LEGAL HAZE

Drug Dealers Are Exploiting Medicinal Pot Laws, Police Say

For as long as people have sold marijuana on the black market, pot
dealers and growers have gone to great lengths to keep their stashes hidden.

Now, police say some Oregon marijuana farmers are taking advantage of
a relatively new tool -- a state-issued medical marijuana card -- to
help conceal their criminal activity.

"For some growers, the card adds to a hoped-for ruse. They're hoping
that if somebody sees their marijuana and checks it out, (police)
will think it's a legal grow," said Oregon State Police Sgt. Ted
Phillips, who supervises Lane County's Interagency Drug Enforcement Team.

Police say they've noticed a recent uptick in the number of pot busts
involving growers who have received state permission to cultivate a
small amount of marijuana for medical use -- but whose true intention
is to grow much more than the law allows, then harvest the buds and
sell them illegally on the street for a hefty profit.

State police officials compiled statistics earlier this year
indicating that roughly one in five marijuana investigations
initiated by state troopers since 2006 have involved state-licensed
pot farmers.

Phillips and his team of local detectives uncovered an outrageous
example last month when they served search warrants on three adjacent
homes on Wilkes Drive, in north Eugene's Santa Clara area. They
discovered more than 1,100 plants growing inside.

The man who rented the modest homes just a block from Madison Middle
School had permission under Oregon Medical Marijuana Program rules to
grow up to 24 plants for medicinal purposes.

The renter -- who has not yet been charged in the case -- allegedly
admitted to police that his crops produced 13 pounds of marijuana
each month, which he would sell for $3,200 per pound.

The Wilkes Drive bust is just one in a series of local cases police
worked in October and November that focused on state-licensed growers
who allegedly abused that right and attempted to use it as a cover
for a criminal enterprise.

The list includes a Lorane area raid carried out by Eugene police who
seized 48 enormous plants -- most of which stood eight feet tall and
measured 10 feet in diameter -- and several pounds of processed pot
from a property registered as a grow site for three medical marijuana patients.

Detectives from other local agencies have investigated similar
incidents this fall in Springfield and Elmira, as well as in Cottage
Grove -- where a convenience store owner stands accused of selling
pot at her business that her husband and a friend allegedly grew at
their homes, both of which are state-registered grow sites.

"We've always had abuse in the (medical marijuana) act," said OSP Lt.
Mike Dingeman, who heads the agency's drug enforcement section. "It
just seems that lately -- especially in the last few months -- it's
at the point where we feel it's out of control."

No Program Oversight

Dingeman and other police officers contend that rampant abuse of the
state's voter-approved program is occurring because it lacks any
oversight to ensure that card-carrying growers don't break the law.

After the state issues people cards allowing them to grow or consume
marijuana for medicinal purposes, no one from the program checks to
see whether they produce more than the state allows, or sell it to
people who aren't approved medical users.

"It's basically an honor system," Dingeman said. "The health
department administers a card and that's it. What we're saying is
that if marijuana is going to be a person's medicine, then we need to
find a way to treat it like one and regulate it."

Officials in charge of the medical marijuana program say they can't
- -- and don't even try -- to determine how many medical marijuana
users and growers are violating the law. No one in the agency keeps
track of how many card holders are being found by various law
enforcement agencies to be exceeding grow limits or selling their pot
illegally.

State law doesn't require the program officials to do that type of monitoring.

"We just act as a registration program," said Aaron Cossel, who has
worked as a program analyst with the state medical marijuana office
for the past eight years.

"We do no monitoring of grow sites, and do not have any authority to
police it," he said. "Law enforcement has to enforce the law."

Cossel -- the state program's senior member -- added that,
"Obviously, we don't like to see any abuse in the program. We wish
everyone would follow the letter of the law."

People who get medical marijuana cards from the state can grow plants
themselves or have someone else do it. State officials conduct a
background check on every grower listed by a patient. Anyone with a
felony drug conviction within the past five years is ineligible to
cultivate pot as part of the program, Cossel said.

Growers are permitted to produce marijuana for up to four patients at
a time. Each patient is authorized to store up to 24 ounces of usable
pot, while growers can have a maximum of six adult, flowering plants
and 18 immature plants per patient.

The state revokes a user's or a grower's medical marijuana card when
officials in charge of the program receive from a judge a court order
to do so, in connection with a criminal case.

Program officials don't know the number of revocations, but Cossel
said it's very rare that a judge asks the state to yank a card.

Patients -- who are responsible for providing officials with
information about where they intend to get their medical pot -- can
change their listed grower at any time, without explanation.

"They don't need to inform us why they're making that decision," Cossel said.

Spike in Legal Users

Proponents of the state's medical marijuana program say that police
overstate the level of abuse occurring in it. Police admit that much
of their evidence on the issue is anecdotal.

"My own point of view is that considering the numbers (of medical
marijuana patients and growers), the level of abuse has been
relatively small," said John Sajo, a Douglas County resident who
serves as executive director of Voter Power. The nonprofit group is
credited with helping draft and pass the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act in 1998.

More than 54 percent of voters supported the ballot measure that made
Oregon the second U.S. state to approve a medical pot law, two years
after California did the same. Eleven more states have since followed.

Meanwhile, the number of Oregonians who have since gained a
physician's recommendation to use medical marijuana -- and were
subsequently awarded a state-issued card allowing it -- has ballooned
in the past 11 years.

As of Oct. 1, 23,873 patients were registered with the state, with
6,216 more applications pending final approval. People with pending
applications are allowed under state law to use medical marijuana,
Cossel said. There are about 15,000 medical marijuana grow sites in
Oregon, operated either by the user or an approved grower.

Demand for medical marijuana cards has surged in recent months.

Between Oct. 1, 2008, and Sept. 30 of this year, state Department of
Human Services officials received 13,083 new applications from people
who received a doctor's recommendation to use medical marijuana --
far more than anyone expected.

"At first, I think people thought that maybe 500 patients would apply
annually," Cossel said. "No one anticipated how many people would
want to be in the program."

Measure in Works

Sajo said a ballot measure initiated by his group that appears headed
to the November 2010 ballot could help clean up some problems
plaguing the state program.

The proposal -- known as Initiative 28 -- would expand the program to
create a system in which state-licensed pot growers would distribute
their crops to dispensaries regulated by the health department.
Medical marijuana patients could buy their drugs from the
dispensaries, instead of having to find a personal grower or figure
out how to grow pot themselves before receiving state approval to use
pot for medicinal purposes.

Under the current system, patients can pay their growers for supplies
and electricity required to power indoor pot gardens, but are
forbidden to pay producers for the marijuana itself.

Sajo said some growers who sign up for the current program with good
intentions end up selling marijuana to middlemen and recreational
users because they're not being paid by patients for their work.

If Voter Power's new initiative is approved, "Farmers would be able
to be paid, and they'd have a strong incentive to follow the rules," Sajo said.

"We'd be talking about a highly regulated system," he said.

Sajo knows that some people who gain state permission to grow medical
marijuana have no plans of producing it for any medical purpose. But
he argues that those people would grow pot for profit whether or not
the state's program existed.

"Marijuana has been big business in Oregon for decades," he said.
"There is some overlap of illegal growers trying to hide behind the
medical marijuana law. But if you took that law away, there wouldn't
be fewer illegal growers."

It may be true that some career pot farmers simply obtain a medical
marijuana card for whatever value it may bestow. For example, police
earlier this year raided a north Eugene rental house and seized 700
pot plants there. The renter had state permission to grow 24 plants
for medical purposes. According to a landlord who had previously
rented to that same tenant, the individual several years earlier had
grown hundreds of pot plants at another house.

Cases such as that one damage the state program's credibility, said
Dan Koozer, who heads the Willamette Valley chapter of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

"It's something that's horrifying to us," Koozer said. "Any time
you're pro-something and you hear about someone abusing it, you just cringe."

How Much Abuse?

Like Sajo, Koozer believes that a majority of growers licensed by the
state to grow medical marijuana are operating within the law.

Dingeman, the state police lieutenant, wouldn't say if he agrees with that.

"That's not something I would speculate on," he said. "The fact is
that there's no way to know because there's no way to check."

Cossel guesses that a good deal of the surge in applications for the
program this year is a direct result of the Obama administration's
announcement that federal officials would stop arresting medical
marijuana users in the 13 states that have programs. Under the
federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana remains within the
category of drugs most tightly restricted by the federal government.

Since Oregon's medical marijuana program began, more than 3,000
Oregon doctors have recommended patients use pot to alleviate a
variety of maladies.

"More people feel comfortable with medical marijuana now, and I think
more doctors are comfortable approving patients," Cossel said.

Although police suspect that program abuse is high, Dingeman said he
knows plenty of people have legitimate medical reasons to use
marijuana -- some of whom he said have complained to police that
they've been shorted by growers who sell most of their pot on the black market.

"We often hear of people victimized by their growers," Dingeman said.
"Patients say they're not getting their medicine because too much is
going out the back door. It's just another example of how some
people are using the (medical marijuana) act as a cover for illicit activity."

[sidebar]

23,873

Card-holding medical marijuana patients in Oregon

2,418

Card-holding medical marijuana patients who reside in Lane County

6,216

Pending applications from patients

13,083

New patient applications statewide received between Oct. 1, 2008, and
Sept. 30, 2009

851

Applications denied between Oct. 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, 2009

23,068

State-licensed physicians who have recommended that people use medical pot

21,087

Patients who receive medical marijuana who are diagnosed with severe
pain; some patients have more than one qualifying medical condition