Pubdate: Wed, 12 Dec 2001
Source: Los Angeles Independent (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Independent Newspaper Group
Contact:  http://www.laindependent.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1602
Author: Malaika Costello-Dougherty
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm (Ashcroft, John)

CANNABIS CENTER OPENS TREE LOT TO KEEP AFLOAT

With a sign out front that says there is still a "lot" to live for, the Los 
Angeles Cannabis Resource Center is busy selling Christmas trees to raise 
money for its building trust and legal defense funds.

Meanwhile, the City of West Hollywood declared itself a "sanctuary for 
medical marijuana use, cultivation and distribution, supporting the Los 
Angeles Cannabis Resource Center" at the Dec. 3 City Council meeting.

The LACRC is selling Christmas trees and holiday wreaths instead of 
distributing medical marijuana because of the Oct. 25 Drug Enforcement 
Agency raid on the center, when its marijuana plants and medical records 
were seized and the LACRC bank accounts were frozen.

Scott Imler, cannabis center president, says that they have had to take a 
"hurry-up-and-wait" approach after the raid and the Christmas tree sales 
gave them something to do.

According to Imler, the center is working to raise the $10,000 a month it 
costs for the mortgage and basic utilities of the LACRC building.

Rev. John Edwin Griffith of the Crescent Heights United Methodist Church 
was found shopping for a Christmas tree for the church's sanctuary. 
Griffith says he was buying a tree at the lot because he supported the 
LACRC and that he was encouraging his congregation to buy their trees from 
the center.

"I don't understand why George Bush, a United Methodist, doesn't see this 
in a different light," Griffith says.

Lot manager Morgan Lee says many of the customers have voiced support for 
the LACRC and question the recent conflict between state law -- the 1996 
Compassionate Use Act California, or Proposition 215, which legalized 
medical marijuana -- and the federal law that prohibits it.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld a 1970 law that declared dispensing 
marijuana a federal crime and that marijuana did not have medicinal value 
worthy of exception.

"[I spend] nights awake walking the floor there worried and sometimes just 
sobbing because I want to be open," Imler says. "Our members are very, very 
sick and a lot of them come here at the very twilight of their lives.... 
They suffer at twilight that they are federal criminals, that their own 
country turned against them.

"We're here and we're not giving up and we'll do whatever we have to do to 
survive until we get this worked out once and for all," Imler says.

The West Hollywood sanctuary declaration is largely symbolic, with copies 
of the resolution being sent to the U.S. attorney general, the state 
attorney general, the Los Angeles County district attorney and other public 
officials.

Still, Councilman Jeffrey Prang says that while medical marijuana users are 
vulnerable to the DEA, the "using [and] distributing of medicinal marijuana 
is not the subject of arrest by the City of West Hollywood or the agencies 
that work for us. We will continue to express the will of the people as 
expressed in Proposition 215."

City Councilman John Duran, who is the LACRC's legal counsel, says the 
center has a three-pronged legal strategy: avoiding criminal indictments, 
going into federal court for clarification of the medical necessity 
exception under federal law and lobbying to change the federal law.

Duran says the first step is avoiding criminal prosecutions in the next few 
months and that this week the center will be making a presentation to the 
U.S. Attorney's Office on why federal indictments should not be filed.

According to Duran, the Supreme Court decision stated that a club cannot 
assert medical necessity for medical marijuana but didn't decide whether 
individual patients may be able to assert medical necessity.

Since each member of the center was a qualified patient, Duran says, "I 
think we still have an opportunity to explore ways to get Scott and his 
group covered legally," noting that the project may take years.

"We always knew this day would probably come, where we had to deal with the 
federal government," he adds. "Someday, legally we will be back in the 
business of medicinal marijuana to qualified patients, but only with 
federal approval."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jackl