Month: October 2010
New Jersey Medical Marijuana is outrageous
By Steve Elliott
The New Jersey Health Department on Wednesday night released 97 pages of rules for what patients, advocates and lawmakers are describing as one of the most restrictive medical marijuana programs in the country.
John Munson/The Star-Ledger |
N.J. Health Commissioner Poonam Alaigh: “We have designed a clinically sound program that is unique to New Jersey” |
Photo: Drug Policy Alliance |
Roseanne Scotti, Drug Policy Alliance of N.J.: “Overall, it seems the goal of the regulations it to provide the least amount of relief to the fewest number of patients” |
US Federal judge arrested on drug & weapon charges
Atlanta – A Georgia judge was arrested last Friday by the FBI in an undercover sting operation, and now faces weapons and drug charges.
67 year old senior U.S. District Court Judge Jack T. Camp was arrested last Friday in an undercover sting operation, and was released on Monday. Hailing from Georgia, Camp was arrested after he allegedly bought cocaine, marijuana and other illicit drugs reported the New York Times.
MSNBC broke the news last week, and have posted a copy of the FBI’s complaint and affidavit against the judge that resulted in Camp’s arrest. The complaint was sworn by a special agent for the FBI and states Camp tried to buy drugs, and also had cocaine, marijuana and roxycodone in his possession. He also allegedly had in his possession illegal firearms. In the FBI’s affidavit detailing the particular allegations behind Camp’s arrest, the anonymous stripper claims she and Camp did drugs together.
MSN reported that Camp’s lawyer, Bill Morrison, said the case had nothing to do with Camp’s position as a judge and everything to do with his marriage. At Camp’s arraignment Monday, Morrison said Camp would plead not guilty. However, as USA Today reported, a hearing might be difficult to obtain. A judge had to be brought in from Alabama for Camp’s arraignment.
Morrison told media that Camp would most probably take a leave of absence from his job as a judge until the charges were resolved.
USA Today said Camp had been caught when buying drugs from an undercover officer who was posing as a drug dealer. Camp allegedly had two guns with him when he made the drug deal.
Camp was nominated to the District Court by Reagan in 1987, and after the senate approved his appointment, he began his commission in 1988. He became a senior judge in 2008.
The allegations say that Camp had formed a relationship with an Atlanta stripper, paying her for sex and purchased illegal drugs from her. She turned into an informant earlier this year, and the FBI began tailing Camp and also tapped his phone. The Times-Herald said Camp
“… faces four drug-related charges and one count of possessing firearms while illegally using drugs.”
The judge and the stripper were together when purchasing drugs from the undercover FBI, reported the Atlantic Journal-Constitution.
According to an article posted at Law, reproduced from the Fulton County Daily Report, Camp’s wife and children attended Monday’s arraignment hearing.
Reefer Revolution
It’s a scorching late afternoon in mid-July. Strolling on the sidewalk along the west side of Flamingo Park in South Beach, Eric Stevens approaches a man holding his toddler son by the hand. The blond-haired, blue-eyed University of Miami business school graduate asks the father if he is a registered voter in Miami Beach. The man, whose name is Charlie, replies in the affirmative. “I was wondering if you would sign a petition that would allow Miami Beach police officers to issue a citation to anyone caught with 20 grams or less of marijuana instead of putting them in jail,” Stevens says. The dad doesn’t hesitate: “Where do I sign?”
Stevens then walks over to a thin, young man named Adrian, who’s wearing a tank top and gym shorts and leaning against a pole holding a basketball hoop. “A $100 fine instead of jail?” Adrian remarks. “That’s cool, man.” Over the course of three hours, Stevens collects two dozen signatures from registered Miami Beach voters for a petition that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
The 23-year-old Foxboro, Massachusetts, native forms half of the brain trust behind Sensible Florida, a group that earlier this year initiated a petition drive in Jacksonville that stalled before coming to South Florida to make a go of it. His counterpart is Ford Bannister, a 27-year-old who helped push medical marijuana referendums in Denver, where it is now legal. As of this past September 6, Sensible Florida has collected 2,402 signatures from registered voters in Miami Beach. Stevens and Bannister need to get another 1,800 John Hancocks to hold a special election that would let Beach residents make their city the first in Florida to legalize small amounts of reefer.
“Billions of dollars have been spent on the drug war to put countless people in jail and ruin their lives,” Stevens reasons as a brunet unloading her Mini Cooper signs the petition. “But it just seems impossible to me that anyone can stop a plant from growing anywhere in the world.”
Stevens’ path to pro-marijuana activist began last summer when he was taking an entrepreneurial class during his junior year. “I was a naval sea cadet in high school and a straight-A student,” he says. “I always thought marijuana was bad for you until I realized fellow classmates who were much smarter than me smoked pot and still excelled.”
So for his class, he developed a business plan advocating for medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida, which won him a $2,500 endowment from the university’s business school to further study his proposal. “Florida is an agricultural state,” he says. “And marijuana is the number-one cash crop in the country, so it seemed pretty logical to me.”
Stevens used the money to cover travel expenses to California, the first state to legalize medical marijuana, where he visited dispensaries and Oaksterdam University in Oakland. There, he took advanced classes on the business of government-regulated pot selling. He also familiarized himself with the federal government’s hypocrisy on marijuana. “I found out that the government has a patent on THC [the primary intoxicant in pot] to make marinol for medicinal purposes,” he says. “Yet the same government classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no medicinal value.”
After his trip out West, Stevens returned home to Foxboro, where he volunteered on the ballot initiative that last year made medical marijuana legal in Massachusetts. After graduating in May, he joined Bannister to bring the reefer revolution to the Sunshine State.
“I’ve always been entrepreneurial,” Stevens notes. “I saw a huge demand but a low supply for a safe product with significant medical benefits. Many of the arguments for keeping marijuana illegal just don’t have any substance.”
Medical marijuana: Taking a legal toke
Irvin Rosenfeld is a hero to any sick person who has ever felt the positive, ultrahealing vibes marijuana has on the body. When he was 10 years old, Rosenfeld was diagnosed with a genetic disease that causes tumors to grow at the ends of the long bones in his body. That’s why doctors had him doped up all the time.
“I was taking all kinds of prescription narcotics as a kid,” the Virginia native recalls. “I had morphine and Azolam. You name it, I had it. But I was totally against illegal drugs. I used to speak to high school kids about the perils of doing illicit substances.”
So what’s he up to now? It’s shortly before 11 a.m. on a muggy July day, and he’s sitting behind his desk at Fort Lauderdale’s New Bridge Securities, where he is senior vice president of the stock-trading firm. His boss is cool with him smoking the green. On the job! And he can’t be busted!
Rosenfeld says he came to the illuminating realization pot was good for him his senior year in high school. In 1971, his doctor told him warm weather would do him good, so the then-19-year-old cruised down to South Florida and rented a pad at Sunset Apartments on Galloway Road in South Miami. By then, the southern part of the Sunshine State was a freewheeling doper’s paradise. “Most of my neighbors were college students,” he says. “And many of them would be drinking alcohol and smoking pot.”
Naturally, Rosenfeld’s anti-illegal-drug stance made him a buzz-kill. He’d decline invites to smoke grass with neighbors. “After 30 days of saying no, I wasn’t making any friends,” he says. “So one day, I relented and gave it a try.”
Rosenfeld claims he didn’t get high, but something more remarkable took place, something similar to that scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when the apes wake up to the black monolith and just go bananas. Um, not exactly like that, but it was one of those epiphanic moments that make us humans realize we are very special beings who have the capacity to rationalize and conclude that, hey, smoking some reefer could, like, save our lives. Well, that’s what happened to Rosenfeld.
“I couldn’t sit in one place for more than ten minutes due to the pain caused by my disease,” he continues. “After I took my first hit, I played chess for close to 30 minutes. I didn’t feel any discomfort.”
Being a smart fellow, Rosenfeld studied the history of marijuana. He discovered the drug had been legal in the States from 1860 to 1937, primarily for the treatment of pain. “I began using marijuana off and on to test its effects,” he says. “I reduced my use of heavy narcotics as well.”
A year later, he dropped out of school and returned to Virginia, where he embarked on a mission: He would make the case before the federal government that he should be allowed to have his grass. So with the help of his primary physician, Rosenfeld argued before a panel of 20 doctors assigned by the Food and Drug Administration to hear cases from individuals seeking approval to use marijuana for medical purposes.
It worked. In 1982, Rosenfeld became one of two people in the entire country to get the federal government’s OK to use marijuana. The number grew to nearly 30 until George H. W. Bush’s administration shut down the medical marijuana program in the early ’90s.
Luckily, Rosenfeld and the original dozen patients were grandfathered in and still get their pot from a farm run by the feds at the University of Mississippi. Yeah, the feds grow grass. So every 25 days, he picks up his prescription of approximately 300 marijuana joints in a metal tin.
“I have not had morphine in 20 years,” he says triumphantly. “Smoking marijuana has kept my tumors from growing. I have not had a tumor grow in 30 years. I attribute it to cannabis.”
So now he’s on the pro-medical-marijuana speaking circuit. He recently traveled to Oregon, where he spoke on a panel that included Robert Platshorn, the man who served the longest prison stint in U.S. history (29 years) for marijuana trafficking. “Marijuana is a fantastic medicine,” Rosenfeld says. “Doctors should be allowed to prescribe it nationwide.”
Rosenfeld will toke up right in front of your face. In fact, he tokes every day at work in the parking lot. And his office is in the same building as the Drug Enforcement Administration. Not even the agents inside the complex can mess with him. Cuhrazy, brah!
At 11:15 a.m., he is on one of his four smoke breaks. He reaches into the right breast pocket of his blue short-sleeve dress shirt and pulls out a clear plastic bag containing several joints. He grabs one, places it on his lips, and ignites it. As he takes the first drag, a pungent odor confirms he has just lit a fat Marley. Anybody else would have to hot-box inside his car to sneak a toke.
“When people think of a marijuana smoker, they conjure up images of some hippie pothead,” Rosenfeld says. “They don’t imagine a guy in a suit and tie with a career.”
As he takes his drags, we wonder what government weed smokes like.
Hemp is No Laughing Matter. Seriously.
by Brian Cronin
That said, I believe a few key points were omitted in your efforts to shed light on the issue of industrial hemp:
* Cultivation of industrial hemp is not a half-baked idea.
* It is high time that we as Americans and Idahoans start taking this issue seriously.
* We just need to let legislators hash this out—a joint effort between Democrats and Republicans.
Obviously, I can take a joke and I may have been asking for it by dragging out the frozen hemp based treats during a committee hearing. But the more we laugh about hemp and over emphasize its biological relationship to marijuana, the longer we’ll have to wait before we can take advantage of a domestically grown and remarkably versatile hemp crop potentially worth millions to Idaho farmers.
Is this a fringe issue? Hardly. A Sept. 12 article from USA Today touts the use of hemp in green buildings. A company in North Carolina is starting to build homes using hemp-based walls, conferring the benefits of energy efficiency and environmental health: “Hemp-filled walls are non-toxic, mildew-resistant, pest-free and flame-resistant.” As the green building movement blossoms in this country, it only makes sense that we should have access to a domestic source of hemp, rather than relying on imports.
Our society has been using hemp for centuries for a wide range of applications—everything from the sails and rope used by Christopher Columbus to the paper used for the Declaration of Independence to the fabric covering the Conestoga wagons. Even the first Levis were made out of hemp-based material. And I recently learned that during the restoration of the Idaho Statehouse, workers discovered a hemp fiber binding material inside the columns and underneath the marble panels.
What other plant can yield clean fuel, medicinal products, high-quality protein, lubricating and fuel oils, plastics, building material, clothing and paper? It’s inexplicable that we’ve banned this crop in the United States even as hundreds of U.S. companies are now using it to forge hemp products for which there is a huge demand.
I recognize it is fun to make “pot jokes”—I face the same battle even amongst my colleagues in the Legislature. But as Canadian and European farmers sell hemp to American companies and our own farmers are prohibited from doing so, the joke is on us. And that, dudes, is lame.
Rep. Brian C. Cronin is a Boise Democrat representing District 19.
Hemp produces viable biodiesel
By Christine Buckley
Hemp plant.
(PhysOrg.com) — Industrial hemp, which grows in infertile soils, is attractive as a potential source of sustainable diesel fuel.
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Researchers at UConn have found that the fiber crop Cannabis sativa, known as industrial hemp, has properties that make it viable and even attractive as a raw material, or feedstock, for producing biodiesel – sustainable diesel fuel made from renewable plant sources.
The plant’s ability to grow in infertile soils also reduces the need to grow it on primary croplands, which can then be reserved for growing food, says Richard Parnas, a professor of chemical, materials, and biomolecular engineering who led the study.
“For sustainable fuels, often it comes down to a question of food versus fuel,” says Parnas, noting that major current biodiesel plants include food crops such as soybeans, olives, peanuts, and rapeseed. “It’s equally important to make fuel from plants that are not food, but also won’t need the high-quality land.”
Industrial hemp is grown across the world, in many parts of Europe and Asia. Fiber from the plant’s stalk is strong, and until the development of synthetic fibers in the 1950s, it was a premier product used worldwide in making rope and clothing.
Today, there are still parts of the world that rely on Cannabis stalks as a primary fiber, mainly because of its ability to grow “like a weed,” without requiring lots of water, fertilizers, or high-grade inputs to flourish. But the seeds, which house the plant’s natural oils, are often discarded. Parnas points out that this apparent waste product could be put to good use by turning it into fuel.
“If someone is already growing hemp,” he says, “they might be able to produce enough fuel to power their whole farm with the oil from the seeds they produce.” The fact that a hemp industry already exists, he continues, means that a hemp biodiesel industry would need little additional investment.
With his graduate student Si-Yu Li and colleagues James Stuart of the Department of Chemistry and Yi Li of the Department of Plant Sciences, Parnas used virgin hemp seed oil to create biodiesel using a standardized process called transesterification. The group then tested the fuel for a suite of characteristics in the Biofuels Testing Laboratory at UConn’s Center for Environmental Science and Engineering.
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The hemp biodiesel showed a high efficiency of conversion – 97 percent of the hemp oil was converted to biodiesel – and it passed all the laboratory’s tests, even showing properties that suggest it could be used at lower temperatures than any biodiesel currently on the market.
Although growing hemp is not legal in the U.S., Parnas hopes that the team’s results will help to spur hemp biodiesel production in other parts of the world. UConn holds a patent on a biodiesel reactor system that could be customized to make biodiesel from a range of sustainable inputs, hemp included.
“Our research data could make buying a reactor system with our technology more attractive,” says Parnas. “If we have data for the production of many different feedstocks, we can tailor the system to meet the company’s needs.”
Parnas, Yi Li, and colleagues Steven Suib of the Department of Chemistry, Fred Carstensen of the Department of Economics, and Harrison Yang of the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment are preparing to build a pilot biodiesel production facility using a two-year, $1.8 million grant from the Department of Energy.
The reactor will be capable of producing up to 200,000 gallons of biodiesel per year, and while this production rate is small in comparison to commercial biodiesel reactors, the main use of the facility will be to test new ways to produce biodiesel, including catalysts and feedstocks. Ultimately, the team will perform economic analyses on commercializing their methods.
As for other industries that utilize Cannabis plants, Parnas makes a clear distinction between industrial hemp, which contains less than 1 percent psychoactive chemicals in its flowers, and some of its cousins, which contain up to 22 percent. “This stuff,” he points out, “won’t get you high.”
Medibles
Shekina Peña, owner of Your Healthy Choice Clinic at 628 E. Michigan Ave., discusses the benefits of feasting on your cannabis
Peña says to be forewarned while cooking at home, because the aroma of cooking crock-pot sized batches of cannabis butter can be quite pungent. When cooking with cannabis-based oils, she recommends using saffron oil, which is safest for allergies. Olive or vegetable oils can be substituted, but when cooking with butter, do not use margarine, she stressed.
Another key point is to cook cannabis-based dishes “low and slow,” so as not to compromise the THC levels in the food. You run that risk cooking at temperatures higher than 212 degrees, she said.
Peña recommends sativa-based foods for a “kick-start” in the morning. For a slow-released body high, she recommends indica-based foods. However, Peña says a majority of medibles are combinations of the two (as are most strains). Hybrids can be effective for patients with Crohn’s disease or anything related to digestive function that leave a “confused high” and are recommended for nighttime use.
Peña studied medicine in Europe and the medibles idea came to her after a visit to Amsterdam about 10 years ago. She is registered with the state Health Department and her food labels comply with the state Cottage Food Laws, she said. She received her Bachelor’s degree in nursing from Lansing Community College and Michigan State University.
Peña´s creativity doesn’t stop there. Your Healthy Choice Clinic also specializes in deep tissue cannabis massages that use pot-based topical oils. Peña says muscles respond within 20 minutes.
“Some of my patients come just for the medibles,” Pena said. “It’s pretty exciting sharing the secrets.”
Prohibition and edicine…
Michigan is one of 14 states to straddle that line
Medicine.
That last descriptor, legitimized by 63 percent of Michigan voters in 2008 and in 13 other states since 1996, has changed the game. Here in the greater Lansing region, perhaps most prominent is the number of businesses that engage in the sale, trade and education of it.
Also prominent are local officials who stand by scratching their heads, moratoriums in place, waiting for the first community to make the leap into regulation despite a supposedly confusing state law.
In the end, though, this law was written for ill citizens who benefit from using cannabis either by inhaling, vaporizing, eating or rubbing it into their skin. It doesn’t go far beyond defining patients and caregivers and the amounts of cannabis they can possess and grow — up to 2.5 ounces of usable product per patient and up to 12 plants per patient, with caregivers allowed up to five patients.
This guide is meant to be a resource for those who legally use medical marijuana and to offer an update on what’s going on in the greater Lansing region, an area establishing itself as a hub for medical marijuana in Michigan.
Enjoy.
A look about town The most common way communities in the area are dealing with the state medical marijuana law, particularly new businesses, is by issuing moratoriums on their existence at least for a few months. However, some are going the zoning ordinance route, while others wait to see who takes the lead.
Charlotte
City Manager Gregg Guetschow said any authorized patients and caregivers who can grow marijuana legally under the state statute will face no problems in Charlotte. However, existing ordinances prohibit any businesses that are illegal under federal law — for example, dispensaries and co-operatives. Guetschow issued an administrative order in June saying so and hasn’t received any inquiries from potential businesses since the law passed.
Delhi Township
The Township set a six-month moratorium Sept. 21 on any businesses related to medical marijuana, Township Supervisor Stewart Goodrich said. “We needed to take a much more serious look. Heaven forbid (state) legislators would want to do anything about it,” he said.
Delta Township The Delta Township Board extended a moratorium on Sept. 7 for six more months on any businesses related to medical marijuana, Township Manager Richard Watkins said. There have been three or four inquiries regarding Lansing’s city limits in relation to the township, but Watkins said he is not aware of any businesses in the township.
DeWitt
A six-month moratorium took effect Sept. 14 on sales or dispensing of medical marijuana within the city, which includes retail stores, residences or any facility where cannabis is purchased. The penalty is a misdemeanor with a fine of up to $500 or a maximum 90 days in jail.
DeWitt Township
A scheduled public hearing Monday will address proposed amendments to the township’s home occupation ordinance that would limit one caregiver per dwelling and forbid operations within 1,000 feet of a church, school, daycare or drug rehabilitation center. Caregivers would also need a permit from the township and would be subject to inspection by the Fire Department.
Dimondale
Nothing has been adopted or approved in Dimondale yet, but Village Manager Denise Parisian imagines a moratorium will be placed on “certain activities” as an ordinance is worked out. “We understand medical use is a statutory right,” she said. “We are not looking at anything that will compromise that right.”
East Lansing
East Lansing is considering three different ordinances that regulate homebased businesses (caregivers), central businesses (dispensaries) and one that takes a “Livonia approach” that restricts all cannabis growing in light of federal law. “I don’t think many favor that (last) approach,” City Manager Ted Staton said. A public hearing is scheduled for Oct. 19 to discuss the approaches, Staton said.
Grand Ledge
A moratorium set in May is in place until the end of November on any commercial businesses relating to medical marijuana. Mayor Kalmin Smith said local officials “really don’t know what to,” citing the new law´s vagueness. Smith said the administration and City Council are looking at a “zoning approach,” but it is still early to tell. “Whatever restrictions we have, if they’re significantly different from our neighbors, that will cause confusion,” he said.
Lansing
The City Council passed an ordinance that took effect Sept. 27 that regulates home-based caregivers who conduct business with patients inside their homes. Only one caregiver can operate out of a house if cannabis is sold there, which can’t be within 1,000 feet of any public or private schools, playgrounds, churches or substance abuse rehabilitation centers. No advertising can be placed outside, and any energy use and heat generation that could pose a fire hazard has to be approved by the fire marshal and the Building Safety Office. This ordinance does not address dispensaries or cooperatives.
Lansing Township
A moratorium is in place until May 1, 2011, restricting permits for sales, growing facilities, clubs or any business activities that result in medical marijuana sales.
Township Zoning Administrator Susan Aten said home occupation regulations similar to Lansing’s are being considered “very seriously.”
Mason
City Administrator Marty Colburn said no formal actions have been taken in Mason and that all medical marijuana regulations are in the “discussion phase.” Colburn said he is unaware of any businesses coming up in the city and that outside of the 2008 election, he has heard of no feedback from the public.
Meridian Township
Township Supervisor Susan McGillicuddy wants to see some zoning restrictions or a moratorium in place for anyone growing medical marijuana in the township. “I have brought it up twice to the township board, both times they chose not to act or do anything.” Board meeting minutes show that some members are concerned about the legality of such limitations; meanwhile Meridian Township remains free of any restrictions. “I don’t think that’s the right decision to make,” she said.
Williamston
At a Sept. 27 meeting, the Williamston City Council placed a six-month moratorium on land use permits for the sale or dispensation of medical marijuana in the city.
Williamstown Township
A six-month moratorium on medical marijuana businesses took effect Sept. 7 so the township can address a law that is “proven to be rather vague,” Supervisor Mickey Martin said. The Green Leaf Smokers Club, which made headlines in late May after its owner Fredrick “Wayne” Dagit allegedly stored 74 pounds of cannabis there, is located here. Dagit is facing drug-related charges.
Catching up with the MDCH It started out in April 2009 as a three-person staff to administer medical marijuana applications. The Michigan Department of Community Health’s cannabis division has grown to six fulltime and nine temporary workers, with three more full-timers starting over the next few months. That is on top of two new printers purchased about four months ago that can each print up to 400 cards in one day.
Still, the department struggles with a three-month backlog from the time it takes to approve an application to the time a physical card lands in mailboxes. As of Sept. 24, the Department issued 32,859 applications since April 9, 2009, the day the law took effect.
Celeste Clarkson, who manages the program, said the process is not as simple as going to the mailroom, browsing through an application and printing off a card. From the mailroom, applications are taken to the cash processing office and then sent to the registry program where they are sorted and reviewed for program eligibility and background checks. Then comes the tedious process of data entry.
“That is where the backlog starts,” Clarkson said. The department is still processing applications from July, which is relatively straightforward once data entry is finished and patient information is sent to the printers.
The new hires and printers are geared toward efficiency, but there is still more to be done: The mailroom, cash processing office and the registry program are all in different buildings in Lansing, Clarkson said.
L.A. County officials seize marijuana at Palm Springs collective
Los Angeles County officials seized marijuana at a Palm Springs collective Wednesday as they served search warrants in four counties across Southern California, a sheriff’s captain said.
“We had a long-term investigation of a certain organization,” said Los Angeles County sheriff’s Capt. Ralph Ornelas, who oversees the multiagency Marijuana Dispensary Task Force. “Today was a culmination of this investigation where we served 16 search warrants.”
One of the dispensaries searched was The Holistic Collective of Palm Springs, 2235 N. Palm Canyon Drive.
Authorities arrived about 11 a.m. to serve the warrant, said Lt. Joseph B. Nuñez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Narcotics Bureau.
“It’s a search warrant for illegally operating dispensaries,” Nuñez said.
By about 2 p.m. Wednesday, authorities had carried at least half a dozen small boxes out of The Holistic Collective.
Ornelas said authorities took marijuana buds and other products made with the substance.
Authorities also searched a dispensary in Riverside, but none of the 11 arrests were made in Riverside County, Ornelas said.
Names of the people arrested were not immediately released.
Ornelas said the dispensaries searched Wednesday in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties were all tied to an organization that operated under various names to make a profit.
“Basically, it’s a money-making organization, not what the Compassionate Use Act was meant to be,” he said.
State law allows qualified patients to collectively grow marijuana for medical purposes but does not allow marijuana to be grown or distributed for a profit.
Palm Springs is the first and, so far, only Coachella Valley city to allow medical marijuana dispensaries, but a city ordinance limits the number and location of dispensaries.
The city filed a complaint against The Holistic Collective in April 2009, saying the business had violated the city’s 2006 moratorium on marijuana dispensaries and that it later operated without the proper permits. The collective legally challenged that ordinance.
Three people who identified themselves as volunteers at the collective but did not give their names said authorities took patient files and personal property during Wednesday’s search, and the disruption would likely keep the collective shuttered for days.
A person reached by phone at the collective said an owner or manager was not immediately available for comment.
An attorney who had represented the collective as it challenged Palm Springs’ dispensary ordinance was also unavailable Wednesday afternoon.
The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office assisted with Wednesday’s operation, and Palm Springs police had a unit on standby in the area at the outset of the search, spokespeople for those agencies said.