| Wing-Chi Poon/Commons. |
Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told the media last summer that returning marijuana to a medicinal user was “not how we do business.”
But Wilmot did not return calls or even issue a statement this morning after the U.S. Supreme Court decided — by its inaction — that Wilmot must give the pot back to the patient. With the decision to turn down the Yuma case for a hearing, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided squarely with the state’s medical-marijuana law.
| Zander Welton. |
In a ruling with wide impact on the Arizona medical-marijuana program, Zander Welton and his family have won their battle to provide extracts to the boy for his seizures.
The East Valley family sued on October 29 in Maricopa County Superior Court, receiving legal help from the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, after threats of possible felony prosecution by County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
Judge Katherine Cooper sets Montgomery straight in a ruling filed on Friday, telling him and the state plaintiffs that the Arizona Medical Marijuana Law “authorizes qualifying patients to use extracts, including CBD oil, prepared from the marijuana plant.”
An Arizona medical marijuana patient had purchased a Tootsie Pop-like candy at a local “compassion club” that isn’t approved by the state to sell marijuana. Maricopa County attorney Bill Montgomery’s office tried to use the case to advance the elected official’s belief that voters did not authorize patients to use concentrated marijuana when they approved the state’s medical-pot law in 2010.
Now, it seems, Montgomery probably wishes he hadn’t done that. Phoenix New Times has the details.
Alabama state Rep. Mike Ball wants to legalize medical cannabis for sick and ailing Alabamans, but he doesn’t want the whole plant. Instead, Ball says he will be pushing for a bill that allows for high-CBD oils derived from cannabis but not for the outright legalization of the cannabis plant as a whole for medical purposes.
“This CBD oil bill is very high on my list of priorities,” Ball told Montgomery, Alabama’s ABC 31. He says the idea for the bill came after meeting a child in his district suffering from a severe seizure disorder.
An Arizona judge yesterday ruled that medical marijuana patients in that state essentially do not have the right to grow their own medicine anymore.
Judge Katherine Cooper in Maricopa County (yes, that Maricopa County) made the decision yesterday in response to two men filed a challenge to rules in the 2010 medical marijuana laws saying that patients could only grow their own if they lived more than 25 miles from a dispensary.
Ohio police spent $500,000 last year arresting a whopping 27 people for marijuana cultivation under the state’s flyover marijuana eradication program. That’s more than $18,500 per person and in total they only destroyed 20,747 plants – down nearly 64,000 plants from just two years before.
Sound like a waste to you, too?
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court to resolve the issue of medical-marijuana extracts for a seizure-plagued boy.
Saying an oil from a low-THC strain of marijuana has dramatically reduced the seizures suffered by 5-year-old Zander Welton, the ACLU and the Weltons are asking the court to declare that extracts are legal under the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and block County Attorney Bill Montgomery from taking legal action against the family based on his “incorrect” interpretation of the law. Phoenix New Times has the full story.
Arizona counties must allow state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries and cannot zone the shops out of existence, a judge ruled yesterday.
The ruling comes after Maricopa County essentially banned dispensaries on the grounds that they were federally illegal. Judge Michael Gordon called the law changes “a transparent attempt to prevent implementation of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act”.
| John Tracey. |
Small acts of defiance have sometimes sparked political infernos. December 1955: seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to sit in the back of the bus and touches off the Montgomery bus boycott. August 1980: electrician Lech Walesa hops a fence at the Gdansk shipyards and goes on to lead a strike that opens a crack that spreads until the Soviet empire collapses. July 2013: marijuana legalization activist John Tracey defies a deputy sheriff’s order to cease petitioning at Cruzan Amphitheatre and…
… read the rest over at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times
| photo by Jamie Peachey. |
| Billy Hayes |
Phoenix police have busted marijuana activist Billy Hayes for the second time in two years in connection with running an unauthorized medical-marijuana dispensary.
Hayes seems to have more lives than a cat, so we’re not betting yet on whether Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery will be able to secure a successful prosecution. Phoenix New Times has the full story.
