Pubdate: Wed, 05 Dec 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
Author: Peter Hecht

SACRAMENTO'S CANNA CARE DISPENSARY A FAMILY BUSINESS WITH CHRISTIAN OUTLOOK

Bryan Davies, an evangelical Christian with a long, drifting beard, 
is the CEO of a family business that doles out marijuana and 
spirituality in fragrant, faithful harmony.

His Canna Care dispensary, one of Sacramento's longest operating 
medical marijuana providers, is as renowned for its political 
activism at City Hall and the state Capitol as it is for its calls to prayer.

California's medical marijuana industry has drawn people from 
mortgage brokers to car salesman, from hippies to computer geeks, 
into the marijuana trade. But Canna Care may well stand out for its 
singular devotion to serving up cannabis with Christ.

As some marijuana businesses shrink from the spotlight in the face of 
a federal crackdown that has shuttered hundreds of California 
dispensaries, Bryan Davies and his wife, Lanette, are running radio 
and newspaper ads touting nightly prayer sessions in their marijuana store.

"Please join us, it's the least we can do," Bryan says in a current 
radio spot, adding, "May God's will be done."

The people who show up, generally in small numbers, for 6 p.m. 
prayers find an establishment that handles up to $2 million in 
medical marijuana transactions a year  and has given out more than 
3,000 Bibles. Customers looking for Purple Kush or Super Silver Haze 
can also share recitations of the Lord's Prayer.

The couple classify the operation, in a modest warehouse in North 
Sacramento, next-door to a church, as a nonprofit, saying they donate 
to community charities and medical marijuana advocacy groups.

Bryan, 57, who opened the dispensary in 2005, never prayed to go into 
the marijuana trade.

Instead, he says he feared Satan was at work when a doctor suggested 
he try cannabis for a disabling bone disease, ankylosing spondylitis, 
that caused spinal curvature and searing pain and led him to give up 
his truck washing business.

Bryan said he believed he was succumbing to evil when he first got 
the idea of opening a pot dispensary. But then, he insists, the Lord 
interrupted him in prayer to assure him it was divine will.

Lanette, 55, who normally shares her husband's spiritual devotion, 
wasn't at all sold on this vision.

"He kept telling me that God was telling him to do it," she said. "I 
thought he was insane." For a time, she said, she kept her job as a 
credit and collections coordinator at The Bee, because "I thought 
somebody needed to support the family when he went to jail."

But not long afterward, Lanette joined the marijuana store after 
their daughter Brittany was diagnosed, at age 15, with a different 
bone disease, chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis, that causes 
lesions and painful inflammation. She said she saw Brittany "in 
convulsions, begging to die." A doctor augmented Brittany's 
prescription medications with a recommendation for medical marijuana.

Brittany, now 22 and a student at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, 
appeared in a Fox 40 commercial in 2010  the first known mainstream 
TV ad for a pot dispensary. She says she continues to battle the 
condition, but talked about cannabis giving her "a way to live" in a 
spot that included people with diabetes, HIV and hypertension.

The couple's son Don, 26, who studied biochemistry at UC Santa Cruz, 
works as a Canna Care technician, using a microscope and computer 
screen to examine marijuana strains to ensure they are free of fungus.

The family doesn't adhere to spiritual practices of a small marijuana 
faction that views the cannabis plant as a religious sacrament. They 
consider marijuana simply as a useful healing aid for man.

To that end, Lanette runs Canna Care's lobbying group, Crusaders for 
Patients Rights, which pushes the state for medical marijuana 
legislation and lobbies cities to permit dispensaries. She played a 
key role in negotiations as the city of Sacramento passed regulations 
in 2010 that, at the time, allowed 38 dispensaries to stay in business.

Canna Care has spent $15,000 since July on Christian-themed radio 
spots and newspaper ads, including display advertisements in The Bee 
expressing the dispensary's "humble honor to assist those in need of 
cannabis therapy." A Fourth of July ad, with the Ten Commandments, 
celebrated "a Nation under God."

Bryan said not everyone is pleased with the dispensary's religious 
theme. He got a call recently from a man "saying we were right-wing, 
radical Christians."

He says the caller was only partly right: He describes himself as a 
Republican whose politics span an arc from Occupy Wall Street to the 
tea party. His wife is a Democrat. They provide medical cannabis to 
believers and nonbelievers alike.

Most people coming into their dispensary don't stop to pray. They 
move quickly past the open Bible at the entrance and the Ten 
Commandments to get to the marijuana offerings.

But some come specifically for Canna Care's Christian orientation. 
Last year, Bryan said, a man with a cancer diagnosis came in, 
conflicted and ashamed over finding himself in a pot store.

"I went to church every day. I paid my tithes," Bryan recounted the 
man saying as he dropped to his knees before the cannabis counter. 
"And yet they tell me I'm going to die."

"You didn't ask for cancer," Bryan said he assured him. "You didn't 
ask that cannabis could help you out. Obviously, it was God's will."

These days, the couple are praying for the Internal Revenue Service, 
which is seeking $875,000 in additional taxes from Canna Care for 
2006-2008 under a 1982 tax code that targets illegal drug dealers. 
The government is invoking the code to deny routine business 
deductions for medical marijuana outlets.

Canna Care refused a settlement offer "for an amount that would have 
been acceptable," said Lanette. She said they made "a moral choice" 
to fight the case, which is to be heard in U.S. tax court next year.

Cecil Smith, pastor of the Sacramento Valley Jubilee Church that is 
Canna Care's neighbor, said he has no problem being next to a dispensary.

"I don't know what marijuana does," Smith said. "I know what Jesus 
does. Jesus heals."

Recently, in the pot store lobby, between the Toys for Tots donations 
barrel and a sign declaring, "God Bless Everyone, No Exceptions," 
Smith joined in clasping hands with dispensary workers in white lab 
coats. Along with Bryan and Lanette and another daughter, Rebecca, 
21, they bowed their heads in worship.

Just as they were starting, Manal Nassef, 37, who is suffering from 
thyroid cancer, came in for medical marijuana. Nassef is Muslim. She 
asked if she could join in. As the others offered a Christian prayer, 
Nassef offered an Islamic one.

"It feels good to pray," she said, "to heal yourself."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom