Pubdate: Wed, 25 Sep 2002
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2002 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Claire Cooper, Bee Legal Affairs Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

MEDICAL POT CLUB WANTS PLANTS BACK

A medical marijuana collective near Santa Cruz went on the offensive 
Tuesday, asking a federal judge to order the return of 167 pot plants 
seized in a raid by federal drug agents.

The unusual legal motion, filed in San Jose, was based on a states' rights 
constitutional defense of California's medical marijuana law that is 
expected to find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The federal government will fight the motion "tooth and nail," said Richard 
Meyer, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who said he 
believed the request to be the first of its kind.

"Our job is to take dangerous drugs off the streets, not to put them back 
on the streets," he said.

The case grew out of a DEA raid three weeks ago on the Wo/Men's Alliance 
for Medical Marijuana.

Agents arrested the collective's founders -- and brought to a head the 
dispute between California, which legalized medical pot by initiative in 
1996, and the federal government, which banned pot by an act of Congress in 
1970.

Californians in droves, including some state and local civic leaders, 
stepped forward to support WAMM and its founders, Valerie and Michael 
Corral, who were released without charges.

On Tuesday, a team of volunteer lawyers led by Santa Clara University law 
professor Gerald Uelmen took the next step, demanding return of the seized 
marijuana plants to the sick and dying WAMM members.

"The medicinal marijuana that was seized is not contraband because its 
cultivation and use was authorized by state law," says the legal motion.

The motion was based on recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions under the 
states' rights 10th Amendment. In those decisions, the high court struck 
down federal laws that banned guns near schools and made violence against 
women a federal crime.

The Supreme Court said the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution 
- -- on which both laws relied -- did not give Congress the power to 
interfere with non-economic activities or those confined within a state's 
borders. WAMM provides pot free to its 250 carefully screened members.

The 10th Amendment argument for Proposition 215 also has been raised in a 
case that arose in Oakland. The argument was rejected this year by a 
federal district judge in San Francisco and now is before the 9th U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Oakland's medical marijuana 
cooperative in 2001 but did not decide the 10th Amendment issue.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom