Search Results: privacy (110)

Photo: Livingston Current
Under Montana law, qualifying patients and caregivers may grow and possess up to six marijuana plants and one dried smokable ounce of cannabis.

​Officers knocked down a Montana man’s door with a battering ram, and once inside, found what they expected — 39 marijuana plants. But they claim that it was only after thousands of dollars in equipment and cannabis were seized and destroyed that they learned Alan Edson is a legal patient, allowed to grow and sell marijuana for medical purposes.

“They proceeded to go through my entire home,” Edson said. “They confiscated and destroyed my legally licensed property and my personal property. They even went through my wife’s underwear drawer,” he said, reports Kim Skornogoski of the Great Falls Tribune.
Similar incidents are probably happening weekly across the state, according to State Narcotics Bureau Chief Mark Long. “If we get a tip that a person is growing plants — whether it’s six plants or 600 — we have to investigate it,” Long claimed.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services licenses medical marijuana patients and providers under state law. But in an all-too-common practice of pot-phobic law enforcement officers acting as if they are qualified to practice medicine, local police officers and sheriff’s deputies claim it’s their job to “make sure those people follow the law,” and they go about “making sure” with what seems close to unhealthy zeal.

Photo: Julie R. Johnson/Corning Observer
Ken and Kathy Prather, owners of medical marijuana dispensary Tehama Herbal Collective in Corning, California

​Hundreds of people are signing up as litigants in a class action lawsuit to be filed against Tehama County, California, for its recently approved medical marijuana cultivation regulations.

Many of the potential litigants, medical marijuana growers and patients, met in Red Bluff on Thursday to fill out forms naming themselves as plaintiffs in a lawsuit being backed by California NORML, reports Julie R. Johnson of Tri-County Newspapers.
Kathy Prather, co-owner of Tehama Herbal Collective (THC), a marijuana dispensary in Corning, said the lawsuit will be filed against Tehama County because of its recent ordinance regulating medical cannabis cultivation.

Graphic: Medical Marijuana Blog

​The Maryland Senate on Saturday voted 35-12 to pass SB 627, a bill that would allow qualified patients to use medical marijuana with their doctor’s recommendation, and receive safe access to their medicine through state-licensed dispensaries.

The bill now moves to the state House. The General Assembly’s session ends Monday night.
“I’m very proud of my Senate colleagues today for voting to provide some of our most vulnerable residents with the compassion and care that they deserve,” said Sen. David Brinkley (R-Frederick), the bill’s sponsor and a two-time cancer survivor.

Graphic: Medical Marijuana Blog

​The Maine House of Representatives gave final approval Monday to a bill establishing medical marijuana dispensaries and a patient registration system in the state.

After a short but passionate debate, the House voted overwhelmingly, 128-17, in favor of the bill, which expands Maine’s existing medical marijuana law, reports Susan M. Cover of The Portland Press Herald.
In a November 2009 referendum, 59 percent of state voters supported allowing the nonprofit marijuana dispensaries.
The bill makes several changes to the measure approved by voters:
• It limits the number of dispensaries, at least for the first year, to one in each of eight “health districts.
• It gives the Maine Department of Health and Human Services until July 1 to establish rules regarding application and renewal fees for patients, caregivers and dispensaries. Dispensary fees will be set by the department, but will be at least $5,000 and not greater than $15,000 per year.

Graphic: Fox 5

​Medical marijuana advocates have responded with shock and concern at a draconian proposal that would create strict new rules for medical marijuana collectives in unincorporated areas of San Diego County.

According to advocates, the ordinance, as drafted, threatens to cut off San Diego patients’ access to medical marijuana by making compliance with the absurdly too-strict rules almost impossible.

Graphic: Proud Smoke

​Most major candidates for California attorney general are lining up against the state’s marijuana legalization initiative, reports Seth Hemmelgarn at Bay Area Reporter.
Even supposedly liberal, but quite spineless, Democratic candidates disagree with those who say it’s time law enforcement got out of the marijuana business.
“As a career prosecutor, I believe that drug selling harms communities; it is not a ‘victimless crime,’ as some contend,” said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who is running in the Democratic Primary for California attorney general.

Graphic: San Diego News Network

​Tough new proposed medical marijuana dispensary rules would make it almost impossible to open and operate dispensaries anywhere in unincorporated San Diego County, according to cannabis activists.

Under a proposed ordinance released for public review this month, medical marijuana dispensaries would be banned within 1,000 feet of residences, schools, playgrounds, parks, churches, and recreational centers, as well as other dispensaries.
That rule would eliminate all but a handful of the unincorporated areas of the county, according to county documents, reports Edward Sifuentes at North County Times.

Graphic: Addo Gaudium

​Lawyers for five Dana Point, California medical marijuana dispensaries are asking an appeals court to reinstate their motion to avoid turning over company records, including financial data and patients’ names, to the city under a subpoena.
The Fourth District Court of Appeals has given the dispensaries until Tuesday to file a petition for an “extraordinary writ,” for which the pot shops are seeking an extension, reports Vik Jolly at The Orange County Register.
In its January 29 order, which took at least one dispensary attorney by surprise, the court found that the appeal in the “case is not from an appealable order” and deemed it an “extraordinary writ” petition.
That petition requires the pot shops to show that an Orange County Superior Court judge abused her discretion in issuing an order to enforce the city subpoena, according to attorney Lee Petros for the Point Alternative Care dispensary.

Graphic: www.technologygear.net

​A federal appeals court in Oregon has ruled that mobile tracking devices can be attached to the vehicles of suspects as part of a marijuana investigation, The Associated Press reports.
Juan Pineda-Moreno argued his constitutional rights were violated when U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents attached the tracking devices to his sport utility vehicle.
DEA agents attached several of the spy gadgets to Pineda-Moreno’s SUV, tracking his movements after they learned the suspect and his associates bought large amounts of fertilizer, groceries, irrigation equipment and deer repellent in the Medford, Oregon area in 2007.

Photo: NORML Foundation
From left, Ken Wolski, Jacki Rickert, and Jim Miller at October’s rally at the Wisconsin State Capitol.

​The Wisconsin Legislature will hold a public hearing Tuesday to debate SB 368, the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act, which would allow seriously ill patients to use cannabis without fear of arrest if their doctor recommends it.

The hearing will be at 10 a.m., Tuesday, Dec. 15, at the State Capitol, Room 412 East, Madison, Wis.

Qualifying patients with doctors’ notes could grow their own marijuana or obtain it from “compassion centers” around the state if the bill becomes law.
Wisconsin is working to become the 14th state to allow medical marijuana. Legislation is in the works in at least 14 other states, according to Mike Meno, assistant director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).
The bill is the namesake of Jacki Rickert, a 58-year-old grandmother from Mondovi who has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and advanced reflex sympathetic dystrophy, and who founded medical marijuana advocacy organization Is My Medicine Legal Yet? (IMMLY) in 1992.
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