Recent Stories with tag medical

...robberies have become more common in Washington over the years. Marijuana advocates complain that robberies are underreported because law enforcement officials focus more on confiscating marijuana from the growers than on arresting the thieves. The authorities, in turn, have noted that some growers are exceeding limits on how much of the drug they can possess...

So reads the New York Times story, "Violence Prompts Debate Over Medical Marijuana." The story is based on all of two violent incidents involving medical marijuana growers, so it may be a little early to call this a trend.

Steve Sarich's case may also be an outlier, since King County Sheriff's Department investigators claimed they found 385 "plants." That size of an operation may be more tempting to thieves than the typical 15-plant allotment provided for by state law. At least one of the robbery suspects, anyway, is a authorized medical marijuana user. (The comprehensive Seattle Times story is "Medical-pot grower plans to sue over shootout fallout.")

Sarich argues that many of his plants were just rootless cuttings stuck in pots, but Washington's medical marijuana law was not, it appears, drafted by a horticulturalist. It just says "plants," without a definition of what exactly that is.

This vagueness--combined with a letter-of-the-law spirit on the part of law enforcement--is part of what drove the I-1068 initiative filers to move beyond medical marijuana to legalization. Their Facebook status says, "KCSO narcotics detectives took 17 hours before executing a search warrant on his house, which contains only starter plants. Why are legal medical marijuana providers being harassed? Why is KCSO spending taxpayer dollars this way?"

I've been covering the progress of the marijuana legalization initiative, which has apparently gotten me on a high-level marijuana policy list. From way over in Richland, WA, comes this letter from the Three Rivers Collective, which makes the case for collectives for cannabis cultivation. Many of you probably think that since Washington allows medical marijuana use, patients have unfettered access to prescribed medicine. Chet R. Biggerstaff writes in to correct that.

Chet R. Biggerstaff

The people of Washington State decided back in 1998 that certain patients should be able to use and access cannabis without the fear of arrest and persecution. We passed an initiative that gave patients a legal defense in court only as anything more at the time would not have passed.

What this was supposed to have done was stop the arrests of very ill patients and to allow them to use cannabis as their medicine as well as to have access to it. It further allowed the patient to grow their own medicine or have a caregiver grow it for them. The spirit of the law was to make sure patients could use, access, and grow (or have grown by a caregiver) their medicine without fear of arrest or discrimination, but that is not what we have achieved. What we have now are patients that can’t get their medicine, and patients that are scared of their local police and officials.

Patients are supposed to grow their own or have a caregiver grow it for them. This was a good idea initially but has had some "unexpected" issues. Most patients can't grow their own for a number of reasons like a place to do so, or are too sick to do so. So the powers that be say you can have someone grow it for you. Well, this sounds good on paper but it does not work in practice in the current environment.

What is happening to the patients that need a caregiver is either they can’t find anyone to do so for them without taking advantage or they are being ripped off by said caregivers. The vast majority of people I've come across that want to be caregivers are not doing so for the patients but for their pocketbooks. They say they will grow for the patient but then turn around and charge the patient either street prices or very close to street prices for something they should only be paying cost for (power, nutrients, etc) and then turn around and either use the "excess" themselves or sell it on the black market. ... (more)