marijuana.

The alliance proposed, and county agreed, that a garden capable of
producing three pounds of marijuana a year should have a canopy -- the
mass of the leaves -- no larger than 100 square feet.

Whether a grower has six plants or 99, under the guidelines those
plants cannot legally produce more than three pounds of marijuana.

Beck said the alliance hopes to persuade authorities that some
patients legitimately need more than three pounds of marijuana a year
and to allow them more with their doctors' permission.

Alliance members said the new guidelines are cause for celebration by
patients who for years have feared police would accuse them of growing
marijuana commercially and seize the plants.

"We feel like a great weight has been lifted," Beck said. With an
agreement worked out with local authorities, she said, "we can
concentrate on making our gardens safe from thieves."