cannabisnews.com: Judge OKs Oakland Marijuana Club 





Judge OKs Oakland Marijuana Club 
Posted by FoM on July 18, 2000 at 16:22:14 PT
By Bob Egelko of The Examiner Staff
Source: San Francisco Examiner
Medical marijuana will soon be legal in Oakland under an unprecedented ruling by a federal judge. Over Clinton administration objections, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer allowed the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative to distribute the drug to patients who face imminent harm without it and have no legal alternative. Monday's ruling comes three days after San Francisco health officials started issuing photo ID cards to marijuana users who had their doctors' approval. 
A day earlier, a UC-San Francisco professor's study released at the 13th International AIDS Conference in South Africa found that marijuana did not interfere with anti-retroviral drugs used against AIDS and suggested it was effective against extreme weight loss associated with the disease. "We applaud the wisdom of the courts and again call upon the federal authorities to reschedule" marijuana, now classified under federal law as a substance with no legitimate medical use, said Jeff Jones, executive director of the Oakland cooperative. The government has shown no such inclination, moving instead to close marijuana clubs that sprang up after California voters passed Proposition 215 in November 1996. The initiative, adopted in varying forms by seven other states, suspends state drug laws for patients whose doctors recommend marijuana to ease pain, nausea or the side effects of potent medicines for diseases that include AIDS and cancer. Justice Department spokeswoman Gretchen Michael said the department was reviewing Breyer's ruling and had no comment. The department has until the end of next week to decide whether to seek Supreme Court review of an appellate ruling last September that was the basis of Breyer's decision. Implementation may not be quick or simple. Following the language of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Breyer said the cooperative could supply marijuana to patients who showed a medical necessity - a serious condition, threatening imminent harm, that has resisted all legal medicines but could be improved by marijuana. That is narrower than the Prop. 215 standards and will require Jones' staff and medical advisors to screen the 2,500 members of the cooperative, which halted marijuana distribution by court order in October 1998. Jones said the review should take about a week and would probably leave somewhere between 15 and 50 percent of the members eligible for marijuana. The ruling also has a limited scope, shielding only the Oakland cooperative and not a handful of patients and growers who have been turned down by other federal judges in the past year when they tried to invoke a "necessity" defense against federal criminal charges. Those defendants are counting on the appeals court to apply its September ruling to their cases. But Breyer's decision was nevertheless a dramatic victory for sponsors of Prop. 215 after more than three years of adversity in state and federal courts. "This is the first step toward getting it in pharmacies. . . . The genie's out of the bottle and they never can put it back," said Dennis Peron, author of Prop. 215 and founder of the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco. The club, which predated the 1996 initiative, was closed by the courts, and Peron now runs a farm in Lake County that distributes marijuana to about 150 patients. "It's a victory for everyone who voted for Prop. 215," said San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan. "Medical patients can now use marijuana legally under federal law." Breyer refused to carve out an exception for medical necessity in October 1998 when he granted the Justice Department's request for an injunction prohibiting marijuana distribution at the Oakland cooperative and five others in Northern California. The Oakland organization quickly reopened as a hemp store and patient counseling center, with the backing of city officials. Last September, the appeals court told Breyer to reconsider and said evidence offered by the cooperative and its patients, about the effectiveness of marijuana and lack of a legal substitute, would support an exception unless the government rebutted it. Breyer invited a rebuttal at a hearing last Friday but was told by Justice Department lawyer Mark Quinlivan that he had nothing to add beyond the fact that Congress and federal regulators considered marijuana medically worthless. "The government has still not offered any evidence to rebut (the cooperative's) evidence that cannabis is medically necessary for a group of seriously ill patients," Breyer said in his order Monday. E-mail: sfexaminer examiner.comPublished: July 18, 2000 ©2000 San Francisco Examiner  Related Articles & Web Sites:Oakland Cannabis Buyer's Cooperativehttp://www.rxcbc.org/Marijuana.orghttp://www.marijuana.org/CCUA Chronology of Implementation http://drugsense.org/CCUA/chrono.htmlMedical Marijuana http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6438.shtmlRuling in California Favor the Medicinal Use of MJhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6436.shtmlCard-Carrying Medical Pot Users Like Protectionhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6406.shtmlMed. Pot Ruling May Have Far-Reaching Implicationshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6402.shtml Study Finds Pot Safe for AIDS Patientshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6390.shtmlCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml 
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on July 18, 2000 at 17:11:24 PT:
The silence is deafening
'Breyer invited a rebuttal at a hearing last Friday but was told by Justice Department lawyer Mark Quinlivan that he had nothing to add beyond the fact that Congress and federal regulators considered marijuana medically worthless.'Quinlivan's stance, like that of all Drugwarriors, has eroded. They can't even open their mouths without the Abrams Report being shoved down their throats, and they know it. They've finally realized the truth in Lincoln's Dictum, the part about fooling some of the people all of the time. The number of willing sheep is diminishing, and the number of people who are questioning the DrugWar is growing. But there's a danger in this...as well as an opportunity. The danger has already been made clear: Congress's attitiude towards democracy. Just look at the DC initiative and it's handling from Congress. The idiots on Capitol Hill already tried to strip the citizens of DC of their rights *as* citizens. What they have done once, they will try again. This time, they will try, in their typical dunderheaded way, to do that to an *entire nation*. They are already trying with the Anti-Meth Bill; they won't stop there. Pressures are already building in the wake of the Abrams Repoprt for the Feds to *do something*. They can't afford to remain silent. They know that every day they do they appear to validate our position. They have to make a move. That will breed frustration. And people who are used to using force to get their way have a tendency to use force out of habit...often when it is least appropriate. They can't keep this up much longer without doing something so arrogantly shocking and destructive that they bring unwanted attention to what had been mainly an intellectual exercise for many Americans... the tragedies of the so-called justice system's depredations on families. Like another Waco (which was started over accusations of a meth lab on the premises) it's something they can't afford.The opportunity is obvious; the DrugWarriors are in retreat now. Don't give them time to re-group. Get active, write letters, join NORML, bug your Congressman and Senators about the Abrams Report and HHS and all the rest. We might not get another chance... why waste this one?
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