Bill to Protect Prop. 215 Passes Assembly Appropriations Committee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MAY 22, 2008
Bill to Protect Prop. 215 Passes Assembly Appropriations Committee
AB 2743 Would End the Use of California Resources in Federal Medical Marijuana Raids, Now Heads to Assembly Floor
CONTACT: Bruce Mirken, MPP director of communications ............... 415-668-6403 or 202-215-4205
SACRAMENTO -- In what advocates hailed as an important step toward protecting California law, the Assembly Appropriations Committee passed AB 2743 by a vote of 9-7 today. The measure, authored by Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego), would protect the integrity of California's medical marijuana law by making it the policy of state and local law enforcement agencies not to cooperate with the Drug Enforcement Administration or other federal agencies in raids on state-legal medical marijuana patients and caregivers.
DEA raids on medical marijuana patients and providers who are allowed to cultivate and possess marijuana under California law have been assisted - and in some cases requested - by local law enforcement agencies in communities around the state, including Los Angeles, Bakersfield, San Mateo, San Diego and many others.
Jon Palmer, who uses medical marijuana to ease the agony caused by a rare blood disorder, lost his safe source of medicine when Kern County sheriff's deputies assisted the DEA in arresting the operators of Nature's Medicinal in Bakersfield. "Faced with the prospect of having to immediately double my morphine dosage and take to the streets to find my medicine, I was devastated," Palmer said. "The most outrageous part of the ordeal is that local officials used state and local tax dollars to arrest these individuals who were in full compliance with state and local laws."
"This bill is about maintaining the integrity of California law," said Aaron Smith, California state organizer for the Marijuana Policy Project. "Our medical marijuana law enjoys the support of three out of four Californians, yet in too many cases federal officials have intruded into our state affairs and raided patients and caregivers. Due to these federal prosecutions, sick, elderly and disabled Californians who almost certainly would have been found innocent in a state court are in federal prison right now. At a time when state and local governments are in fiscal crisis, California tax dollars shouldn't be used to undermine our own laws."
With more than 23,000 members and 180,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit http://MarijuanaPolicy.org.
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Comment posted by Anonymous on Sun, 07/27/2008 - 3:20pmON JULY 5 2008 A FRIEND WAS PICK UP BY POLICE HE TOLD THEM HE LIVED WITH ME AND CAME TO MY HOUSE I TOLD THEM I HAD MEDICAL MARIJUANA THEY KEPT MY 78 YEAR OLD FATHER AND MY SELF OUT SIDE FOR 9 HOURS TO GET A SEARCH WARANT AFTER I TOLD THEM IT WAS OK TO ENTER I WOULD SIGN. THE DEA CAME AND TOOK MY PLANTS AND TOLD ME IF I HAD A DOCTOR NOTE I MIGHT HAVE BEN OK. THAT WHEN I GOT MAD THE OFFICER HAD PUT THE PAPER IN HIS CAR THAT I HAD TAPED UP IN TWO PLACES IN THE HOME LONG STORY SHORT THEY WERE MAD I WAS MAD AND I SAT OUT SIDE IN MY WHEEL CHAIR FOR 9 HOURS DOES THAT SEEM TO BE JUSTICE.
Heartless
Comment posted by Anonymous on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 1:56pmI assure you that dealing with devastating effects of Chemo, and radiation would tear any person down.
The MM I use has let me cut the use of Morphiene, and all the other pain medication by more than half. It also help overcome the nausea and other ill feelings that this treatment does to you.
Why can not these people go after the dangerous Crack dealers, Cocaine peddlers, and Crystal Meth? Oh, yeah, unlike myself who has no gun, is not violent, and if not for the VA would be dead already would not resist. God knows it is so much easier to pick on a Cancer Patient than to actually go after the real criminals.
They resist and shoot back. God forbid that they actually do the job they are paid for.
Thanks DEA for helping put me one day closer to death.
I swear if it is possible to come back as a ghost I am going to come back and haunt those basterds!