A 'Work in Progress'

LEGAL TERRITORY STILL UNCHARTED AS ADVOCATES PUSH FOR LIBERAL ACCESS

It has been nearly a year since Michigan voters approved a loosely
regulated system legalizing medical marijuana.

In a quiet and mostly out-of-the-way fashion, the program has taken
root across the state. Patients and caregivers have formed local
"compassion clubs" to educate themselves on the details of the law,
share cultivation techniques and generally support one another.

Medical marijuana is still an underground product - cultivated in
so-called grow rooms, under lock and key and exchanged in the small
"compassion" networks.

Michigan Department of Community Health registration records show
that 83 people in Berrien County have registered as patients or
caregivers. Van Buren County has 49 MDCH card-holders, and Cass County has 29.

Michigan's program is still young. And many of the rules - for
growers, patients, police, prosecutors and local governments - are
still hazy, especially because they may conflict with federal law.

One man in Niles is finding out the hard way.

Caught in the gap between state and federal law, he could be evicted
from subsidized housing for growing and using medical marijuana.

Allain's ordeal

Steve Allain has been working within the state law. He has a MDCH
card that entitles him to grow up to 12 plants inside his home.

Smoking marijuana helps him live with the pain of Crohn's disease and
hepatitis C. And it's a treatment he can afford, he told The Herald-Palladium.

A gastroenterologist put him on an experimental drug regimen, Allain
said, but he couldn't afford the $10,000-a-year treatment.

Smoking marijuana proved to be a relief. He kept some plants at first
but later turned them over to a friend, who is a registered
caregiver, to grow for him.

Though the plants are gone, Allain still smokes in his house, which
is the only place he can comply with the law.

The 53-year-old former truck driver continues to get by on disability
benefits. He said the Social Security Administration is aware of his
marijuana use but has not stated any objections.

But a different federal agency - the Department of Housing and Urban
Development - does mind.

No matter what Michigan's law says about medical marijuana, it is
still against federal law. Allain lives in HUD housing, and HUD has a
problem with his marijuana use. The Niles Housing Commission wrote
Allain an eviction notice in June. Mary Ann Bush, the Niles Housing
Commission executive director, recently told The Herald-Palladium
federal regulations require a "zero-tolerance" policy toward illegal drug use.

Allain stayed, and the Housing Commission filed suit in Berrien
County Trial Court.

The suit was dismissed, but "without prejudice," which means it could
be refiled, and it was last week.

Appealing to the Housing Commission, then hiring a lawyer to keep his
house while battling his physical ailments at the same time has
become an exhausting ordeal, Allain said.

"My stress levels are obviously off the charts. ... Financially, I'm
just slammed," he said.

Medical marijuana advocates in Michigan are pushing to liberalize the
program. Members of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association want
growers to be able to pool their resources and form nonprofit
collectives, which would take the drug out of the basements into more
public commercial spaces.

Meanwhile, some municipalities want to regulate where growers can set
up - to keep California-style commercial "pot shops" from springing
up in their neighborhoods and to preempt parts of the law that are
open to abuse.

Keeping It Legal

From a police perspective, the law has yet to be much of an issue in
Berrien County.

"We haven't had many problems," said Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey.

An MDCH-registered patient can grow up to 12 plants to harvest
marijuana for personal use. Because caregivers can supply for up to
five patients, some caregivers can grow up to 60 plants.

When the Medical Marijuana Act went before voters in a referendum
last November, opponents argued that this system would give growers a
legal smokescreen for illegal operations - that 12 plants per patient
would allow caregivers to grow a huge amount of marijuana, most of
which could be sold on the black market.

That scenario does not seem to be playing out locally.

In the short time the program has been in effect, Berrien County
Sheriff's Department Narcotics Unit officers have not found illegal
growers trying to use what prosecutors have called the "medical
marijuana defense."

Police continue to arrest people for selling marijuana and other
drugs, Bailey said, but apparently none of those marijuana growers
have been legal caregivers.

"If there are caregivers out there, we don't know where they're at,"
Bailey said.

He said he doesn't know of any medical marijuana users in Berrien
County being arrested for possession.

Bailey said his officers have been trained extensively about what to
do on road patrol with respect to possession.

Under the law, patients can carry up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana.

"If we find less than 2.5 ounces, we ask for the card," Bailey said.
"If they don't have the card, they're arrested."

If a person is carrying more than 2.5 ounces, he noted, it does not
matter if the person has a card, because it is still breaking the law.

"We've still been making a lot of arrests, because we're not seeing
the medical cards," Bailey said.

Scot Woods, director of the Berrien County Compassion Club, which
meets in Coloma, said members of his group have met with the sheriff
several times and have "a good relationship" with the department.

"Their stance and ours is, stay within the law and you're fine ... no
worries," Woods said.

Berrien County Prosecutor Art Cotter said local police in Berrien
County are beginning to see MDCH cards in traffic stops, and
prosecuting attorneys have dealt with a few cases where medical
marijuana is involved.

In July, police arrested one man for a variety of drug charges after
they found a methamphetamine laboratory in his house in Buchanan. A
tip that the man was growing marijuana outdoors led police to search
his house. It turned out that the was a registered medical marijuana user.

The man had drug convictions in three states, and it was obvious he
was a drug user, according to the police report. But he had a
recommendation for medical marijuana from a Niles doctor and a valid
card from the MDCH.

Because the system depends on doctor recommendations, preventing
cases like that depends on the prudence and responsibility of
doctors, Cotter said.

"It depends on the legitimacy and appropriateness of their
recommendations," Cotter said.

A Need for Collectives?

Brad Forrester, spokesman for the Michigan Medical Marijuana
Association, talked by telephone about efforts around the state by
growers to start nonprofit collectives. Forrester said collectives
could provide a better quality and a more stable supply of marijuana
for patients, ensure easier access and protect caregivers.

Well-intentioned caregivers who end up growing a greater supply than
needed would have a safe place to dump any surpluses.

But the primary objective is "to give patient more options," Forrester said.

"The (one-caregiver-per-patient) option is not going to work well for
all people," he said.

Woods also said collectives would be better for patients.

A patient who grows his or her own marijuana could go there in a
pinch in the event of a "grow failure" in the patient's own supply.

That would be "a lot better than going to the streets" to buy the
drug, Woods said.

The law has a provision allowing caregivers to charge patients for
the costs associated with growing - which introduces a commercial element.

Collectives could be a source of tax revenue for local governments,
Forrester said.

Medical marijuana proliferation could spin off a whole industry with
related businesses, said Greg Francisco, executive director of the
Michigan Medical Marijuana Association.

But the law is silent about pooling operations. If multiple
caregivers are contributing to a common pool and the collective is
selling to patients, Forrester admitted it would likely violate the
five-patients-per-caregiver limit.

Still, Forrester said he is working with growers in Detroit who are
pushing for a local ordinance to allow just that kind of pooling arrangement.

"The next step is for a few brave souls to step forward and get an
ordinance passed in a receptive community, form the collective and
test the waters," Forrester wrote in an Internet article on the
subject of collectives.

"We have to take an incrementalist approach," he told The Herald-Palladium.

Legal battles are to be expected, he said, and patients and
caregivers will get arrested as they push the boundaries of what is legal.

"I expect to be arrested," he said.

"That's part of how the change happens. There's gotta be a body count."

Local Control

A few municipalities are studying how to minimize the local impact of
medical marijuana through zoning.

The St. Joseph Township Board formed a committee, but no new
ordinance is in the works for now, Township Supervisor Roger Seely said.

"We're still doing homework, trying to gather more information about
the law," Seely said. "It's a new thing they put on the books and
it's something we're trying not be blind-sided by. We're watching to
see what everyone else is doing."

Scott Dienes, a lawyer who represents local governments including
Lake Township, Coloma Township and others, said many municipalities
want to add their own guidelines to control where medical marijuana
is grown and sold.

"I think the concern is we don't want growing operations just
anywhere in the community. We sure don't want them in basements of
houses near a school or church," Dienes said.

Relatively few cities have passed ordinances so far, though Niles is
one. The Niles City Council passed the ordinance in May, and it took
effect in June.

It prohibits growing within 1,000 feet of a drug-free school zone.

It says marijuana cannot be grown "in connection with or at a
location at which any other commodity, product or service is also available."

It prohibits multiple caregivers from growing in the same location.

Those and other sections of the ordinance would make it hard for
growers to form collectives.

But medical marijuana advocates have pointed out that the Michigan
Right to Farm Act may protect marijuana growers from local ordinances.

The act exempts farmers from certain zoning regulations.

Dienes called the Right to Farm Act an "obvious sticking point" that
could block local governments from adding levels of regulation not
authorized in the tightly written Michigan Medical Marijuana Act.

Dienes said he has sent a letter to Attorney General Mike Cox,
through Rep. John Proos, R-St. Joseph, asking for an interpretation
on whether the Right to Farm Act supersedes local regulation over
medical marijuana growing.

The Michigan Medical Marijuana Act contains a carefully crafted
system of protections for growers and users. It was drafted by
lawyers working at and with the Marijuana Policy Project, a
Washington, D.C.-based pro-marijuana advocacy organization.

Regulations the MDCH wrote for the medical marijuana program in the
two months after Proposal 1 passed were reversed after medical
marijuana advocates, including the lead drafter or Proposal 1,
charged that the additions violated the intent of the law.

Medical marijuana advocates locally and at the state level said they
have been communicating with state lawmakers about how to expand
access to medical marijuana.

"We've been to Lansing meeting with several senators and
representatives working on this co-op thing," Woods said.

"This is a work in progress."