cannabisnews.com: Medical Marijuana Backers Put On Public Pressure 





Medical Marijuana Backers Put On Public Pressure 
Posted by FoM on May 01, 2001 at 09:00:32 PT
By Thomas Elias
Source: Record Searchlight
It may be the first time California public officials have ever been targeted for recall because they're ignoring the outcome of a ballot initiative. It's definitely the first time a group of prospective criminal defendants has threatened political revenge against the people who would prosecute them.Those two unique realities give wide implications to the recall efforts now being mounted or threatened against half a dozen district attorneys who have pursued users of medical marijuana.
Medical pot advocates won public approval of their cause in a 1996 ballot initiative campaign, passing Proposition 215 by a 56-44 percent margin. But most prosecutors never recognized that measure as a defense in pot cases. Now the activists are using recalls and the threat of recalls in an attempt to muscle law enforcement into accepting legalization of "medipot."The first vote comes May 22, when Marin County District Attorney Pamela Kamena must try to defend her office and her actions in a special election called after activists for the American Medical Marijuana Assn. gathered thousands of petition signatures.The same medipot backers and users have also served "official warnings" on half a dozen other D.A.s, threating recalls if they don't cease prosecuting patients who smoke marijuana to ease the pain and nausea of some illnesses and the dealers who provide them with pot."We see recall actions as a means of convincing local prosecutors to comply with Proposition 215," said Steve Kubby, founder of the AMMA. "This isn't a vindictive thing on the part of patients. It's a matter of survival."The initiative allowed use of medipot on the recommendation of a physician. It has produced confusion and controversy ever since, as U.S. attorneys and judges and some local sheriffs and prosecutors refused to recognize it as law. Plus, judges and federal prosecutors contend federal laws banning almost all marijuana use render the proposition meaningless.Kubby, the 1998 Libertarian Party candidate for governor, and his wife were cleared this spring of most charges against them in a landmark medipot trial stemming from a 1999 raid on their home near Lake Tahoe which netted police more than 100 marijuana plants.Kubby presented evidence that he has used marijuana since 1976 to combat a rare form of adrenal cancer and his physician testified that he needs the pot to survive. He was convicted only of one count of possession of a hallucinogenic mushroom, but has appealed that verdict, claiming the mushroom was a souvenir which had long since lost any potency. The jury hung 11-1 for acquittal on most other counts and they were dropped.Now Kubby's group has warned Placer County D.A. Bradford Fenocchio, who supervised the Kubby prosecution, that he will be the object of the next recall.The recall in leafy Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, comes despite what Kamena calls her "progressive view" about medipot. Her office guidelines exempt from pot possession prosecutions anyone with fewer than seven mature cannabis plants and less than half a pound of dried marijuana. She also does not prosecute anyone with AIDS or breast cancer."These people want you to believe this is about medical marijuana," Kamena told a news conference. "It is not. This process is about the rule of law and the entire legal process."She called her opponents "small minded" litigants trying to make the courts "bend to their thuggish ends."But Lynette Shaw, director of the AMMA's Marin County branch, argued that even when medipot patients are not prosecuted, authorities in the county frequently confiscate their supplies. "We're looking at 300 people who lost their pot," she said. "After they get arrested and lose their pot and go through all these hoops, only then are they let go."Other district attorneys who have been warned by the medipot advocates include those in El Dorado, Sonoma and Shasta County District Attoreny McGregor Scott.Opponents of the Marin County recall maintain the petition drive that qualified the issue for a vote was misleading. The petitions, they note, did not mention medipot, but attacked Kamena for prosecuting a woman convicted of falsifying a court document in a child custody case.State Attorney General Bill Lockyer joins the anti-recall chorus. "Recalls of district attorneys," he says, "are an abuse of the system."Meanwhile, most prosecutors say they will not allow themselves to be pressured by any recall efforts."We're not going to react to someone wanting to put some type of political pressure on us to make a decision on how we should apply the law," said Edward Berberian, assistant district attorney of Sonoma County.That declaration focuses on the real issue here: Can people who may be prosecuted retaliate when district attorneys choose to ignore a standing law they don't happen to like? And if they succeed, will they be setting a dangerous precedent?Note: Medical Marijuana backers put public pressure on district attorneys.Complete Title: Medical Marijuana Backers Put Public Pressure on District Attorneys Thomas Elias is a political columnist whose commentary appears in newspapers throughout California.Source: Redding Record Searchlight (CA) Author: Thomas EliasPublished: Sunday, April 29, 2001Copyright: 2001 Redding Record Searchlight - E.W. Scripps Contact: letters redding.com Website: http://www.redding.com/ Related Articles & Web Sites:The Kubby Fileshttp://www.kubby.org/Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana http://www.cbcmarin.com/American Medical Marijuana Associationhttp://americanmarijuana.org/District Attorney Recall Effort Moves Forward http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9269.shtmlMarin D.A. Calls Foes Thuggish http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8603.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by dddd on May 02, 2001 at 01:41:27 PT
dangerous precedent?
So this is the "real issue";>"That declaration focuses on the real issue here: Can people who may be prosecuted retaliate when district      attorneys choose to ignore a standing law they don't happen to like? And if they succeed, will they be setting a dangerous precedent?"As if the "California Association of Rapists and Murderers",are going to launch a recall by gathering a bunch of signitures outside of the local grocery store,from fellow rapists and murderers,who have been unjustly singled out,and prosecuted in spite of Prop. 618,which allows rape and murder as long as the rapist,or murderer has a note from their doctor.A recall is one of the few remaining ways to keep the kingpin D.A.s,and their ilk,in check,,Just like the propositions that send a message from the public.I'm afraid that propositions,and recalls will soon be a thing of the past,as the governing powers will not tolerate the citizens interfering with the development of the dark empire that is taking over the country,and the planet.dddd............the aging Hippie
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