CHP AGREES TO UPHOLD STATE LAW

The California Highway Patrol issued an "Update on Medical Marijuana
Enforcement Policy" August 22 directing officers not to confiscate
marijuana from documented medical users in possession of eight ounces or
less (and in some counties, more).

The new policy was drafted with input from the attorney general and the
governor's office. It comes in response to a suit filed in February -2/15,
to be exact-by Americans for Safe Access on behalf of documented patients
whose marijuana had been seized by the CHP.

The CHP's policy revision is a significant victory for California medical
marijuana users. Sheriffs and police tend to hold the CHP in high regard
and now are likely to reconsider their own policies regarding confiscation
of marijuana from documented users. Agencies that don't follow state law
will face legal challenges from ASA, said attorney Kris Hermes at a press
conference Aug. 29.

The new CHP policy recognizes that a letter of approval from a doctor is as
valid as a state-issued i.d. card in establishing a medical-user's bona
fide. Officers coming upon marijuana during a traffic stop are advised
that if the amount "is within the state limits designated under SB 420
(eight ounces of dried marijuana, or the plant conversion, and no more than
six mature or 12 immature marijuana plants) the individual is to be
released and the marijuana is not to be seized. The state (SB 42) limit of
eight ounces does not apply if there is a higher limit in the locality in
which the individual is stopped. Authorized local limits supercede the
state limit."

Over the past year ASA received 457 complaints by phone from Californians
whose cannabis had been seized during an encounter with law enforcement.
More than a quarter of the confiscations had been made by CHP officers,
according to Hermes, who along with staffer Elliott Caldwell fielded most
of the calls. Hermes picked up on a recurring pattern: a routine traffic
stop, an officer asking "Do you have any drugs in the car?," a confident
citizen producing his or her paperwork, and the officer saying that it
didn't apply because of federal law, and arresting or citing them anyway
and confiscating their herb.

Upon confirming that the CHP had an explicit policy directing officers to
ignore Prop 215 protections, ASA decided to sue. Attorney Joe Elford
drafted the complaint, which cites numerous violations of the California
Constitution and seeks, among other things, an injunction against
confiscation of marijuana from documented patients who possess an amount
allowable under state law. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Attorney General
Bill Lockyer, and CHP Commissioner Mike Brown were named as co-defendants.

Soon after the Raich decision, which came down June 6, Lockyer issued a
"Bulletin to All California Law Enforcement Agencies" advising that
"California's Compassionate Use Act is not preempted by the federal
controlled Substances Act as a result of the decision in Raich... therefore
the use of medicinal marijuana under state law is unaffected by that
decision. Accordingly, California state and local peace officers may not
refuse to abide by the provisions of California's Compassionate Use Act on
the basis that this Act conflicts with federal law."

It remained to be seen whether the CHP, which reports to the governor,
would comply with Lockyer's directive. Says Joe Elford, "The CHP didn't
change their policy until their opposition to the motion for a preliminary
injunction was due. They didn't fold easily. The fact that they did
ultimately fold is going to send a clear signal to other law enforcement
that it's not a position worth upholding. It's no more constitutional for
the Ukiah sheriff's office to seize marijuana without probable cause to
believe that a crime has been committed than it is for the CHP."

Elford said that law enforcement agencies that don't follow the CHP
precedent will "get hit with lawsuits, too... The LAPD is on our radar screen."

All credit to ASA -not just the skillful lawyers, but the staffers who
handled the calls and the organizers, Steph Sherer and Hilary McQuie, who
recognized the need for an infrastructure that would enable rank-and-file
medical marijuana users to express their needs and get some action.

Osteopathic Manipulation Boosts the Endocannabinoid System

The June Journal of the American Ostopathic Association has an article by
John McPartland of GW Pharmaceuticals and colleagues suggesting that
osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) works via the endocannabinoid
system. The researchers conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled study
involving 31 patients of a New Zealand osteopath. "Cannabimimetic effects"
were measured by patients filling out a questionnaire before and after
treatment defining levels of light-headedness, hunger, alterness, etc.
Anandamide levels in the blood were also measured before and after treatments.

The "sham" manipulation mimicked a new technique called "biodynamic
osteopathy in the cranial field" (BOCF). The sham practitioner sabotaged
her concentration and mental healing intention by silently reciting
"backwards serial sevens" while she applied light manual contact to the
patient's head.

Subjects receiving OMT indeed reported feeling cannabimimetic effects (more
creativity, less coherence, for example) and their serum anandamide levels
increased 168% over pre-treatment levels. Subjects receiving sham
manipulation reported no changes in the questionnaire and there was no
change in their serum anandamide levels.

McPartland et al noted that patients receiving OMT often experience an
improved sense of well-being, sedation and euphoria -effects similar to
those brought on by cannabis consumption. Previous studies indicated these
psychotropic effects are not elicited by endorphins (as once had been assumed).

A recent study by Andrea Giuffrida, who contributed to the OMT study,
showed that "runner's high" correlated with elevated anandamide and not
endorphins. Patients receiving chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, and
energy healing also experience parallel psychotropic effects. The authors
conclude that the endocannabinoid system may be mediating a widespread but
heretofore unrecognized therapeutic phenomenon.

P.S. Last week we reported that the state of Oregon is billing Phil Leveque
$21,127.10 to cover the cost of his prosecution by the Board of Medical
Examiners. Leveque is a doctor of osteopathy (with a PhD in pharmacology,
which he spent many years teaching at the medical-school level). He has
long believed that the Board, which is dominated by MDs, is biased not just
against marijuana but against osteopathy itself.

Scripture and Strategy

Joe Talley, MD, recently sent an email on "Scripture and Strategy" to
colleagues facing prosecution by the DEA. Talley is a North Carolina family
practitioner whose willingness to prescribe opioids resulted in his office,
over the years, becoming a clinic of last resort for thousands of pain
patients. In 2002 Talley was raided by the DEA and had his license
suspended. He faces criminal charges stemming from patients selling or
overdosing on drugs that he prescribed.

Inspiring sermons are not commonplace today. But I did hear one this
morning that might be (1) a little comfort to any prescriber currently
beating himself up, and (2) more importantly, may have implications for
future defense of some of us.

Even those of us who last saw the inside of the church as a 12-year-old
forcibly deposited there will probably remember the parable of the wheat
and the tares. The one where farmers woke up to find their wheatfield all
grown up with weeds that some wise guy had sown. They asked the boss
whether they should pull up the weeds, and he said, "No, you can't tell the
wheat from the tares at this point. If you go after the tares, you are
bound to sacrifice a lot of good grain with it. So treat the wheat field
with the same TLC you always did. The good grain is your priority. The
tares we will deal with later."

For many people, that parable simply promises them that their enemies (all
designated tares) will someday get theirs. (For a few, maybe it worries
them that they might some day turn out to be tares themselves!) But the
real point for today, the minister pointed out, was that all the trauma,
bloodshed, discrimination, and other horror stories done in the name of
religion today, everything from bloody religious wars down to squabbles
about gays in the congregation, comes from Christians (Not to mention
Muslims!) doing what the servants in the field wanted to do -go after the
tares now. But that won't work -we can't tell who are tares and who are
wheat- and it is not what our faith teaches us to do.

Some day I will be facing 12 men and women tried and true from the
mountains of North Carolina (all there because they were too dumb to know
how to get out of jury duty). They will live in little houses on the
hillside, with American flags flying on their porch, and perhaps a sign
saying "America! Love It or Leave It!" They will be haunted by the usual
demons - communists, gays, liberals, foreigners, drugs (excepting alcohol
and tobacco, of course), abortionists, and their rebellious teenage
kids! They will almost all be professing Christians. They may not spend
much of their time in a careful study of their faith, but they will
remember, vaguely at least, the parable of the wheat and the tares.

At my trial, on direct exam I would want my attorney to say: "Dr. Talley,
you admit you must have at some time or other given opioids to people who
in fact didn't need them, or at least that many of them, for pain
relief. Why did you do that?"

I would answer, "Because there was no way to be sure. There was no accurate
way to foil the drug abusers and dealers without denying mercy to people
tortured by pain. All of us will remember the parable in Matthew, about
the wheat and the tares. The government wants me to do what the Master's
servants wanted to do -to separate them out when there was no way to
separate them out. To ignore the needs of the grain just to make sure the
tares don't get away with anything. There is no way to justify that
scientifically or morally. Just as in the case of the wheat and tares,
time will tell who is who, but there is no way to tell when the guy sitting
across from me in my office appears to be suffering. There are things to
do to try to narrow it down, and I did those things. But in the end, there
is no way to be sure. And to deny 10 people mercy just to frustrate one
drug abuser is just plain wrong."

In most of the trials I have followed so far, the jury has not had it
hammered home to them convincingly that you cannot tell the wheat from the
tares. The government has successfully advanced the scam that we really
could have if we had just tried, rather than being criminally indifferent.
When my turn comes, I think of trying in some way to put over Nancy's
sermon, "Why can't we just pull up the tares?" in a fashion they can grasp.

Anyhow, now let us all bow for the benediction...

"He sprinkled the speech with biblical references, at one point using the
tale of Esther to urge the jurors to do the right thing even if they were
fearful." -The Wall St. Journal, analyzing lawyer Mark Lanier's successful
techniques on behalf a Merck victim.