Pubdate: Thu, 05 Jun 2014
Source: Visalia Times-Delta, The (CA)
Copyright: 2014 The Visalia Times-Delta
Contact: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2759
Author: David Castellon

MEDICAL MARIJUANA USERS WORRY ABOUT COUNTY CHANGES

Tuesday's decision by the Tulare County Board of Supervisors to take
the first step to ban growing medicinal marijuana in unincorporated
areas amounts to a life-and-death decision for Sandra Lambert.

The 65-year-old former attorney from Ivanhoe uses medicinal marijuana
to fight pain from seven shattered discs in her spine along with the
effects of Cushing's disease and fibromyalgia, she said.

Lambert uses medicinal marijuana because morphine and other
medications were destroying her liver and causing stomach bleeding,
she said.

"I'm fighting for my life," Lambert said.

She doesn't smoke the marijuana she grows on a property she owns but
instead sprinkles some ground flakes into a drink and also has the
plants incorporated into a cream that serves as an effective topical
treatment to her symptoms, Lambert said.

And being on an fixed income, she said she can't afford to buy
marijuana from a collective that grows and distributes the drug. As
such, Lambert expressed worry that an outright ban on growing medical
marijuana would leave her without any treatment and might prove fatal
to her in the long run.

She told the supervisors that she knows of 175 people in similar
circumstances.

"I'm not high. It's medicine," Lambert told the board during their
regular, weekly meeting. "It's medical. We're trying to save our lives
and get up and walk around each day and have a life."

Lambert was among a small group of people who spoke before the
supervisors on Tuesday prior to them voting on whether to change the
county's existing medical marijuana ordinance.

Those changes could either allow individuals or their caregivers to
grow medical marijuana under the county's rules while banning
marijuana collectives and cooperatives or ban people from growing
marijuana entirely.

Despite the pleas of Lambert and others, the board voted 5-0 to go
with the latter option, directing county staff to create an ordinance
that bans all medical marijuana in the county. The ban wouldn't apply
to cities in Tulare County.

A report to the supervisors explained that the changes were considered
following the California Supreme Court decision not to hear an appeal
of a decision by the city of Live Oak to ban medical marijuana growing.

That ban is despite California voters passing in 1996 the
Compassionate Care Act, which allows people to grow and ingest
medicinal marijuana with doctors' recommendations.

Cities and counties are allowed to create ordinances designating where
and under what conditions the plants can be grown and smoked. Fresno
County recently passed an outright ban.

Tulare County officials have long attributed several crimes, including
killings and robberies, to medicinal-marijuana growing operations.

Officials have also cited concerns from neighbors who fear the
violence could spill over as reasons to severely restrict or ban growing.

In addition, officials have cited numerous cases in which illegal
growers have raised marijuana for sale under the guise of doing it for
medical patients.

Whatever the reasons for the board's vote, Roger Southfield of Exeter,
a medical marijuana user who addressed the board on Tuesday, said
after the meeting that the supervisors made their decision without
factoring in the needs of patients.

He said county staff should invite medical users, growers and others
involved in medical marijuana growing and distribution to develop an
ordinance that protects the public and still allows people access to
their medicine.

That still can happen said Cox, noting that it may be three months or
more before the amendment comes to the board. Before that happens, the
county Planning Commission will hold a public hearing and may
recommend changes, and another public hearing will be held by the board.

Cox noted that there are hundreds of grow sites - many of them illegal
operations - that the county Sheriff's Department and county
code-enforcement officers are stretched thin to visit them all and
develop cases for criminal and code violations.

County officials know of two cooperatives or collectives in the Goshen
area east of Visalia complying with the current county ordinance. And
Tammy Murray, who operates one of them, said the board's decision "is
cutting the legs from under us."

Murray is chief executive officer of CannaCanHelp, Inc. - formerly the
Compassionate Cannabis Information Center - a dispensary and
collective operating out of a warehouse in Goshen.

The dispensary offers marijuana, supplies for growing, seeds and
starter plants, supplies for smoking and ingesting the drug and
several marijuana-laced foods from brownies and chocolate candies to
peanut brittle and beef jerky. Most of the marijuana comes from
growers in Tulare County.

Weston Fox, the general manager, said that based on Tuesday's board
vote, some growers are talking about quitting or moving out of the
county, which wouldn't collect taxes from the sales, Murray said.

"If there is no cultivation in the county, then how can you make it
legally accessible unless you are buying it from other people in other
counties? So how are you benefiting Tulare County?" he said.

She said that if the ordinance changes are approved without
significant revisions, CannaCanHelp will have to get its medial
marijuana from growers in Humboldt County - where the restrictions are
less severe - but that presents risks if a farmer delivering the
harvested plants is pulled over and an officer finds them.

Murray, who uses marijuana to treat pain from injuries she suffered in
the military, accused the supervisors of "holding onto an old,
backward prejudice against marijuana.

"It's difficult to challenge that because it's been demonized for so
long," she said.

Murray also accused the board of trying to supersede state law and not
following the changing public attitude that favors legalizing
marijuana, which has happened in Washington state and Colorado.

If Tulare County's ordinance amendment goes through and her collective
is served with a cease-and-desist order for cultivating marijuana,
Murray speculates the American Civil Liberties Union would sue.

When asked by Lambert about a possible legal challenge, County Counsel
Kathleen Bales-Lange suggested that ACLU attorneys first read the
ruling on the lawsuit against Live Oak's ban.

While the supervisors wait for a draft ordinance amendment, Fox said
Wednesday that he already had heard from a few of the 2,000 worried
patients his dispensary serves.

Many are too ill to go outside the county to buy marijuana legally,
and Fox said he worries the restrictions will drive patients to
illegal pot sellers, supporting the criminals that county officials
want to stop.

When asked if medicinal marijuana growers may be grandfathered in and
allowed to continue growing after the ordinance changes, Bales-Lange
said the county could review them on a case-by-case basis.

People with legitimate medical recommendations who are complying with
the growing rules in the current county ordinance shouldn't worry
because because county leaders don't want law- and code-enforcement
officials going after everybody growing marijuana, just the criminals
and code violators not little old ladies, Cox said.

"[But] if she's growing the plants and shipping them to Colorado, I
want them to kick in her door and arrest her," Cox said.
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MAP posted-by: Matt