Defending the government's classification of marijuana as one of the most dangerous drugs, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration declares on its website that pot causes mental illness and lung cancer and leads youths to heroin and cocaine. But an advocacy group says the DEA, in a legal filing in August, said it found no evidence to support any of those conclusions. The group, Americans for Safe Access, has asked the agency to remove discredited claims from its Web page. [continues 522 words]
In a potential legal breakthrough for medical marijuana, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Justice Department cannot prosecute anyone who grows, supplies or uses the drug for medical purposes under state law because Congress has barred federal intervention. The decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was written by one of its most conservative judges, Diarmuid O'Scannlain, and was the first by any appeals court to prohibit federal prosecutions under spending restrictions enacted by Congress. First passed in 2014 and renewed through September, the budget amendment forbids the Justice Department to spend any money to prevent California and other states from "implementing their own state laws" that authorize the medical use of marijuana. [continues 698 words]
Oakland has no right to challenge the government's attempt to shut down the huge Harborside medical marijuana dispensary even though it would cost the city millions of dollars in tax revenues, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag filed suit in July 2012 to confiscate the Harborside Health Center's property along the Oakland Estuary for violating the federal ban on marijuana. Harborside, which serves 108,000 patients and is the nation's largest licensed pot dispensary, is fighting the forfeiture suit in federal court, saying it violates other federal laws and the Obama administration's stated policy of deferring to state medical marijuana laws. Its case has been on hold while the courts decide whether the city can intervene. [continues 267 words]
Justice Dept. Sidesteps Limits Set by Congress In a newly disclosed memorandum, President Obama's Justice Department has told federal prosecutors they can file criminal charges against medical marijuana users and suppliers and shut down pot dispensaries, despite a congressional ban on federal interference with medical marijuana laws in California and other states. The Justice Department had previously made its intentions clear by refusing to drop pending marijuana prosecutions and pursuing forfeiture actions against dispensaries, including Oakland's huge Harborside Health Center. But the Feb. 27 memo, made public Wednesday by Tom Angell of the advocacy group Marijuana Majority, provides the department's rationale for considering the congressional spending restrictions largely toothless. [continues 539 words]
A San Francisco federal appeals court dealt a financial setback to medical marijuana dispensaries Thursday, saying that - unlike other commercial enterprises - they can't deduct business expenses from their taxable income because their product is prohibited by federal law. The ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was also another blow to the Vapor Room, which operated as a pot-inhaling shop and social club in the Lower Haight neighborhood from 2004 until July 2012, when it shut down under pressure from U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, who said she would seek its eviction for being too close to Duboce Park. Federal law increases penalties against marijuana dispensaries that are less than 1,000 feet from a school or playground, and the Vapor Room was 597 feet from the Duboce playground. [continues 230 words]
A federal appeals court questioned the government's move to seize and shut down the huge Harborside medical marijuana dispensary, but showed no support Tuesday for Oakland's attempt to preserve the pot supplier and its bounty of tax revenue. Despite the Obama administration's repeated assertions that it would not target medical marijuana operations that comply with state laws, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag filed suit in July 2012 to close down the city-licensed Harborside Health Center, which supplies marijuana to 108,000 patients along the Oakland Estuary at 1840 Embarcadero. City officials sued to block the forfeiture, but a federal magistrate ruled in 2013 that Oakland had no rights of its own at stake in the case. [continues 442 words]
U.S. Attorney Fights New Court Challenge Two weeks after President Obama signed legislation prohibiting federal interference with state medical marijuana laws, his administration has told a federal judge in Sacramento that pot is still a dangerous drug with no medical value. The U.S. attorney's office, representing Obama's Justice Department, made the argument in a court filing Wednesday opposing a challenge to the long-standing federal law that classifies marijuana as a Schedule One drug along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy - substances that have a high potential for abuse and no safe medical use. [continues 426 words]
Judges Seek Clarity Before Sentencing In a sharp reversal of federal drug policy, Congress has prohibited the Justice Department from interfering with laws in California and other states that allow the medical use of marijuana. And the turnabout caught the immediate attention of federal judges, who want to know its impact on some recent criminal convictions under the federal law that classifies pot as one of the most dangerous drugs. A day after President Obama signed the new law last week as part of a government spending bill, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco asked a federal prosecutor whether the change would affect the sentencing of a Mendocino County pot grower, who pleaded guilty to charges requiring at least five years in prison. [continues 696 words]
S.F. Officers Convicted of Stealing From Drug Dealers A San Francisco police corruption scandal, triggered by surveillance videos that appeared to show officers as thieves, registered its first verdicts Friday when a federal court jury found two veteran officers guilty of stealing property and thousands of dollars in cash from drug-dealer suspects to enrich themselves and defraud the city. The jury took 31/2 days of deliberations to unanimously find Officer Edmond Robles guilty of five felony charges and Sgt. Ian Furminger guilty of four. Jurors acquitted them of four charges, including conspiracy to deprive the public of their honest services, and deadlocked on a theft charge against Furminger. [continues 781 words]
After securing a guilty plea and an agreement to cooperate from one San Francisco police officer, federal prosecutors have added theft and corruption charges against two veteran officers accused of taking money and drugs from suspects. The timing of the new federal grand jury indictment against Sgt. Ian Furminger and Officer Edmond Robles suggests the additional charges resulted from statements by former Officer Reynaldo Vargas. Vargas was charged in the original indictment in February, along with Furminger and Robles, but pleaded guilty to four felonies on Oct. 21 and agreed to testify against his former colleagues. [continues 371 words]
Marijuana users and growers usually try to stay out of federal courts, which strictly enforce the nationwide laws against the drug and have rebuffed challenges to the government's classification of pot as one of the most dangerous narcotics. But that could change this week when a federal judge in Sacramento, in a criminal case against seven men charged with growing marijuana on national forest land in Trinity and Tehama counties, hears what she has described as "new scientific and medical information" that raises questions about the validity of the federal ban. [continues 872 words]
Barry Hazle was paroled after a one-year prison term for methamphetamine possession in 2007 and was ordered to spend the next 90 days in a residential drug treatment program. When he arrived, officials told him it was a 12 step program, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous, that required participants to confess their powerlessness and submit to a "higher power" through prayer. Hazle, a lifelong atheist, had asked for a secular treatment program. He said he was told this was the only state-approved facility in Shasta County, where he lived, but that it wasn't a stickler for compliance. [continues 556 words]
Californians will vote in November on a measure backed by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon - and opposed by most of his fellow prosecutors - to make possession of drugs a misdemeanor rather than a felony. Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office said Thursday that the initiative, co-sponsored by Gascon and former San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne, had more than the 504,760 valid signatures it needed to qualify for the ballot. Reducing penalties It would make possession of heroin, cocaine and several other drugs a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than a year in county jail, instead of a felony carrying up to three years in prison. It would also reduce small-time theft offenses such as shoplifting and check forgery to misdemeanors if the amount stolen was $950 or less, about twice the current limit. [continues 285 words]
House Votes to Rein in Feds Shows Times Are Changing Members of Congress whose states allow the medical use of marijuana have been trying since 2003 to stop federal prosecutors from going after state-approved pot suppliers. In one vote after another, they've been beaten back in the House - until now. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, a lead sponsor of the latest hands-off amendment, expected to fall a few votes short of the 218-vote majority needed for passage. But a 219-189 roll call last week approved the measure, which would cut off funding for Justice Department enforcement actions that interfere with medical marijuana laws in 22 states and with laws in another 10 states that allow medical use of hemp oils. [continues 761 words]
An undercover FBI agent posing as a medical marijuana supplier met with state Sen. Leland Yee in Sacramento in June and, according to the FBI's transcript of a secret tape recording, said he was willing to make campaign contributions in exchange for support of legislation. Yee's reply, the FBI reported, was, "You can't do that, man. You go to jail for that." Yee was right. His problem, if the government's account of his actions is accurate, is that he didn't listen to his own advice. [continues 797 words]
Eighteen members of Congress, including six from Northern California, urged President Obama on Wednesday to remove marijuana from the government's list of the most dangerous drugs and allow doctors to prescribe it. "Lives and resources are wasted on enforcing harsh, unrealistic and unfair marijuana laws," the House members said in a letter to Obama. They cited Obama's recent comment that marijuana, which he smoked as a youth, was no more dangerous than alcohol. In a later interview, however, when asked if he would remove marijuana from Schedule One, the strictest prohibition for narcotics, he replied that was a "job for Congress." [continues 180 words]
When it comes to the regulation of marijuana, President Obama has had a hard time squaring his words with his actions - most notably, his campaign promise to defer to state medical marijuana laws, followed by a flurry of federal raids on state-licensed dispensaries and the closures of hundreds in California. Now Obama has discussed the subject in a national television interview, and it's hard to reconcile his words with the law. It happened Jan. 31, when CNN's Jake Tapper brought up the president's headline-making observation during a recent New Yorker magazine interview that marijuana was no more dangerous than alcohol. Could that mean, Tapper asked Obama, that he would consider removing marijuana from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act, reserved for dangerous drugs that have no accepted medical use? [continues 850 words]
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a San Francisco group's challenge Monday to the federal government's refusal to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana, leaving intact the government's classification of the drug as a dangerous substance with no legitimate uses. The advocacy group Americans for Safe Access contended that more than 200 studies, performed and reviewed by medical professionals, have established that marijuana is both safe and effective in relieving pain and nausea, and in relieving the effects of chemotherapy for cancer patients. But federal courts have deferred to the Drug Enforcement Administration's conclusion that the drug's effects have not been adequately studied. [continues 274 words]
A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit over a Pittsburg police detective's fatal shooting of a man during a drug raid, saying there was evidence that the officer opened fire on the unarmed man without warning. Timothy Mitchell Jr., 29, was killed in his Antioch apartment during a 7 a.m. raid by a Contra Costa County narcotics squad in March 2011. Officers, who had a search warrant, said they had to force open a security door after a male voice shouted from inside that they were at the wrong home. Les Galer, a Pittsburg police officer, said he entered with his gun drawn and shot Mitchell after the man approached and grabbed his arm. [continues 280 words]
The Obama administration has pressured landlords, banks and credit card companies to cut off services to medical marijuana dispensaries. Now the administration may have found a new target: armored car companies that carry cash for the pot clubs. The executive director of Oakland's huge Harborside Health Center, already fighting a federal eviction suit, has used armored cars to pay tax collectors and other creditors because he can no longer use checks or credit cards. On Wednesday, he said, the armored car company told him it was terminating service on the orders of an unnamed federal agency. [continues 522 words]
In S.F., U.S. Attorney General Calls for Fewer Low-Level Offenders in Jail The "so-called war on drugs" has needlessly imprisoned thousands of Americans for relatively minor crimes, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday in a San Francisco speech announcing Obama administration policy changes that will reduce or possibly eliminate federal sentences for some low-level drug offenders. While Holder ordered federal prosecutors to reduce their use of mandatory sentencing laws in drug cases, the impact of his order will depend on such unpredictable factors as how prosecutors interpret the new rules and whether Congress decides to add flexibility to rigid sentencing laws. [continues 720 words]
A federal magistrate blocked the government Wednesday from closing and seizing the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary while the city of Oakland tries to join a legal challenge to the shutdown. U.S. Magistrate MariaElena James, who had dismissed Oakland's lawsuit against the closure of Harborside Health Center, said Wednesday that the city had a chance of successfully appealing her decision, an effort that would be futile if the dispensary were shuttered in the meantime. Wednesday's ruling could keep Harborside open for at least another year. [continues 277 words]
Two weeks after the California Supreme Court ruled that cities could bar medical marijuana dispensaries, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a separate case Monday brought by disabled Californians who claimed the local bans violated federal disability law. The four plaintiffs, all from Orange County, said conventional treatments have failed to relieve their pain. They argued that cutting off their local supply of doctor-approved marijuana denies their right to equal treatment under the Americans With Disabilities Act. A favorable ruling might have affected dispensary bans in about 200 California cities and shielded the severely disabled from enforcement of federal laws that forbid any use of marijuana. But a federal appeals court dismissed the disability claims last year, and on Monday the Supreme Court denied a hearing in the case. [continues 217 words]
Local Governments' Authority to Regulate Land Use Upheld Seventeen years after California became the first state to legalize the medical use of marijuana, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities can ban pot dispensaries, preserving a system in which some patients can find their supplies nearby while others have to travel or grow their own. The court said the bans are part of local governments' authority to regulate land use and do not conflict with Californians' right to possess marijuana for medical use. [continues 425 words]
Federal prosecutors have dropped their demand for the names of medical marijuana growers who took part in a unique Mendocino County program that let cultivators buy county permits for up to 99 pot plants. The prosecutors' action was reported Friday in federal court in San Francisco. The county halted its permit program under federal pressure last year. Mendocino allowed residents, starting in June 2010, to grow up to 99 marijuana plants on their property, subject to inspection by the sheriff's office, and required them to buy zip ties at $50 per plant to show they were complying with local regulations and the state's medical marijuana law. [continues 298 words]
Oakland's challenge to the federal government's attempt to shut down the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary was rejected Thursday by a federal magistrate, who said the city - despite its claims of harm to its residents and tax revenues - has no rights at stake in the proposed forfeiture. Under federal law, only those with legal interests in the property - the operators of the Harborside Health Center, and the owner of the building that houses it - have the right to contest the government's move to seize the property, said U.S. Magistrate MariaElena James. [continues 306 words]
Justices Seem To Side With Cities On Dispensary Bans The California Supreme Court left little doubt Tuesday that it would uphold the authority of local governments, including more than two dozen in the Bay Area, to ban medical marijuana dispensaries within their borders. At a one-hour hearing at the University of San Francisco, a lawyer for a pot supplier in Riverside - one of about 200 cities and counties in the state that have outlawed dispensaries - argued that such ordinances conflict with state laws that allow medical use of marijuana. [continues 381 words]
The city of Oakland told a federal magistrate Thursday that the federal government's shutdown of the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary would damage residents' health and welfare as well as the city's revenues. The Obama administration replied that the city doesn't belong in the case. The 90-minute hearing in San Francisco was a potentially critical stage in the legal battle that started in July when U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag filed suit to close down Harborside Health Center and seize the building for violation of federal drug laws. [continues 398 words]
The state Supreme Court has denied prosecutors' request to review a ruling to allow large nonprofit dispensaries to sell medical marijuana, a case that could affect the federal government's attempt to shut down the giant Harborside dispensary in Oakland. Harborside Health Center is the nation's largest medical marijuana supplier, with 108,000 patients. Local and state authorities have not objected to its operations, but U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag sued in July to seize its property in Oakland and a smaller site in San Jose. [continues 392 words]
Oakland's latest round in its campaign to save the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary includes a statement this week from Mayor Jean Quan saying federal prosecutors should back off, and the federal government's own patent application lauding the therapeutic qualities of cannabis. In papers filed late Tuesday with the magistrate who is considering the fate of the Harborside Health Center, lawyers for Oakland said patent and research records reveal that "the government believes in the medical efficacy of cannabis" - contrary to the Justice Department's insistence that marijuana is a dangerous drug with no legitimate use. [continues 360 words]
City's Disagreement With Federal Government Centers on How Deadline for Forfeiting Property Is Determined The city of Oakland, fighting the federal government's attempt to shut down the nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary, is accusing the government of trying to win the case by bullying the building owner into evicting the pot club under the threat of losing her property. Justice Department lawyers counter that Oakland has no legitimate voice in the case and is only trying to protect the "windfall" it collects in taxes from the "illegal marijuana distribution activities" at Harborside Health Center. [continues 563 words]
Parents who abuse drugs can lose custody of their children. But a parent who uses marijuana for medical reasons, with a doctor's approval, isn't necessarily a drug abuser, says a state appeals court. In a 3-0 ruling Wednesday, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles rejected findings by a local child-protective agency that a man who smoked pot four or five times a week for arthritis pain, outside the presence of his infant son, was endangering the child. [continues 411 words]
print Big dispensaries can sell to members, court rules Tackling a disputed issue in California's medical marijuana law, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday that a nonprofit dispensary can legally sell pot to members of its collective, even if they played no role in growing it. The Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected arguments by the San Diego County district attorney, and by Attorney General Kamala Harris' office, that the law protects only small collectives in which most or all members take part in producing marijuana for their own medical use. [continues 373 words]
A Bay Area congresswoman wants to stop the federal government from seizing medical marijuana dispensaries, like Oakland's Harborside Health Center, if the pot suppliers are complying with state law. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, introduced legislation last week in response to a recent federal move to shut down Harborside, the nation's largest supplier of marijuana to medical patients, and seize its property in East Oakland and San Jose. The move on Harborside last month by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag came after she and the three other chief federal prosecutors in California announced plans last October to shut down pot dispensaries, saying their owners were using the state's medical marijuana law as a front for drug profiteering. Since then, more than 400 dispensaries statewide have closed. [continues 247 words]
Like Oakland's Harborside Health Center, the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center had the approval of local law enforcement and political leaders for its medical marijuana dispensary. Host city West Hollywood was so supportive that it lent the center $300,000 to help buy its building, and the mayor gave a nationally televised interview in the grow room. None of that helped the center, or the city, when the federal government moved to shut down the operation and seize the building. The government is now trying to do the same thing to Harborside, the state's largest medical pot supplier. [continues 779 words]
Cities and counties in California have authority to issue permits for medical marijuana dispensaries and regulate their activities, San Francisco's city attorney told the state Supreme Court on Monday in a challenge to an appellate ruling that would prohibit local operating permits for pot collectives. The state's top court has agreed to review a decision in October by an appellate panel in Los Angeles that said a city's decision to authorize medical marijuana suppliers puts a stamp of approval on activity that federal law forbids and interferes with federal drug enforcement. [continues 171 words]
A city's ban on marijuana dispensaries doesn't violate federal disability law even though it may interfere with medical care for the disabled, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said it sympathized with a group of severely ill individuals who sought to preserve their "basic human dignity" by using pot to relieve their pain. But the court said the federal government's ban on marijuana contains no exemption for the disabled. [continues 313 words]
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has joined critics of the Obama administration's campaign against medical marijuana suppliers in California, saying the government is endangering patients and undermining its own proclaimed policy of deferring to states on the issue. "I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medical marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California," the San Francisco congresswoman said in a statement Wednesday. It was Pelosi's first public criticism of the actions announced in October by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag of San Francisco and federal prosecutors in the state's other three regions to crack down on marijuana dispensaries by going after their landlords. [continues 293 words]
Pot suppliers went to federal court Monday to try to halt the Obama administration's campaign to close down their dispensaries, saying the survival of California's medical marijuana law is at stake. In lawsuits filed in each of the state's four federal districts, medical marijuana cooperatives, joined by patients and property owners, accused the Justice Department of violating an agreement to leave them alone if they complied with state law. The department had pledged to the courts, and to patients and their suppliers, that "those who possess, grow and distribute medical marijuana in compliance with state law will not be prosecuted nor their property seized," the dispensaries' lawyers said. [continues 353 words]
The Obama administration's campaign against medical marijuana dispensaries in California is an unconstitutional attack on the state's authority to set its own health policies, an advocacy group charged in a lawsuit Thursday. While the federal government is entitled to enforce its laws against marijuana possession, cultivation and sale, its recent tactics - including threats to prosecute dispensaries' landlords and members of city councils that license pot suppliers - add up to an "unlawful assault on state sovereignty," Americans for Safe Access said in papers filed in San Francisco federal court. [continues 255 words]
California's federal prosecutors announced a campaign Friday to shut down scores of marijuana dispensaries, which they described as profit-making criminal enterprises masquerading as suppliers of medicine. The announcement at a Sacramento news conference angered medical marijuana advocates, who said President Obama had reneged on his promise to let states set their own policies on therapeutic use of the drug. But prosecutors insisted they weren't going after patients and their caregivers. "People are using the cover of medical marijuana to make extraordinary amounts of money," said San Francisco's U.S. attorney, Melinda Haag, speaking alongside her counterparts from Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. [continues 767 words]
A federal appeals court upheld the conviction and 10-year sentence Wednesday of a medical marijuana advocate who grew 32,000 pot plants for patients and fellow Rastafarians on his land in Lake County. The federal judge who sent Charles "Eddy" Lepp to prison in 2009 criticized the federal law that required a 10-year term for growing at least 1,000 marijuana plants. But U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of San Francisco said she was bound by the law, and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. [continues 200 words]
A new Obama administration memo approves federal prosecution of anyone in the business of growing or supplying marijuana for medical patients even if they are complying with state law, a contradiction, advocacy groups say, of President Obama's pledge to let states set their own policies. The memo, issued Wednesday by Deputy Attorney General James Cole, insisted that the Justice Department hadn't abandoned the policy it announced in a set of guidelines in October 2009. Those guidelines discouraged federal prosecutors from charging people who were following laws in California and other states that allow the medical use of marijuana, despite the federal government's absolute ban on the drug. [continues 570 words]
Despite Administration's Promise, Those Following State's Laws Face Charges When the Obama administration declared 18 months ago that it would stop arresting people who complied with their states' medical marijuana laws, advocates were encouraged but wary, saying pot patients and their suppliers were still at risk of federal prosecution. In a new report, the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access said its caution was justified: Prosecutions have continued unabated, and the number of raids has increased. [continues 966 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- An employer can refuse to hire someone who has ever tested positive for marijuana or other drugs, even if the applicant is now clean and sober, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the "one-strike" rule of the Pacific Maritime Association, which controls hiring in the West Coast longshore industry, doesn't discriminate against rehabilitated addicts in violation of disability laws. The rule "imposes a harsh penalty on applicants who test positive," and may seem unreasonable because many drug and alcohol users recover, the court said. But it said the maritime association had adopted the rule for safety purposes and did not single out former addicts. [continues 334 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court has upheld the drug convictions and five-year prison sentences of two Northern California medical marijuana activists who grew pot for themselves and their fellow patients. Attorney Dale Schafer began growing marijuana for his wife, physician Marion "Mollie" Fry, on their property in the town of Cool (El Dorado County) in 1998. She had secured a doctor's recommendation for the drug to ease the effects of chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery. Schafer later started using medical marijuana for back pain and other ailments. The couple began distributing the drug to other patients in 1999 and contacted sheriff's deputies, who let them continue under California's medical marijuana law. [continues 382 words]
An advocacy group's attempt to force the federal government to concede that marijuana could have therapeutic qualities has been snuffed by an appeals court. Americans for Safe Access sued the government in 2007 under the Information Quality Act, a decade-old law that allows people to compel federal officials to correct false statements. Private citizens must show that a statement affects them and fails to meet an agency's published standards for accuracy. The organization said its members include seriously ill people who have been discouraged from using marijuana by the Department of Health and Human Services' long-standing position, stated most recently in 2001, that the drug has no medical value. [continues 153 words]
In a victory for medical marijuana users, the state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a state law that protects them from arrest if they show police official identification cards. The court also overturned a law that limits how much pot patients can carry and how many plants they can grow. The court unanimously ruled that the limits - 8 ounces of dried marijuana, six mature plants or 12 immature plants - conflicted with Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that made California the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use. [continues 503 words]
A judge who wanted a gun-toting youth to clean up his act was acting within his power by forbidding him to use the medical marijuana he took for migraine headaches as part of a probation sentence that kept him out of prison, a state appeals court in San Francisco has ruled. More Bay Area News The First District Court of Appeal said the Solano County judge reasonably decided that becoming drug-free would help the youth turn his life around. But a dissenting justice said the 2-1 ruling undermines the medical marijuana law that California voters approved in 1996. [continues 495 words]
