Pubdate: Sun, 20 May 2012
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2012 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376

CALIFORNIA MEDICAL POT ADVOCATES PUSH BILL TO REGULATE LEGAL DISPENSARIES

Medical marijuana advocates Saturday opened a three-day event to rally
support to regulate a legal dispensary industry in California, spurred
on by videotaped messages from two members of Congress who recently
pushed an amendment to deny funds for federal raids on cannabis businesses.

About 200 people, including dispensary operators and people who use
marijuana for medical conditions, turned out at a Sacramento labor
hall in a conference to rally support for a bill to create a state
oversight agency for cannabis business and make it harder for cities
and counties to ban dispensaries.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, who passed the bill out of
his public safety committee, said it faces difficult path to passage
as state lawmakers shrink from the medical marijuana issue while "the
(federal) Department of Justice is going rogue on us and the U.S.
attorneys are participating in this spin cycle of reefer madness."

Representatives of marijuana patients' advocates Americans for Safe
Access and a union organizing California marijuana workers, the United
Food & Commercial Workers, used the event to attract volunteers to
flood the Capitol on Monday to lobby lawmakers to pass Assembly Bill
2312, which is opposed by law enforcement groups.

California's four U.S. attorneys announced last year that they were
targeting medical marijuana businesses, which they charged were
"hijacked by profiteers" and operating in violation of both federal
and state laws.

The crackdown, including letters threatening property seizures and
prosecution of dispensary landlords, has shuttered hundreds of
dispensaries.

"It's been 16 years since we passed Proposition 215, which called for
a safe and affordable distribution system for patients in medical need
in California," Dale Gieringer, state director for the National
Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, told the gathering. "We
haven't gotten very far in that."

The attendees at the event were greeted by videotaped speeches from
U.S. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, and Sam Farr,
D-Carmel, who ripped federal drug agents and President Barack Obama
for cracking down on medical marijuana providers in California.

Rohrabacher and Farr joined Reps. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, and
Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., to introduce an amendment to deny funding for
federal crackdowns on marijuana businesses in California and 16 other
states permitting medical use. The amendment to a bill funding the
Department of Justice was defeated in the House on May 10 by a 263-163
vote.

"I think we thought by now, especially with Barack Obama in the White
House, that there would be greater progress on medical marijuana,"
Farr said. "Instead we've seen raids on clinics, bank assets frozen,
inventories confiscated. To me that is not the sign of an informed
health care policy."

Rohrabacher said "making medical marijuana illegal is
insane."

"And it is even more insane," he said, "to have the federal government
using its resources ... to attack people in California for
distributing medical marijuana." 
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