cannabisnews.com: For Some, Cannabis is Balm 





For Some, Cannabis is Balm 
Posted by FoM on May 16, 2001 at 09:37:54 PT
By Lynda Gorov, Globe Staff
Source: Boston Globe
The medical marijuana club located atop an automotive parts store is closed to buyers on Tuesdays, a relatively quiet time to tend to the crop and catch up on paperwork. Yesterday the first frantic phone call came into the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center at 6 a.m. The calls didn't stop coming all day.A day after the US Supreme Court banned the distribution of marijuana for any reason, club members said they were worried that their relief would be cut short. They talked anxiously about waning appetites and ebbing strength. They wondered aloud whether the black market would become their only option, rather than their last resort.
Official Seeks Review: The people who say they depend on medical marijuana to ease their agony weren't alone in their confusion. Even at the State House in Sacramento, no one was sure what impact the court's decision would have in California. The state's attorney general, Bill Lockyer, called the unanimous ruling unfortunate and said it needed further review.''Nobody knows what's going on,'' said Scott Imler, president of the Cannabis Resource Center in West Hollywood. ''People don't know what they're going to do if the clubs are shut down. It's not like they can just find another source.''The clubs and their clients have always known they could be shut down. Not even the 1996 passage of Proposition 215, which permits patients to grow and use small amounts of marijuana for medical reasons, allayed fears of police raids or federal prosecution. When California became the first of nine states to legalize medical marijuana, the state was in direct conflict with federal drug laws. It still is.''The court decision could be the signal of the end of cannabis clubs, or they could just decide to leave us alone,'' said the Rev. Lynette Shaw, a founder of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a club in northern California. ''This is very, very frightening, and it's meant to be. It's an incredibly cruel thing to do to people who are already ill.''Lawyers involved in the medical marijuana issue stressed that the court decision did not prevent individuals from obtaining medical marijuana. Instead, the decision only addressed clubs that distribute large quantities of marijuana. The specific case before the Supreme Court involved an Oakland marijuana cooperative that had raised a medical-necessity defense when the federal government tried to shut it down.Some Clubs Stopped: The Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, established with the approval of city officials and local police, no longer dispenses medical marijuana. Three other northern California clubs named in a January 1998 lawsuit by the federal government have also shut down. But leaders of the Marin club, also named in the suit that led to Monday's court action, insist that it will remain open. Still, Shaw said she is encouraging patients to begin cultivating their own marijuana plants.Dave Fratellos, a spokesman for Santa Monica-based Americans for Medical Rights, said: ''The Supreme Court hasn't said there's no way to do distribution. They just said the cooperative arrangement was not legal.''But there's no permanent protection for anyone until they change the law'' to reclassify medical marijuana as a legal drug under certain circumstances, said Fratellos, whose organization has sponsored eight successful state medical marijuana initiatives.Law To Be Revamped: Both advocates and opponents of medical marijuana agree that the California law was poorly worded and needs revamping, a process already underway. Fratellos said his group is working with Maine and Nevada to create state-authorized distribution systems that would circumvent concerns raised in Monday's court ruling.As Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for California's attorney general, put it, ''We're sort of at the `where do we go from here?' point.''At the club in West Hollywood, Imler said he didn't know where patients would turn if the club closed. So far, the club has maintained good relations with both local law enforcement and the city. With about 860 members ranging in age from 19 to 86, the club distributes more than 250 pounds of marijuana a year, much of it grown in the basement and on a plot of land in Ventura County.Patients can smoke marijuana on the premises, relaxing on one of the sofas or reading in one of the mismatched chairs. But sharing is prohibited. Imler, scowling at the pill bottles in his desk drawer, said he relies on medical marijuana to ease his epileptic seizures.Variety of Ailments: About 80 percent of the members have AIDS and 10 percent have one form of cancer or another. The remainder suffer from a variety of ailments, from glaucoma to multiple sclerosis. Payment is on a sliding scale, depending on income.''We set up these clubs as a stop-gap measure, believing, naively, that our democratic institutions would take care of us,'' Imler said. ''We'd like nothing better than for someone to come up with a better distribution system or to just make medical marijuana legal for people who need it. We'd like to get on with our lives already.''Note: Even officials uncertain on California law.This story ran on page 3 of the Boston Globe on 5/16/2001. Source: Boston Globe (MA)Author: Lynda Gorov, Globe StaffPublished: May 16, 2001Copyright: 2001 Globe Newspaper CompanyContact: letter globe.comWebsite: http://www.boston.com/globe/O.C.B.C. Versus The U.S. Government News http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/mj.htmCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml 
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Comment #1 posted by Devun on May 16, 2001 at 22:22:19 PT:
ORegon #1
YOu said that Cal. was the first state to legalize medical bud. Not true. Oregon was the first state to legalize medical chronic. Cally was second.
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