Pubdate: Tue, 16 Mar 2004
Source: Oakland Tribune, The (CA)
Copyright: 2004 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.oaklandtribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/314
Author: Josh Richman, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Ed+Rosenthal (Rosenthal, Ed)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Bob+Martin

OAKLAND'S 'GANJA GURU' SUES FOR GREEN

SAN FRANCISCO - Perhaps only here could someone go to court to enforce the 
terms of a marijuana deal gone bad.

Ed Rosenthal, the Oakland "Guru of Ganja" who was convicted but avoided 
prison time on federal marijuana charges last year, was back in court 
Monday, but this time of his own volition.

He was in small claims court in his lawsuit against Bob Martin, a man who 
has been involved with several of San Francisco's medical marijuana 
dispensaries.

At issue is just how much protection the state's medical marijuana law 
affords marijuana providers -- marijuana costs money to produce, and if 
dispensaries must pay providers for plants, does the law ensure those 
payments will be made in good faith?

Rosenthal claims Martin a few years ago wrote him several checks for 
marijuana "clones" -- plants grown from cuttings of other plants -- that he 
created and delivered to the Harm Reduction Center, a dispensary on Sixth 
Street. These checks bounced, and Rosenthal now wants his money.

Rosenthal provided the checks Monday to San Francisco Superior Court 
Commissioner Catherine A.S. Lyons.

He also gave her a transcript of testimony Martin gave at Rosenthal's 
federal trial last year, in which Rosenthal claims Martin said he never 
intended to pay Rosenthal for the plants.

Martin told Lyons he doesn't own the Harm Reduction Center and wasn't 
present when Rosenthal delivered the plants; Lyons, however, noted aloud 
that Martin signed the bad checks.

Martin said he worked at the dispensary as a volunteer, and that the 
transaction with Rosenthal was interrupted in February 2002 by a Drug 
Enforcement Administration raid in which plants were seized from the 
dispensary and Rosenthal's Oakland growing facility, and in which Rosenthal 
and others were arrested.

Martin made another argument: "If I was forced to pay those checks, your 
honor, I'd be committing a federal crime ... I'd be paying for marijuana, 
which is a federal offense."

But Martin had no legal precedent to cite to Lyon on that, and Rosenthal 
noted Martin remains one of San Francisco's largest providers of medical 
marijuana.

Lyons didn't rule Monday, saying she'll probably issue her decision in 
about a week.

The bad blood between Rosenthal and Martin boiled over last spring at the 
annual conference of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana 
Laws (NORML).

The two reportedly got into a public shouting match after Rosenthal branded 
Martin a "snitch" for having testified against him at trial.

Rosenthal was convicted early last year of three marijuana cultivation 
felonies, but a federal judge last summer sentenced him to only one day of 
jail time he'd already served.

The judge said Rosenthal's conviction served as a warning that city and 
state laws don't protect marijuana users and providers from federal law's 
ban on the drug, and future providers won't receive such lenient sentences.

Prosecutors appealed that sentence and Rosenthal appealed his conviction, 
claiming that jurors were unfairly kept in the dark about his permission 
from Oakland officials to grow marijuana and provide it to patients with 
doctors' recommendations under the state law. Those appeals are pending. 
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