GOING UNDERGROUND

A Seattle Lawyer Tells Local Medical Marijuana Dispensaries to Go on
the "Down-Low." Will They Listen?

"We're almost on time," began Kevin Oliver, just a couple of minutes
late. "Which is pretty good for a meeting full of stoners."

Also pretty good for a bunch of stoners: More than 80 of them showed
up for a Sunday meeting with little notice to hear a lawyer explain
the intricacies and intersections of local, state and federal laws.

But that's what happened.

Oliver, executive director of the local chapter of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), stood before
the crowd, looking a little nervous in a pinstriped blazer stuck with
a little golden pin the shape of a marijuana leaf. He explained the
reason for the meeting. "This is not a war on drugs," Oliver said to
the crowd in the Community Building's lobby in downtown Spokane.
"This is a prohibition on hemp and cannabis."

For the crowd, composed mostly of those deeply involved with medical
marijuana, the talk was a little off-base, but Oliver heads up a
group that advocates for the full legalization of pot for everybody.
Not just for sick people.

As Oliver gave his half-hour oratory, a small group sat huddled
around a table away from the meeting, discussing their own business.

Douglas Hiatt, a self-described lawyer-activist from Seattle, was
speaking intently with Jacey Hoag and Rhonda Duncan, owners of two
different medical marijuana dispensaries in town.

As a lawyer who's worked with medical marijuana cases since 1996 --
two years before Washington voters approved its use -- Hiatt had some
pretty simple advice: Don't sell drugs and don't draw the attention
of law enforcement.

"The advice they've been getting is not very good advice," Hiatt says
about the dispensary owners. "I told them to do it in a safe way, and
to do it in a nonprofit way so they're not glorified drug dealers."

As for the location of many of the dispensaries -- on busy roads
surrounded by retailers -- Hiatt was not impressed.

"In Seattle, [medical marijuana co-ops are] much more on the
down-low, even though the police know where they are. Co-ops are in
industrial areas, not across from the Starbucks. And they're not open
to the public," Hiatt says. "Absolutely I think [Spokane dispensaries
acting like regular businesses is] part of the trouble. That's
aroused the ire of law enforcers."

The last couple of months have been pretty hectic for the medical
marijuana community in Spokane. First, SpoCannabis leader Darren
McCrea, who has organized meetings that allowed dozens of medical
marijuana patients to get pot, was charged with seven drug-related
felonies in late August. Then, in early September, just as a new crop
of medical marijuana dispensaries were popping up around town, the
city's police force raided Change, Spokane's first dispensary with a
business license. Most of the other dispensaries closed their doors
in response. Then, last week, the Obama Administration issued a
memorandum saying the federal government would no longer arrest or
prosecute people who are legally using or selling medical marijuana
in the 13 states that allow it.

At Sunday's meeting, the audience contained what can be best
described as the leadership of Spokane's troubled medical marijuana
community: Hoag, owner of the Wellness Medicine Collective and the
leader of an association of medical marijuana dispensaries; Duncan
and Robert Brocklehurst from Club Compassion; Chantel Jackson of the
Human Connection; Scott Shupe and Christopher Stevens from Change;
Spocannabis' McCrea; and David Van Scyoc, a man whose body is so
riddled with ailments (full body scarring from a garage fire when he
was two, plus brain cancer) that he has become something of an icon
in the movement.

Hiatt's advice to the larger group was almost the exact opposite of
what he gave Hoag and Duncan: scream from the rooftops.

"Nobody is more powerful than you are when you open your mouth. Talk
to your neighbor, to the pastor at your church," he bellowed. As the
crowd grew boisterous, Hiatt's voice boomed over them, occasionally
shutting down an out-of-turn speaker. "You can raise a lot of hell
with an attitude and a fax machine. ... Get in the face of elected
officials. In a good way."

With one-liners that kept the crowd's attention, Hiatt dispensed
advice for those in the audience who had a doctor's authorization to
use medical marijuana.

"Don't even use the words 'money' and 'marijuana' in a sentence
together," he said. "If 'money' and 'marijuana' are in the same
sentence, it's practically a federal sentence."

The day after the event, Hiatt was up in Colville with one of his
clients. He says he's coming back to Spokane, considering everything
that's happening right now with medical marijuana. "I've made a
commitment to go statewide to defend this thing. Absolutely I'm going
to come back to Spokane. I'll go wherever they need me," he says.

But Hoag, who closed his doors the day Change got raided but remains
open as a members-only "private collective," says it would be better
if everybody calmed down.

"This whole thing is really blown out of proportion.... I never
wanted to go protest [Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor John] Grasso
and protest Change getting shut down... I want to remain a quiet,
nonprofit collective," he says. "The problem came when we got so loud."

As for the medical marijuana crowd being mixed up with NORML's
full-legalization agenda, Hoag says it's probably not a good idea.

"You put a few people on edge when you throw that in," he says.
"That's a talk to have later. We've got enough on our plate now.
That's a whole 'nother talk."