cannabisnews.com: Jail Patient Captured in Marijuana Law's Cracks!





Jail Patient Captured in Marijuana Law's Cracks!
Posted by FoM on August 01, 1999 at 07:27:39 PT
 By Teri Sforza, Orange County Register
Source: Hot CoCo
This is a battle Marvin Chavez watches through prison bars. Years of his life may well hang in the balance.
Chavez is imprisoned in Susanville, a Gold Rush town about a 200-mile drive northeast of Sacramento. He's from Santa Ana, so he doesn't get many visitors. He says he needs marijuana to control severe back pain.But he doesn't get it in prison. And he's got 5½ more years to go."The guy is just suffering," said J. David Nick, who has represented Chavez.In November, Chavez was found guilty on three felony counts of selling or transporting marijuana. In January, he was sentenced to six years in prison.If Chavez did what he did in San Francisco or in Mendocino or Ventura counties, rather than in Orange County, he might not be behind bars.That's a difference -- some call it an injustice -- that pending legislation might eliminate. Whether it would help Chavez remains to be seen, but his advocates are hopeful."If you've been convicted of a crime, and tomorrow they decide it's no longer a crime, you could argue that you shouldn't be in jail," said Dennis Riordan, the San Francisco attorney who is handling Chavez's appeal. "But it depends on the final form of the legislation."Chavez's odyssey began in 1996, when he zealously crusaded for the passage of Proposition 215, California's medical-marijuana initiative. After its victory, he created Orange County's first "cannabis club," got a business license, spoke at city council meetings and worked to familiarize people with the new law -- at least as he understood it.His understanding was wrong -- at least as far as the Orange County District Attorney's Office is concerned.When officers posing as patients came to Chavez for marijuana, complaining of pain, Chavez gave them "medicine" in exchange for "donations." That, the prosecutor successfully argued, is a marijuana sale."He should not have been jailed," said Anna Boyce, a registered nurse and Mission Viejo grandmother who helped draft Prop. 215 and worked alongside Chavez. "He was doing a big service to the people in our cooperative. Now people don't have any way to get their medication."Every county in California has interpreted Prop. 215 differently, and Orange County is known as one of the most hard-line.Compare that with San Francisco. The most outspoken cannabis club was shut down last year, but four others are thriving. A Ventura County store owner who was openly selling marijuana under the auspices of Prop. 215 was ordered to stop -- but wasn't prosecuted. In Mendocino, the county issues identity cards to patients, who can have up to 2 pounds of marijuana without running afoul of the law.The list goes on.State Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, is trying to fix that. He introduced a bill, SB848, that would "promote uniform and consistent application" of the law.The bill, based on recommendations of a task force convened by Attorney General Bill Lockyer, would establish a voluntary statewide registry for marijuana-using patients.It would require the state Department of Health Services to decide how much marijuana is appropriate in a medical context.Cooperative marijuana-cultivation projects would be allowed, with regulations developed for their operation and supervision.Patients would need a recommendation from their personal physician to legally use marijuana."Serious medical conditions" warranting the use of marijuana would be defined as AIDS, anorexia, arthritis, cachexia, cancer, chronic pain, glaucoma, migraine, persistent muscle spasms, seizures and severe nausea."This is needed because patients are finding themselves in potential criminal situations that they didn't anticipate under 215, and law enforcement is wasting a lot of time and resources ... that they could be expending on actual violations of the law," said Rand Martin, chief of staff for Vasconcellos.After clearing the Senate, the bill passed the Assembly Health Committee last week and will go to the Assembly Appropriations Committee when the Legislature reconvenes this month.The proposal is highly controversial. Some Prop. 215 advocates abhor the idea of a statewide registry of patients, which would require photo identification. Others object on principle, saying all legitimate drugs should be handled through the pharmaceutical system. And Gov. Gray Davis has grave concerns of his own: Federal law still says marijuana is illegal to use, no matter what California does.But this collision course between the state and federal governments has been set since 1996, when Prop. 215 garnered 56 percent of the vote. "We passed it. It's the will of the people. We need some method of distribution. Do it," Boyce said.If some version of the bill passes, Chavez's crimes might be crimes no longer.Published on August 1, 1999© 1999 Contra Costa Newspapers Inc.
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