The story "Marijuana seizures soar in state, sour locally" (Nov. 20) provides further documentation of the utter failure of California's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting. Record plant seizures have not diminished the marijuana supply, but continue to push growers into more dangerous locations in order to stay one step ahead of police.

Moving operations indoors, often in residential homes, is one common reaction to CAMP's activities. In a report issued Nov. 8, the U.S.

Department of Justice wrote, "Federal, state, and local law enforcement reporting indicates that vigorous outdoor cannabis eradication efforts have caused many marijuana producers...particularly to relocate indoors, even in leading outdoor grow states such as California and Tennessee." This enables year-round operation and what DOJ predicts will be an "exponential" increase in profits for criminal gangs.

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Probably Dooms Future Attempts in Sonoma Valley

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted 3-0 Tuesday afternoon to deny a pot club permit in the old Nicholas Turkey building just across the Ig Vella Bridge at 19445 Riverside Drive.

Following nearly three hours of discussion and public testimony, the Supervisors, sitting with a bare, three-person quorum, voted to deny the application by Dona Frank of Creekside Medical Organics. Frank had been hoping to open the dispensary in leased office space toward the back of the concrete block building that sits adjacent to Sonoma Creek just across from Maxwell Farms Regional Park. The permit application had won the support of the Sonoma Valley Citizen's Advisory Commission in a nonbinding 6-1 vote.

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Long Beach has become the latest city caught in a crossfire between the state and federal governments over medical marijuana.

Last week, federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials raided the Long Beach Cannabis Club, which is located downtown (near a new condominium project and the CityPlace center). Agents seized 33 kilos of marijuana, about $10,000 cash and arrested the proprietor, Samuel Matthew Fata.

Since the raid, the club has remained closed. But there are an estimated 10 other clubs operating in Long Beach, according to a list put together by the Long Beach City Prosecutor's office.

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If you are a member of the Dewar family, makers of fine Scotch whisky, Wednesday - the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition - might as well be Christmas Day.

In celebration of nearly 75 years of our hard-fought freedom to drink, Dewar's is launching a nationwide campaign to formally recognize Repeal Day - when the 21st Amendment was written to overturn the 18th Amendment, which in 1920 had made alcohol an illegal substance.

Back in the 1920s and '30s, lawmakers decided that stuff that ignites and peels paint should not be ingested. It made sense, but it was doomed to fail. Why? People liked to drink, if only once in a while, and still did it, even if it was illegal to do so.

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Regarding Jyl Lutes' Nov. 26 letter to the editor: If health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. Marijuana can be harmful if abused, but jail cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican immigration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best. White Americans did not even begin to smoke pot until a soon-to-be entrenched government bureaucracy began funding reefer-madness propaganda.

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The U.S. Justice Department has now confirmed what marijuana-legalization activists have been saying for years: Pot eradication efforts such as California's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) are driving pot growers to move to indoor sites, including suburban homes.

According to the DOJ's National Drug Assessment 2008, released Nov. 8, the trend is likely to continue. "DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] and criminal groups ... will adapt to the increasing law enforcement pressure ... associated with outdoor sites and will most likely shift operations indoors."

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It wasn't just women with breast cancer who were excited last month when scientists at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute showed that a compound found in marijuana may be able to block the growth of aggressive tumors. This finding also cheered activists who hope that mainstream medicine will soon embrace marijuana as a treatment. For a range of reasons, that's extremely unlikely.

Effective medicines can of course be derived from plants. Digoxin from foxglove, atropine from belladonna and quinine from cinchona are only a few examples. The marijuana plant likewise contains potentially therapeutic compounds known as cannabinoids, one of which, cannabidiol, was examined in the breast cancer study. Other research has examined tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the cannabinoid in marijuana that is primarily responsible for the plant's psychoactive effects (e.g., feeling "high," hallucinations, changes in mood). THC has been shown to benefit at least some patients with a range of problems, including chemotherapy-induced nausea and the tremors and muscles spasms associated with multiple sclerosis.

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The United States is a nation governed by law at the federal, state and local levels. Sometimes these laws differ with each other. That's where the great principle of federalism comes in. Federalism permits state laws to be in conflict with each other, and even with the federal government. But that's OK. The sometimes messy business of federalism permits different locales to try different solutions to vexing problems, allowing the states to act as the "test tubes of democracy."

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Gary Ross is a 45-year-old veteran living in Carmichael, near Sacramento, and until 2001, the mild-mannered father of two had been leading a productive life as a computer systems administrator, notwithstanding his chronic pain and spasms from a back injury sustained in 1983, while in the Air Force.

But Ross' life took an unfortunate turn for the worse in September 2001 when his employer, RagingWire Telecommunications, fired him for using medical marijuana to treat his debilitating illness.

Now Ross finds himself in the whirlwind of a major employment case - one that is being closely followed by patients in California and across the United States. It's the latest illustration of the tension between federal and local authorities around medicinal marijuana. California residents legalized it more than a decade ago, and 11 other states have since followed suit - but that has not stopped the feds over the years from raiding pot clubs, even the homes of patients.

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Is there any mercy in America for Clarence Aaron? Aaron has been on the wrong end of a gross miscarriage of justice, yet somehow, few voices will speak for him.

In 1992 at age 23, Aaron broke the law. While he was a senior at Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., he became a go-between for two drug dealers for two deals; one deal didn't happen, the other involved 9 kilograms of cocaine. He was paid $1,500.

Federal prosecutors in Alabama honed in on the dealers. Eventually they charged six individuals for the deals, including Aaron.

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Under our federalist system of government, the states, rather than the federal government, are entrusted to exercise a general police power for the benefit of their citizens. Due to this constitutional division of authority between the federal government and the states, the State of California may elect to decriminalize conduct, such as medical marijuana activity, which remains illegal under federal law. Even if law enforcement officers take a personal position on any conflict between state and federal law, they are bound by California's Constitution to uphold only state law.

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Four months after Yuba County supervisors deferred a decision to consider medical marijuana identification cards, the issue is back on their agenda.

In August, board members agreed to refrain from making a decision until legal counsel could review state and federal laws on medical marijuana. Tuesday, supervisors will consider approving a program that will offer patients the option to obtain a statewide ID to medically approved users.

County Counsel Dan Montgomery said approval would bring the county into compliance with state law.

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Irrigation hoses snaked along tunnels through white thorn bushes.

Rusted cans littered the ground around a weathered tent, while Styrofoam cups holding what once were marijuana seedlings lined a makeshift nursery.

After law enforcement officials root out marijuana growers and destroy the gardens, this is what's left behind. It's up to agencies like the U.S. Forest Service to clean up the mess.

This week, Stanislaus National Forest officials recruited the help of the California National Guard's Counter Drug Unit and their own firefighters to gather the trash in the camps and haul it out by helicopter.

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Medical pot-using patients won a major victory Wednesday when a California appeal court ruled that Garden Grove cops must return the marijuana they confiscated from a Southern California man during a traffic stop.

The man's attorney, Joseph Elford, chief counsel for the Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access, was almost breathless from excitement in confirming that the ruling was the first published decision in which a California appellate court ordered the return of doctor-approved medical marijuana.

"This is a huge case for us," Elford said. "It's probably the greatest legal victory for medical marijuana patients in California to date."

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Law enforcement officers must return marijuana they seize from people who are in compliance with state law allowing possession of the drug for medical purposes if drug charges are not pending and the substance is no longer potential evidence, even if the person's possession of the drug violates federal law, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

Upholding the decision of Orange Superior Judge Linda S. Marks, Div. Three held unanimously Wednesday that the state may not seize marijuana when a person who is entitled to possess the drug for medical purposes under Proposition 215 does so under circumstances permitted by that measure. The justices ordered the Garden Grove Police Department to return less than one third of an ounce of marijuana that it seized from Felix Kha after drug charges against Kha were dropped.

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Police who confiscate medical marijuana must give it back when drug charges against the user are dismissed, a state appeals court has ruled in a case that could settle a hotly disputed issue of conflicting state and federal drug laws.

Statewide police and prosecutors' organizations and 16 city governments from around California joined officials of the Orange County community of Garden Grove in arguing that the court-ordered return of a patient's pot supply would condone drug use, interfere with federal enforcement and even expose police to possible federal prosecution for distributing marijuana or aiding in its use.

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Appellate Court Tells Garden Grove It Can't Rely on Federal Ban on Medical Marijuana

The decision by a unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal to uphold a court order directing Garden Grove police to return marijuana seized from a properly certified patient is a welcome validation of the law approved by voters 11 years ago. Since it clarifies the duty of state and local law enforcement agencies - to uphold state law, not to ignore it and seek to enforce federal law - - it should end the noxious and widespread practice of simply seizing medical marijuana from patients who are legally entitled to possess it.

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Put the smartest scientific minds in a computer lab. Give them all the time and money in the world to design the perfect organism. It's doubtful they could come up with a tougher, more wily creation than the virus that causes AIDS.

Ponder its track record: Decades after it terrorized American cities, HIV was largely quelled through prevention, awareness and life-extending drugs. The national infection rate has steadied at 40,000 new cases for years.

But the bug is back and in ways that make it as troubling as ever. In the recent past, the new cases were mostly found among needle users, a definably small (and politically unappealing) group. That's why this country has pretty much gone to sleep on a topic that once produced Hollywood movies, books and endless strategizing.

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SACRAMENTO -- Despite a crackdown on Central Valley methamphetamine labs, use of the deadly drug remains a serious problem in California, state and federal officials said Wednesday.

More than 2 million Californians have used meth at least once and treatment admissions jumped 500% from 1992 to 2004, according to the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

"We have made progress on the methamphetamine front but there is so much more to do," said Renee Zito, director of the department.

Zito and other officials discussed the problem at a Sacramento news conference observing "Methamphetamine Awareness Day," declared Tuesday by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

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Garden Grove

An appeals court ruled Wednesday that police must return the medically prescribed pot they confiscated from a man during a traffic stop in 2005.

Police cited Felix Kha, 22, after finding a third of an ounce of marijuana in his car. Prosecutors threw out the charges because Kha had a doctor's approval to use the drug, and an Orange County Superior Court judge ordered city officials to return the marijuana. Police refused, alleging that federal drug laws trump the state's medical marijuana law.

The ruling this week upholds the judge's original order. In the unanimous decision, the panel of three judges wrote that "it is not the job of the local police to enforce the federal drug laws."

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