MARIJUANA LAW GOES UP IN SMOKE AS FEDERAL AGENTS RAID DISPENSARIES

United States Federal Agency Takes on California Over Cannabis Use
for Health Reasons

The young woman in the bikini top and bottle tan was having a good
time in the bright afternoon sun. Gyrating opposite the Muscle Beach
Gym on the boardwalk at Venice beach, she chanted her mantra in an
eastern European accent. "The doctor is here! The doctor is here!"

Sitting behind her in a beach chair, an equally bronzed young man
repeated the single word: "Caliente!"

The saleswoman changed her mantra: "Medical marijuana! Medical
marijuana!" she said, proffering cards to the tourists ambling by.

"Do you suffer from Aids, glaucoma, insomnia, cancer, migranes [sic],
eating disorders, anxiety, depression, nausea, chronic pain or many
other disorders?" asks the card. "Walk-ins welcome. No appointment necessary."

The Medical Kush Beach Club is probably not what the voters of
California envisaged when they passed proposition 215 - the
Compassionate Use Act - in 1996. The act allows patients in the state
to possess or cultivate marijuana and permits the cultivation of
marijuana for a patient.

Twelve years later, marijuana dispensaries such as the Medical Kush
Beach Club have sprung up across the state, providing legal marijuana
to anyone with an appropriate referral from a doctor, typically
obtained for $100-$150 (UKP52-UKP78), a standard medical visit fee.

Yet while California and a dozen other states have passed medical
marijuana laws, the federal government has not.

This week, Charles Lynch, the proprietor of Central Coast
Compassionate Caregivers, a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro
Bay, 200 miles north of Los Angeles, found himself at the sharp end
of a legal argument that has pitted state authorities against federal
drug enforcement agencies.

Facing five charges of distributing illegal drugs, Lynch was found
guilty in a Los Angeles courtroom of selling 100kg (220lb) of
marijuana. He faces between five and 85 years in prison; his lawyers
intend to appeal.

During his trial, the prosecution contended that Lynch had sold $2m
worth of marijuana to patients from his dispensary between its
opening in 2006 and a raid by federal Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) agents in March this year. He sold drugs to young people "not
yet old enough to legally drink", prosecutors told the jury, and
carried the proceeds in a backpack full of cash.

Lynch's lawyers argued that he had been told by a federal agent that
local jurisdiction would prevail and he would therefore not be
prosecuted by federal authorities, a legal principle known as
entrapment by estoppel. But prosecutors - and the jury - dismissed
the contention.

Bone Cancer

Owen Beck, who as a teenager was taken by his parents to receive
treatment from Lynch for bone cancer, was prevented, with other
patients, from testifying as soon as his medical condition was
mentioned. The judge ruled that state laws concerning medical
marijuana were irrelevant in a federal court.

Character references from the city's mayor and officials of the local
chamber of commerce, who attended a ceremony to mark the opening of
the dispensary, also made little impression.

"We all felt Mr Lynch intended well," the jury forewoman, Kitty
Meese, told reporters after the trial. "But under the parameters we
were given for the federal law, we didn't have a choice.

"It was a tough decision for all of us because the state law and the
federal law are at odds," she said.

In Culver City, two miles from the beach at Venice, the staff at the
Organica Collective, a medical marijuana dispensary housed in a
single-storey stucco building tucked off a main road, sympathised. On
July 31, Organica was raided by the DEA.

"It was like a smash and grab," said Ed Jones, a friend of the owner,
Jeff Joseph. "They were armed to the hilt, like we were a terrorist
cell. They stole all our money. I'd rather have been done in by gangs."

Sarah Pullen, a spokeswoman for the DEA, said the agency was
"enforcing federal drug law, which still holds that marijuana is an
illegal drug in any form".

Even the permissible age of a patient is a source of dispute between
the two competing jurisdictions: under state law, anyone under 18 is
a minor; under federal law, it is 21.

Despite the raid and the confiscation of its stock, records and
money, the dispensary was up and running again the next day and,
within a week, a steady stream of customers was passing through its doors.

"I heard the unthinkable happened," customer Clifford Williams
shouted across to Joseph, as the owner sat on a tatty sofa in the
dispensary's car park.

Williams, 18, has been a customer for two months, having been
referred by a doctor for anxiety and migraines. "My parents wanted to
put me on lots of pharmaceutical drugs," he said.

'War on People'

The raid caught the attention of an LA council member, Bill
Rosendahl. "It's ridiculous to have this constant battle between
federal and state laws," he said. "America has gone over the top. The
war on drugs is out of control - it's become a war on people."

Rosendahl and his fellow LA city councillors voted last year to issue
licences to existing dispensaries and place a moratorium on new ones.
The move, he thinks, has helped temper the DEA's approach. But until
there is a change in federal law, he says, the agency will continue
to carry out raids.

"The real leadership needs to come from the federal government," he said.

He pointed to a bill launched the day before the raid on Organica by
Barney Frank, a senior Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. His
bill would eliminate most federal penalties for marijuana use.

Another backer of the bill, Democratic representative William Clay of
Missouri, described the prosecution of marijuana offences as "a
phoney war on drugs that is filling up our prisons, especially with
people of colour".

But John Walters, the director of the federal government's Office of
National Drug Control Policy, countered that too many people were
trivialising the effects of the drug.

"Baby boomers have this perception that marijuana is about fun and
freedom," he said. "It isn't; it's about dependency, disease, and
dysfunction. Too many of us are in denial and it is time for an intervention."

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IN NUMBERS

200,000 registered medical marijuana patients in California

150 - estimated number of medical marijuana dispensaries in California

20m marijuana plants cultivated in California

$13.8bn (UKP7bn) - estimated street value of California's marijuana crop

2m cannabis plants eradicated in California by the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration

829,625 people arrested nationally for marijuana violations in 2006

96.8 million Americans (40.2% of the population over 12) admit to
having tried marijuana

14.6 million Americans admit to having used marijuana in past month