CITY MUST RELINQUISH SEIZED MEDICAL POT

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by a California city
that asked the justices to overturn a lower court ruling requiring
police to return medical marijuana that they seize from a patient.

In the November 2007 ruling, a state appeals court said California's
medical marijuana law entitles patients to recover pot wrongfully
seized by police.

The city of Garden Grove (Orange County), joined by the California
Narcotics Officers Association, argued that returning marijuana to a
user would violate federal law, which strictly bans marijuana
possession and distribution. The state Supreme Court refused to
review the case earlier this year, and the nation's high court denied
review Monday without comment.

"It's now settled that state law enforcement officers cannot arrest
medical marijuana patients or seize their medicine simply because
they prefer the contrary federal law," said Joseph Elford, chief
counsel of the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access and lawyer
for the plaintiff in the Garden Grove case.

Lois Bobak, a lawyer for Garden Gove, said city officials and police
were disappointed by the court's rejection.

"Law enforcement officials are concerned about the proliferation of
drugs," she said. In this case, she said, "they felt like they were
being put in a position of violating federal law to comply with state law."

A similar issue may soon reach the U.S. Supreme Court in an appeal by
San Diego County, which claims it is being forced to condone federal
drug-law violations by California's medical marijuana law and
legislation requiring counties to issue identification cards to
marijuana patients. Another state appeals court upheld the California
law in July, and the state Supreme Court turned away the county's
appeal in October.

The Garden Grove case dates from June 2005, when police stopped Felix
Kha for running a red light and found 8.1 grams of marijuana in a
container. Kha said he had documentation that his doctor had
recommended the drug for severe pain, but he was charged with
marijuana possession. Prosecutors later dropped the charge, but the
city refused to return the marijuana and said it should be destroyed.

Elford said Monday that Kha has never gotten his marijuana back and,
after moving to Northern California, doesn't plan to return to Garden
Grove and ask for it.

In last year's ruling, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa
Ana said withholding small amounts of marijuana from patients who are
entitled to use it under state law would thwart the will of the
voters who passed Proposition 215 in 1996, and also would violate the
rights of people like Kha to recover property they possessed legally.

Dismissing police arguments that they have a duty to enforce and
uphold the federal marijuana ban, the court said, "It is not the job
of the local police to enforce the federal drug laws."

The Supreme Court case is Garden Grove vs. Superior Court, 07-1569.