NORML’s new talk radio program, NORML SHOW LIVE, will be streaming for three days at the 2009 NORML National Conference, “Yes We Cannabis”, live from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco. These special three-hour episodes will be available at live.norml.org at the following special times and archived for download later just fifteen minutes after broadcast:
Thursday, September 24
11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
Friday, September 25
11:00am – 2:00pm Pacific Time
Saturday, September 26
3:00pm – 6:00pm Pacific Time
The show will be hosted by “Radical” Russ Belville, but with very limited commercial interruption and the occasional narration. After the shows broadcast remotely in the difficult wireless environment of Portland’s Kelley Point Park and the noisy backstage of the Boston Freedom Rally, Russ is excited to present an indoor event that will take its audio directly from the conference PA system.
NORML is proud to confirm that Dr. Lester Grinspoon will be delivering the luncheon remarks (via skype) at the 2009 National Conference in San Francisco, CA.
Dr. Grinspoon is Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and served for 40 years as Senior Psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. A Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychiatric Association, he was the founding editor of both the Annual Review of Psychiatry and the Harvard Mental Health Letter.
He is the author or co-author of over 160 journal articles, including his 1995 commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Marihuana as Medicine: A Plea for Reconsideration.” His first book, Marihuana Reconsidered, originally published in 1971 by Harvard University Press, was recently republished as a classic. His latest book, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine, co-authored with James B. Bakalar, was published by Yale University Press in 1993 (revised and expanded edition, 1997) and has now been translated into ten languages. Dr. Grinspoon was also a reviewer of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base.”
In 1990 Dr. Grinspoon received the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship and Writing from the Drug Policy Foundation (now Alliance) in Washington, DC. He presently serves on NORML’s Advisory Board and maintains www.marijuana-uses.com, which chronicles real life stories of people who have had positive “non-medical” experiences with marijuana.
“When I first began to study marijuana in 1967, I naïvely believed that its only use was as a recreational drug,” says Grinspoon. “I soon came to understand that it also had a second important utility, as a medicine, and I published (along with James B. Bakalar) Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine. Just as penicillin, after its discovery as an antibiotic in 1941, was soon hailed as a wonder drug because of its limited toxicity, its versatility in treating a number of different kinds of symptoms and syndromes, and its limited cost, we believe that marijuana, for the same three reasons, will eventually be hailed as a wonder medicine. Over the last decade and a half I have come to believe that there is a third category of marijuana use –enhancement.”
Lester Grinspoon says, “Yes we cannabis” and so should you! Register for NORML’s 38th annual conference, taking place September 24-26 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown San Francisco. For registration information, please visit: http://www.norml.org/conference.
Iowa, America’s breadbasket, home to liberal scion Tom Harkin and conservative contrarian Charles Grassley, is vetting the issue of medical marijuana politically like no other previous state has by conducting a series of public testimonies, convened by the Iowa Pharmacy Board (who was ordered by a Polk County judge to do so in April in response to lawsuits brought by medical marijuana patients in Iowa against the IPB).
Two of the first four public hearings have already happened (August 19 in Des Moines and Sept. 2 in Mason City); the next hearings are:
October 7 in Iowa City and November 4, Council Bluffs
At the Mason City hearing on September 2, eight speakers, all but one in favor of medical marijuana law reforms, spoke out against the prohibition of medical marijuana in Iowa.
Des Moines resident and multiple sclerosis patient Ray Lakers, 42, who was jailed for possessing less than a gram of medical marijuana in 2005, spoke of medical marijuana’s utility and benefit to his life. Conversely, Maedene Sappenfield of Mason City spoke out against it in the Globe Gazette, “I have a son-in-law in North Carolina who has MS and he functions without marijuana very well, so it is possible.”
The IPB does not have the authority to legalize marijuana for medical use, but it could suggest to lawmakers to move marijuana to a schedule lower than I. In turn, Iowa lawmakers would have to pass amending legislation. An AP article indicates an interesting legislative challenge (some would say ‘poison pill’): “the [IPB] said that the drug [marijuana] would have to be used as treatment in all states for Iowa to reclassify it.”
If you’re confused over the term ‘jury nullification’, a prime example of such emerged from a courtroom in Boulder, Colorado last week. Many legal and sociology experts recognize a significant change in society by whether or not juries, made up of one’s local peers, will continue to enforce what many in a society have come to believe are bad and/or antiquated laws.
Throughout America’s relatively short history, when elected policymakers and bureaucrats are not responsive to the will of the citizens or pass laws not supported by society, citizens sitting on a jury have an absolute right to vote their conscience, which also means in effect nullifying the law by not voting for conviction.
The effect of this becomes abundantly clear when jurors consistently refuse to convict so-called ‘criminal offenders’, and numerous examples abound from prior civil rights movements in America: Abolitionists, Women’s Sufferage, Minority Rights and Access To The Vote and Gay/Lesbian.
In time, and NORML is observing this right now around the country in ever-increasing amounts, prosecutors are having an increasingly harder time winning criminal convictions for ‘crimes’ a majority of the citizens do not in fact believe is a crime.
Want to know more about the awesome power each of us possess as jurors to stop ‘bad’ laws from their continued enforcement? Check out FIJA!
I want to personally thank ‘D. Walters, Erie, CO’ for both voting their conscience while sitting in judgment of a fellow cannabis consumer, and for letting their fellow citizens in the Boulder area know via a letter-to-the-editor what a waste of time and valuable social resources cannabis prohibition enforcement is for the criminal justice system.
Medical marijuana case a waste of resources
Posted by Camera staff in Tuesday, August 11th 2009
I was a member of the jury on the medical marijuana case and beg to differ with Mr. Garnett’s assessment as presented in this Open Forum on Tuesday.
This case was both a waste of taxpayer money and a travesty of justice that the charges against this man were ever brought in the first place. First of all, Mr. Garnett’s assertion that the jury found “that the amount of marijuana in Mr. Lauve’s home was medically necessary” is an inaccurate statement. The job of the prosecution was to prove that the amount in possession was NOT medically necessary and that Mr. Lauve was aware that he was in violation of the law. The prosecution presented absolutely NO EVIDENCE regarding either point of law. They brought no witnesses to show that the amount was not medically necessary. They did not even assert that the amount was not medically necessary. In fact, they prevented the defense from offering evidence regarding medical necessity. The prosecution did not even attempt to assert that Mr. Lauve knew the amount was excessive or suggest that he was doing anything inappropriate with the ‘excess’.
This jury admired Jason Lauve for standing up to an unfair prosecution. The physical, emotional and legal costs to Jason Lauve of defending himself do not seem to be of concern of Mr. Garnett.
And the cost to taxpayers? 4 full days spent by a judge, two prosecutors, a bailiff, a clerk, a detective, assorted police officers and 12 jurors! Plus laboratory time and expense to prove that it was ‘real’ marijuana. All of us could have spent these 4 days doing something that actually involved prosecuting a crime.
While states like Michigan, New Mexico and Rhode Island have recipriocity for out-of-state medical cannabis patients, to date NORML was not aware of a AUSA recognizing such (though, on occasion, we’ve seen the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) not act upon medical cannabis patients caught with small amounts of their medicine). This may well be another change under the current Obama administration as both the Clinton and Bush 2.0 administrations prosecuted state authorized medical cannabis patients caught up in federal arrests.
PRESS RELEASE – AUGUST 2, 2009 – FROM JOHN MCCALL, ATTORNEY
On June 30, 2009 in the Federal District Court of New Mexico, Assistant US Attorney John Anderson agreed, on the record, to Honor the Medical Marijuana Recommendation of Charles Smith of Shasta Lake, California. Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Lorenzo Garcia further agreed to accept the State’s proposed recommendation of a Conditional Discharge upon provision of Mr. Smith’s Medical Marijuana Recommendation to the US Attorney’s office. This historic moment occurred during the federal Government’s prosecution of cases related to the Annual Rainbow Gathering that occurs in different states around the country and involves a large Federal Law Enforcement presence. The cases were prosecuted as civil collateral forfeitures and the records have been transferred to the Central Violations Bureau for the Federal Government. Five Medical marijuana recommendations were honored including those from Wyoming, California, Hawaii and Washington State. This is the first time in modern history, in which it is known that the US Attorney and the Federal District Court agreed to accept medical marijuana recommendations and licenses in order to dismiss marijuana possession charges.
This historic series of events followed the filing of a law suit by Bryan Krumm of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use in New Mexico Federal District Court in 2008. During those proceedings members of New Mexicans for Compassionate Use were able to speak to Justice Department representatives about the statements in March of 2009 by Eric Holder, US Attorney General, that medical marijuana would no longer be prosecuted. After this conversation in May of 2009, Attorney General Holder came to New Mexico in June of 2009 and again gave a public presentation on the matter stating that legally established medical marijuana distribution operations and legally sanctioned medical marijuana users (all under state laws), would not be prosecuted by the Federal Government. During the proceedings it was revealed that the AUSA’s prosecuting the cases in New Mexico told Defendants that they were not returning the medicine and that they would be prosecuted if they were caught with Marijuana in the National Forest again. During discussions with the US Attorney and his Assistants at the Court, long time Federal Criminal Defense Attorney Judy Rosenstein discovered that the US Attorney for New Mexico, Gregory J. Fouratt, was not involved in that decision to impose conditions on the Defendants.
Contact Attorney John McCall for more information on this case. Charles Smith has given permission for this information to be released to the public and is available, somewhere in the woods around Shasta Lake, if you want to find him and talk to him about his experience.
You can go to Youtube Lisa Law for video of the Rainbow Gathering and Law Enforcement activities.
While the government contract to date has been pro forma–the University of Mississippi/Oxford has won the contract every year since the late 1960s and MAPS’ and Prof. Lyle Craker’s successful lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to effectively break Ol’ Miss’ monopoly on cultivating cannabis for research and approximately five Compassionate IND patients, and allow the University of Massachusetts/Amherst to cultivate research and therapeutic grade cannabis, is being appealed by DEA–competition can only help science, and the free market place of ideas and research.
Production, Analysis, & Distribution of Cannabis & Marijuana Cigarettes
Solicitation Number: N01DA-10-7773
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Office: National Institutes of Health
Location: National Institute on Drug Abuse
Synopsis:
Added: Aug 05, 2009 9:03 am
The National Institute on Drug Abuse is soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to (1) grow, harvest, analyze, store and distribute GMP grade cannabis (marijuana) on large and small scales; (2) extract cannabis to obtain purified phytocannabinoids including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC), analyze, and store; (3) prepare marijuana cigarettes and related products; and (4) distribute marijuana, marijuana cigarettes and cannabinoids, and other related products for research and other Government programs upon NIDA authorization.
Offerors must possess suitable and secure DEA approved outdoor and indoor growing facilities, research laboratory with appropriate analytical instruments, and experienced personnel to conduct the project tasks. Appropriate DEA approved secure facility for manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes, and their storage, and DEA Schedule I registration for marijuana and THC are essential. NIDA anticipates a 1-year with four 1 year options cost reimbursement type contract will be awarded. Additional quantity options for manufacturing cigarettes may also be required. In order to handle substances under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, it is mandatory that offerors possess a DEA Research Registration for Schedules II to V and demonstrate the capability to obtain a DEA registration for Schedule I controlled substances. All studies must be carried out under pertinent FDA regulations, such as current Good Clinical Practice (cGCP) and current Good Laboratory Practice (cGLP) regulations. The pertinent FDA’s guidelines/guidance shall be followed. RFP No. N01DA-10-7773 will be available electronically on or about August 25, 2009. You can access the RFP through the FedBizOpps:
The electronic RFP contains all information needed to submit a proposal. No printed version of the solicitation document or source list is available. NIDA will consider proposals submitted by any responsible offeror. Proposals will be due on or about October 9, 2009. This advertisement does not commit the Government to award a contract. Based upon market research, the Government is not using the policies contained in Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items, in its solicitation for the described supplies or services. However, interested persons may identify to the contracting officer their interest and capability to satisfy the Government’s requirement with a commercial item within 15 days of this notice.
In an attempt to clarify an apparent gaffe made a few weeks ago to California media stating that “marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal value”, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske in a new interview with his hometown media in Seattle has only slightly, almost imperceptibly, modified his remarks by now implying that somehow how ‘smoked‘ medical cannabis is not a legitimate and effective drug delivery method:
When asked about his comments a few weeks ago Kerlikowske told KOMO news “I certainly said that legalization is not in the president’s vocabulary nor is it in mine. But the other question was in reference to smoked marijuana. And as we know, the FDA has not determined that smoked marijuana has a value, and this is clearly a medical question that should be answered by the medical community.”
KOMO also reports:
Kerlikowske’s stand on legalizing marijuana for everyone is more clear-cut. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, by law, actively works against legalizing drugs.
Kerlikowske takes on last jab at cannabis by continuing his predecessor’s proclivity to mislead the media and public by claiming “You know from the University of Washington, the number one call from young people for treatment here, after alcohol, is marijuana. So I’m not seeing the benefit to society with legalization here.”
Number one, cannabis is not legal in Washington state, or anywhere in the US, 2) youth in Washington, and all around the US, after being ensnared by the hundreds of thousands per year by cannabis prohibition laws enforced by the criminal justice system (or university police), are provided with the Hobson’s Choice of either going to jail or so-called ‘treatment’.
Mr. Kerlikowske should cease employing this rhetorical straw man as he is intelligent enough to know its inaccuracy, but continues to adopt the failed rhetoric of prior hardliner drug czars Gen. Barry McCaffrey and John Walters, who consistently made the same claims during their tenure, and lost credibility every time they continued to propound such obviously misleading propaganda.
Kerlikowske’s latest unfortunate remarks affirm cannabis law reformers have much work left to do! Maybe our good drug czar should call actor Patrick Swayze and ask him ‘if he is benefiting from smoked medical cannabis?’
Patrick Swayze, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer over a year ago, is using medical marijuana to relieve the pain of his last days of chemotherapy.
According to a family insider, Swayze, 56, has found that smoking marijuana helps with his nausea, inability to sleep, and anxiety. The insider noted on the actor’s slight weight gain as well as adding that he (Swayze) feels more “normal than he has in months.”
Pictures have surfaced of Swayze out with his brother Donnie looking much healthier than he had weeks before.
“Patrick was rapidly losing weight because he couldn’t keep good down. He was so weak, he needed help getting around,” the source told the magazine.
“Marijuana works extremely well for many cancer patients. It helps fight nausea from chemotherapy treatments and may alleviate anorexia or loss of appetite,” Dr. Ron Kennedy of Santa Rosa, CA, said of the situation.
This informative article from CBS News about the government’s claim that there is no need for medical patients to access cannabis, when there is a ‘fake’ cannabis pill on the market, features remarks from NORML advisory board member, professor and author
Mitch Earleywine, and former deputy drug czar under Bush 1.0 Herb Kleber, which strongly underlines the differences between credible and not credible on the topic of cannabis.
Credible:
[One] problem with Marinol is that it’s orally administered,” Dr. Mitch Earleywine, an associate professor of Clinical Psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, said in an email. “Therefore, it takes longer to work than cannabis inhaled from a vaporizer. (Usually 90 minutes at best rather than 15 seconds – a meaningful amount of time to the nauseated.)”
“It’s harder to control dosage, too, so folks end up discombobulated or without symptom relief,” he added. “In addition, folks who are vomiting can’t hold down the pills.” Earleywine also said that a dose Marinol costs three to five times as much as a comparable dose of medical marijuana.
Not Credible:
“Are there actions in the whole plant that you don’t get from just the Marinol? I would be surprised if there wasn’t,” he continued. “The problem is that most of the data about the potential medical actions of the smoked form are anecdotal.”
Dr. Kleber, who said he has prescribed Marinol to a patient and found it to be effective, points to what he characterizes as a significant advantage of the pill over traditional marijuana: “People don’t abuse it.”
“Marijuana addiction is becoming common and as a result I’m seeing an increasing number of people who have trouble stopping marijuana,” he said. “Contrary to popular beliefs that there is no marijuana withdrawal, there is marijuana withdrawal. It’s very clear cut.”
Talk about anecdotal! Dr. Kleber would have readers believe, that cannabis today, as compared to the prior 2,000 years of documented cannabis use by humans is that “Marijuana addiction is becoming common”.
Really?
“I’m seeing an increasing number of people who have trouble stopping marijuana”
Of course you are Herb because as it has been well documented by NORML that the criminal justice system throughout most of the United States presents minor cannabis offenders with the Hobson’s Choice of either going to jail or to visit the offices of the ‘Dr. Klebers’ in America for ‘treatment’.
Dr. Kleber well knows this, so his statement is for me the working definition of disingenuous!
Lastly, there is nothing new about Marinol as it has been legal and available for medical patients since the mid 1980s. If the pill worked as Dr. Kleber claims, voters and legislators in the 13 states with medical cannabis laws would not have opted for a whole plant solution.
Marinol was supposed to be the government’s great ’silver bullet’ back in the mid 1980s to end the public debate about patients’ need for whole-smoked cannabis–an analog of one of the plant’s major ingredients isolated in pill form.
Want to know more about ‘pot’ pills vs. the real thing? Checkout NORML’s published paper ‘Marinol vs. Natural Cannabis‘.
Does the Pot Pill Work?
The Government Says a Pill Called Marinol Offers the Same Benefits as
Medical Marijuana. Is it True?
By Brian Montopoli
August 4, 2009
(CBS) “Medical marijuana,” the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says, “already exists.”
They don’t just mean in California. A pill known as Marinol has been legal and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use with a prescription anywhere in America since 1985.
It’s active ingredient? Dronabinol, better known as THC, the primary psychoactive element of the cannabis plant.
“Marinol provides standardized THC concentrations, does not contain the other 400 uncharacterized substances found in smoked marijuana, such as carcinogens or fungal spores, and is not associated with the quick high of smoked marijuana,” said Neil Hirsch, a spokesman for Marinol manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals.
But Marinol is not the same thing as traditional, smokable marijuana. It is a less complex substance lacking both some of the good components found in traditional marijuana (such as cannabidiol, which has been found to have anti-seizure effects) and the bad or not-yet-fully-understood components (among them potential carcinogens) that can also come with the drug.
Ken Trainer, a 60-year-old Massachusetts resident who has battled Multiple Sclerosis for 25 years, said he has long been smoking marijuana to deal with the regular tremors he gets in his arms and legs.
“If I smoke a joint, the tremors go away most times before the joint is gone,” he said. “It makes my life a little easier.” Marinol, by contrast, “didn’t really do much of anything for me,” he said.
56-year-old Des Moines resident Jeff Elton, who was diagnosed with gastroparesis six years ago, had a similar experience when he was prescribed Marinol to deal with his chronic nausea and vomiting.
“I felt no relief, I didn’t feel ill, I felt nothing,” he said. “It might as well be M&M’s.”
Elton said he switched to marijuana, which he smokes through a vaporizer – a device that heats the active ingredients into a vapor instead of burning them. He said it allows him to keep down his food and regain some of the weight he lost while on Marinol.
A medical billing company may be blowing smoke, but could reimbursing patients for medical marijuana lower drug costs for employers?
By Jeremy Smerd, Workforce Management Online, July 2009
In mid-June, Rhode Island became the third state to legalize the sale of marijuana for medical use, giving momentum to advocates who believe the legalization of the drug offers a dose of sanity for the nation’s costly health care system.
Now that more states are legalizing the sale of the marijuana used solely as a medicine, the next hurdle for reformers who say the drug is more cost-effective than pharmaceuticals is getting those who pay for health care—insurers and employers—to reimburse patients for its use.
“It’s going to take an employer that says, ‘We’re not interested in marijuana as a gateway drug or any of that reefer madness. We want to talk about dollars and cents,’ ” says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). “If the idea here is saving money, then there’s no question that medical marijuana should be part of the ambit of choices that doctors, patients and employers can have.”
The effort to legalize the sale of medical marijuana has focused mainly on whether the medical effectiveness of the drug justifies making it legal to obtain in plant form. The medical benefits have been most closely tied to treating weight loss, nausea, pain, inflammation, spasticity and other symptoms associated with cancer, AIDS, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and arthritis.
Advocates for its legalization say its medical benefits should be made available to ease the suffering of patients. In a nod to the plant’s medicinal powers, pharmaceutical companies have produced synthetic forms of some of its active chemicals.
Less attention, though, has been focused on whether paying for patients’ medical marijuana is a cost-effective way to manage certain illnesses. Advocates argue that marijuana is an effective medicine that can also be a cost-effective alternative to pharmaceuticals.
Reimbursing patients who use it could push them away from otherwise costly drugs that some advocates say are not as effective. Employers, as payers of health care, should champion the legalization of medical marijuana as a potential cost-saving tool, advocates say.
Despite the recent legislative victories, however, even employers that want to reimburse patients who use medical marijuana cannot.
Stephen DeAngelo, chief executive of Harborside Health Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland, California, has tried to provide a medical marijuana benefit through the health plan he provides to his 67 full-time employees.
“Blue Cross Blue Shield will not reimburse for medical marijuana; we checked,” he says. “It’s illegal under federal law and they can’t do anything that will break federal law.” Instead, he provides his employees, all of whom are medical marijuana patients, with a free gram of marijuana for every shift they work, a policy he says has lowered his company’s health insurance costs. “Many of these patients had drug bills of several hundred dollars a week before they began using medical marijuana,” he says. “Now they are about $40 or $50 a week.”
Here is an update from South Dakota where the judge who placed a one year gag order on South Dakota NORML’s Bob Newland not to publicly advocate for cannabis law reform whilst on probation for a minor cannabis offense has had to defend his sentencing and constitutionally-questionable limitations on Mr. Newland’s First Amendment rights to free speech; the right to peaceably assemble; petition the government for a redress of grievances.
To place this into sharper political context, in their first attempt two years ago, South Dakotan voters narrowly defeated a pro-medical cannabis initiative, 51%-49%.
Therefore, placing First Amendment restrictions on the state’s most vocal and notable cannabis law reform advocate for a minor cannabis offense sets a wretched legal precedent for personal freedom and political organizing in South Dakota.
To make matters worse, now an anti-drug state senator is gratuitously misleading the public by claiming that medical cannabis advocates in South Dakota are disingenuous:
“Judge Delaney was absolutely correct. To characterize Newland as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana for MEDICAL purposes is untrue. He is only interested in making marijuana available for his friends and others for recreational purposes, and perhaps financial gain.”
The voters of South Dakota need to run another pro-cannabis law reform initiative and pass it ASAP, making politicos like Adelstein and Judge Delaney eat crow—like hundreds of other politicos since the early 1990s who’ve opposed cannabis law reform, only to see voter-driven initiatives wash over them, and their opposition to these important–and popular–public law reforms.
——————————–
28 July 2009
Hello everyone,
I write today to tell a tale of an execrable and gratuitous lie told by SD State Senator Stanford Adelstein.
First, on Monday, July 27, the following story appeared in the Rapid City Journal
Judge defends marijuana sentence
Jack Delaney imposed a gag order on political activist Bob Newland
By Kevin Woster, Journal staff | Monday, July 27, 2009
The well-known public advocate for the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes had previously pleaded guilty to felony possession of the drug. And Delaney wanted to make the sentence sting without imposing an unduly harsh prison term on a 60-year-old man with a relatively clean criminal record.
So in essence, he told him to shut up for a year about one thing: medical marijuana, and an ongoing campaign to bring the issue to another public vote in 2010.
Delaney sentenced Newland to one year in Pennington County Jail but suspended all but 45 days under a set of stipulations that included weekly drug tests, random searches and a one-year ban on public advocacy for medical marijuana.
Delaney rejects assertions by some that he was imposing his personal beliefs on medical marijuana through the sentence.
“I have no concern whatsoever about whether medical marijuana is legalized,” Delaney said during an interview with the Journal in his office. “The important thing was to have a sentence crafted to impose a penalty on Mr. Newland that was significant to him.”
The advocacy ban was an infringement on Newland’s First Amendment rights. Delaney doesn’t deny that. But neither does he consider it more onerous or any less appropriate than many other infringements imposed as part of felony sentences.
The random searches Newland faces in the next year would be violations of his constitutional rights, but for the felony plea. Felons can face otherwise unconstitutional firearms restrictions and the right to associate with certain people or go to certain establishments, Delaney said.
“We restrict speech as well in a lot of protection orders, or in divorces, where in some cases the parties’ freedom to speak to one another may be limited,” he said.
And given the fact that the maximum penalty for Class 6 felony marijuana possession was two years in prison and a $4,000 fine, Newland’s sentence could be considered light by others who face similar charges, Delaney said. He was particularly concerned about younger minority defendants who might get a longer jail term for the same crime.
“I’m sitting there faced with a gentleman who is older, well known, who is thought by many to be considerably more well off than he is, and he is seeking a sentence that is going to be considerably more lenient that what they (minority defendants) might receive,” Delaney said. “So my thought was that I have to take something from him that is as valuable or maybe even more valuable than his freedom.”
Delaney settled on what he calls the “partial infringement of speech,” as well as limits on his freedom of association in support of medical marijuana. Newland may still meet in private with medical marijuana advocates to plan the medical-marijuana campaign. But he cannot appear publicly in or speak on or for the campaign.
“I’m taking away a legal right of the person to associate,” Delaney said. “I’m taking away his liberties. But not nearly as much as if he were in jail.”
Typical sentences for the same felony possession charge range from 45 days to 120 days in jail, Delaney said. But many of those who receive such sentences have more criminal marks on their record, he said.
Delaney has received about 40 e-mails commenting on the verdict, with many critical of the ban on speech and public involvement in the medical marijuana campaign. Many of the e-mails came from people active in the medical marijuana movement, he said, and some engaged in “name calling.”
Others, however, were more understanding when Delaney explained his rationale.
“All felonies are serious crimes, and they have a wide range of impacts on anybody who’s a felon,” he said. “This is unusual. And if it hadn’t been Bob Newland, it wouldn’t have had the same impact.”
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com
*************
In the online “Comments” on this story, Sen. Adelstein said this (reprinted as written, bad grammar and spelling intact):
Judge Delaney was absolutely correct. To characterize Newland as an advocate for the legalization of marijuana for MEDICAL purposes is untrue. He is only interested in making marijuana available for his friends and others for recreational purposes, and perhaps financial gain.
I met with him at the Capitol in Room 411, (or maybe 412) during the session to offer, to assist for MRDICAL purposes in a Bill, as Chair of Health and Human Services. I said that I would only do so if there were 3 (three) simple changes in the legislation he was proposing.
1. There would be a required prescription from and MD legally authorized to issue drug prescription
2.The prescription could only be given if either there was no FDA drug that would accomplish the same as the marijuana or that drug cost three more times the cost of the pot.
3. The marijuana could only come from one or two sites approved and inspected by the SD Dept of Health
He and his friends in the room flatly rejected all three saying that anyone could grow the stuff for anyone else at any time that it was needed
I walked out of the room, knowing that they had no true interest in the help for people with pain and/or suffering. I of course opposed their bill vigorously and it did not even get to the House floor.
Newland is and should be treated as a common felon. The Judge was correct from stopping his phone posturing, I only wish that it was for more than a single year.
Stan Adelstein, State Senator District 32
The details of the meeting as described by Adelstein are a lie. You can read the true story at the decorum Forum Blog, and you can comment there or at the Journal “Comments” site above.
NORML’s new talk radio program, NORML SHOW LIVE, will be streaming for three days at the 2009 NORML National Conference, “Yes We Cannabis”, live from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco. These special three-hour episodes will be available at live.norml.org at the following special times and archived for download later just fifteen minutes after broadcast:
