Learn When to Let Medical Marijuana Attorneys Handle Your Case

"How can we take into account what is perhaps probably the most dramatic legal disparities in medical cannabis currently? The issue of non-profit ""sale"" of medical cannabis to qualified patients via collectives and cooperatives. There's nothing else this way dispute. What do the pros say concerning this anyway?

Steve Cooley, The Los Angeles District Attorney, disagrees with Jerry Brown, the California State Attorney General.

How could two prominent state-employed attorneys arrive at wholly different conclusions around the answer? First the Los Angeles District Attorney claims ""all sales are illegal"". The California State Attorney General was sure enough to write in the guidelines that ""storefront collectives might be legal under state guiidelines"". How could this be? After all, each attorney is looking on the same task, right?

So what's the answer? What does the law say?

COMPASSIONATE-USE ACT 1996

Proposition 215 that was approved with a most Californians in 1996 and it became referred to as Compassionate-Use Act. The statute itself does not say anything about ""sales"" nevertheless it does speak about ""possession"", ""cultivating"", obtaining medical cannabis, about affordability and ""distribution"".

It does point out that qualified patients and their primary caregivers will never be victim to criminal issues:

""(B) To ensure that patients and their primary caregivers who obtain and employ marijuana for medical purposes upon the advice of a physician are certainly not susceptible to criminal prosecution or sanction.""

And it also pushes governments to help ensure ""safe and affordable access"" to medical cannabis for ""all qualified patients"".

""(C) To encourage the federal and state governments to implement a plan for the safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to any or all patients in medical need of marijuana.""

The Los Angeles District Attorney, Steve Cooley, had State and Federal police force agents raid a medical cannabis collective and arrest a minimum of 3 people, the week before Christmas. He insists ""all sales are illegal"". This appears to be up against the letter and spirit of the law, not the mention the spirit from the season.

Also if all ""sales"" are illegal, each and every the Compassionate-Use Act say ""affordable""? If the patients are financially responsible for your cannabis, how can Cooley expect the currency to get exchanged? What's wrong with incremental reimbursements?

MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROGRAM OF 2004

The Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) got into law in 2004 from the legislative approval of Senate Bill 420. It was the state's attempt ""to implement an agenda for that safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to all patients in medical need for marijuana,"" because Compassionate-Use Act of 1996 (Prop 215) encourages the State and Federal government to accomplish.

The MMP improves access to medical cannabis for qualified patients by approving collectives and cooperatives.

""(3) Enhance the access of patients and caregivers to medical cannabis through collective, cooperative cultivation projects.""

What Steve Cooley doesn't manage to understand is non-profit storefront Medical Cannabis Dispensing Collectives/Cooperatives include the distribution facet of ""cultivation projects"". Just like a collective cultivation farm wouldn't have customers visit the farm to get their tomatoes, they would have to have their collective tomatoes at a farmer's market or distribution location-- that's how medical cannabis collective cultivations occur. Grown in a single place for safety and other reasons, then distributed at another location.

The MMP goes on to talk about all of the criminal statutes that qualified patients and primary caregivers are exempt from. In section 11362.765, it says: ""shall not be subject, on that sole basis, to criminal liability under Section 11357, 11358, 11359, 11360, 11366, 11366.5, or 11570.""

Let's have a look at these 1 by 1:

11357: alternative treatment for depression san carlos [possession],

11358: [cultivation],

11359: [possession for sale],

11360: [""transports, imports into this state, sells, furnishes, administers, or gives away""- or purports to or attempts to complete any of those],

11366: [Every person who opens or maintains anyplace for the reason for unlawfully selling, giving out, or using any controlled substance]

11366.5 [Managing a place for manufacture, storage and/or the distribution of an controlled substance]

11570 [Every building or place used for that purpose of unlawfully selling, serving, storing, keeping, manufacturing, or giving away any controlled substance, precursor, or analog specified by this division, and each building or place wherein or on which those acts occur, is really a nuisance which will be enjoined, abated, and prevented, as well as which damages could be recovered, whether it can be a public or private nuisance.]

The Health and Safety Code section 11360 specifically says ""sells"". Not only that, what's more, it says: ""gives away"" and ""furnishes"". How come the LA District Attorney's office says ""all sales are illegal"" and non-profit storefront medical cannabis dispensing collectives/cooperatives are banned?

In that same bill,

""11362.775. Qualified patients, persons with valid identification cards, along with the designated primary caregivers of qualified patients and persons with identification cards, who associate inside State of California in order collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes, shall not solely about the basis of that fact be be subject to state criminal sanctions under Section 11357, 11358, 11359, 11360, 11366, 11366.5, or 11570.""

Again, it says that patients can collectively cultivate cannabis and distribute it amongst themselves for non-profit. Again, the distribution of medical cannabis is outside of the cultivation just like the manufacturing of my vicodin is located outside of my pharmacy.

The Medical Marijuana Act also calls for the State Attorney General to supply guidelines related to medical cannabis:

""The bill would need the Attorney General to formulate and adopt guidelines to ensure the security and non-diversion of marijuana grown for medical use, as specified.""

And that what exactly State Attorney General, Jerry Brown did in the late summer of 2008.

GUIDELINES FOR THE SECURITY AND NON-DIVERSION OF MARIJUANA GROWN FOR MEDICAL USE August 2008

To fulfill his mandate, the State Attorney General release the following tips to help law enforcements do their jobs based on State law and to help you patients understand those laws.

The guidelines state non-profit storefront Medical Cannabis Dispensing Collectives and Cooperatives may be legal under state regulations whenever they followed the policies and the above laws.

""It will be the opinion on this Office which a properly organized and operated collective or cooperative that dispenses medical marijuana via a storefront could possibly be lawful under California law""

The State Attorney General confirms what regulations says. The Attorney General may be the highest-ranking legal employee with the State of California. His office also taken care of immediately the difficulties raised in Los Angeles by City Attorney's office.

According for the New York Times on October 17: Christine Gasparac, a spokeswoman for State Attorney General Jerry Brown, declared that after Mr. Trutanich's comments in Los Angeles, police force officials and advocates from across the state had called seeking clarity on medical marijuana laws.

Mr. Brown has issued regulations that allow for nonprofit sales of medical marijuana, she said. But, she added, with laws being interpreted differently, ""the final answer will ultimately come from the courts.""

So so what can the courts say?

PEOPLE v. MENTCH

The District Attorney's office would have you feel that the Mentch decision outlaws non-profit storefront Medical Cannabis Dispensing Collectives/Cooperatives and makes ""all sales illegal"" but that decision has to complete with all the definition of ""primary caregiver"" not sales.

Mentch had 82 marijuana plants growing in their home and he sold the medicine to 5 individuals who located his home with all the primary intent behind buying cannabis. The most of the plants in Mentch's home belonged to him as he testified. Their operations had not been a collective or possibly a cooperative nor a storefront. Mentch owned Hemporium, a for-profit care giving and consultancy business, not really a non-profit collective or perhaps a cooperative.

Based off of the evidence the courts concluded that Mentch's operation was primarily a for-profit commercial venture anf the husband had not been a primary caregiver for all those he supplied medical cannabis to from his home-based business. I've written about it thorough here.

So there you've got what are the courts say, what are the State Attorney says, and just what the laws say; all confirm non-profit storefront dispensing of medical cannabis can be legal under State law.

Now the Los Angeles District Attorney must obey what the law states along with the will from the people and stop wasting time and resources to hurt medical cannabis patients especially just before Christmas. Especially when you will find over 7,000 untested rape kits that the District Attorney claims to not have access to the resources to take care of.

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