DOSAGE IS A MEDICAL ISSUE, NOT A LEGAL ONE

Ventura County Law Enforcement Proposes Unreasonable Medical Marijuana
Guidelines To Supervisors

As patients who use medical marijuana we are shocked to find out that two
months ago Ventura County law enforcement agencies adopted unreasonable and
unworkable guidelines regarding "how much pot a person can legally possess."
Those guidelines were presented to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors
meeting on Tuesday.

After nearly two years of studying "several Northern California counties,"
the panel of city and county law enforcement leaders quietly mimicked the
cynical policies of Butte and El Dorado Counties, which allow only 6 plants
per patient or one pound of dried cannabis per patient.

The guidelines used in Butte and El Dorado counties don't work. Such "arrest
them all, let the courts sort it out" guidelines have resulted in dozens of
dismissals and acquittals. El Dorado county judges dismissed a case against
a patient arrested with 140 plants for his own use, and another case
involving a caregiver's 185 plants.

Just last month in Yuba County, where five plants are "allowed," a judge
ordered police to return 37 plants and 4 ½ pounds of the dried herb to
patients Doyle and Belinda Satterfield. Their attorney cited nine other
criminal cases that ended with a court ordered return of marijuana.

Here in Ventura County a judge ordered 68 plants returned to Lisa Schwartz
after hearing from the patient and her doctors. Another Ventura judge signed
a settlement agreement in the county's civil action against Andrea Nagy, in
which she was allowed to grow a similar number of plants for her personal
use.

While Ventura law enforcement officials maintain that one marijuana plant
can produce about one pound of dried pot, in actuality yields per plant vary
tremendously--from a fraction of an ounce, up to a pound or more in ideal
high growth conditions. Furthermore, the DEA yield statistics that local law
enforcement relies upon also state that only 28% of the plant is bud. And
only about half of seedlings become females that produce any bud at all.
Most patients compost leaf as waste material, or maintain a supply of
"shake" for use in tinctures or baked goods.

The Ventura law enforcement guidelines reflect the conspicuous lack of a
single patient, doctor or scientist on their research panel, as well as the
blatant absence of any input from the public or health care professionals.
Their guidelines exemplify why police should not be responsible for medical
decisions. Even the federal government's Investigational New Drug (IND)
program currently provides its patients with 10 to 12 marijuana cigarettes
per day--from 5.6 to 7.23 pounds per year to each patient.

Why does Ventura law enforcement attempt to limit garden size to a very few
plants? At the same time juries statewide are acquitting patients arrested
with hundreds of plants and multiple pounds of processed dried buds. Such
trials can cost the county more than $100,000, plus the cost of civil
litigation after judges order police to return uprooted decaying plants that
are no longer usable.

Local guidelines are not state law. In counties with low plant number limits
juries continue to acquit patients who prove that six plants are not enough
for one person. Dosage is a medical issue, and should be determined
scientifically.

With only six seedlings it is quite possible that every plant that survives
until late summer will become a useless male. And any attempt to clone a
therapeutic female plant in order to achieve six useful plants requires
taking well over a dozen cuttings (subjecting one to arrest) just to get
four or five rooted plants - and that's if one knows what they're doing and
controls the cloning environment well.

Sonoma County struggled with the problem of how to tell if a cannabis garden
is reasonably related to the medical needs of a patient, when every garden
is a bit different, with huge variances in yields per plant. Frustrated
after wasting valuable resources and money aggressively arresting and
prosecuting patients, Sonoma DA Michael Mullins came to an important
conclusion: There is a scientific method that allows patients to grow in any
planting variation they wish, indoor or out, and still makes it easy for
police to gauge the likely output. It is a cannabis yield formula that was
developed and published in 1992 by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

The "Sonoma Guidelines" allow up to 100 square feet of garden canopy, which
will typically produce three pounds of usable cannabis per year, an amount
typically used by patients. The guidelines additionally allow up to three
pounds of processed bud per patient per year. Patients who require more than
the limits set by the guidelines must present a physician's statement to
that effect. Sonoma adopted one additional restriction that limits patients
to less than 100 plants each, in order to keep the quantity below the
federal intervention threshold.

Under the Sonoma Guidelines all field-officers need is a tape measure and a
calculator. Patients can grow an adequate supply regardless of whether they
prefer to grow many smaller plants, or a reduced number of larger plants --
as long as they do not exceed the 100 square foot limit. These guidelines
eliminate the need to train officers how to calculate individual garden
yields, distinguish between male or female and vegetative or flowering
plants, determine what part of the crop is usable, assess patient needs, or
interpret various modes of consumption, processing and storage.

County Supervisors should reject Ventura law enforcement's rigid,
uncompassionate and unworkable guidelines in favor of guidelines based on
science and medicine, like those adopted by counties such as Sonoma and Del
Norte. The Sonoma DA's office is proud of its program and has offered to
help other counties adopt it. We urge them to review this scientific answer
to a medical question.

(Lynn and Judy Osburn live in Lockwood Valley. Judy serves as a member of
board of directors of the Los Angles Cannabis Resource Center; both Lynn and
Judy formerly co-managed LACRC's Ventura County co-op garden, prior to the
fall DEA raids against LACRC.)