cannabisnews.com: Mendocino County Law Enforcers Say Mendocino County Law Enforcers Say Posted by FoM on March 02, 2001 at 12:39:53 PT By Don Thompson, Associated Press Writer Source: SF Gate Here in the Emerald Triangle, where marijuana sprouts like mushrooms from the forest floor, Mendocino County's two top cops see themselves as a buffer between drug agents and an often-freewheeling citizenry. District Attorney Norman Vroman and Sheriff Tony Craver won office two years ago with campaign pledges to set up one of the nation's first medical marijuana licensing programs. Their goal, they said, is to keep police from seizing legal pot gardens and hassling legitimate growers who register under a 4-year-old California law. Now both men are promising to enforce state and federal drug laws, in part to keep outside drug agents from stepping in after 58 percent of residents in this North Coast county voted last fall to bar police from targeting small-time marijuana growers. Measure G instructs county supervisors not to spend money pursuing those growing fewer than 25 marijuana plants, and directs Vroman and Craver to make enforcement and prosecution of small-time growers their lowest priority. No problem, they say. Neither the DA nor the sheriff has enough staff or money to go after those they call ``mom and pop growers.'' Not when drug cartels are importing armed workers to tend and guard thousands of marijuana plants hidden in national forests and other remote areas of the region. ``Twenty-five plants is a hellacious amount of marijuana. Some of the stuff they grow here, you can get two and three pounds off a plant,'' Vroman says. However, ``as a practical matter, nobody in the county got prosecuted for 25 plants or 30 plants.'' The only time arrests were made for small numbers of plants was when police were called in for other reasons, for instance on a domestic violence complaint, and saw the marijuana, Vroman and Craver say. That policy will continue, and should stave off any crackdown by outside drug agents in the wake of Measure G, they say. ``We still will arrest people who shove it in our face,'' Vroman says. ``I know damn well what you'd see if we made a flat refusal to do it,'' Craver says. ``You'd see a lot of political pressure, intervention, all kind of things going on here. No doubt about that.'' Both men think the biggest danger from marijuana isn't the drug itself. It's ``theft by people too lazy to grow their own, and wanting to make an easy buck,'' Vroman says. Craver, who's spent nearly 30 years working his way up through the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department, remembers a case about 15 years ago in which a local grower woke up to find thieves raiding his backyard garden. ``This guy's a former GI, so he puts on a military flak jacket, grabs a .44 magnum, goes out in the backyard and gets in a gunfight with these guys,'' Craver recalls. ``He wounded two of them, but everyone went to jail on that one. It was like the OK Corral: He's shooting at them, they're shooting back at him, they're trying to get over the fence with his dope. It was quite a deal.'' Things changed two years ago once Craver and Vroman started their medical marijuana licensing program. Since then, Craver's department has issued about 500 licenses to residents who produced a doctor's recommendation that they use marijuana to treat an ailment, or to those who grow the marijuana for them. Craver advises license-holders to carry the photo-ID card and post a large copy of the license near their garden so police won't inadvertently tear up the plants. ``We don't want to harass an honest citizen,'' Craver says. ``A lot of these people really are not criminals. These are people who really want to be law-abiding citizens. They have a legal right to what they consider to be medicine. It's not for me to question whether or not it has medicinal benefits -- I'm not the doctor.'' Vroman settled on what he acknowledges are arbitrary limits on what growers can claim for their medical needs: 12 immature plants or six immature plants and two pounds of cured pot, though users are free to argue they need more to treat their particular illness. ``Both (Craver) and I got a lot of static from our compatriots that they thought we were crazy, but we've reached a spot now where they're calling us to find out how to set up the program,'' Vroman says. ``So we're vindicated to a certain extent.'' Officials at the federal and state justice departments say they don't object to Mendocino County setting arbitrary limits for small-time users, though the federal government takes strong issue with California's medical marijuana law. ``We're not into punishing law enforcement for setting their own guidelines, so to speak,'' Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Jocelyn Barnes says. The DEA doesn't target users but will arrest anyone caught growing marijuana for profit or the illegal drug market, Barnes says. And claiming the marijuana is for medical use doesn't fly under federal law, which holds that there are no bona fide health benefits, she says. B.E. Smith of Trinity County, the first to challenge federal law using California's medical marijuana statute, wound up with a 27-month prison term in 1999 after federal prosecutors and a federal judge said U.S. law trumps California law. ``Marijuana cultivation and distribution are crimes under federal law, and we will continue to enforce those laws,'' John K. Vincent, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said through a spokeswoman. California voters' support for marijuana as medicine has pitted the state and federal governments against one another. Attorney General Bill Lockyer, for instance, is backing an Oakland marijuana club in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Justice Department, however, told the high court that distribution by such clubs ``threatens the government's ability to enforce the federal drug laws.'' Craver won't say if he thinks marijuana should be legal, an issue he calls ``a political hand-grenade'' -- even in Mendocino County. Vroman supports legalization as a member of the Libertarian Party. He won the unlikely support of both the Green Party, which supported the medical marijuana law, and the National Rifle Association, which loves Vroman's spirited defense of Second Amendment rights. That sort of incongruity plays well in Mendocino County, 120 miles north of San Francisco. ``The people up here are very accepting of anybody. They don't care who you are or what you've done in the past, or what your agenda is now, as long as you do it without stepping on somebody else's rights,'' Vroman says. ``The attitude when I went to the DA's convention was kind of, 'Yeah, well, that's Mendocino County -- anything can happen up there.''' Complete Title: Mendocino County Law Enforcers Say They're Bulwark Against Drug Agents On the Net: http://www.canorml.org/news/mendoinit.html Source: Associated PressDon Thompson, Associated Press WriterPublished: March 2, 2001Copyright: 2001 Associated Press Related Article:Patton of Pot - 60 Minutes IIhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8656.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #6 posted by dankbluntsmoker on August 04, 2001 at 21:16:30 PT: WUZZUP FELLOW CANNABIS CUP WEED SMOKERS! just a couple of words..,.......SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by Lee Willadsen on August 02, 2001 at 12:15:43 PT: A poem from all of us who support it You steal our freedom,you cause us painwe walk forward...onwardwhat's going on in that head of yours...are you sain?non-libertarians...my god that's obseardwithout freedom there's no gainhush...listen to me ,not another wordi've got some cruel advise for your brainmurderers,rapists their eyes ...o so blurreda joint makes me a criminal... god man have you gone insainjoin together, all can be heardalchoholics ,they all should be slainwhen drinking and driving and their vision is obscuredthrough Marijuana comes relief from painthrough peace my friends much can be learned....... [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by Lee Willadsen on August 02, 2001 at 11:42:46 PT: Marijuana legalization...There's no other way ... I'm back with some other insights of my own on the legalization issues of Marijuana.Getting to the point right away i'd like to say f*** the government and there promises of resolving this matter.I think we should be able to grow at least one plant...That's all we're asking for,a little space and respect for our personal freedom as tax paying citizens in this god awful country of nolibertarians...(You know who you are ...)The way i see it ; all the people in congress will soon die off and we'll finally see the day when we as citizens will get that ounce of freedom so indefinetly earned.Bare with me people it will happen...Keep growing for personal use only.....!Don't try and grow the world ...just a few personal be it inside or out...They can't arrest us all.....HE HE HE....The joy of being rebelous and getting our freedom in witch we deserve.The way i see it if a murder gets off the hook for a cool $100,000 then we should be able to grow our plants with no fear whats so ever of officials wanting to kick our doors in , and worst of all destroying our gardens....Grow america grow...Woody Harrelson,Bob Marley,Robert Downey Jr.,and myself are just a small minute fraction of the supporters for legalization,and prosperity of the uses of marijuana for nominal purposes...Hemp is legal ...Why because the government says its harmful and unconstitutional ,but Abe Lincoln one of our founding four fathers used hemp fiber to make his clothing and half of the United States militia as well...George Washington another UNITED STATES president who used hemp fiber as well and who also like myself smoked it and believed in its medicinal properties as well....Ha Ha Ha.Clinton my friend we must get you smoking once more for old times sake.In my personal fight for Marijuana legalization i have come across people who think that marijuana is not harmful and that the laws brought on by other types of drugs...Witch are nominaly more abused than Marijuana by far...is the only reason it's not legal...Why not raise the MINIMUM penalty for all other drugs including our #1 killer alchohol witch is abused by members of the senate,house of representitives,and by congress on a daily basis...Watch a few films with anything relating to the government and its associated parties and see how they abuse the laws witch are so nominaly enforced upon UNITED STATES citizens...Who's really in charge ...now the truth is here and in the open...know wonder our goverment is so corrupt in many ways....Marijuana doesn't make us violant peaople ...Alchohol,crack,cocaine(another highly abused drug of choice for our goverment),mdma,Lsd,and anything else that our so highly rated scientific officials can cojure up from tests upon tests...It's time to open your eyes my fellow americans and imigrants to this anything but free country we so proudly call home...I think the new world will be a world we're Libertarians run our government and people are treated as citizens not criminals of society...Thank you for this opportunity to speak out on Marijuana Legalization. [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by Lee Willadsen on August 01, 2001 at 23:04:49 PT: Legalize it please "Get off our backs" Hello people just want to be left alone...Marijuana has helped me for many years,i've made friends through marijuana,these are the most GOD loving,caring,sharing,and earth respecting people on this beautiful planet today..."Free" thats the biggest lie told to people today...Marijuana is my personal freedom from goverment skrew-ups and undesirable measures taken to eliminate this wonderful plant with unlimited uses for our weakening economy.Alcohol "yeah thats the drug of choice for america" what man says that alcohol is less harmful than marijuana? Congress...a bunch of non-liberarians with no respect for earth planet...who are they to judge us...when they're the ones who go directly from work to a bar and talk about us...the marijuana smokers , all the while having their third drink in 20 minutes and a cigarette(the number one killer by the way)to ease there non-liberarian ways of thinking about how to abolish marijuana (the drug with no reported deaths for hundreds of years)yeah we got the right people running the show...what a hoax.This is Lee Willadsen signing off.If any who reads this has links to a national organization who supports the marijuana legalization cause e-mail me at jbeard01 midsouth.rr.com thank you for your time and concern in this matter at hand... [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by military officer guy on March 03, 2001 at 14:52:59 PT libertarian's kick a$$!!!... see what happens when we elect a libertarian into office...we get common sense and someone who supports the people they were elcected by...a lesson for those who didn't vote libertarian this election...ALWAYS vote libertarian...we can win this war... [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by Duzt on March 02, 2001 at 13:09:48 PT Great DA Now if only the rest of the US would base their drug policies after Mendocino. The police and citizens work together and everybody is happy. Strange concept, way to common sense for most politicians to comprehend. [ Post Comment ] Post Comment Name: Optional Password: E-Mail: Subject: Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message] Link URL: Link Title: