SAN DIEGO - AN END TO POT DISPENSARIES?

District Attorney Says Raids Were A Warning

In the past two years, the number of medical-marijuana dispensaries in
San Diego County has grown from zero to roughly two-dozen, most of
them located within San Diego city limits, with another dozen
medical-cannabis delivery services focused solely on bringing pot to a
person's home.

Only the L.A. area has experienced a similar increase in
medical-cannabis-related businesses in such a short period of time.
The issue's reached a tipping point in San Diego two weeks ago,
federal and local law-enforcement agents raided 13 dispensaries and
arrested 15 owners and employees. Five people have been charged with
the federal crimes of conspiracy to distribute and conspiracy to
manufacture marijuana; the remaining were arraigned in state court
last week on drug sales and possession charges.

Damon Mosler, head of the District Attorney's narcotics unit, said the
raids were a warning to dispensaries that remain open. "The rest are
on notice and certainly can expect to see law enforcement if they
remain open," he said.

Indeed, California NORML (National Organization to Reform Marijuana
Laws), which keeps lists of cannabis clubs, dispensaries and co-ops,
updated San Diego County's listings this week, noting that five
dispensaries were "closed till further notice by DEA raid."

For the past 18 months, dispensaries operated in San Diego with
relatively little law-enforcement oversight and no political
oversight. Mosler said he watched more dispensaries open but didn't
hear anything from the San Diego Police Department.

"County prosecutors were wondering when they were going to start
seeing reports from police to prosecute these cases," he said.

Juliana Humphrey, an attorney and a member of the city's
medical-marijuana task force, said she gets calls from patients and
dispensary owners, asking for her advice. Dispensaries, she tells
them, "are not legal in any way, shape or form."

Prop. 215, the decade-old voter-approved initiative that made medical
marijuana use legal with a doctor's recommendation, said nothing about
how a person should obtain marijuana. The law encourages "state and
federal governments" to come up with a plan that would give patients
safe and affordable access to marijuana. Marijuana remains illegal
under federal law, classified as a "Schedule I" drug, meaning it has
no medicinal value.

State Senate Bill 420, signed into law two years ago, sought to tie up
some of Prop. 215's loose ends?clarifying how much marijuana, both
dried and in plant form, a person could possess and requiring counties
to create an identification-card program to recognize legitimate
patients? But like its parent law, SB 420 said nothing about how
someone should obtain pot or a plant. A person can appoint a "primary
caregiver" to grow marijuana for them and then, according to the law,
pay that person "for actual expenses, including reasonable
compensation." Some have interpreted this as an OK for dispensaries.
On its website, though, California NORML warns that "dispensaries?
selling marijuana over the counter accordingly do so at the tolerance
of local authorities."

"Prop. 215 was not a 'full employment for marijuana growers' act,"
Humphrey said.

"One person providing for 1,000 people is not what the law envisioned"
in defining a primary caregiver. "They have to have some sort of
relationship with their patients."

Humphrey said dispensaries have gotten by so far because law
enforcement chose not to go after them. "Some get lulled into a sense
of false security, but as others pop up, people start complaining and
cops feel they have to do something," she said.

Though San Diego was, in 2003, one of the first cities in California
to pass guidelines as to how much marijuana a person could possess for
legitimate medical use (the guidelines set rules for growing, too),
the city sits within a county governed by a Board of Supervisors that
has refused to implement the ID-card program and last year launched an
attack on Prop. 215. The supervisors, a steadfastly conservative
bunch, are hoping to kill the law by arguing that the federal
government's ban on marijuana trumps state law.

As for dispensaries, however, while six counties and 24 cities have
taken steps to regulate them, San Diego's done nothing.

Even Kern County, where George Bush beat John Kerry by a 2-to-1
margin, enacted dispensary guidelines earlier this month. San
Francisco last year put a moratorium on new dispensaries and drew up
rules that required dispensaries to apply for business licenses and
permits, pay related fees and not be located near a school. The Kern
County guidelines give the sheriff the right to review sales records.

Bruce Mirken, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project, said
cities and counties that fail to regulate dispensaries "are inviting
trouble."

"Communities that have chosen to ignore them or try to not have them
at all are doing everybody a disservice because you either end up with
the Wild West or with all the activity forced underground where nobody
can properly regulate it. Neither is good for patients or the
community," Mirken said.

When asked about dispensaries' legality, Mirken pointed out that
they've never been challenged in state court.

"Arguably, there's enough vagueness in the law that one could make a
case one way or another about the legality of dispensaries," he said,
"but there certainly has been no definitive decision that state law
bans them."

Claudia Little, 60, a nurse and medical-marijuana patient, had hoped
that the city's medical marijuana task force would take the lead on
the dispensary issue and call for guidelines.

"Very few people have the green thumb or the resources to grow their
own cannabis," she said. "Dispensaries are wonderful for patients
where they can go in, show their paperwork, get their medicine and go
home without having to ask a teenager to score it on the street for
them."

Over the past year, Little and other medical-marijuana advocates have
tried to meet with local officials with little luck.

"The dispensary owners, a lot of them, really have been begging for
regulations," she said. One of those owners, Wayne Hudson, hired
lobbyist Nikki Symington to meet with public officials and ask for
regulations.

When it comes to medical-marijuana dispensaries, Symington said,
"there will always be a gray area? because we're caught between a
federal and state issue. But the gray area? really gets cleaned up
when there are clear regulations."

Little and Symington had an appointment to meet with City Attorney
Mike Aguirre. A day before the raids, they got a call to say the
meeting was cancelled. "We had set up appointments; I had been calling
the mayor's office. I should have guessed," Symington said about the
raids.

"Everybody sort of said to me, 'Well, we're having internal
discussions right now.'"

Mosler said the raids focused on dispensary operators and doctors who
the authorities believe were giving out questionable
recommendations.

"We didn't want any patients brought into this," he said. "We're not
touching patients; we're not going to debate their ailment."

But, Mirken said, using raids to shut down dispensaries is an attack
on patients.

"Patients need a safe, reliable source of medicine, something that's
been acknowledged by local public-health and law-enforcement officials
in communities around the state."

Neither Aguirre nor Police Chief William Lansdowne responded to
CityBeat's request for an interview. Mayor Jerry Sanders, through a
spokesperson, said that while he supports the use of medical
marijuana, he doesn't support for-profit dispensaries: "Under the
Compassionate Use Act, the state and federal governments are called on
to develop a plan for the safe and affordable distribution of
marijuana to all patients needing the drug," he said. "This includes
enhancing the access of patients and caregivers to medicinal marijuana
through collective, cooperative cultivation projects. This does not
include for-profit dispensaries."

Humphrey said there are alternatives to dispensaries. "The folks who
are sincere [about access to medical marijuana] should brainstorm,"
she said.

Longtime medical-marijuana activist Steve McWilliams, who died last
year, opposed dispensaries, instead advocating for a secure, municipal
"grow area" where qualified patients would pay a small fee to grow
their own marijuana or have someone grow it for them. The place would
be guarded, and guards' salaries would be covered by user fees.

Lynette Shaw, who runs the only dispensary in the Marin County town of
Fairfax?one that's strictly nonprofit?said her set-up, in place for
nine years, is something she'd like to see other cities and counties
try; she's offered to advise San Diego.

"The chief of police wrote this use permit with 84 conditions" that
Shaw has to follow, she said. Among them: her books are audited yearly
by the Fairfax City Council to make sure she remains a nonprofit; she
pays state, federal and local income taxes; she has a contract with
the police to keep loiterers away from the dispensary; and she abides
by community concerns when it comes to operating hours.

"Because we're across from a Little League ball field, we close during
Little League games," she said. Her patients' purchases are
100-percent tax deductible as a medical expense, and she's also the
only dispensary she knows of with a money-back guarantee. "If the
medicine doesn't work, you bring it back," she said.

In the end, Shaw believes her dispensary has saved both the city of
Fairfax and Marin County money in law enforcement and legal costs. "We
have calm in the community. The officers are not wasting their time?
they can get on to taking care of the real bad guys."