AUTHORITIES TRY TO AVOID MEDICAL POT CASES

Local police say medical marijuana gives them a headache.

Nearly 3,000 Lane County residents are authorized to use pot for
medical purposes. Many others have state permission to grow or
transport medicinal marijuana to patients.

The fact that scores of local residents can legally possess the drug
can complicate police efforts to investigate reports of supposedly
illicit marijuana-related activities -- because those cases sometimes
turn out to involve a person authorized to grow or use the medical kind.

"Unless a marijuana sale or grow is pretty large, we're not
concentrating much effort on it, partly because of the medical
marijuana issue," Eugene police Capt. Chuck Tilby said.

The biggest vexations for police include questions about whether a
pot plot has more plants than allowed under state law, and if a
portion of a legal medical grow is being sold illegally to people who
do not hold medical marijuana cards.

"There is a lack of interest in doing investigations involving
medical marijuana, because they're such a pain in the butt,"
Springfield police Detective Keith Seanor said. "In most cases, I
don't have time to see how far someone is over the limit."

Seanor and Tilby both said their departments' anonymous tip lines
regularly receive messages from people claiming knowledge of pot
dealers and illegal growers.

"We get lots and lots of citizen complaints about someone's neighbor
who's selling marijuana," Tilby said. "The general population is
concerned about that sort of thing."

But police ignore a significant number of those tips because
investigators often can't be sure exactly what they're dealing with.

"A lot of the information we receive (about marijuana cases) stays on
the anonymous tip line," Seanor said. "Those sorts of cases can be a
lot of work for little payoff."

Still, investigators don't hesitate to crack down on medical
marijuana cardholders suspected of selling a large amount of pot for
profit, or being involved with other drugs.

In late November, Seanor said Springfield police seized nearly 70
plants from a state-registered medical marijuana patient who was
licensed to grow a smaller amount pot for himself and another person,
as part of a case that began with the discovery that the suspect had
about 1.5 ounces of methamphetamine for sale. Investigators believe
that the man also was selling the marijuana on the street.

Lane County Chief Deputy District Attorney Patty Perlow said
prosecutors place no special priority on marijuana cases, which she
said are evaluated just as any others that police forward to her office.

"If police bring us a case and we determine it's prosecutable, we'll
do it," Perlow said.

Marijuana advocates say police should leave peaceful pot smokers --
especially card-carrying medical marijuana patients -- alone.

"Law enforcement has a real vendetta against marijuana and marijuana
users. They always have," said Dan Koozer, who in addition to working
with the Willamette Valley chapter of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws produces the local cable-access program
Eugene Cannabis TV.

Seanor acknowledges that while it's true many local residents provide
police with information of illegal marijuana activity, it can be
tricky to convince a Lane County jury to convict someone of a crime
involving pot.

"We're in the Northwest, and I think that a lot of people who end up
on jury pools in Lane County really aren't that interested in
marijuana allegations," Seanor said. "Unless other drugs are
involved, you've always got a fair shot of getting one or two
marijuana proponents on a jury who think law enforcement is picking on people."