GETTING ORGANIZED

Compassion Clubs Embrace New Statewide Group

It was a display of the worst behavior - publicly taunting a
7-year-old girl in the late stages of Huntington's disease on a
Facebook page. However, in the wake of that atrocious act by a
neighbor, the outpouring of support for Kathleen Edwards, the young
Downriver girl, was an equally heartening outpouring of the best of
human kindness.

Kathleen was showered with donations from around the world, a trip to
an Ann Arbor toy store, and a couple of thousand people attended an
Oct. 23 rally in her support at Trenton's Elizabeth Park. Among
Kathleen's gifts there was a $350 gift card and a five-day trip to
Kalahari Resorts in Sandusky, Ohio, donated by the Michigan
Association of Compassion Centers.

"The public needs to know who we are," says Ryan Baser of the Capital
City Caregivers, a medical marijuana compassion club in Lansing. "We
want to show everyone that we're here to support the patients and the
community. We're doing food drives in Lansing, Ypsilanti, Port Huron
and Detroit. We're starting a coat drive for Thanksgiving and
Christmas. In Lansing, there's a local toys program where a police
officer takes kids shopping that we're participating in."

It's the kind of civic involvement you hear about from local business
associations around this time of year. Except the MACC is an unknown
entity, and their business is, shall we say, controversial. Some
observers might look at their charitable activities with a jaundiced
eye. They might say that it's a public show that covers up their
shady activities. It takes some getting used to. But MACC members
seem to be trying to maintain their business openly and legally under
intense scrutiny from local governments and law enforcement.

The MACC was organized in the wake of the August busts of two Oakland
County "compassion clubs" that authorities alleged were illegal
marijuana dispensaries. There was obvious concern at other places
that were involved in marijuana exchanges that they might be next.

"We saw the horrible way some people are being treated, how patients
and caregivers were violated," says Jamie Lowell of the Third Coast
Caregivers in Ypsilanti. "We need to protect our collective
membership. There was a void in community where someone needed to
step up and get rallies organized, find legal help for those who need
it, help out on political campaigns, and promote good neighbor
policies and attitudes."

There are 10 compassion clubs in the MACC, and they're said to
represent a combined 6,000 patients mostly in southeast Michigan. The
member organizations pay a $1,000 initiation fee plus $300 a month.
They meet every two weeks and are in daily contact through e-mail.
Like other business associations, they set standards among their
membership. When a compassion club wants to join, they talk to them
about staying within the law.

"We've started working to set a standard for the rest of the state in
how to operate the correct legal way - how to do business, how to
treat patients right, how to do security, how to work with local
municipalities instead of against them," says Baser. "Our main focus
is protecting our patients. Anytime there's a case and something
going on that's not fair, we'd like to send a lawyer, legal
representation, so they are not railroaded. Most of these people
didn't do anything wrong in the first place."

Of course, there are areas of the law that are still being sorted out
by the courts, and one of those gray areas is whether and how
marijuana can change hands in compassion clubs.

MACC members expect to have their nonprofit status verified this week
and start admitting new members next week. Several additional
memberships have been unofficially approved. When a compassion club
asks to join, the MACC does things you might expect of more
conventional business associations. They send members to the clubs
unannounced to check out the security and see if they are properly
checking state cards.

"It will help a club to achieve these standards," Lowell says. "If
they are good people, we try to help bring them up to snuff in our
opinion. Most places that are in operation came through our place,
Third Coast, because we were the first one up and running. We've
taken that seriously to be a model, although we have room to grow and
room for improvement. But we have to get on the same page with a lot
of people. I mean law enforcement, municipal officials, patients,
caregivers and doctors, we all should have the same understanding of
this law so you don't have to go through criminal proceedings or lawsuits."

As the fronts on the drug war evolve, it's going to take time,
education and communication to get past former attitudes and
entrenched positions. Some areas are going to change faster than
others. Bayer says that things are working well in the Lansing area,
where Ingham County officials have been "incredibly supportive."
Bayer gets a bit giddy in touting some 25 medical marijuana-related
businesses in Lansing that are positively impacting the local
economy. But then you can't blame him for being a little giddy.

"I actually got pulled over by the Michigan State University police
with four big marijuana plants in my car," he says. "They ended up
letting me go. I talked to them for about 30 minutes; they were
pretty interested. At MSU, if you have your card and less than 2
ounces of marijuana and aren't staying in any federally funded
housing, it's not a problem. The head detective told me that's how
they are handling things. It was a positive police experience."

Maybe we can all be on our best behavior as we work our way through
this medical marijuana moment in Michigan.

Medicated Feds:

While the federal government has officially denied that marijuana has
any medical benefits, it's a different story behind the scenes. The
U.S. government actually holds a patent for the medical use of
marijuana. U.S. Patent 6630507, granted in 2003, and titled
"Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants," is held by the
United States of America as represented by the Department of Health
and Human Services. The abstract to the patent reads: "Cannabinoids
have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA
receptor antagonism. This newfound property makes cannabinoids useful
in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of
oxidation-associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related,
inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to
have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example, in
limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as
stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases,
such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia."
One of those cannabinoids is commonly known as THC
(tetrahydrocannabinol), the component of marijuana that gets you
high. Does this mean that, when the ground-level compassion clubs
build up the market, the government will swoop in for a piece of the
action? At the very least, the government's hypocrisy about medical
marijuana is evident when they deny that marijuana has medical value
while it holds the patent for the medical use of the substance.