cannabisnews.com: ID Card Plan for Medical Pot Stalls 





ID Card Plan for Medical Pot Stalls 
Posted by CN Staff on October 20, 2003 at 07:40:01 PT
By Ray Huard 
Source: SignOnSanDiego.com 
San Diego's plan to develop an identification card program for medical marijuana users may be abandoned before it gets started because of a new state law that requires county governments provide the service. The city's voluntary ID card program was meant to protect sick people who use marijuana on a doctor's advice from being arrested by city police. The City Council approved the program in September, but it has been stalled, partly because of a lack of funding, said City Councilwoman Toni Atkins.
The Medical Cannabis Task Force, which the council created in May 2001, has been trying to raise the $20,000 to $25,000 it would cost to set up an ID card program. Ed Plank, the city manager's liaison to the council and the task force, said potential donors have been identified. Atkins, a lead advocate of the city ID card program, said it no longer may be needed because a state law Gov. Gray Davis signed Oct. 12 requires the state Department of Health Services to establish a statewide voluntary registry of medical marijuana users. Counties also must set up a program to enroll medical marijuana users in the registry and to issue state medical marijuana ID cards. Like the city program, the state law is meant to protect medical marijuana users from arrest. "The onus is placed back on the county, which is where it should have been since the get-go," Atkins said. When the San Diego County Board of Supervisors wouldn't develop a program to implement a medical marijuana initiative that voters statewide approved in 1996, the city adopted the ID card program, Atkins said. The measure, Proposition 215, was approved by 55.6 percent of voters statewide and 56.1 percent of voters in San Diego County. Steve McWilliams, a former task force member and medical marijuana activist, said the city should continue its program because it is unknown how long the state and county governments will take to implement the new law. City guidelines also are more lenient than the state law on the amount of marijuana that patients and their caregivers can possess, McWilliams said. The city guidelines allow adult patients, with a San Diego County doctor's approval, to keep up to 1 pound of marijuana and grow up to 24 plants. Caregivers can keep up to 2 pounds of marijuana and grow up to 48 plants for as many as four patients. The state law, Senate Bill 420 by Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, allows patients and caregivers to keep no more than 8 ounces of marijuana and six mature plants or 12 immature plants. It allows patients and caregivers to keep higher amounts if a doctor says more is needed. It also allows counties to adopt more lenient guidelines. The law takes effect Jan. 1, but it sets no deadline for the Department of Health Services to establish the statewide program, nor does it set a deadline for counties to create the ID card program, said Sue North, Vasconcellos' chief of staff. San Diego's task force has yet to recommend whether the city should proceed with its own program. Dale Kelly Bankhead, chairwoman of the task force's legislative subcommittee, said she shares McWilliams' concern that it could take the state and county "an extraordinary amount of time" to implement the new law. If so, Bankhead said, the city might want to proceed with its plan until the state and county programs are ready. The task force will make a recommendation after analyzing the new law, Bankhead said. County Supervisors Chairman Greg Cox said the county has yet to determine how to handle the new law. "We've got probably a couple of months to figure out the approach we can take," Cox said. Because the city of San Diego has done much of the work to establish an ID card program, Cox said, "Our first call is going to be to the city of San Diego, since they're already working on it, to see if they want to do it for the rest of the county." Atkins said she doesn't want the city running an ID card program for the county. The Board of Supervisors opposed the ID card legislation because of a conflict between state and federal law on the medical use of marijuana, Cox said. Although the state ballot measure authorized the medical use of marijuana, federal law still prohibits it and federal officials have arrested and prosecuted Californians for growing and using marijuana for medical purposes, including McWilliams. He was arrested in October 2002 by federal agents on charges of cultivating marijuana. As part of a plea agreement, McWilliams was sentenced in April to six months in prison, given three years probation, ordered to seek drug abuse counseling and told to register as a convicted drug offender. McWilliams has appealed. "Clearly, we're going to comply with state law, but it puts us at odds with federal law," Cox said. Note: Funding lags, and new state law orders county program.Source: SignOnSanDiego.com (CA)Author: Ray HuardPublished: October 20, 2003Copyright: 2003 SignOnSanDiego.comWebsite: http://www.signonsandiego.com/Contact: http://www.signonsandiego.com/about/ut/contacts.htmlRelated Articles & Web Site:Americans for Safe Access http://www.safeaccessnow.org ID Cards in Medical Pot Use Approvedhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17339.shtmlSan Diego City Council OKs Pound of Marijuanahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15375.shtmlGuidelines Might OK Less Than 3 Poundshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15240.shtml 
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Comment #1 posted by Virgil on October 20, 2003 at 09:00:58 PT
The American Imposition
We have an Imposition on our hands. One imposition lasted from 1937 to the 1969 Supreme Court decision in US v Leary. Then we have a second Imposition that came from Nixon’s lunacy that included the shift of power that came with starting Executive Orders, like the one that created DEAth. It is a hoax if not unconstitutional in its creation and enforcement and it ignores its own guidelines in wrongfully welding cannabis to Schedule 1 in a schedule they call narcotics.From http://www.hr95.org/dw101.htm - 1969 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional. Drug control authority was eventually written into a "scheduling" hoax that extended prohibition enforcement. Under this system, drugs are not officially 'prohibited'; they're 'illicit'. But people still go to prison for using them.We are an occupied country and our government has been overthrown and our Constitution ignored. The plutocracy rules by criminality and complicity of the medial. The American Imposition needs to end immediately and then we need to do something about this occupation. Being an occupied country seems to bother the Iraqis and the Afghans, so why are we so tolerant of it?ABC News will be covering the health care crisis in Occupied America all this week. There coverage yesterday came as a welcomed shock from what I read at Democratic Underground. Here is what is up on the Internet- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/Living/GMA031020FamilyStruggles_healthcare-1.html
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