cannabisnews.com: Another Medical-Marijuana Trial Due Another Medical-Marijuana Trial Due Posted by FoM on October 02, 2000 at 19:57:32 PT By Teri Sforza, The Orange County Register Source: Orange County Register Medical marijuana activist David Lester Zink has long been one of the crusaders. He joined Orange County's cannabis cooperative when it was still in its infancy. He was there when its founders were arrested.He attended trials at which lawyers argued over Proposition 215, California's confusing medical marijuana law. And he cried, "There is no justice! No good deed goes unpunished!" as co-op founder/cult hero Marvin Chavez was led away to a six-year prison sentence. Now, it's Zink who may be led away to prison. A police helicopter swooped over Zink's Long Beach home last month and spotted 30 marijuana plants growing in his back yard, some up to 7 feet high.Zink tried to invoke the protection of Prop. 215, saying he suffers from severe arthritis, has a doctor's recommendation to use medical marijuana, and was growing the plants for that purpose, as the law allows.But police didn't buy it. "He had 30 plants with an estimated dry weight of 150 pounds, plus the apparatus to make hashish," said Long Beach police officer David Marander. "To us, that's not consistent with personal use."Zink was charged with cultivating marijuana and possession of equipment to manufacture concentrated marijuana. Bail was set at $500,000 and Zink spent seven days in jail before a judge released him. A pretrial hearing is set for Oct. 11 and Zink finds himself in one of the latest skirmishes in the ongoing, messy medical marijuana war.It has been a busy few weeks on the battlefield. Consider :On Aug. 29, the U.S. Supreme Court barred an Oakland cannabis club from distributing medical marijuana to patients, a step toward closing it. The high court is expected to review the thorny issue of medical marijuana distribution issue this fall.On Sept. 5, a San Diego judge threw out all charges against five people who worked in a medical marijuana clinic. The judge bemoaned the muddy nature of Prop. 215, said the workers tried their best to comply with the law, and questioned why the case was prosecuted to begin with.On Sept. 8, a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco ruled that doctors can recommend marijuana to patients without fearing they'll lose their licenses. In the past, the federal government threatened to revoke the licenses of such doctors.On Sept. 13, Ventura County prosecutors postponed the arraignment of four people accused of growing 342 marijuana plants for the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center. Prosecutors hadn't decided how, or even whether, to charge them. "When you look at all this, doesn't it start to look a little strange?" asked Zink.The same passionate supporters who rallied after the arrests of Orange County's Chavez, co-op co-founder Jack Shachter (who recently died of cancer) and co-op volunteer David Lee Herrick have rallied to Zink's defense."David Zink is a patient, and it's really a shame that they tore up all his plants," said Chavez. "He was just trying to grow his own medicine."And growing your own medicine was exactly what the Orange County cannabis co-op urged its members to do after Chavez's arrest in 1998.Since there didn't seem to be a legal way for the co-op to distribute pot to patients, grow-your-own became the order of the day. Zink said the plants at his house were for two other patients in addition to himself.The machinery to make hashish wasn't operating, Zink said, but had been used in the past to make a concentrated oil to deliver marijuana's medical virtues without the vice of smoking. Zink's arrest has outraged many."Here we have patients with their doctors' recommendation being ignored by law enforcement," said Anna Boyce, a retired nurse from Mission Viejo who helped write Prop. 215. "I had the belief that when they saw the doctor's note, and also realized the actual amount of medicine they had, nothing would happen. How wrong could a person be?"Boyce is frustrated that there's still no uniform interpretation of Prop. 215 in California - even though it passed almost four years ago.But with all the recent action in the courts, many think a resolution is coming. "I have a feeling that I had once before, after I got out of the military in the late '60s," Zink said. "You could feel the public sentiment turning against the war. Well, I feel the public sentiment turning against this drug war. Thirty years of this policy, and what have we got? If they keep on persecuting the people who believe in medical cannabis, I believe they're going to lose the whole war." News researcher Eugene Balk contributed to this report. Please send comments to: ocregister link.freedom.comNews Focus: It's one of the latest steps in the continuing debate over Proposition 215. Source: Orange County Register (CA)Author: Teri Sforza Published: October 2, 2000Contact: letters link.freedom.com Address: P.O. Box 11626, Santa Ana, CA 92711 Fax: (714) 565-3657 Copyright 2000 The Orange County RegisterWebsite: http://www.ocregister.com/ Related Articles & Web Site:Compassionate Use Act of 1996 - Chronologyhttp://drugsense.org/CCUA/chrono.html Marijuana Grower To Stand Trial http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6867.shtml Activist Fighting Felony Drug Charges http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6854.shtmlCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml END SNIP --> Snipped Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #1 posted by EdC on October 03, 2000 at 01:38:38 PT: medical MJ The court cases of Steve Kubby, David Zink, and others will eventually lead to less law enforcement interferement with the medical use of cannabis.It all stems from Lockyear's refusal to do the job he promised to do if elected. That clown should be thrown out of office and directly into jail. 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