PATIENTS IN LIMBO

Medical Marijuana Advocates in Redding Wait on Courts

Lindy May-Saunders is worried about her access to medical marijuana
should Redding's dispensaries shut down.

"It scares the hell out of me because without medicine I die," she said.

May-Saunders, a 32-year-old Army veteran, uses medical marijuana to
treat seizures caused by epilepsy. She was left with that condition
after a 1999 brain injury she suffered while deployed to Thailand.

She's just one of the likely hundreds of medical marijuana patients
in Redding dealing with fear, anger and confusion over the uncertain
future of that access heading into the New Year.

"They're kind of mad about what's going on, and they're trying to
figure out what's going on," said Jess Brewer, owner of the Trusted
Friends collective, about the patients coming in and out of his Pine
Street storefront.

The uncertainty for patients has intensified since Redding's City
Council passed a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in November.
In the wake of that decision patients have protested, two lawsuits
have been filed and a recall effort launched against three City
Council members as patients and advocates seek to secure safe access
to medicine.

Dispensary bans also are in place in Anderson and the unincorporated
county, although separate court action in Anderson and a push for a
county referendum seek to overturn those actions.

Meanwhile, officials maintain they made the right choice for the city
as Redding, along with the rest of California, is itself caught in
the uncertain legal climate surrounding the state's medical marijuana
laws and the potential conflicts with federal law, which considers
all cannabis illegal.

Many worried about losing dispensaries

May-Saunders became a medical marijuana patient about three years
ago, she said, and since then has found cannabis more effective than
any other seizure treatment.

"For years and years of my life I seized every day. And I'm now I'm
seizure-free," she said. "I didn't know if it was going to work or
not, this was my last resort."

May-Saunders, who's been rated 100 percent disabled by the Department
of Veterans Affairs, has her choice of medicine.

But other drugs have all caused severe side effects, including
sleeplessness, anxiety, hostility, suicidal thoughts and other
physical problems, May-Saunders said.

What's worse, none of those drugs cured seizures, which will return
if May-Saunders doesn't have access to medical marijuana, she said.

"I will seize for maybe two to four hours straight and maybe die,"
May-Saunders said. "It's not a pretty picture."

May-Saunders, who lives in an apartment in north Redding, can't grow
her own medicine and is skeptical of the safety of private
cultivators. She, like many other patients, counted on dispensaries
for safe access to medicine, medical marijuana advocates said.

"There are a lot of patients who did not grow because they knew they
had dispensaries to rely on," said James Benno, a vocal advocate
who's been at the center of local medical marijuana fight. "(The
city) basically turned us into criminals, and they want us to turn to
the black market."

Greg Dulik hasn't thought about what he'll do should Redding's
dispensaries close, although he's worried about losing access to his
medicine of choice.

"I'm too old to be slinging out on the street looking for dealers,"
said Dulik, 55, of Shasta Lake. "It's going to be rough for a lot of
people, that's about all I can say."

Redding could keep its dispensaries. A pair of lawsuits filed late in
the year have left the certainty of the city's ban in question. The
case will come before a judge this month.

Lawsuits, recall launched

The lawsuits, filed in late November and early December on behalf of
a total of nine Redding dispensaries, claim the city acted outside
its authority when it imposed the ban and has denied dispensaries and
their patients due process rights.

The suits seek a court order preventing Redding officials from
enforcing the ban, effectively allowing dispensaries to remain open.

Meanwhile, the city has sought an injunction from the court that
would order dispensaries to comply with the ban and shut down.

Many dispensaries remain open despite the ban as the owners and
operators of those businesses await a judge's decision. Brewer's
Trusted Friends location is one of those dispensaries.

"I decided to just ride this thing out until then," said Brewer, who
previously planned to close the dispensary by Christmas.

"I feel that we're a service, I hope that we'll be able to stay in
business," he said. "If there comes a time when we're forced out of
business, then so be it."

Medical marijuana patients and advocates also have launched a recall
effort against City Council members Francie Sullivan, Patrick Jones
and Rick Bosetti. Councilwoman Missy McArthur and Mayor Dick
Dickerson's terms expire this year.

Rob McDonald, a medical marijuana patient and outspoken advocate,
presented the council members with recall notices at the Dec. 20
council meeting.

He also decried the city's ban and said the council discriminated
against a group of people based on that group's choice of medicine.

"They are violating our rights under Prop. 215 and SB 420," he said.
"They are completely violating our rights, and they've been wanting
to for a long time."

His initial recall notices didn't have enough signatures, City Clerk
Pam Mize said, although it's common for recall notices to be
insufficient on the first submission.

McDonald said he'll refile this month.

Even with the overwhelmingly negative reaction to their decision,
City Council members maintain their vote was the right one for Redding.

Council members defend decision

Bosetti said he believes the purpose of the Compassionate Use Act -
commonly known as Proposition 215 - wasn't to create retail storefronts.

"Since the decision was made, I've received a lot of supporting
information from people throughout the state." Bosetti said. "I stand
solidly behind my vote."

Jones, who in 2009 cast the lone vote against allowing dispensaries
in the city, remains confident the ban was the right choice.

"It is a federally controlled substance, and we cannot make any local
laws that are in violation of state and federal laws," he said. "It's
what I argued two years ago."

Recreational users make up the majority of dispensary clients and
those users are abusing the system, he said.

"For those people who are critically ill, it does provide some
relief," he said. "If the federal law was different, I could
certainly support that. But I'm certainly not going to support the
recreational uses that are happening today."

Sullivan said recently she believes the council made the only choice it could.

"I think that it's very clear that the city tried to follow the will
of the voters of the state of California," she said. "Our city
council at the time tried to meet the intent of that initiative to
the best standard that they could, and now the courts have said that
was wrong, you can't do that."

The decision to ban dispensaries wasn't personal, Sullivan said,
although it's being misrepresented by medical marijuana patients and
advocates as the council's verdict on the morality of marijuana.

"That was never discussed, that was never part of our decision and
that was never allowed to be part of decision," she said.

Redding's ban was based in part on an October ruling that state and
local laws licensing the dispensaries are pre-empted by federal law.

The ruling in the Pack vs. Long Beach case invalidated Redding's own
permitting system for dispensaries, city officials have said.

The Pack ruling, state Attorney General Kamala Harris said recently,
is state law while the parties in the case wait to see whether the
state Supreme Court will weigh in.

Redding also drew on a recent 4th District Appellate Court ruling
upholding a city of Riverside ban on collectives despite Prop. 215
and the state Medical Marijuana Program of 2003.

Prop. 215 and other medical marijuana laws do not provide people with
inalienable rights to establish, operate or use dispensaries, the
court ruled in that case. And state law does not prevent cities from
banning medical marijuana outright.

"The court cases today are confirming what I have said the entire
time," Jones said.

While banning storefront collectives, the city still allows groups of
up to 10 people to cooperatively grow and distribute medical marijuana.

Patients in Redding can also grow their own marijuana as the Pack
ruling didn't affect the city's growing regulations, City Attorney
Rick Duvernay said. So far, no court has ruled a city can't have
zoning regulations, he said.

Benno, who's embroiled in a battle with the city over his medical
marijuana garden, said the city's regulations don't allow patients to
grow adequate amounts of medical cannabis.

Shasta Lake still has two dispensaries. Jamie Kerr, owner of the 530
Collective, said she's seen as many as five new members a day, mostly
former members of Redding dispensaries. But state law adds to the
confusing climate for law enforcement and local municipalities, Harris said.

State law adds to confusion

Complicating decisions for cities including Redding is that state law
isn't clear on how, when and where patients can grow and obtain
marijuana with a doctor's recommendation, Harris said in a recent
letter to state legislators.

"The state of California itself is going to have to step in and
clearly define everything," Bosetti said.

Duvernay said much of the same in November. Proposition 215 and
guidelines published by a previous attorney general are vague, he
said. Medical marijuana advocates don't speak in a single, consistent
voice, and neither does law enforcement, Duvernay said.

"I agree with many of the concerns expressed by Ms. Harris to the
state Legislature regarding serious inadequacies in the current state
of the law," Duvernay said. "The attorney general's position
reinforces (Redding's) decision to take a 'timeout' and a step back
on this issue."

Harris has asked state lawmakers to draft legislation to clarify
whether patients can legally acquire marijuana at storefront
dispensaries or whether collective and cooperative cultivation is the
only legal way.

"Without a substantive change to existing law, these irreconcilable
interpretations of the law, and the resulting uncertainty for law
enforcement and seriously ill patients, will persist," Harris said in
a letter to Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and John
Perez, speaker of the state Assembly. "In short, it is time for real
solutions, not half-measures."

She also asked legislators to clarify what it means for a collective
or cooperative to operate as a nonprofit and address whether edible
medical marijuana products should be treated and regulated.

New legislation, however, can't interfere with the core rights of
Prop. 215, Harris said. The state constitution limits the Legislature
from amending or changing the scope of initiatives without voter
approval, she said.

"In simple terms, this means that the core right of qualified
patients to cultivate and possess marijuana cannot be abridged," Harris said.

Nor can the state license large-scale growing operations, which would
conflict with the ruling in the Pack case, she said.

But Benno, a self-described expert on Prop. 215, said asking for the
legislation is a cop-out, and state guidelines are already clear enough.

"It's not the patients who have problems complying with the
guidelines, it's local officials," Benno said. "There is no gray
area. The only gray area is the one being created by local politicians."

Patients use for different reasons

McDonald, 50, uses medical marijuana to treat back pain, but it has
also relieved his shoulder bursitis. He said people with cancer,
multiple sclerosis and a wide range of other diseases use cannabis
for medicine, in addition to treating pain.

Nick Ciampi, 63, of Redding began using medical marijuana in the
1990s when he was diagnosed with leukemia.

"When I was going through my chemo they couldn't give me anything
legally at the time," Ciampi said. "The doctors told me if I could
get marijuana that was the only thing I could use."

The chemotherapy cured the leukemia, Ciampi said, and he still uses
cannabis to treat pain left from bone tumors. Ciampi has stomach
issues that prevent him from taking other pain medications, he said.

Richard Leake, 20, of Redding said he uses medical marijuana to ease
the pain from a degenerative hip disease he's had since birth.

Leake suffers from Legg-Calve-perthes, a disease that causes
thighbone to die when the ball of the bone in the hip doesn't get enough blood.

"Pretty much my right hip is almost completely dead now," he said.

Leake has taken over-the-counter and prescription pain medication
since he was 5, but those medicines cause stomach deterioration. He
can't take them without getting sick, he said.

Leake also recognizes medical marijuana isn't just used for pain relief.

One of his friends, whom Leake didn't name, suffers from
post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in the military. That
friend uses medical marijuana to help with symptoms, he said.

"Ever since he's been smoking it, he's calmed down a lot," Leake
said. "He doesn't like what the city is doing."

Brewer said fear prevents many medical marijuana patients from
speaking out. Those patients worry that they'll be drug-tested at
work or lose government assistance.

That fear stems from a stigma associated with medical marijuana, Brewer said.

"This is still looked at as a bad situation. And again, it has to do
a lot with the bad publicity," he said.

Patients also stay silent out of a desire to keep their medicine
choice private, Brewer said.

"If you take Prozac, I'm sure you don't tell the office," he said.

Yet Brewer said his collective's membership represents every segment
of society. "I can tell you for a fact I have patients from every
part of society you can name," he said. "Do you know these names? No.
They are 215 patients, but they're not going to come out and tell you."