GROUP SEEKS CLARITY ON RULES FOR COLLECTIVES

Six Coachella Valley cities have banned marijuana dispensaries

Medical marijuana patients and advocates in the Coachella Valley are
pushing Riverside County officials to set guidelines to allow
collective groups or cooperatives to grow and dispense the drug
legally. As reported on thedesertsun.com, Lanny Swerdlow, president
of the Marijuana Anti-Prohibition Project, a patients' support group,
sent a letter Thursday to Riverside County District Attorney Rod
Pacheco and Sheriff Bob Doyle, asking for the guidelines. Questions
raised in the letter focus on how many patients a collective could
include and the kind of documentation patients might need to grow
medical marijuana for a group.

"An organizational structure understood by patients and recognized by
law enforcement would go a long way in assuaging the fears that many
co-op and collective members have of their facility being raided by
local police and their medicine confiscated," Swerdlow wrote in the
letter, copies of which were also sent to the Riverside County Board
of Supervisors and all city councils in the valley.

With bans or moratoriums on medical marijuana dispensaries now in
force in six of nine Coachella Valley cities, area patients are
increasingly looking at collectives as a way to obtain the drug.

The majority of collectives in the area consist of eight patients or
less, Swerdlow said in the letter.

California's medical marijuana laws allow patients to form
collectives and cooperatives, but do not define either type of
organization. Federal law bans all use, cultivation or sale of the drug.

Representatives for both Pacheco and Doyle declined comment, both
saying they have not had time to review the letter.

"We laid out our position in the white paper," said Ingrid Wyatt, a
spokeswoman for Pacheco, referring to a paper outlining the county's
opposition to dispensaries issued by former District Attorney Grover
Trask in 2006.

The paper defines collectives as "organizations jointly managed by
those using its facilities or services."

Responding to a reporter's question at a June meeting of the
Coachella Valley Association of Governments' Public Safety Committee,
Assistant District Attorney Bill Mitchell said a collective could be
"six to eight people having a regular (medical marijuana) garden plot
where it's for the benefit of the people." Garry Silva of Sky Valley,
a medical marijuana patient, was growing for a collective when his
home was raided by agents from the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration in March of 2006. At the time of the raid, he had
about 40 plants, along with forms from the other patients, which he
thought made his growing room legal.

Now facing felony charges for cultivation and possession of marijuana
filed by Riverside County, Silva said people growing for collectives
should be issued identification cards, similar to the state-issued
voluntary ID cards for patients.

"We're lagging behind is all," Silva said. "You have to regulate it
because of the nature of what it is."