By Michael Roberts, Mon., Aug. 9 2010 @ 2:25PM Comments (5) Categories: Follow That Story, Marijuana
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Photo: Rob Corry.
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Back in July, attorney Rob Corry told us about a case involving Frank Marzano, a medical marijuana grower who was convicted in 2007 after his crop was discovered during an unrelated search for a wanted fugitive.

Today, Corry reveals that the criminal charges have been dismissed. Find out why below:

Three years ago, authorities showed up at Marzano’s Loveland home in search of a fugitive named Randall Zandstra, who was suspected of holing up there. They obtained permission to search by way of a letter from Anthony Dugasz, whose late mother had owned the house — but they didn’t get clearance from Marzano, holder of a lease allowing him to be there. In the Colorado Court of Appeals ruling in the Frank Marzano case, the lease proved key. An excerpt:

Upon entering the home, officers found defendant, who answered in the affirmative that he had a lease or other arrangement with Ms. Dugasz to be on the property. The existence of such an arrangement without Mr. Dugasz’s knowledge was certainly possible, given his limited knowledge of the property. At this point, the police should have obtained consent from defendant to continue searching the house or obtained a search warrant if he refused.
In oral argument, the People conceded that they relied exclusively on the consent of Mr. Dugasz for the warrantless search. However, a third party does not have the authority to consent to a search simply by virtue of his ownership of the property… Defendant confirmed to police officers that he had a lease or other arrangement with Ms. Dugasz to occupy the property, and it is undisputed that he never expressly gave authorities consent to search. The People, therefore, had the burden to show that he was an occupant without permission, a burden which they did not meet. Accordingly, the initial search was unlawful because it was conducted without consent from the present occupant…

Did the illegality of the search mean the marijuana that led to Marzano’s distribution and cultivation conviction should have been considered inadmissible? In a word, “yes.” Here’s the explanation:

Because probable cause for the search warrant was based upon the officers’ discovery of a large marijuana growing operation in the house during an illegal initial search, the search warrant was also invalid…
We therefore conclude that there was not valid consent to the initial search and that all evidence found during the initial search and pursuant to the subsequent warrant must be suppressed. Accordingly, the trial court erred in denying suppression of the evidence.

In speaking about the initial ruling back in July, Corry said, “Judges are usually right. But this time, with all due respect, the trial court got it wrong. And that’s why we have appellate courts — to correct errors and guarantee people’s constitutional rights.”

For Corry, and for Marzano, the situation worked out just as he outlined.

Tags:
Frank Marzano, medical marijuana, Michael Roberts, Rob Corry

Medical marijuana search & seizure: Rob Corry on appeal of disputed Frank Marzano verdict

By Michael Roberts, Fri., Jul. 23 2010 @ 10:39AM Categories: Marijuana Rob Corry.

​The medical marijuana laws in Colorado are akin to a full employment plan for attorneys. Take this week’s appeal of a case involving Frank Marzano, who was convicted in 2007 of cultivation and possession of marijuana after a search for a fugitive turned up weed — and despite the fact that he had loads of patient information showing that the pot was MMJ. Attorney Rob Corry provides the details:

The opening brief in the Frank Marzano case, as well as other court documents available on the Cannabis Therapy Institute website, provide the basic facts:

Three years ago, authorities were searching for a fugitive named Randall Zandstra, who was suspected of holing up at a home in Loveland. U.S. Marshals got a warrant to search the property for Zandstra under complicated circumstances the brief describes as a “sham” — and Marzano, the person actually living there, refused to let them keep poking around after determining that Zandstra wasn’t present.

They did so anyhow, and subsequently happened upon plenty of marijuana — and while Marzano had what’s described in the brief as “41 pages of medical marijuana documentation” establishing that he was growing the weed for patients, he was busted for assorted drug beefs anyhow. He was ultimately cleared of distribution charges, but he was convicted of possession and cultivation — a verdict that frustrates Corry, Marzano’s attorney, who felt that the trial judge tied his hands.

“The judge held that Frank couldn’t call as witnesses any patients who had not affirmatively and expressly designated him as a caregiver on their registry card,” he says. “And if you read the definition of caregiver in the Constitution, it’s an adult who has significant responsibility for the well-being of a patient — and whether or not that person is on the registry card isn’t dispositive of that person being a caregiver.”

In addition, Corry continues, “we allege that the judge had a substantial bent of mind against Frank and medical marijuana. The judge said that I, his defense council, couldn’t use the phrase ‘medical marijuana’ during the trial. He told the jury, ‘I have ruled that there’s no such thing as medical marijuana.’ So I had to say, ‘marijuana for medical use.’ The judge used the words ‘medical marijuana’ over and over again, as did the prosecution, but I was under a separate command that really polluted Frank’s opportunity to get a fair trial.”

In addition, Corry says, “there’s also a quite-prominent issue that maybe isn’t as concerning to the medical marijuana community, but it’s important for Frank, involving a warrantless search that is presumptively unconstitutional. They were after a federal fugitive who had last been seen at that property ten months before. That was their purpose for being there — and he obviously wasn’t there. They thought they had consent to enter from the executor for the owner — the owner of the property was deceased, so the executor gave the marshals consent to enter for the purpose of arresting this alleged fugitive. But when they didn’t find him, Frank, who had every right to be there — he wasn’t charged with trespassing, he was lawfully present — told them to leave, and they didn’t. They proceeded to do a complete search, top to bottom, and then got their warrant four hours later, which doesn’t cure the violation. In fact, it probably exacerbates it.”

In Corry’s view, the case is important for Marzano, who’s been living under a cloud since 2007. But he feels it’s also a way to prove that members of the MMJ community “aren’t second-class citizens. We ought to be able to claim the protections of the Fourth Amendment and the right to a fair trial. And it also deals with the parameters of an affirmative defense, which will be more and more important with the legislature potentially shutting down the medical marijuana registry.

“Caregivers will have to claim status independent of the optional registry card. The details of that will have to be worked out, but the fact remains that Frank had documentation for 34 patients in his home at the time of the search. It was nothing concocted afterward. He had the cards in his possession then. And there was zero evidence that a single gram of this marijuana was used for anything other than medical purposes — which is something else I wasn’t allowed to say in court.”

Corry is hopeful that things will turn out better for Marzano this time around based on this week’s hearing before the Court of Appeals. “The three judges were impressively well-prepared for our argument,” he says. “They seemed like they’d read every inch of the record. And that gives me some confidence. I think we should win if the appellate court looks at the record, and I have every belief that it has, and will.”

If he’s wrong — and Marzano likely won’t learn about the decision for a few months — Corry is prepared to appeal the case to the Colorado Supreme Court.

“Judges are usually right,” he maintains. “But this time, with all due respect, the trial court got it wrong. And that’s why we have appellate courts — to correct errors and guarantee people’s constitutional rights.”

Tags:
Frank Marzano, medical marijuana, Michael Roberts, Rob Corry

DENVER — A parent’s use of medical marijuana does not necessarily constitute child endangerment, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The determination of whether medical marijuana use presents a threat to a child’s safety should be made on a case-by-case basis, the court held.

Medical marijuana has been legal in Colorado for a decade, but urinalysis testing for marijuana is still used in some child custody matters. The parenting plan agreed to by divorced couple David Lyman and Catherine Parr called for the father to undergo “[o]ngoing UA’s [urinalysis tests] and drug screenings to demonstrate that he does not return to marijuana use.”

But a week after signing the parenting plan, Lyman learned he had been granted a license to use medical marijuana to treat back and knee pain resulting from a motorcycle accident.

Lyman filed a motion to asking a magistrate judge to waive the urinalysis requirement, but the magistrate said Lyman had voluntarily signed the parenting plan ordering urinalysis and was “stuck with it.”

A year later, El Paso County District Judge Rebecca Bromley upheld that order, but modified it to say Lyman could only have supervised parenting time until he could demonstrate to the court that his use of medical marijuana is not detrimental to his child. Bromley also held that Lyman could not petition for unsupervised visitation until he submitted a clean hair follicle test.

A three-judge Court of Appeals panel released 2-1 decision reversing Bromley’s more stringent order but upholding the original order calling for urinalysis.

“[T]he record does not show that father’s use of medical marijuana represented a threat to the physical and emotional health and safety of the child, or otherwise suggested any risk of harm,” Judge Daniel Taubman wrote in the court’s opinion. “Thus, father’s use of medical marijuana cannot support the trial court’s restriction on his parenting time.”

The court also vacated the order for hair follicle tests. However, the court was very clear on what it was not deciding.

“[W]e do not express an opinion as to whether medical marijuana use may constitute endangerment; rather, we conclude only that endangerment was not shown here,” Taubman wrote. “We also express no view on father’s constitutional right to use medical marijuana and whether the exercise of this right should bar UAs and drug screening.”

The court also said nothing in its decision would stop Lyman from arguing that his constitutional right to use medical marijuana should bar urinalysis testing. Neither does the opinion prevent Parr from asking for a hearing to restrict Lyman’s parenting time.

Judge David Furman wrote a special concurring opinion, saying that the best interests of the child should be the only thing considered in making a parenting plan, regardless of Lyman’s constitutional right to use marijuana.

Noted marijuana attorney Rob Corry represented Lyman on the appeal; Parr represented herself pro se.

May 7, 2010

Senator Scott Refroe
Colorado Senate
Denver, CO

Re: Your Call for Government Military Force Used Against
Coloradans Suffering from Debilitating Medical Conditions

Dear Senator Renfroe:

I called your office to discuss this with you in a civilized manner, but your
voice mail is full, so I write instead. Perhaps those who filled your voice mail
share my shock that a serving Colorado State Senator would, on the floor of the
State Senate, call for armed military troops to forcibly take away the personal
property (State-issued Medical Marijuana Registry Cards) of Colorado’s medical
marijuana patients, peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights on April
20, 2010 at a permitted event in Denver’s Civic Center Park:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2010/05/06/should-the-guard-be-called-outon-
pot-protesters/

I am baffled as to how a Republican who trumpets Christian beliefs and
alleges support of “small government, property rights, individual liberty, and
protecting life” would advocate — even as legislative hyperbole — the use of armed
government military force against people who are doing nothing worse than
exercising their constitutional rights to express opinions with which you may
personally disagree. Many of these suffering patients are disabled veterans who
served their country in wartime, and suffer from war-related debilitating medical
conditions.

Your hateful words have caused widespread panic among Colorado’s
patients, who already fear of the “auditors with guns” your colleague Senator
Chris Romer pledges to unleash on them through the passage of House Bill 1284.

Your statements do have one side benefit: you have helped expose the
contempt that many legislators have for the Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII §
14, protecting the medical use of marijuana for people suffering from debilitating
medical conditions. Thanks to you, Coloradans (and perhaps reviewing courts)
will be able to view legislative intent and motivation on this issue in the proper
context.

The damage has probably already been done, but perhaps you can minimize
it if you act quickly and decisively. Thus, please immediately retract, in writing,
your utterly irresponsible and fearsome statements, and clarify that you do not
support the use of government military forces against peaceful medical marijuana
patients. I will be happy to help publicize your retraction if you provide it to me.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this important request, and please
do not hesitate to call me if you would like to discuss this further. My office
phone is 303-634-2244 and cell phone is 720-629-7112.

Sincerely,

Robert J. Corry, Jr.
Attorney and Counselor at Law

by Robert J. Corry, Jr. and Jessica Corry
Posted: April 26, 2010 10:47 AM

“Rocky Mountain High” Medical Marijuana in Danger

Read More: Chris Romer , Colorado , Colorado Medical Marijuana , Denver Post , Jessica Corry , Marijuana Dispensaries , Medical Marijuana , Robert Corry , Denver News

Over the past year, medical marijuana has consumed Colorado’s news headlines and political debates. But with an estimated 100,000 patients now legally authorized to use marijuana to treat debilitating medical conditions, a handful of lawmakers threaten to dismantle a transparent dispensary system in favor of constitutionally-suspect regulations that could embolden a now-distressed black market.

We remain cautiously optimistic that the cloud of Prohibition will continue to clear. Repeatedly, courts have sided with patients in litigation surrounding medical marijuana rights. Voters, too, continue to express support for an emerging medical marijuana marketplace where transactions occur in well-lit, safe, taxable, environments instead of darkened back alleys, as they did in the decades before Colorado voters first approved medical marijuana in 2000.

While opponents mock this thriving industry and impugn patients’ motives, six in ten voters continue to support medical marijuana rights. Notably, pro-medical marijuana sentiment runs strong even in the most unanticipated of places. In nursing homes across Colorado, terminally-ill residents use marijuana as an alternative to the haze of highly addictive narcotics.

While the state’s economy continues to flounder, legislators have spent hundreds of hours over the last four months formulating proposals that could dismantle the state’s system of retail dispensaries. Sen. Chris Romer, a Denver Democrat also running for Mayor, proposes Senate Bill 109 and House Bill 1284. As he explained it recently, the legislation would establish an army of “auditors with guns” to meet his goal of putting “well over 50 percent” of Colorado’s legal marijuana businesses “out of business.”

The proposals come after Senator Romer previously posted on this site that his efforts to establish a complex regulatory structure for medical marijuana were “now over.”

Even more concerning, a handful of our fellow Republicans have now signed onto a ballot measure that would prohibit caregivers from making any profit whatsoever. If approved by legislators, Senate Concurrent Resolution 5 could appear on this November’s ballot. It would ask voters to amend the Colorado Constitution to exclude retail sale or commercial cultivation of medical marijuana from constitutional protections, while also establishing overly cumbersome entitlements governing caregiver-patient relationships.

Patients will face an uphill battle and must band together to counter the special interests and establishment voices that seem to disfavor dispensaries. While Colorado’s largest newspaper, The Denver Post, has established an excellent medical marijuana advertising section that has pumped much needed revenue into its coffers, ColoradoCannabisCorner.com, it uses its editorial page to bash dispensaries. A recent editorial argued that “dispensaries are never even mentioned in the medical marijuana constitutional amendment.” Another Post editorial called legal retail medical marijuana a “farce” and “hypocrisy.”

This assertion despite the Colorado Constitution Article XVIII § 14(2)(d)’s specific reference to “acquisition, possession, manufacture, production, use, sale, distribution, dispensing, or transportation of marijuana.” If “dispensing” marijuana is explicitly contemplated, then a dispensary must reasonably be considered legal.

Marijuana is the only legal industry in America that endures such brazen threats from elected and opinion elites. If a politician had said that he plans to put “well over 50 percent” of all, say, supermarkets, out of business, would he suffer from voters?

Colorado House Bill 1284 and Senate Bill 109 would realize Senator Romer’s dream of putting “well over half” out of business with requirements that no other business sector need satisfy. For example, the current version of HB 1284 purports to allow local governments to ban the exercise of this constitutional right to the medical use of marijuana. This would subject constitutional rights to government approval, when the principal purpose of constitutional rights is to protect vulnerable or unpopular minorities against the majority. Popular things don’t need constitutional protection; pitchfork-wielding mobs are not screeching to ban Mom and apple pie. Although medical marijuana remains popular statewide, there remain geographically-isolated pockets of irrational prejudice and NIMBY-ism relating to medical marijuana. Medical marijuana patients are the new despised minority; typical arguments recycle emotional Segregationist canards of “property values,” “increased crime,” and “we must protect the children,” none of which have any empirical support.

HB 1284 requires the state to go, hat in hand, to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and request that the federal DEA “reschedule” marijuana from a Schedule I substance to a Schedule II substance. Lately here, the DEA’s favorite pastime has been to laugh in Colorado’s face when it comes to medical marijuana. However, in this instance, the DEA’s inevitable laughter at Colorado’s rescheduling request would be justified, since HB 1284 somehow ignores that it is the U.S. Congress, not the DEA, which sets the schedules for drugs. Before requesting the DEA to do something it cannot do, the Colorado Legislature should keep its own house in order, and reschedule marijuana away from Schedule I in its own State-level classification, Colorado Revised Statutes section 18-18-203.

HB 1284 requires that all officers, directors, stockholders, and employees be of “good moral character and reputation.” What organization could comply with such a sweeping and vague requirement? Probably not even Focus on the Family, or the Colorado State Legislature for that matter. HB 1284 requires those in the medical marijuana business to repay all student loans and have no outstanding judgments due to any government agency, such as a parking ticket.

HB 1284 irrationally requires that retailers themselves cultivate no less than 70% of their supply offered to customers, and that no wholesalers can exist. If such a requirement applied to supermarkets, i.e., that the supermarket must grow 70% of the wheat for the bread on the shelves, and that every farmer growing the wheat must also be a retailer, it would put both farmer and supermarket out of business, stuck in an infinite loop of government “auditors with guns” tracking every last minutiae of the production chain.

HB 1284 also attempts to resurrect the notorious limit of five patients per caregiver, an unconstitutional limit which the Colorado Health Department illegally adopted and was enjoined by a court from enforcing. How can a caregiver function with any economies of scale if limited to five patients?

If these proposals become law and the government puts “well over half” of dispensaries out of business, would the production, sale, purchase, and use of marijuana end? Of course not. It would simply go back underground, back to unsafe darkened alleys, un-taxable, with no quality control.

And those who need it the most, the 75-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair, would suffer in the black market. Try as the government might to repeal the laws of supply and demand, marijuana will always be grown, sold, and consumed.

Let’s hope legislators can understand even more basic economies of scale. With 100,000 voters now registered as patients and another couple million who believe strongly in medical marijuana rights, lawmakers should think twice before dismantling the dispensary industry.

Medical marijuana business is on fire

By Rob Reuteman, Special from CNBC.com

DENVER — Medical marijuana dispensaries are springing up in Colorado’s major cities like coffee shops, nail parlors, tanning salons or taco shops.

It’s been 10 years since Colorado voted to allow the use and sale of marijuana for medical reasons. But in the past six months, the number of patients and dispensaries has skyrocketed.

“This industry is like a bolting horse running out of a stable that’s on fire,” said Sierra Neblina, owner of the Medimar Haven dispensary in Lakewood, Colo. “We need to get a hold of our own industry.”

Denver has some 250 dispensary storefronts and Boulder, Colo., has more than 100. So far, the state has issued more than 66,000 cards that allow holders to purchase medical pot. Card demand is so high that there’s a six-month waiting period.

Now, experts estimate more than 100,000 Coloradans can buy medicinal marijuana legally. On April 1, the Medical Marijuana Registry at the state health department stopped accepting walk-up applications and will only process those sent by mail.

“The changes are necessary due to the explosive growth in the number of medical marijuana applications,” said Mark Salley of the Colorado Health Department. He said the number of applications jumped from 270 per workday in August 2009 to about 1,000 in February 2010.

Yet, few see legalized marijuana as a way to boost the economy and create jobs, according to an Associated Press/CNBC poll. About a quarter of those polled said legalized pot would lead to more jobs, but 57% said there would be no effect. Sixty-two percent approve of states taxing the drug, with people in the West more likely to back the idea.

Call it Marijuana Country

Like California, which was the first to OK medical marijuana in 1996, Colorado’s marijuana infrastructure and culture are well ahead of the other 12 states that followed.

Though Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington allow the practice, they are in various stages of start-up mode.

Similar ballot measures or legislation allowing medical marijuana are pending in 14 more states this year: Alabama, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin. The City Council of the District of Columbia today considers a bill to allow the sale and use of medical marijuana.

Those states have a lot to learn from California and Colorado. In the Mountain State, the jump in dispensary openings and applications for medical marijuana cards appears to be a direct result of key events — both local and national — that essentially loosened restrictions.

In February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Drug Enforcement Agency would end raids on state-approved marijuana dispensaries. He said President Obama’s election campaign position condoning medical use is “now American policy.” Marijuana for non-medical purposes remains illegal.

In July 2009, during a 12-hour hearing in which hundreds testified, the Colorado Board of Health rejected a proposal to limit the number of patients to five that could be served by each caregiver or dispensary. In October, the Obama administration clarified Holder’s February statement, telling federal authorities not to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana users and suppliers who aren’t violating local laws.

The policy decisions bolstered a business model used by most existing dispensaries, which serve 400 or more patients. And they offered a measure of certainty to investors who are bankrolling the growth in retail outlets.

How it works

To get a medical marijuana card in Colorado, a patient must see a licensed physician who provides written documentation of a “debilitating medical condition.” These may include cancer, glaucoma, AIDS or HIV-positive status, seizures, severe pain, severe nausea or severe muscle spasms.

Medical use, according to the law, covers “the acquisition, possession, production, use or transportation of marijuana or paraphernalia related to the administration of such marijuana to address the symptoms.” A doctor’s visit typically costs about $150 and may consist of a five- to 10-minute conversation.

Some dispensaries host doctors on site. Websites list regular doctors’ hours. The state charges a $90 processing fee, and dispensaries usually add notary or other smaller handling charges, for a total patient cost of about $250.

Then there’s the product. An ounce of medical marijuana currently costs about $350 and is considered sufficient to last about six weeks for the average patient.

Often, a dispensary offers a discount to a patient, who then lists it as his or her “primary caregiver.” A patient may possess up to 2 ounces of pot or six plants for personal use, and a dispensary may have on hand 2 ounces of pot per patient.

A dispensary may provide a grower with its patient list; a grower may house six plants per patient.

Dispensaries, however, are far more than smoking dens. Marijuana is bought and sold in an array of edible forms, such as caramel corn made with marijuana-laced butter, chocolate-covered cherries, rice cake treats and frozen pizzas.

Mile High Ice Cream in Denver makes dozens of flavors with marijuana. There are bottled soft drinks, pills and tinctures.

Dispensaries also sell routine and advanced drug paraphernalia, including pipes, lighters, scented candles and smokeless “delivery systems” called vaporizers, the latter of which can cost several hundred dollars apiece.

Many dispensaries have expanded to offer massage, acupuncture and other alternative healing methods, usually arranging patient appointments and providing operating space for a practitioner.

There’s even an industry trade group, the Colorado Wellness Association, formed in October 2009, whose public affairs officer is a former state senator, Bob Hagedorn.

“I’ve visited about 80 dispensaries in the Denver metro area,” Hagedorn said. “I’d say 10% are very serious about the wellness side of things. Fifty percent are interested in moving product. The other 40% is a balance of those two.”

Regulatory whiplash

Since medical marijuana started to take off here, state officials have been scrambling to control a largely unregulated industry that is maturing with retail storefronts, prominent advertising and large-scale operations.

In January, the Denver City Council passed a slew of new dispensary regulations aimed at bringing order to industry chaos and revenue to city coffers.

“Six months ago, Denver and Colorado were the Wild West of medical marijuana, with unregulated and untaxed dispensaries opening almost daily and the number of registered patients soaring,” said Denver Councilman Charlie Brown, who sponsored the ordinance.

Now, an applicant for a dispensary license must submit a floor plan and security plan and apply for a zoning permit, a sales tax license and a burglar alarm license. Fees top $5,000 annually, plus ongoing sales tax.

Brown said crafting the ordinance was “like trying to pick your teeth with a rattlesnake.”

Nearby Boulder passed a similar ordinance in 2009. Dispensaries and marijuana-growing operations there generated nearly $74,000 in sales tax revenue, though most of the estimated 105 businesses didn’t open until September or later. (In Los Angeles, the city council is poised to pass regulations aimed at reducing the current 545 dispensaries to about 70, mostly through license fees and zoning.)

“With taxation comes legitimacy,” said medical marijuana attorney Rob Corry. “This industry is one of the few that is asking to be taxed and legitimized to join the rest of the business world.”

The Colorado Senate is now crafting an additional layer of regulations and fees.

A bill introduced by state Sen. Chris Romer creates new requirements for dispensaries and may institute an excise tax similar to taxes on liquor sales.

“I believe that a highly regulated business structure is required to separate the medical marijuana industry from black market operators,” Romer said.

Once state legislation is passed, Romer believes “new business people will quickly enter the market and increase the status and quality of the wellness models.”

Jack Cary, a partner in Greenwerkz, a Denver dispensary, agrees. “There is a lot of investment money waiting on the sidelines, investors waiting to see what the rules are, waiting until an investment is not so high-risk,” he said.

“Like any gold rush, any boom, there’ll be a bust. There will be a shakeout.”

By John Ingold
The Denver Post

Posted: 04/07/2010 02:40:05 PM MDT
Updated: 04/07/2010 05:33:40 PM MDT

Sergio Elizondo, William Chengelis and Miguel Lopez applaud during the introduction of criminal defense attorney Robert Corry, who debated Colorado Attorney General John Suthers at the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver. (The Denver Post | CRAIG F. WALKER)

Colorado Attorney General, John Suthers, left, debates criminal defense attorney Robert Corry at the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver in Colorado. The debate was moderated by Sam Kamin, professor of criminal law & procedure and federal courts. (The Denver Post | CRAIG F. WALKER)

Two heavyweights of the Colorado legal community faced off today at the University of Denver law school in a bare-knuckled debate over medical marijuana.

The bout pitted attorney Rob Corry, one of the state’s most fiery medical-marijuana advocates, against state Attorney General John Suthers, a staunch critic of the current medical-marijuana system. Think of it as a rhetorical cannabis cage match — a Lincoln-Douglas for legalized dope — held in a packed lecture hall before an audience that was a 2-1 mixture of law students and marijuana activists.

Corry, in particular, seemed to figuratively lick his canines in anticipation of the battle.

“I’ve been looking forward to this debate for a number of years,” he said.

Questions and responses in the debate veered from the densely legal to the broadly philosophical to the cautiously predictive, but the lead-off question was a simple one: Do you believe Colorado’s medical-marijuana system, approved at the polls in 2000, is currently what the voters wanted it to be?

Suthers said it isn’t, arguing that the system is rife with fraud and that proliferation of retail marijuana dispensaries far exceeds the limited criminal-law exemption and small-scale patient-and-caregiver model voters were sold. Voters should be asked whether they want dispensaries, he said.

“It creates an affirmative (criminal) defense,” Suthers said of the state’s medical marijuana constitutional provision. “It doesn’t create an industry.”

Corry, naturally, disagreed, saying it was a “canard” that voters didn’t realize where the constitutional measure would lead.

“It does much more than create an affirmative defense,” Corry said of the law’s language. “… It mentions ‘dispensing.’ So if dispensing is OK, how can a dispensary not be OK?”

And it … was … on.

This being a debate at a law school, a good bit of discussion ventured deep into the stuff of leatherbound books. There was debate over the Supremacy Clause, the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — all pillars in the bridge between state and federal laws. The two lawyers sparred over the details of a state appeals court decision, a U.S. Supreme Court decision and a U.S. Justice Department memo that offers guidance to federal prosecutors in medical-marijuana states.

As a sign of his eager preparation, Corry repeatedly tried to sting Suthers with his own words, quoting passages from one of Suthers’ books and mentioning a lawsuit Suthers is a part of over federal health care legislation that argues the legislation violates states’ rights.

“The federal government needs to leave us alone and let us comply with our constitution,” Corry said.

Corry said it was illogical for the federal government to “ban a plant, an herb, a harmless herb.”

Suthers, though, said his previous words lost their context when applied to medical marijuana. Particular to the health care lawsuit, Suthers said he is seeking to block further expansion of federal power and said the Supreme Court has already ruled the federal government can regulate marijuana as interstate commerce even if that marijuana is grown and consumed entirely within a medical-marijuana state.

When a student pressed Corry more on that point, Suthers said, “I appreciate very much a law student bringing some legal realism to the discussion here today.”

Suthers also disputed Corry’s characterization of marijuana as harmless, saying he worries about an increase in adolescent marijuana use with attendant negative consequences.

Things grew tense toward the end of the debate — during the questions-from-the-audience portion — when several marijuana activists at different times began screaming at Suthers. Suthers remained stoic but had a security escort when he left the room following the debate.

“When we were talking about the issues, I thought it went fine,” Suthers said later.

Afterward, Corry said, “There’s nothing wrong with passion,” and said he thought the debate went well.

“I never miss a chance to try to hold a fellow Republican to the principles of limited government and freedom when it comes to drug prohibition,” Corry said.

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14838074#ixzz0kSkqNhOF

Medical Marijuana Brands Like ‘AK-47′ Harsh the Mellow of Upscale Potrepreneurs

PAGE ONE MARCH 19, 2010

By STEPHANIE SIMON

DENVER—Attorney Warren Edson would like to throttle the anonymous marijuana breeder who named a potent strain of weed “Green Crack.”

He’s not too fond, either, of those breeders who have given strains names like “Jack the Ripper,” “White Widow,” “AK-47″ and “Trainwreck.”

“How can I find them and strangle them?” Mr. Edson asks.

His beef: Mr. Edson is in the vanguard of an aggressive movement to make pot respectable —but decades of stoner culture keep dragging him down.

Stoner Culture Goes Up in Smoke

Medical marijuana is now legal in 15 states for patients suffering certain conditions, including, in Colorado, chronic pain. More than 60,000 Coloradans have doctor recommendations allowing them to buy marijuana; physicians are approving about 400 new patients a day. Pot shops have popped up all over, including at least 230 here in the Mile High City.

Many of the new dispensaries are dingy and cramped, with bars on the windows, psychedelic posters on the walls and a generally furtive feel.

But a growing number of potrepreneurs have gone upscale, investing as much as $100,000 to launch “wellness centers” that look like spas—and just happen to sell weed. This new breed of marijuana “pharmacist” is pushing hard to professionalize the industry.

That means promoting a voluntary code of conduct at odds with the traditional buck-the-system stoner culture. The new pot professionals look down on neon cannabis-leaf signs, wince at tie-dye Bob Marley posters, and cringe at the in-your-face swagger of the names traditionally used to differentiate varieties of marijuana.

The result: a brewing culture clash within the counterculture.

“Some people don’t even want to use words like ’stoner’ and ‘pothead,’ ”
complains Steve Bloom, co-author of “Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language and Life.” He has no patience for that: “We should embrace those terms. This is who we are.”

In 2000, Colorado voters amended the state constitution to let patients seek relief from pain, nausea and other symptoms by working with medical marijuana “caregivers.” For years, all was discreet. Then, last summer, the Board of Health approved a liberal definition of “caregiver,”
opening the door to commercial dispensaries. A few months later, President Barack Obama ordered federal narcotics agents to respect state medical-marijuana laws.

The green rush was on.

Self-styled pot experts like Nick Paul, an out-of-work handyman, found that for an investment of a couple thousand dollars, they could rent a small shop, set out a dozen strains of marijuana in glass jars and reinvent themselves as bud-tenders, ringing up $80,000 a month in sales.
An industry took root, complete with security consultants, zoning advisers, even crop insurance. Westword, a Denver weekly newspaper, hired a medical marijuana reviewer.

Then came the backlash, as communities statewide moved to restrict dispensaries. The most organized and wealthy of the potrepreneurs formed trade associations to protect their interests; they hired lawyers and lobbyists, pollsters and publicists. They also took a close look at their industry—and, in some cases, recoiled.

Wanda James, a recreational smoker, says some dispensaries have such a disreputable feel, “they put me on edge.”

Determined to show there’s a classier way, Ms. James and her husband run the Apothecary of Colorado in a gentrified building with exposed-brick walls, airy views and unimpeachable fellow tenants—architects, software engineers, wind-energy consultants. The bud bar is lined with live cannabis plants, and a gourmet goodie-shop stocks medicinal banana-nut bread and organic-vegan-gluten-free granola.

A couple blocks away, Shawna Brown creates a similar mood at Lotus Medical, an elegant space with muted lighting, antique furniture, massage tables and a Zen garden. This, she says, is the true face of medical marijuana: dignified care for patients with AIDS, cancer or other chronic illnesses.

“People need to wake up and see this in a different light,” Ms. Brown says. “It’s not about Pink Floyd posters all over the walls.”

But Ms. Brown says it is hard to convey that sober image and stave off a regulatory crackdown when other dispensaries glory in jaunty names (”Dr.
Reefer”), goofy slogans (”If you got the pain, I got the strain!”) and cut-rate deals (”Free med grab bag for the first 100 patients”).

“A doctor wouldn’t offer, ‘Buy one Vicodin, get one free,’” she says.
“It turns my stomach.”

To which her low-rent rivals respond: Mellow out.

“That’s very fancy-pantsy,” says Angel Macauley, who runs the Little Green Pharmacy, a tiny pot shop with Christmas lights strung through the window grate and an enormous cannabis-leaf sign.

“This is a simple business. Get them in and out, like a gas station,”
Ms. Macauley says, nibbling on Doritos. “I just want to make my money.”

Across town at the Denver Marijuana Medical Center, a bare-bones shop with a three-foot-high plastic alien in the window, owner Julian Sanchez is equally dismissive of attempts to pretty up the industry.

“They’re not doctors. They’re people selling marijuana,” he says. “It’s all a money game.”

A customer in a hooded sweatshirt—who calls himself Patrick and says he needs meds like Purple Urkle and Sour Diesel for chronic pain—chimes in. “You want us to sugarcoat it?” he asks. “Why?”

Economics may be behind the culture clash, with upscale joints trying to muscle out the competition, but there’s also a real philosophical debate.

Rob Corry, a lawyer and longtime marijuana activist, sympathizes with those who want a neon pot leaf on every corner. “Part of normalizing this is putting it in peoples’ faces and saying, ‘You’ll get used to it,’” he explains.

Yet Mr. Corry thinks the best way to win acceptance is to be discreet. He’d like to do away with the more violent names for marijuana strains. “Maybe we could come up with holistic names that reflect the wellness idea? Like Harmony,” he says. “I can tell you, ‘Trainwreck’ isn’t a great name for a medicine.”

Mr. Corry considers a moment. “Or maybe it is,” he says. “I’ve heard 75-year-old grandmas say, ‘I need more Trainwreck.’ ”

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

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Marijuana at the end of the St. Paddy’s Day rainbow: Arapahoe County to return two pounds of pot seized from caregiver last year

By Joel Warner, Wednesday, Mar. 17 2010 @ 6:54AM

Categories: Colorado Crimes

For this case, Rob Corry seemed to tap the luck of the Irish.

​Today should turn out to be a very good St. Paddy’s Day for Colin Olmstead, since he’ll be getting a whole lot of green from the Arapahoe County DA’s office — and by green, we mean two pounds of pot.

Olmstead had the marijuana confiscated in Arapahoe County over a year ago during a routine traffic stop. His lawyer, Rob Corry, says he was in the process of delivering the pot to a dispensary called Cherry Creek Health, but didn’t say anything about that to the officers at the time out of respect for his patients’ confidentiality.

Soon after, however, Corry says Olmstead told the authorities the contraband was medical marijuana and produced paperwork showing enough patients who had previously designated him their caregiver to justify the amount of weed he had in his car. While it apparently took them a while to make a decision, it was enough for the DA’s office to drop the case and return the cannabis.

“I think it’s a record for quantity of marijuana returned in Arapahoe County, which is generally regarded as one of the stricter judicial districts,” says Corry.

The marijuana hand-off is planned for 2 p.m. today at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, 13101 East Broncos Parkway in Centennial (Olmstead’s supporters are encouraged to wear green). Corry says they’ve been told the high-grade pot was shrink-wrapped soon after it was confiscated, so they’re hoping it’s still usable.

If it is, the plan is to distribute it to indigent patients — so lots of folks can enjoy the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

Colorado Congressman Jared Polis has sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice questioning a recent DEA raid against Colorado Medical Marijuana. Text of the letter follows:

Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

As you know, the voters in my state legalized marijuana for medical use, and placed it in the Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII § 14, the Supreme Law of Colorado.

The Department of Justice is to be commended for issuing formal written guidelines on October 19, 2009, clarifying that federal resources should not be used against people in compliance with state law in states that have legalized marijuana for medical use. When drug czar Gil Kerlikowske was in Colorado recently, I thanked him for taking this step and respecting our state law.

Despite these formal guidelines, Friday, February 12, 2010, agents from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided the home of medical marijuana caregiver Chris Bartkowicz in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. In a news article in the Denver Post the next day, the lead DEA agent in the raid, Jeffrey Sweetin, claimed “We’re still going to continue to investigate and arrest people…Technically, every dispensary in the state is in blatant violation of federal law,” he said. “The time is coming when we go into a dispensary, we find out what their profit is, we seize the building and we arrest everybody. They’re violating federal law; they’re at risk of arrest and imprisonment.”

Agent Sweetin’s comment that “we arrest everybody” is of great concern to me and to the people of Colorado, who overwhelmingly voted to allow medical marijuana. Coloradans suffering from debilitating medical conditions, many of them disabled, elderly, veterans, or otherwise vulnerable people, have expressed their concern to me that the DEA will come into medical marijuana dispensaries, which are legal under Colorado law, and “arrest everybody” present. Although Agent Sweetin reportedly has backed away from his comments, he has yet to issue a written clarification or resign, thus the widespread panic in Colorado continues.

On May 14, 2009, Mr. Kerlikowske told the Wall Street Journal: “Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.” The actions and commentary of Mr. Sweetin are inconsistent with the idea of not waging war against the people of the State of Colorado and are a contradiction to your agency’s laudable policies.

On Saturday, February 13, 2010, local Attorney Robert J. Corry, Jr. submitted a formal complaint regarding the raid and subsequent comments by Sweetin to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, which is tasked with investigating “waste, fraud, abuse, or misconduct” from Justice officials. I ask you to instruct the Inspector General to respond promptly to Mr. Corry’s complaint.

On Tuesday, February 17, 2010, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado David Gaouette announced his office’s intention to criminally charge Mr. Bartkowicz in federal court. In order to ensure a fair trial for Mr. Bartkowicz, it is essential that the confusion about administration policy caused by the actions of Agent Sweetin be resolved ahead of jury selection in this case. A response to Mr. Corry’s complaint would serve as point of clarity.

I again applaud your policy. Treating drug policy as primarily an issue of public health, as opposed to an issue of criminal justice, is both practical and compassionate and it has been and will continue to be supported by the voters of Colorado. Please clarify for me in writing whether Agent Sweetin’s comments that DEA will “arrest everybody” remains United States policy. Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Jared Polis
Member of Congress

cc: President Barack Obama

February 13, 2010

Office of the Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice
Investigations Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Room 4706
Washington, DC 20530

Re: Rogue DEA Agents Violation of Justice Department Formal Guidelines on Medical Marijuana

Dear Office of Inspector General:

Please treat this as a formal complaint of waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct against U.S. Department of Justice/Drug Enforcement Administration employees, agents, contractors, grantees, and others who executed an armed raid on or about February 12, 2010 in the Denver, Colorado area targeted against Medical Marijuana patients and caregivers.

These actions are in direct violation of the formal guidelines issued by the Department on October 19, 2009. http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/192. The caregiver involved in the raid, Chris Bartkowicz, remains incarcerated after being arrested by armed DEA agents.

The February 12 medical marijuana raid is reported in today’s Denver Post. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14393797. Rogue DEA agent Jeffrey Sweetin is quoted in the newspaper as opining “It’s not medicine.” Sweetin probably is not trained or educated as a physician, and his opinion is directly contrary to the will of Colorado’s citizens, a majority of whom decided in 2000 that marijuana is, in fact, medicine. Sweetin further comments in the article:

“We’re still going to continue to investigate and arrest people. … Technically, every dispensary in the state is in blatant violation of federal law,” he said. “The time is coming when we go into a dispensary, we find out what their profit is, we seize the building and we arrest everybody. They’re violating federal law; they’re at risk of arrest and imprisonment.”

Sweetin’s comments confirm that the individual involved was in compliance with the law, and confirm Sweetin’s attitude that compliance with the law and the Main Justice October 19, 2009 guidelines is impossible. Sweetin’s purpose in making these provocative and irresponsible comments that “we arrest everybody,” is to strike fear and panic in Colorado’s vulnerable and suffering medical marijuana patients.

The United States Government should stand for what is right and good; and must not be in the business of using assault rifles and jailhouse bars to intimidate powerless Coloradans suffering from debilitating medical conditions. The rogue DEA agents involved with the raid seized medical marijuana grown for and intended for patients suffering from debilitating medical conditions such as cancer, glaucoma, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and other debilitating medical conditions as provided in the Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII § 14.

The October 19, 2009 Department of Justice formal guidelines instruct federal agents to refrain from using any federal resources for the investigation and prosecution of individuals who are in compliance with state laws governing the medical use of marijuana. “As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals who are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” The guidelines evidence an appropriate respect for the voters’ will in states that have legalized medical marijuana.

The rogue agents, led by Sweetin, have ignored and disrupted the guidelines and the chain of command, and operate outside of their lawful authority. This action cannot stand, and must not be ignored by the Inspector General or Main Justice. The formal guidelines must be given meaning and effect.

If these rogue actions are ignored, this reprehensible ultra vires campaign of fear and intimidation will only intensify, and people will needlessly suffer. The agents involved must be fired, suspended, or appropriately disciplined so the message is sent that formal guidelines must be respected. The federal government must focus its resources on real crime.

Please contact me if you have additional questions. Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

Robert J. Corry, Jr.
Attorney at Law

cc:The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman, U.S. House Judiciary Committee
Members, U.S. House Judiciary Committee

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy
Chairman, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
Members, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee

Colorado Congressional Delegation

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/01/rob_corry_rips_apart_another_s.php

Rob Corry has his red pencil out again.

​Earlier this month, we told you about medical marijuana attorney Rob Corry’s shredding of Senator Chris Romer’s draft bill to regulate the medical marijuana industry — an action that predated Romer’s decision to withdraw the legislation.

Since then, Representative Tom Massey has taken on the chore of assembling a bill to regulate the industry — one likely to impose law-enforcement-supported doctor-patient limits that might destroy the dispensary business. As for Romer, he’s putting forward a bill focusing on the doctor-patient relationship — one Corry sees as problematic enough to warrant another line-by-line dissection, offered in a letter sent to all Colorado legislators earlier today.

Corry’s analysis of the latest bill, on view here, albeit with the occasional editorial cross-out, isn’t as vituperative as the first. Indeed, there are numerous passages to which he doesn’t object. Nevertheless, he sees the document as a whole as “a major shift in government interaction and oversight of the doctor-patient relationship, and there are probably parts of it that are unconstitutional.”

Exhibit A: Romer’s call for “a government-appointed board of overseers to second-guess a doctor’s recommendation,” Corry notes. “That has major constitutional implications.”

To illustrate this point, Corry applied the Romer bill’s provisions to abortion: Read that document here. And in his letter, he raises the specter of lawsuits should the legislation be passed as is. He writes:

My clients’ lives literally depend on their access to medicine, and SB 10-109 thus causes concern, and we hope you or the sponsors will consider modifying it or withdrawing it. If not, and it becomes law, it will cause unnecessary human suffering and may expose the State of Colorado to costly litigation.

There are certainly no shortage of medical marijuana issues that strike Corry as litigable. Note the question of whether employers can prevent licensed medical marijuana patients from using the substance under the provision of company drug policies — the subject of this Denver Post article.

“I’ve represented people on this issue,” Corry says — and while he hasn’t yet filed a lawsuit to address it, that’s because “we’ve usually been able to work things out with the employer.” Still, he continues, “I do think people might have an ADA-type claim based on disabilities from a debilitating medical condition.

“The constitution says employers don’t have to make accommodations for workplace use, which makes some sense,” he acknowledges. “But as far as what an employee does on his or her own time, that’s not the business of the employer” — not should someone’s boss be able to decide what prescriptions should be used to treat an individual’s ailments.

In the meantime, Corry says he hopes to work with legislators “to get the bad parts of Senator Romer’s bill taken out — and I’m going to be putting forward a package of legislative proposals in the next few days.”

Here’s guessing they’ll be significantly different from Romer’s.

The Letter:

Robert J. Corry, Jr.
Attorney at Law
~
600 Seventeenth Street
Suite 2800 South Tower
Denver, Colorado 80202
303-634-2244 telephone
303-260-6401 facsimile
Robert.Corry@comcast.net
www.RobCorry.com

VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL

January 25, 2010

Colorado State Senators
Colorado State Representatives
State Capitol
Denver, Colorado

Re: Preliminary Comments on Senate Bill 10-109
“Regulation of the Physician-Patient Relationship for Medical
Marijuana Patients”

Dear Senators and Representatives:
Thank you for considering these comments on SB 10-109, “Concerning
Regulation of the Physician-Patient Relationship for Medical Marijuana Patients,”
attached hereto.
I am a lawyer who has specialized in Medical Marijuana issues for
approximately nine years. Some of my relevant experience includes: I
successfully sued the State of Colorado and Department of Health over its illegal
five patient per caregiver limit, won an injunction against the City of Centennial
over its illegal prohibition of the constitutional right to medical marijuana, tried
seven felony criminal jury trials involving medical marijuana, have represented or
currently represent over 100 criminal defendants where medical marijuana was an
issue in the case, have represented or currently represent over 40 caregivers
assisting patients with their medical marijuana, have four appeals cases currently
in front of the Colorado Supreme Court or Colorado Court of Appeals involving
medical marijuana, and have persuaded courts to order the return of medical
marijuana to patients that was illegally seized by law enforcement, including
receiving marijuana grow equipment formerly held by the United States Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). I serve as Chairman of the Colorado
Wellness Association, the industry trade association designed to self-regulate the
medical marijuana industry without government “help,” and I also serve on the
2
Board of Sensible Colorado. I formerly served as Republican Majority Counsel to
the U.S. of Representatives Judiciary Committee and Constitution Subcommittee,
so I am familiar with the legislative process.
In helping to build the medical marijuana community over the years and
experiencing the personal joy of seeing this formerly underground illegal criminal
enterprise blossom into a legal, safe, job-creating, tax-paying, space-renting,
vibrant and beautiful economic force in a relatively short time, I am familiar with
the unique challenges facing patients, caregivers, and physicians who specialize in
this area. My clients’ lives literally depend on their access to medicine, and SB
10-109 thus causes concern, and we hope you or the sponsors will consider
modifying it or withdrawing it. If not, and it becomes law, it will cause
unnecessary human suffering and may expose the State of Colorado to costly
litigation.
In general, the top three problems facing Colorado’s Medical Marijuana
patients are (1) high cost; (2) choices and consistent supply; and (3) quality control
and labeling. Fundamental laws of supply and demand — which the legislature
cannot repeal — hold that only way to lower cost, on both a short- and long-term
basis, is to increase supply. SB 10-109 would significantly increase costs to
patients, thereby placing the most vulnerable of them in danger.
As a threshold legal matter, the medical use of marijuana is a constitutional
right, which cannot be limited by the legislature without amending the state
constitution. Your legislative oath of office to support the Colorado Constitution
(Colorado Constitution, Article V § 2) means the voters have entrusted you to
uphold all aspects of the Colorado Constitution, even those with which you may
personally disagree. We understand that the medical use of marijuana is
controversial, but majority rules, and the majority of Coloradoans placed this in
our constitution.
Specific subsection-by-subsection analysis follows. I am happy to meet
and confer with any elected official or staff member who wishes to discuss my
position in greater detail.
Section 1(1)(a)(I), page 2:
Requires physician and patient to have “a treatment or counseling
relationship,” which implies that patient must have seen the particular physician
on more than one occasion. If this is not the intent of the bill, it should be so
clarified. If it is the intent of the bill, then it should be modified as it conflicts with
the Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII § 14(1)(e), which defines and establishes
the qualifications of the physician as “a doctor of medicine who maintains, in good
standing, a license to practice medicine issued by the State of Colorado.” The
requirement of multiple physician visits is discriminatory against, and harmful to,
patients who have limited incomes, or those do not have medical insurance, or
3
those veterans who served our country in time of war and who see doctors
affiliated with the Veterans Administration which as a federal governmental
entity, has shown some hostility against permitting its physicians to advise
medical marijuana.
Section 1(1)(a)(II), page 2:
Requires physician to consult with the patient before the patient applies for
registry identification card. I have no objections to, or concerns with, this
subsection.
Section 1(1)(a)(III), page 2-3:
Requires physician to provide follow-up care and treatment, including
physical examinations, to determine efficacy of medical marijuana. There are
similar concerns as with Section 1(a)(I) above; it is discriminatory and harmful to
patients with limited incomes or without health insurance, to pay for these
additional government-mandated doctor visits. It is also inconsistent with the
Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII § 14.
Section 1(1)(b), page 3:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(1)(c)(I), page 3:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(1)(c)(II), page 3:
Requires physician to hold a valid, unrestricted license to practice
medicine. Some physicians are permitted to practice medicine on restricted
licenses for a variety of reasons dependent on case-by-case factors. Some of these
restrictions may result from a physician’s own illness or injury, incurred through
no fault of the physician. Physicians on restricted licenses are typically permitted
to practice medicine. Some are permitted to practice in their respective specialties,
which may be highly complex. If a physician on a restricted license can perform
heart surgery, for example, then surely she is qualified to advise patients re
medical marijuana. If a physician satisfies the definition in the Colorado
Constitution, Article XVIII § 14(1)(e), then the legislature cannot further restrict
this constitutional definition, which a physician with a restricted license satisfies.
Section 1(1)(c)(III), page 3:
Requires physician to hold a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
controlled substances registration and have a lifetime perfect record of never
4
having same suspended or revoked. First, a DEA controlled substance registration
is optional, not required to practice medicine in Colorado, and many M.D.s and
D.O.s in Colorado forego or give up such registration because they are familiar
with the damaging effects of addictive synthetic narcotics and are not interested in
prescribing controlled substances to their patients. This section would also
exclude a physician who had a one-day suspension of her DEA license 25 years
ago. Second, to permit the DEA any say in whether a Colorado physician is able
to recommend medical marijuana under our State’s Constitution invites
unconstitutional federal oversight of our state. The DEA continually demonstrates
its disrespect for the will of Colorado’s voters as regards medical marijuana by
working to undermine our medical marijuana law almost from its inception,
including the DEA setting the illegal Five Patient limit, according to sworn court
testimony of a Colorado Department of Health official in the 2007 LaGoy v. Ritter
case in Denver District Court, which I litigated and which struck down the DEA’s
Five Patient limit. The State of Colorado must not provide this potent weapon to a
hostile federal police force.
Section 1(d), page 3:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(e), page 3:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(e)(2), page 3:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(2), page 3:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(2)(a), page 4:
Requires registry card to bear the name of the physician certifying the
debilitating medical condition, and permits the confidential [sic] registry
containing the physician’s name to be communicated outside of the confidential
[sic] registry as a device to refer physicians to the Colorado Board of Medical
Examiners. This “witch hunt” provision is unconstitutional. Colorado
Constitution, Article XVIII § 14(c)(2) provides that “No physician shall be denied
any rights or privileges for the acts authorized by this subsection.” It also provides
that all information about physicians remains confidential. Article XVIII §
14(3)(a). This means that any physician is free to advise as many patients as she
chooses, and cannot be legally denied any rights or privileges, i.e., the license to
practice medicine, for doing so. Further, requiring a single physician’s name on
5
the card makes no sense. As to any given patient, there could be many doctors
who, through the years of the patient’s history, diagnose the patient with a
debilitating medical condition or conditions. There is no legal requirement that a
patient disclose his complete medical history to the Health Department that issues
the cards. Requiring the physician’s name on the card also invites unnecessary
disclosure and further witch hunts by law enforcement that may come into contact
with the registry cards, and which have shown little restraint in persecuting
courageous doctors who try to do the right thing by their patients.
Section 1(2)(b), page 4:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(2)(c), page 4:
Eliminates confidentiality of registry card. This is unconstitutional. The
Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII § 14(3)(a) provides that the registry is
confidential. In 2001, the Legislature passed a criminal statute creating a
misdemeanor criminal offense for any person, including law enforcement or
government officials, who discloses information within the medical marijuana
registry without the patient’s consent. C.R.S. § 18-18-406.3.
Section 1(2)(d), page 4:
Requires physician “recommendation” [sic] to be on a state-prescribed
form. The Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII § 14(1)(j) defines “written
documentation” as “a statement signed by the patient’s physician or copies of the
patient’s pertinent medical records” as the requirements to obtain a registry card.
Thus, a patient need only submit his medical records to confirm his diagnosis of a
debilitating medical condition and physician advice, in order to obtain the registry
card. Furthermore, physician advice need not even be written and can be verbal.
The constitution only requires that “[t]he patient was advised by his or her
physician … that the patient might benefit from the medical use of marijuana,”
The first jury trial in Colorado that used the constitutional affirmative defense of
medical marijuana involved verbal advice by a physician. See People v.
Margenau, Gunnison District Court Case No. 05CR42. The jury acquitted my
client Ryan Margenau of all felony counts even though he did not have a shred of
paper reflecting this physician advice. The physician testified at trial that he
verbally advised Mr. Margenau, the judge and conservative rural jury accepted
that as a valid defense, Mr. Margenau walked out of court with all of his marijuana
and grow equipment, and the prosecution did not waste time and taxpayer monies
appealing the verdict, because the result was legally obvious and there was no
error by the District Court in permitting the defense based on verbal advice.
Further, SB10-109 uses incorrect terms. No where does the constitution refer to a
“recommendation” by a physician. All the constitution requires is that the
physician provide “advice” that marijuana “might” benefit the patient, or that the
6
condition “may” be alleviated by the use of marijuana. Colorado Constitution,
Article XVIII § 14(1)(a)(II); § 14(2)(a)(II); § 14(c)(I); § 14(c)(II); § 14(3)(b)(I).
There is no requirement of a “recommendation” in the constitutional provision. It
only requires physician “advice,” and that “advice,” verbal or otherwise, need only
be that the patient “might” or “may” benefit from marijuana. Thus the voters
engraved in stone a sensible standard, permitting access to medical marijuana,
perhaps because the concept of a leafy plant is not offensive to a majority of
mature adult voters. Unfortunately this bill tightens the voters’ expressed desire to
an unconstitutional degree. Physician “advice” under this constitutional provision
is not a written “prescription,” as Attorney General John Suthers concluded in a
formal opinion holding that medical marijuana sales can be taxed. Colorado
Attorney General Formal Opinion No. 09-06 (November 16, 2009.)
Section 1(2)(e), page 4:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection, other than
concerns expressed above regarding the definition of “bona fide physician-patient
relationship.”
Section 1(2)(f), page 5:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(2)(g), page 5:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(2)(h), page 5:
Provides that the Department has the authority to impose “sanctions” for
physicians who violate this bill, including revocation or suspension of the
physician’s “privilege” to make medical marijuana “recommendations.”
Government bureaucrats in this Department have no authority to revoke any
privilege held by physicians, to whom the voters provided strong immunity in
relation to advice given to medical marijuana patients. Please refer to comments
above, detailing the unambiguous command of the Colorado Constitution, Article
XVIII § 14(c)(2) that “No physician shall be denied any rights or privileges for the
acts authorized by this subsection.”’ Please also refer to comments above
detailing that this is not a “recommendation,” it is “advice.” Even federal appeals
courts have determined that physicians are immune under the First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution for advice given to a patient. Conant v. Walters, 309 F.3d
629 (9th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 124 S.Ct. 387 (2003) (physician has First
Amendment right to advise patients re medical marijuana and cannot be
prosecuted or otherwise have license affected).
Section 1(3)(a), page 5:
7
Requires that a physician “certify to the department” that a patient may
benefit from the medical use of marijuana. The constitution does not require the
physician to have any communication whatsoever with the health department or
any other government bureaucracy. All communications between the physician
and patient are confidential and privileged, and it is the patient who holds this
privilege and decides whether to waive it and seek optional state registration.
Increasing numbers of patients opt to cut out the health department out altogether,
as patients suffer the State’s four month-delay in issuing registry cards, and as
patients continue to rack up court victories with physician advice and no registry
cards, and wellness centers correctly accept physician advice alone. By its own
delays, excessive fees, and hoarding millions of dollars in patient funds, the State
is rendering registry cards irrelevant and superfluous to the process.
Section 1(3)(b), page 5-6:
Requires physicians maintain separate record-keeping system for patients
for whom physician has “recommended” medical marijuana and will turn over
these “separate but equal” patient records to the government upon demand so
bureaucrats can go through peoples’ private medical records. Such an intrusive
provision does not belong in the United States of America.
Section 1(3)(c)(I), page 6:
Prohibits a physician from being compensated for his or her work, except
by the patient directly. This is a requirement that no doctor in any other specialty
must follow. Most doctors are compensated by the hospitals in which they
practice, and doctors rarely collect money directly from their patients. Typically,
in all areas of medicine payments for medical services are made to third parties,
receptionists, or cashiers.
Section 1(3)(c)(II), page 6:
Prohibits a physician from offering a discount to patients. Under this
section, physicians are prohibited from helping poor or disadvantaged people,
disabled veterans, homeless, and others on limited incomes, unless the doctors
charge a homeless man the same price as a millionaire. We thought the problem
was that docs were making “too much” money from medical marijuana. There is
nothing wrong with discounts for suffering patients. Low-cost or discounted
medical services should be encouraged, not prohibited. This bill hurts suffering
people who happen to benefit from marijuana. But doctors could still legally hand
out Oxycontin like candy, for free.
Section 1(3)(III), page 6:
8
Prohibits a physician from seeing patients at locations where medical
marijuana is distributed. The same standard, applied to any other drug, would
eliminate all hospitals where drugs are distributed, essentially every hospital in
Colorado nearly of which have their own pharmacies in the same building under
the same roof. Medical marijuana caregivers are happy to comply with reasonable
regulations (although we are a freedom-loving bunch and will regulate ourselves
better than government can), but should not be held to a standard with which no
hospital could comply.
Section 1(3)(IV), page 6:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(4), page 6-7:
Creates the “Medical Marijuana Review Board,” which will intrude upon
and interfere with confidential physician decisions regarding individual patients
under the age of 21. The specter of these vulnerable young patients facing a
Government board of overseers for “permission” to access his or her
constitutionally-protected, physician-recommended medicine does not belong in a
free country. This Board’s very existence is unconstitutional.
Section 1(5), page 7:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 1(6), page 8:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection, other than to
point out that the Legislature’s April 20, 2009 transfer of $258,735.00 in patient
funds to the general fund is probably unconstitutional under the Colorado
Constitution Article XVIII § 14(3)(i) which allows the fees to be collected to
administer the registry card program, not to enrich government’s coffers for
general pork projects. Colorado’s suffering medical marijuana patients are not the
Legislature’s personal piggy bank. These monies should be refunded to patients.
Section 2, page 8:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection other than those
stated above regarding the existence of the “Medical Marijuana Review Board.”
Section 3, page 9:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection other than those
stated above.
9
Section 4, page 9:
I have no objections to, or concerns with, this subsection.
Section 5, page 9:
Safety clause. There is no evidence whatsoever that this bill is “necessary
for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety.” As of
September 30, 2009, over 800 physicians in Colorado have advised patients that
marijuana might benefit them. No negative impacts on public peace, health, and
safety have resulted from these recommendations. In fact, this bill would harm
public health and safety for all of the reasons detailed above.
In conclusion, in working to help build this community over the past nine
years, I understand that marijuana remains a controversial medicine, although that
is rapidly shifting with even the conservative American Medical Association
accepting it. Luckily, the majority rules, and Colorado’s compassionate voters are
more numerous than those who would deny others this miracle medicine.
SB 10-109 is larger and more significant than just medical marijuana. It
creates unprecedented governmental intrusion into the sacrosanct physicianpatient
relationship. The bill opens the door to further government oversight of
doctors in all fields. In conceptualizing SB 10-109, it may be helpful to consider
another controversial medical issue, abortion. Using SB 10-109 as a model, we
have drafted proposed legislation, attached, for regulating the physician-patient
relationship in the abortion industry. If SB 10-109 were to become law and
withstand legal challenge, then the Colorado Legislature would set forth a national
blueprint for further regulation of that industry. The government “Abortion
Review Board” for abortion patients under 21 years of age, closely modeled after
this bill, would be very interesting to watch.
Thank you for considering these comments. Please call me at 303-634-
2244 or email me at Robert.Corry@comcast.net with any questions.
Sincerely,
Robert J. Corry, Jr.
Attorney and Counselor at Law
Attachments:
SB 10-109
Model Legislation “Concerning Regulation of the Physician-Patient Relationship
for Abortion Patients”

Rob Corry to state health department: Where has all the medical marijuana registration money gone?
By Michael Roberts in Follow That Story

Tue., Jan. 19 2010 @ 9:23AM
Bet the folks at the health department love getting mail from Rob Corry.

​Attorney Rob Corry, one of the most aggressive medical marijuana advocates on the current scene, isn’t about to ease up as the Colorado legislature prepares to consider legislation on the subject.

His latest gambit? Earlier today, he sent an open-records request to the Colorado Department of Health relating to revenue generated by medical marijuana. Via e-mail, he writes that the state has received “conservatively $1.7 million… from suffering patients paying for the privilege of waiting four months for a paper card that doesn’t fit in normal wallets and falls apart in one wash.” He wants to know where the money has gone.

In the letter, Corry documents 19,691 patients who received registry cards between June 2001 and September 2009, but that figure is clearly out of date. As Joel Warner reported on Monday, the health department recently set a record, receiving 1,650 applications in a single day.

Read Corry’s letter below:

Dear Custodian of Records:
We hereby request, pursuant to the Colorado Open Records Act, C.R.S. §24-72-201 et seq., any and all “writings,” under C.R.S. § 24-72-202(8), and public records,” under C.R.S. § 24-72-202(6)(a)(I), relating to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Medical Marijuana Registry financial records.

According to the CDPHE website, as of September 30, 2009, a total of 19,691 patients have applied for registry cards since June 2001, when the registry commenced. Multiplying this number by the $90.00 fee means the State has taken in at least $1.7 MILLION from suffering patients. This number is quite conservative, as there have been thousands of additional applicants between September 30, 2009 and the present. Additionally, for years the fee was $110.00. Given the CDPHE’s admitted four-month severe delay in issuance of cards to patients, CDPHE’s “mission creep” in compiling these unnecessary and intrusive statistics, and evidently scrutinizing physician recommendation data and referring allegedly too-prolific physicians to the Board, serious questions are raised as to the allocation of the patients’ funds.

This CORA request includes bank statements, accounting, financial spread sheets, analyses, memoranda, and other documents reflecting any and all funds or monies received by the CHPHE for Medical Marijuana Registry cards covering the period from the inception of the registry program in approximately 2000 through the present day. This request includes, but is not limited to, any financial statements or other records reflecting the number of patients applying for the card and paying the fee, and the total amount of funds and fees received by CDPHE paid by patients, caregivers, and others for the registry card, as well as specifics regarding how the current $90.00 fee funds the operation of the program, accounting of all costs and staff, whether the current $90.00 fee charged to patients is excessive or insufficient to fund the program, and the amount of funds leftover after this fee is collected from patients, and how the CDPHE and/or the Colorado Legislature arrived at the figure of $258,735.00 that the Legislature deducted from the medical marijuana cash fund and diverted to the general fund on April 20, 2009, and how the Legislature selected that particular date to take these fees away from the administration of the registry program.

Pursuant to C.R.S. § 24-72-203(3)(a) and § 24-72-205(1), please make the records available for inspection and copying as soon as possible. If you decide to withhold from inspection any part of the requested records, please provide a written statement of the grounds for denial pursuant to C.R.S. § 24-72-305(6).

Please email Law Clerk Travis Simpson of my staff at travisbsimpson@gmail.com or me at Robert.Corry@comcast.net or call 303-634- 2244 if you have any questions and to arrange for inspection and/or copying of the records. If it is easier, please make electronic copies and forward to my office. Before incurring any costs, please advise me. Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,

Robert J. Corry, Jr.

cc. Travis Simpson, Law Clerk

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-romer/colorado-medical-marijuan_b_417488.html

Senator Romer: “So my attempts to bring medical marijuana out of the shadows through a complex regulatory structure are now over.”

Death of Romer’s Medical Marijuana Bill Presents Meaningful Opportunity For Quality Reform
By Jessica & Robert Corry

The legislation would have required Coloradans to inform on each other Soviet-style. It sought to forfeit power to the federal government at the expense of rights afforded under the Colorado Constitution. And it advocated for industry rules that would have turned law-abiding entrepreneurs into marked targets for unrepentant thieves.

The bill deserved to die. And on Saturday evening, it was pronounced dead by its own author.

Amidst the current and often passionate debate over medical marijuana regulation, Denver Democrat Chris Romer was never able to move the proposal beyond relentless criticism coming from all sides. Shredded by opponents, questioned by reporters, mocked by constitutional scholars, and ignored by law enforcement officials, it also faced the threat of a mountain of lawsuits had it even dared to pass.

Still, as Senator Romer and his fellow lawmakers prepared to kick off the 2010 legislative session this week, it promised to play a starring role in the Capitol’s opening days. Thousands of medical marijuana activists organized to descend upon Denver for a Thursday lobbying day. Then Senator Romer announced he was pulling the bill.

While we sincerely applaud him for making the right decision, and have no reason to believe he has acted at any step of the process with anything other than the best of intentions, we remain deeply concerned about his fundamental misunderstanding of why his bill failed before it was ever even introduced. His response suggests he confuses anecdotes with documented trends, and emotion with fact.

“Without a patient face like Janice Beecher or an effective lobbying and education campaign by the MMJ community, I see more and more obstacles to any editorial, bi-partisan or even limited partisan support for a set of common sense rules,” he concluded on the Huffington Post’s Denver site. LINK HERE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-romer/colorado-medical-marijuan_b_417488.html

As Romer went on to explain, Beecher is a Colorado medical marijuana patient who contacted him months ago to express concern about the explosive growth in medical marijuana dispensaries following favorable legal developments at the state and federal levels. As he tells it, her compelling personal story inspired him to take action, ultimately resulting in his bill.

“Unfortunately for Janice–and thousands of patients like her–access to sophisticated care is being jeopardized because both sides in this debate cannot seem to grasp the importance of finding common ground.”

While Romer courageously entered the lion’s den of his opponents multiple times to engage in respectful dialogues, his specific proposal made finding common ground nearly impossible. (See Mr. Corry’s 12-page in-depth analysis of the bill by clicking here: LINK http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2010/01/rob_corrys_line-by-line_shredd.php). For starters, as a Senate bill, it violated state rules mandating that tax bills originate in the House. It sought changes in tax policy that violated the state’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). It removed a federally granted Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for many patients. And that’s just a few of its technical problems.

As we’ve publicly noted, it also neglected genuine opportunities for worthy regulatory changes in favor of imposing new rules that would have inevitably created a whole new host of issues. As our above-mentioned analysis concluded, “In general, the top three problems facing Medical Marijuana patients are (1) high cost of medicine; (2) choices and consistent supply of medicine; and (3) quality control and labeling of medicine.”

Romer could have put forth a proposal that would have gotten to a major culprit behind these woes, namely by encouraging increased supply as a way to lower costs and incentivize quality competition. But his proposal did just the opposite.

Troubling on multiple levels, it created a cumbersome administrative structure that granted government bureaucrats almost endless discretion to restrict patient and caregiver access to those who could prove “good moral character.” For those hoping that open dispensaries, the process was even more bizarre, requiring them to provide fingerprints ultimately passed on to the FBI, as well as a “personal history information concerning the applicant’s qualifications.” Allowing government to pick winners and losers to such a degree is nothing short of Communist.

While Senator Romer attributes greed and ignorance to the lack of support behind his bill, this assessment couldn’t be further from the truth. The vast majority of dispensary owners see responsible regulation as a way to gain legitimacy as an industry. They view commonsense changes as a way to protect their own financial interests, creating a level playing field from which all participants compete with the same set of rules.

As Senator Romer now pledges to revamp his legislative strategy, we hope to work with him in whatever way possible. We owe it to our clients, our friends, our neighbors, and even ourselves as invested taxpayers, however, to fight any future proposal that unjustly restricts constitutional rights, patient access, or free market competition.

On Sunday, Senator Romer wrote that he hoped to “buy a few weeks” to mobilize patients in support of his latest strategy. We’d encourage him to shift his focus a bit, first evaluating why his original bill failed to ever gain any sort of measurable support from the tens of thousands of Colorado voters who are medical marijuana patients or caregivers.

He now hopes to introduce two bills. The first, a Senate bill, will “deal solely with the need for a meaningful doctor patient relationship to get a MMJ referral and the creation of a 24-hour per day registry for patients.”

In an effort to spare Senator Romer more wasted energy, we caution him to avoid drafting another bill that rushes to impose arbitrary and emotional requirements on all doctor-patient relationships as a way to somehow address the abuses of a handful of doctors who have failed to use proper restraint in recommending patients for the state’s medical marijuana registry. In fact, legislative action may be an inappropriate response together, with health care licensing officials now investigating and exploring disciplinary options against specific physicians accused of abusing the system.

In the second bill Senator Romer announced Sunday, he says he will attempt to impose a five patient per caregiver cap. His justification here is downright incoherent. His last bill would have allowed dispensaries to serve over 1,000 patients. A few days later, he wants to handicap caregivers by imposing a five-patient restriction. At minimum, the proposal would make operating a operating a viable dispensary more difficult and more expensive. Even while proposing this, he goes on to say, “I will continue to fight for clinics to serve patients like Janice, but I am getting increasingly skeptical that either side understands her needs.”

He wants to fight for clinics, but then significantly limit their legal ability to operate. He wants to fight for patients but then wants to drive up costs, decrease centralized access, and increase security concerns for many of our state’s most physically vulnerable residents. The strategy doesn’t make sense and could ultimately drive more patients to obtain their medicine from the black market.

Any arbitrary five-patient limit is also likely to fail in court as an arbitrary restriction on a constitutionally-protected right. Senator Romer need look no further than the experience of the State Health Board, a body that has seen its repeated efforts to impose a similar limit on caregivers struck down over the state’s own administrative violations. If wise, Romer should review court transcripts to hear the scolding the state’s attorneys received over their pompous disregard of patient needs and constitutional rights. LINK HERE: http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2009/11/live_blogging_the_denver_distr.php

In closing his announcement Sunday, Senator Romer lamented the death of his bill. “What a shame,” he wrote. “We really could have set the national model for medical marijuana including research and sophisticated evidence-based medicine, but the same old fight on both sides–and the failed status quo–appears to have prevailed.”

Senator Romer, if your goal is truly to create a model for other states to follow, don’t destroy viable opportunities or incentives for patients and caregivers to interact in a well-lit system that leaves violent drug dealers scurrying for black markets elsewhere.

Jessica Corry is a Denver land use attorney with Hoban & Feola, LLC. Robert J. Corry, Jr., is a Denver attorney specializing in medical marijuana and serves as chairman of the Colorado Wellness Association, a business organization devoted to improving self-regulation of medical marijuana dispensaries. Together, the Corrys represent several medical marijuana patients and caregivers.

January 7, 2010

The Honorable Chris Romer
Colorado Senate
Denver, Colorado

Re: Preliminary Comments on Draft Text (Dec. 30, 2009) Regulate Medical Marijuana

Dear Senator Romer:

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments to your draft “Regulate Medical Marijuana” bill. I enjoyed our appearance on KBDI January 5, and am encouraged you committed to consider significant modifications to your draft, which cannot be supported by any serious patient or caregiver in Colorado’s Medical Marijuana community. On a personal note, though I appreciate our collegial and respectful dialogue, your obvious diplomatic skills are no replacement for substance. My clients’ lives literally depend on their access to medicine, and we will fight any government proposal that would restrict supply and raise costs, such as this proposal.

In general, the top three problems facing Medical Marijuana patients are (1) high cost of medicine; (2) choices and consistent supply of medicine; and (3) quality control and labeling of medicine. As an economist, you know that the only way to lower cost, on both a short- and long-term basis, is to increase supply. Your proposed bill would significantly increase costs to patients, thereby placing the most vulnerable of them in danger. Your bill would reduce the selection and consistency of medicine, driving most of the supply back to the dangerous criminal underground. Your bill does nothing to address quality and labeling of medicine, which the community is already developing faster and more effectively than government could for this unique community formed under slowly-clearing clouds of Prohibition.

Patients are caregivers are rightfully concerned with your stated motivation, as quoted in both the Boulder Daily Camera and Denver Post, to put half of Colorado’s existing, taxpaying, job-creating, economically viable, caregivers “out of business.” There is currently a shortage of caregivers, and we hope that eventually the supply and availability of medicine can increase to create significant decrease in price.

Specifically, the bill suffers from numerous deficiencies as follows. These comments are of a preliminary nature only, and given more time to study your 39-page proposal I might locate other defects. I thought it preferable to highlight the main problems rather than take the time to develop a comprehensive analysis since you indicated you were contemplating changes anyway.

Page 3, Section 1. Legislative Declaration:

The first sentence incorrectly limits the benefits of medical marijuana to treating “pain.” Although pain relief is one major benefit of medical marijuana, many scholarly studies, physicians, and patients report that medical marijuana can actually improve or cure certain medical conditions, and prevent other conditions, rather than merely relieving pain. Medical marijuana is more than a band-aid for many patients. There are many other reasons for medical marijuana in addition to pain relief, and the declaration should reflect this significant fact.

Page 3-8, Medical Marijuana Licensing Authority:

In these times where our state government is literally bankrupt, we cannot afford to create an additional unnecessary layer of bureaucracy that will exist perpetually and carve out an imaginary justification for its own existence like a parasite, sucking tax dollars for generations. The Department of Health is already bloated, obstinate, hostile, and inefficient enough with documented misinformation about the average age of patients and its inexcusable and illegal delay of over 120 days in issuing simple registry cards and overcharging patients $90.00 for the privilege of waiting nearly a half a year for a card that expires in a year. Patients cannot afford another hostile army of bureaucrats whose mission is to undermine the Colorado Constitution.

Page 4, Line 12:

Improperly delegates too much power and discretion to local authorities on an issue of statewide concern. Local governments have already demonstrated an extreme hostility to suffering patients and their needs, instead opting, ostrich-like, to try to hide from the future. Local governments, with some positive exceptions, have generally shown by their own arrogant and illegal actions (see Frasher v. City of Centennial, Arapahoe District Court 2009, which I litigated, successfully striking down an illegal local prohibition on medical marijuana) that they cannot be trusted to exercise any reasonable discretion on this issue. Of course locals should retain neutral zoning power as to location of businesses, but nothing more. Giving these heartless local bureaucracies any more power is an invitation to them to continue to discriminate against suffering patients. For example, the City Council of Westminster, Colorado callously opted to shutter the doors of existing dispensaries while flatly refusing a courteous written engraved invitation to even take 15 minutes out of their day to personally visit the viable businesses they destroyed. Most other city council members are similarly arrogant. There are exceptions: some Denver City Council members have actually visited the businesses they seek to regulate, and you have as well, which we appreciate.

Page 4, Line 21:

Requires a public hearing on ALL complaints (and there will be some, especially when opponents (or even business competitors) discover this burdensome procedural hammer) made against a clinic or grower licensee, thus burying licensees and the government in expensive perpetual litigation. Believe it or not, there is a shortage of real lawyers who are competent and experienced in dealing with medical marijuana-related court or administrative proceedings. My law firm is too busy already.

Page 6, Line 9:

Criminal background checks as a requirement for serving as a caregiver are unconstitutional and unreasonably restrict patient choice of caregiver. Pursuant to the Colorado Constitution, Article XVIII § 14, the voters already defined a caregiver as an adult with a significant responsibility for the well-being of a patient, period. Not an adult who has lived an error-free life. Not an ordained saint, although some caregivers should qualify for that designation. The practical reality is that many caregivers, since they are knowledgeable in how to cultivate and produce marijuana, picked up criminal convictions at some point in their lives. These people now seek to turn their valuable knowledge into something that helps suffering patients. They should be welcomed to the business world, not shut out in the cold.

Page 7, Lines 9-15:

The Devil’s Dictionary definition of “morality” is “that sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, may actually be having a good time.” The case against medical marijuana closely relates to this irrational mentality, typically held by those individuals so dissatisfied with their own empty lives that they actually obsess about the manner in which other unknown people alleviate their physical conditions. Most of the complaints and concerns regarding medical marijuana relate to the signage on the physical locations themselves. This can be attributed mostly to a very vocal minority of fanatical biddies, grandmothers, and other Communist nanny-types who are somehow “offended” that some suffering people use a 10,000-year-old Old and New Testament-recognized scientifically-proven holistic organic plant remedy instead of synthetic chemicals and pills. Until these poisonous haters die off (from their own narcotic and alcohol addictions that could be cured by the plant they hate), as an elected politician, you probably still have to put some grease on these very irritatingly squeaky wheels. Thus, a reasonable restriction on signage is probably an area that this community would reluctantly compromise on and which government could properly regulate. Your bill does the opposite by allowing unfettered advertising. We should discuss some acceptable compromises in this area along the lines of the tobacco industry, which agreed to limit its own ability to advertise.

Page 7, Lines 16-27:

This section provides that a person cannot refuse, even under the right to remain silent against self-incrimination, to provide testimony to the apparently god-like medical marijuana licensing authority. The Colorado State Legislature can never repeal the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and should not even waste the court’s time in attempting to do so. I will file a lawsuit against this bill in the unlikely event it becomes law over the objections of a thousand screaming patients, but I would rather have a challenge instead of a slam-dunk.

Page 8, lines 4-5:

This permits the all-powerful licensing authority to deny a license “in its discretion.” For the reasons earlier expressed, government cannot be trusted to exercise any real discretion regarding medical marijuana, or the power to deny a license on a whim, regarding an alternative medicine it abhors.

Page 10, Lines 1-7:

This requires any growing location to post a sign on the planned grow location visible to all in the neighborhood, including children. This is ridiculous. This is an advertisement and open invitation for children and teenagers to break in and steal the marijuana they think might be inside, and get shot or killed in the process. This provision is dangerous and unenforceable, and must be eliminated. Grow operations must be as discrete and unknown as possible. Any alternative rule harms children and infringes on public peace and safety. No grower worth anything will comply with this. This requirement would drive grow operations back underground, all for the enjoyment and profit of foreign criminal drug cartels. I expect the prison-industrial complex, led by Warden Suthers, to strongly support this harmful provision, since it is full employment for them and their government-funded satraps.

Page 10, Lines 8-11:

This allows so-called “parties in interest” and other nattering self-important neighborhood nabobs to subpoena, cross-examine, and inquire into confidential medical information. This has no place in the United States of America, still a free country.

Page 11, Lines 22-23:

This would allow neighborhood residents to exercise a veto over location of an existing or new dispensary or caregiver operation on their whim. It gives effect to irrational prejudices against marijuana and must be eliminated.

Page 11, Lines 24-26:

This would allow the government, never a good assessor of supply and demand (see the Former Soviet Union with its interminable bread lines), to deny licensure of existing or new caregivers if there are already adequate (in the judgment of government) suppliers in the area. This is anticompetitive and creates government-imposed marijuana monopolies. Ironically, this is antithetical to the purpose of the bill in that it locks in the early movers (who are presumably offensive) and excludes the newer entrepreneurs who seek to bring their business acumen to bear on this burgeoning industry. If the existing players are somehow offensive, why would this bill lock in their market share in perpetuity and create a government-sponsored syndicate that excludes competition, all in the worst tradition of mob-style crime families?

Page 12, Lines 12-13:

Allows the government, with all of its evident knowledge about marijuana and the medical needs of each patient, to create a “cap” on the number of patients a particular caregiver can serve. This is illegal, and a violation of the constitutional right of the patient to determine his or her own caregiver. It would also harm the most vulnerable of patients who already have difficulties obtaining medicine at a low cost.

Page 13, Lines 10-12:

Grants the government the subjective discretion to deny a clinic or grower license based on the “character” of the applicant or its officers, if the government thinks that violations of this statute might occur. This allows petty government bureaucrats to completely shut down the medical marijuana supply chain on their imaginary whims, and if past actions are any guide, they will abuse every inch of power this statute gives them, and it gives them miles.

Page 13, Lines 13-18:

Again permits government to deny a license based on its own assessment as to whether local customers are already served by existing businesses, thus locking in a marijuana monopoly. Government as Al Capone. See comments above.

Page 14, line 10:

Prohibits government from issuing a license to “a person who is not of good moral character.” This would apply to growing licenses and clinic licenses. It is unlikely that Dr. James Dobson or The Pope will apply for these licenses, therefore government could deny any other fallible human sinner a license and effectively choke off the entire supply, or more probably just drive it back underground. The judgment of “good moral character” is also based partially on business persons/competitors and neighbors within the area, as determined by the local government. So both the state and local governments get to determine the “good moral character” issue. No real adult human being can survive such scrutiny.

Page 14, lines 19-22:

Requires 100% of officers, directors and 90% of stockholders in any business also be of “good moral character.” No company in the United States could meet such a standard. No legislature in the United States could meet such a standard. No city council in the United States could meet this standard. No governor’s office could either. Marijuana should not be held to standards no other entity can satisfy.

Page 15, Lines 4-5:

This prohibits a peace officer, or any member of a peace officer’s family, from obtaining a clinic or grow license. As a criminal defense lawyer, I know that a minority of police officers have difficulty complying with the “good moral character” requirements in this bill, but most of them are upstanding moral members of our community. If we do not trust police officers, or even more strangely and arbitrarily, their families to help suffering people who need marijuana, then who can we trust? One of my favorite dispensary clients has a son who serves as a Sheriff’s Deputy, and there is no problem whatsoever with this situation. This bizarre provision makes no sense, like the rest of this bill.

Page 15, line 23:

Requires clinic and grower licensees to provide fingerprints along with “personal history information concerning the applicant’s qualifications” to obtain a license. Like the “good moral character” requirements critiqued above, this would only inspire local witch hunts against medical marijuana caregivers who already have enough problems with conducting this controversial business. As for “qualifications,” under this standard, a first-time beer brewer such a John Hickenlooper probably would have been denied his permission to brew beer, lacking any “qualifications” in this regard, so the man you may succeed as Mayor might have been denied the business platform that launched him to the Mayor’s Office in the first place. Someday, a dispensary owner may rise to be Mayor but your bill would deprive the community of such new innovative career-changers such as Mayor Hickenlooper.

Page 16, line 3:

Requires the State of Colorado to forward fingerprints, names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and other identifying data of growers and clinics to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for a federal background check. This makes the state government into a federal snitch, an unprecedented development in the history of separation of powers in the United States of America. With this extreme requirement, no self-respecting clinic or grower will ever comply with this law, making it even more unenforceable then current criminal prohibition against recreational marijuana, widely ridiculed by the populace. The State of Colorado should be protecting its citizens from the depredations of foreign sovereigns such as the federal government, which despite President Obama’s pronouncements, continues its hostility against the voters of the State of Colorado and our firm desire that medical marijuana be legal. Your earlier proposal that the Colorado Attorney General be required to defend Coloradoans persecuted by the federal government was a step in the right direction and should be re-inserted into your bill. But this proposal goes the opposite direction. Obviously the FBI cannot be trusted to respect state prerogatives regarding medical marijuana.

Page 16, lines 25-27:

Prohibits a clinic or grower from being within 500 feet of a school or day care center. There should be no arbitrary distance limit from schools and day care centers, which would effectively ban the operations in many parts of the state. There is no documented case of any child ever purchasing or obtaining medical marijuana from a dispensary. A distance limit accomplishes nothing, as children are mobile and can travel to dispensaries, if that were a problem which it is not. It is unclear what “problem” a distance limit from schools “solves.” Why is 499 feet from a school unacceptable but 501 feet acceptable? There is no answer to this rhetorical question, i.e., the very definition of arbitrary. It is also unfortunate that the State Legislature is asked to act as a local zoning board and asked to substitute its judgment over local zoning decisions. Your Senate District is close to 9th and Corona streets in Denver, which has a liquor store and a pharmacy directly across the street from a public elementary school, with no documented problems for decades.

Page 17, lines 3-5:

Prohibits a clinic or grower from being 20 miles from a Colorado state border. This is insane. It could deny citizens in Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Sterling, Burlington, Trinidad, Cortez, and other people and communities that happen to be close to the arbitrary state border lines, access to medicine. This seems utterly arbitrary, like most of these distance requirements. Are we protecting citizens from other states?

Page 17, lines 22-23:

Any transfer of a clinic or grower license must be pre-approved by the government, further locking in monopolies and devaluing the license. This is more government interference in the free market that will only harm patients, and participants will opt out of this non-transferable licensing scheme and go back underground, all to the benefit of cartels.

Page 21, lines 14-20:

This would permit local governments to limit the number of medical marijuana clinics and growers. It grants far too much power to locals, as many of them have expressed and acted on their desire to ban medical marijuana outright, so they would pass limits of “one” under this bill. Patients should decide through their free choices how many clinics and growers there should be.

Page 21, Lines 22-25:

Requires clinics and growers to notify the state within ten days of any employee change, an onerous requirement with which no other type of business in Colorado need comply.

Page 22, lines 11-12:

Requires all officers and board members to be residents of Colorado. There is no rational purpose for this, again a requirement that saddles no other business.

Page 22, lines 13-19:

Prohibits Sunday distribution of medicine or distribution outside of 8am through 8pm, also prohibits on-site consumption. Colorado has grown past antiquated “blue laws,” and this would only deny patients in difficult emergency situations their medicine. Dispensary hours should not be limited. Pharmacies are open 24 hours in some cases, since emergencies can occur and patients may need medicine at all hours. That said, most dispensaries now choose to limit their own hours, but should not be prohibited from having a 24-hour help line to provide medicine to patients in emergency situations on an as-needed basis. On-site consumption, if properly set up, can be an important aspect of dispensaries. Many patients need to medicate in private area of dispensary since they have no other private area to do so, and children may be present in their homes, and the Constitution prevents use in “public view.” This would send people to public places to medicate, which is unsafe and unsightly, and illegal.

Page 22, Lines 20-21:

Limits caregivers to 1500 patients, which is unconstitutional and irrational. If a particular caregiver is compassionate and effective enough to accumulate more than 1500 patients (as many are currently), patients should not be arbitrarily restricted from selecting this caregiver. A similar objection exists to the prohibition on holding an ownership interest in more than three clinics at one time. This is yet another example of an attempt to repeal the laws of supply of demand, which government cannot do.

Page 23, lines 2-9:

Requires clinics to report on and act as informants against their own patients if the amount purchased exceeds two ounces per week. Although law enforcement frequently overuses paid snitches/criminals to do its dirty work, this bill would poison the confidential relationship between patient and caregiver and place them in an unnecessarily adversarial posture. It would just drive this back underground because no truly compassionate caregiver would comply with this evil requirement.

Page 23, Lines 15-19:

Prohibits a grower from “directly” providing medical marijuana to a patient. This is blatantly unconstitutional and inconsistent with reality. Caregivers are permitted by the constitution to provide for their patients. It sets up a required middleman, which increases costs to the patient.

Page 23, Lines 20-23:

Requires transactions be conducted by a “verifiable” payment method. I assume the intent is to eliminate cash transactions, by far the most common method in this business. Multinational credit card companies have shown extreme hostility to medical marijuana as have some banks. Many patients are too poor or disabled to have a credit card or a checking account and this provision only hurts them.

Page 23, Lines 24-25:

Prohibits growers from operating in any areas not zoned for agricultural or industrial uses. So now the State Legislature is acting as a local zoning board and substituting its judgment for local zoning issues, which is the one area the locals should retain some power.

Page 24, lines 10-26:

Grants the licensing authority extreme powers, including subpoena power, to harass and probe into confidential patient, caregiver, and physician issues.

Page 25, lines 8-9:

Allows the clinic or grow license to be “summarily suspended without notice,” which devalues the license altogether. Most will bypass this onerous and worthless license in favor of going back underground.

Page 26, lines 26:

Fines paid by licensees are credited to the General Fund, which is unconstitutional, just like the legislature’s own $258,735 money grab on 4/20/09 (coincidental date?). The Constitution requires that all monies collected for medical marijuana be used to fund the administration of the program.

Page 29, lines 15-18:

Requires physician do perform follow-up care to the patient, even if the patient does not need or request it. This and other micromanagement of the ancient confidential doctor-patient relationship is without precedent in American law.

Page 30, lines 1-3:

Requires physician to have never had his or her Drug Enforcement Administration registration suspended, another unconstitutional requirement. The constitution requires a doctor to only have a current license to practice medicine in Colorado. Many doctors eschew the DEA process as it is too intrusive and bureaucratic, and they are not interested in making their patients addicted to synthetic narcotics.

Page 30, 22-27:

Requires the registry card to have the doctor’s name on it, a further violation of confidentiality, that will enhance witch hunts against the courageous physicians who do the right thing for their patients even in the face of government intimidation.

Page 32, lines 1-7:

Requires caregivers to obtain government approval before acting as such, another unconstitutional requirement. It is the patient who decides who his or her caregiver is, and only the patient.

Page 33, lines 1-6:

Further restricts patient choice by arbitrarily limiting them to four changes of caregiver per year. Some patients have more than four caregivers at any one time, and many patients change them frequently as the supply of medicine is quite inconsistent.

Page 34, lines 13-20:

Allows the government to deny a registry card or revoke it if the government decides, without a hearing or jury trial, that this bill or the constitution was violated. This is unconstitutional. The government’s only constitutionally-permitted role regarding cards is to issue the card if the physician’s recommendation and other information is valid.

Page 35, lines 1-11:

Prohibits a physician from being compensated in any way for his or her work, except by the patient directly. This is a requirement that no doctor in any other specialty must follow. Most doctors are compensated by the hospitals in which they practice, and doctors rarely collect money directly from their patients.

Pages 35-36:

Creates yet another layer of bureaucracy, the “Medical Marijuana Review Board,” set up to intrude upon and interfere with confidential physician decisions regarding individual patients under the age of 21. The specter of these vulnerable young patients facing a Governor-appointed board of overseers for “permission” to access his or her constitutionally-protected, physician-recommended medicine does not belong in a free country. This Board’s very existence is unconstitutional.

What Should be in the Bill

This is a constitutionally-protected medicine that is currently overpriced because of high demand and low supply. Patients depend on this medicine in some cases for their lives. Further restricting supply only drives up the cost for patients, who would be harmed by crushing regulations. The most vulnerable of patients are harmed the most.

This community is not opposed to reasonable regulations designed to help patients, but will oppose those that will restrict supply or quality. Some of the legislative ideas that should be considered are purity and quality labeling; warning labels; prohibition on local infringement on the constitutional right to medical marijuana; prohibitions on discrimination in employment, education, professional licensure, housing, parenting, child custody, based on status as Medical Marijuana patient; statutory protection for entry-level caregivers to start operations without fear of prosecution; expansion of the power to provide recommendations to licensed chiropractors, licensed nurses, and licensed physical therapists; and creation and establishment of a University of Colorado research program into medical marijuana.

In conclusion, in working to help build this industry over the past nine years, I understand that marijuana remains a controversial medicine, although that is rapidly shifting with even the conservative American Medical Association endorsing its medical benefits. Luckily, the majority rules, and Colorado’s compassionate voters are more numerous than those who would deny others this miracle medicine.

In conceptualizing this bill, it is helpful to consider another controversial medical issue, abortion. As we discussed previously, it would be interesting to do a “find & replace” on your bill and replace all references to “medical marijuana” with “abortion.” I am sure Colorado’s creative pro-life organizations would appreciate this blueprint for further regulation of that industry. Your statement that, because you are pro-choice, you would vote against a parallel regulatory regime for abortion providers, speaks volumes.

Thank you for considering these comments. Please call me at 303-634-2244 with any questions.

Sincerely,

Robert J. Corry, Jr.
Attorney and Counselor at Law

denver and the west
Judge bars Centennial from closing medical marijuana dispensary
By John Ingold
The Denver Post
Posted: 12/31/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 12/31/2009 10:16:38 AM MST

“This is a very complex puzzle, as everyone knows. There are many interrelated and contra- dictory pieces to that puzzle.” Arapahoe County District Judge Christopher Cross

CENTENNIAL — An Arapahoe County judge Wednesday barred the city of Centennial from shutting down a medical marijuana dispensary, saying the city had no right to use federal law as a pretext for doing so.

“The city of Centennial cannot use the potential violation of a federal law to order a business legally operating under our state constitution to cease and desist its business,” District Judge Christopher Cross said in his ruling from the bench.

The rationale Centennial used in forcing the dispensary to shut down — that, because the business distributed marijuana contrary to federal law, it was in violation of the city’s land- use code — is one also adopted by a number of other local governments to block dispensaries from opening in their communities, including Aurora, Castle Rock and Greenwood Village.

The attorney for a dispensary in Castle Rock that had its business license partially revoked on similar grounds said she would use Wednesday’s ruling to seek that action’s reversal.

Cross’ ruling resulted in a preliminary injunction against Centennial preventing the city from enforcing its cease-and-desist order to the dispensary, CannaMart.

The broader issue, such as whether Cross’ injunction should be permanent and his ruling become part of case law, is still to be decided at trial, a process that could take years.

Cross acknowledged in his ruling that the legal issues surrounding medical marijuana and the operation of dispensaries in Colorado are still very much in flux.

Cross called the case one of “first impression,” with few prior cases in Colorado or across the country providing much guidance on how to reach a decision.

“This is a very complex puzzle, as everyone knows,” Cross said. “There are many interrelated and contradictory pieces to that puzzle.”

“No one knows what the law is,” Cross added later.

Immediately after the ruling, CannaMart’s owners, lawyers

CannaMart co-owner Stan Zislis hugs attorney Lauren David after a judge Wednesday ruled that Centennial wrongly closed the medical marijuana dispensary. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

and a handful of patients listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit exchanged hugs. Outside the courtroom, patient Shannon Mosher, who suffers from multiple medical problems that cause him severe pain, said he was proud to represent patients across Colorado in the matter.

“It’s a big, groundbreaking moment,” Mosher said. “It’s a big deal.”

Attorney Robert Hoban called the ruling “a victory for the (state) constitution.”

“A city cannot ban this type of use,” he said. “It can zone it, but it can’t ban it.”

Centennial City Attorney Robert Widner said city officials were disappointed but not entirely surprised by the ruling. He said they will take the matter back to the City Council for direction.

“We do not know which route we’re going to take,” he said. “We have to consult with council.”

Zoning not resolved

Zoning is still an issue for CannaMart, which opened in September on East Arapahoe Road just west of Interstate 25.

The dispensary had operated on the Greenwood Village side of Arapahoe Road until that city forced it out on grounds similar to those used by Centennial.

CannaMart’s Centennial location is not zoned for pharmacies, under which CannaMart would fall for zoning purposes, Cross said.

Cross didn’t factor zoning into his consideration of the preliminary injunction because, he said, Centennial didn’t reference zoning problems in its cease-and-desist letter to CannaMart. But the city could still use zoning regulations to prevent CannaMart from reopening in its current location.

Opposition expected

Stan Zislis, one of Canna- Mart’s owners, said he would consult with his attorneys before reopening and could decide to move to another spot. He said he expected opposition wherever he decided to open in Centennial.

“As far as finding a vacancy, I don’t think I’ll have a problem,” Zislis said. “As far as getting a business license, that could be a problem.”

In shutting down CannaMart in October, Centennial had argued that operating contrary to federal law violated the city’s land-use code. Cross agreed that federal law is clear in prohibiting the distribution of marijuana.

“In light of that federal law, the city’s actions were entirely understandable,” he said.

But Cross said local governments can’t take it upon themselves to enforce federal law — that is up to federal agencies. And because Colorado voters in 2000 approved a constitutional amendment legalizing the use of cannabis for medical purposes, Cross found that CannaMart was operating within the state’s laws.

Cross said that closing down CannaMart violated its owners’ and patients’ constitutional rights, which he called “an irreparable injury to all of us.”

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14098042#ixzz0brCejVQy

The 5280 Fifty
We rank the Mile High City’s most influential powerbrokers in our primer on who’s running Denver. Plus: A look at whose stars are rising—and whose stock is plummeting.
By Patrick Doyle, Luc Hatlestad, and Maximillian Potter
January 2010

It’s been five years since we last ranked Denver’s most powerful people, and, oh, how the town has changed. Back then, the governor and both U.S. senators were Republicans; an upstart Andrew Romanoff was a sure thing of a rising political star; Michael Bennet was merely the mayor’s chief of staff; Denver was a two-newspaper town; Mike Shanahan coached the Broncos, and Jake Plummer, now a handball player(!), was the QB; the idea of a Denver DNC was little more than a pipe dream; and people had jobs. Five years—what’s new? How’s that for starters?

As we reported on power in Denver today—which included speaking to dozens of sources, high and low, elected and otherwise—inevitably we were asked variations of this reasonable question: How do you define power? After all, we’re comparing politicians to scientists, doctors to attorneys, business leaders to museum curators. Indeed, this endeavor is an imperfect science. As we considered the reporting, the various agendas encountered, and the like, for our answer to the power question we relied on the sentiment expressed by President Woodrow Wilson, who knew a thing or two about influence: “Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.”

1. John Hickenlooper
Mayor of Denver
In a trailer for the recently released documentary Hick Town, which chronicles the mayor’s life in the run- up to the Democratic National Convention, His Honor jokes, “I tell you how you deal with the press. You fuck the press!” Never mind that he’s married to a journalist, Helen Thorpe—the mayor needn’t be overly concerned with confronting unflattering media. In Denver, polls show that about 80 percent of the town loves the guy, and it’s not like he’s doling out kisses and cup-cakes. During the DNC, Hickenlooper got a bounce from showing the country his beloved city, touting Denver’s downtown, the blossoming green initiatives, and FasTracks, all of which he has been instrumental in developing. After his party’s party was over, Mayor Hickenlooper then tended to unsavory municipal business like a decimated budget, wringing concessions from city employees with diplomatic aplomb. He’s shrewdly relied on a succession of quietly masterful chiefs of staff, but as one political operative puts it, “The mayor’s hands are in every- thing that’s going on in Denver.” Though his “frenemy” Governor Bill Ritter passed over Hickenlooper for Ken Salazar’s vacated U.S. Senate seat—in favor of one of the mayor’s former chiefs of staff, Michael Bennet—this remains Hick’s town.

2. Dean Singleton
Publisher, Denver Post; Vice Chairman/CEO, MediaNews Group
He won the newspaper war. It may prove to be a colossally Pyrrhic victory, what with Singleton’s company so heavily leveraged, but the last Denver newspaper tycoon standing commands the respect of every power broker above and below him on this list. His influence, for the moment at least, remains strong as his company’s credit rating weakens: In November 2007, the Post took the unusually bold step of running a front-page editorial blasting Governor Bill Ritter for what it called “backroom promises” to union bosses. Since then, and particularly since the Rocky Mountain News closure, Singleton’s paper has tweaked the governor’s office over a variety of missteps and shortcomings—like on health care and transportation—leaving Ritter politically vulnerable in 2010.

3. Cole Finegan
Managing Partner, Hogan & Hartson
If Denver’s elected officials are oranges on a tree, Finegan’s the one who can squeeze them for juice. A former partner of the law firm and political machine that is Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Finegan left to serve as Hickenlooper’s city attorney in 2003, and subsequently took on the additional duties of chief of staff. Returning to the private sector in 2006, he told BHFS he wasn’t interested in his old job. Instead, he accepted the offer to head Hogan & Hartson’s Denver office. While H&H has become one of— if not the—world’s largest law firms, locally Finegan has surpassed his old law partners as the parochial shadow lord. The mayor, his friend, still considers Finegan a must-call for advice; so does Bill Ritter, who was an H&H partner until he took leave to run for governor. Finegan is a critical fund-raiser and adviser for both U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall. It’s worth noting that Tom Strickland, the chief of staff for Ken Salazar at the U.S. Department of the Interior, is an alumnus of H&H. And should the Democratic tree stop producing fruit in the next gubernatorial election, it may not hurt Finegan because Republican hopeful Scott McInnis is an H&H partner who’s been granted leave to enter the race.

4. Norman Brownstein/Steven Farber
Cofounders, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck
While the sun is rising in Finegan’s sphere, that doesn’t mean the looming moon of Brownstein and Farber has fallen. Pals since childhood, Brownstein and Farber have been kingmakers in Denver for years, using their considerable charisma and contacts to elevate Denver’s profile, while advocating for their clients’ agendas and making their firm profitable. Brownstein handles the D.C. business, while Farber is the big man on Denver’s campus. Brownstein’s ability to galvanize funding for virtually anything, from DIA to Stapleton, is so legendary on Capitol Hill that Ted Kennedy once called him “the 101st senator.” Championing pro-Israel causes while making fund-raising magic, Brownstein has ingratiated the firm with, it seems, every power broker on the Hill. He needs an annex just to accommodate his freeze-and-squeeze pictures with the senior-most D.C. political establishment. As the cochair for the Host Committee of the DNC, Farber found the funding for the Obama-Fest. He’s a former chairman and ranking member of Colorado Concern, which is a collective of private-sector business leaders that arguably has more to say about business in Denver than does the city’s own chamber of commerce (think the Carlyle Group of Denver). Farber has become more selective about when and how he exercises his muscle since a kidney transplant in 2004 (the donor was his son, Gregg). Healthy (and with a George Hamilton tan), he has emerged as one of the country’s leading organ donor activists and recently cowrote a book about it that has Hollywood interest.

5. Ken Salazar
U.S. Secretary of the Interior
A moderate Hispanic Democrat with cowboy credentials, Salazar likely could have held onto his Senate seat for decades. Instead, he accepted a little job offer from the Obama administration to serve as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. While in D.C. he’ll have to spend some time mending relationships with the Front Range Democratic machine: When Governor Ritter appointed Michael Bennet to fill Salazar’s Senate seat, Salazar felt his opinions about who ought to be his successor didn’t receive the appropriate consideration, and he gave the boys back home a cold shoulder for a while. Then again, Ritter and Co. know they need to play nice with Salazar, who, in his new role, manages one-fifth of the United States’ landmass, including huge chunks of the West, and whatever mineral wealth (like oil shale) can be found therein. (His position on the Roan Plateau will reveal much about the self-described “new sheriff” of the Interior.) Salazar remains a looming influence in Colorado, as two of the folks closest to him—his brother John and his protégé Betsy Markey—control the two congressional districts that fully encircle the Front Range.

6. Mark Udall
U.S. Senator
In 2008, Udall overcame opposition efforts to tag him as a “Boulder liberal” and trounced Republican Bob Schaffer by appealing to lefties and independents alike. Just a few weeks into his term, when Ken Salazar vacated his seat for the post at Interior, Udall took on the state’s senior-senator title. At last, it seemed, he achieved a prominence of public service worthy of his family’s legacy. The Udall clan’s decades-long activism has made it one of the West’s rare political dynasties, and gives the senator pedigree and longstanding relationships to leverage for the state’s environmental and alternative energy-related concerns, both of which will be prominent public-policy issues in the coming years. As a member of the Armed Services and Energy and Natural Resources committees, it will be difficult for political challengers to depict him as merely a hippie-dippie liberal, and makes it virtually impossible for anyone to avoid dealing with him on pressing policy matters. Udall’s presence in Colorado is as undeniable as the Flatirons.

7. Michael Bennet
U.S. Senator
Talk about a swift and stealthy rise. Since 2003, Bennet has gone from Anschutz Investment Company exec to Mayor Hickenlooper’s chief of staff to superintendent of the Denver Public Schools to U.S. Senator. He’s notched his belt with achievements, like dramatic changes within DPS, which drew President Obama’s attention to Bennet as a candidate for U.S. Secretary of Education. Ritter ended up appointing him to Salazar’s vacated Senate seat (not a bad consolation prize). Bennet has won over powerful allies—Senate majority leader Harry Reid chose him to replace the deceased Ted Kennedy on the coveted Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. “The national power he pulls,” says a Democratic politician, “is unlike anything we’ve had in a long time—since the days of Gary Hart.” And he’s bold: On a recent CNN appearance, Bennet was asked if he’d vote for the health-care bill even if it might cost him his seat in the next election, and without equivocation he answered, “Yes.” He’s also already proved to be a fund-raising force, banking a cool $3.6 million.

8. Daniel Ritchie
Chairman/CEO, The Denver Center for the Performing Arts
Ritchie has been a pioneer in educational and artistic philanthropy for more than two decades. The former chancellor and chairman of the board at the University of Denver has given more than $50 million to the school over the years, and also led a series of fund-raising efforts that netted close to $275 million. In 2007, legendary DCPA cofounder Donald Seawell stepped aside for Ritchie, who has overseen further expansion of the theater complex, which now enjoys a sterling national reputation for its touring company shows and for its development of original works. Ritchie also leads or sits on the boards of several other organizations, including the Temple Hoyne Buell Foundation, the Daniels Fund, and Colorado Concern, making him one of the unquestionable guiding lights of Front Range generosity and vision.

9. Bill Ritter
Governor
Job title alone gets him in the top ten. Being the governor during such a recession is a most thankless job: This year, Ritter’s had to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget—over the past two years, there’s been a $2 billion shortfall—and, in the process, he upset just about every single interest group out there. Depending on which other local muckety-muck is doing the talking (and this is within his own party), Ritter is either a man of his own mind or a milquetoast. He appointed the dark-horse candidate Michael Bennet to Colorado’s open Senate seat and has sided with labor unions one day and the business community the next. A 2010 reelection is no guarantee for the governor: Ritter’s approval ratings are all over the place and tepid at best, and word is that a Phil Anschutz-inspired GOP is committed to rallying the vote for Republican challenger Scott McInnis.

10. Patricia Gabow
CEO, Denver Health
Forget about Denver: Dr. Gabow has been named one of the top 25 women—and one of the 100 most powerful (No. 54)—in the health-care industry nationwide, by the trade magazine Modern Healthcare. During the Democratic overhaul of the health-care system, Gabow has emerged as one of the preeminent national speakers on the topic because of her 17 years of experience helming Denver Health. This summer, as the health-care bill was taking shape, it was Gabow who represented the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, testifying before a Senate committee hearing and thereby shaping the debate. And consider how she began it all: Back in 1997, Gabow convinced Mayor Wellington Webb to let the deficit-laden hospital out from under the city’s control. Since then, she has done what once seemed impossible: made a public hospital that serves thousands of uninsured people profitable, year after year.

11. David Kenney
President/Founder, The Kenney Group
A pugnacious lobbyist, Kenney is the man who solves problems for Democrats in Denver— nicely, if that’ll work; not so nicely, if required. “Sometimes,” says a highly placed elected official, “David has to be reined in. But that’s part of what makes him so effective.” He has the ears of every powerful liberal, including Governor Ritter, Senators Udall and Bennet, and Mayor Hickenlooper. Kenney was influential in getting Bennet appointed, and helped nudge along the process at the end of 2008 that placed Kelly Brough (former Hickenlooper chief of staff) at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and made the former chamber boss, Joe Blake (a Republican), chancellor of Colorado State University.

12. Phillip Anschutz
Media Mogul
Billionaire and arch conservative Anschutz has one of the most recognized names in Denver and yet is so publicity-shy that his legal name might be “The Reclusive Phil Anschutz.” His calculated avoidance of the spotlight, however, belies his backroom activism. When Josh Penry dropped out of the GOP primary race for governor, it seemed half the people in Denver politics believed it was because Anschutz was playing puppet master, while the other half denied he would involve himself in such matters. Regardless, the specter of Anschutz loomed large. His entertainment and media properties, and his philanthropic efforts, have long promoted his favorite conservative-themed causes (and his recent purchases of the right-leaning Weekly Standard and Washington Examiner give a more prominent voice to his crusades). Even though he never airs his views publicly, he has an extremely persuasive prominence among Colorado’s political strategists. Every September 1, Anschutz hosts a dove hunt and dinner with a guest list that includes virtually anyone who matters in business as well as politicians from both sides of the aisle. (Democrat Hickenlooper spoke at this year’s dinner.)

13. Bruce Benson
President, University of Colorado
State Democrats were upset when Bruce Benson, a former GOP state chairman and perpetual power broker, was chosen to head up Colorado’s public higher-education system in 2008. CU-Boulder’s notoriously liberal Faculty Assembly voted against his appointment 40-4. Puhleeeze. Evidently the academics didn’t fully grasp the extracurricular realities of who Benson is: He made millions in oil and has won over many of his critics for going to bat for education amid budget cuts. Days after state legislators decided to cut funding for Metropolitan State College’s new multimillion-dollar science building—with a hole for the building already dug—Benson had the construction back on track after meeting with state reps and the governor.

14. Don Elliman
Chief Operating Officer, State of Colorado
Seven billion dollars: That’s Colorado’s stimulus allotment from the Obama administration, and Elliman is the man who tracks it. After three decades as a publishing honcho at Time Inc., Elliman relocated to Denver in 2000, where he took an executive role at Kroenke Sports Enterprises. Governor Ritter hired Elliman out of semi-retirement in 2007 to head the state’s economic development office, and last summer Ritter created the position of state COO with Elliman in mind. Elliman’s hiring, in large part, was inspired by voices from the biz community who felt that the governor didn’t understand private-sector concerns.

15. Larry Mizel
Chairman/CEO, MDC Holdings Inc.
Whenever there’s been a hush-hush meeting about the future of the GOP or the business interests of the Front Range, chances are Mizel’s agenda was in the room, even if he wasn’t. He’s run the multibillion-dollar MDC for almost 30 years, developing homes all over the Front Range. He also cofounded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the world’s foremost human-rights organizations. Like Benson and Anschutz, Mizel has major sway over statewide strategy as Republicans try to get their mojo back in 2010. Yet, make no mistake, he’s a businessman and his power transcends party: At the 2009 Allied Jewish Federation Men’s Event in November, Mizel gave a warm introduction to Senator Bennet that could have been read as something of an endorsement. What’s telling about that, says a muckety-muck who was in the audience, is that while Bennet has Jewish ancestry, he was not raised in the faith; what’s more, Bennet, of course, is a Dem.

16. Terrance Carroll
Speaker of the House
Since taking the reins of the Statehouse from Romanoff at the beginning of 2009—and becoming Colorado’s first African-American speaker of the House—Carroll has presided over difficult times. Yet unlike Ritter, and despite (or perhaps because of) the tight purse strings, Mr. Speaker has rendered himself a critical and respected negotiator. He’s deftly managed committee chairmen and legislators to keep the House moving, and, when needed, delivered a smackdown—like when he filleted state Senate minority leader Josh Penry for criticizing the governor’s energy office: “The new energy economy is the single brightest light in our economy,” Carroll wrote. “Killing jobs in our fastest-growing economic sector is Penry’s answer to the serious crisis facing Colorado?”

17. Ed Perlmutter
U.S. Congressman
A finalist for Salazar’s open Senate seat, the congressman was passed over in large part because the state Democratic establishment respects and needs him as a congressman. Perlmutter represents the cities and counties that circle Denver, a hotly contested congressional district that has one of the most even Democratic/Republican splits in the country, and Perlmutter’s hold on his seat is perceived as formidable, and thus invaluable to the larger machine. Power players cite Perlmutter as efficient and effective—one told us, “He’s the guy you call when you need to get something done.” But he still may have a bit to learn about statesmanship: After receiving $9,500 in campaign funds from telecommunication companies, Perlmutter started opposing the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules, which would prevent Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to some content.

18. Gregory Moore
Editor, Denver Post
Under Moore’s editorial guidance (and his boss Dean Singleton’s iron-fisted leadership), the Post emerged last year as Denver’s last daily newspaper, or, at the very least, the leading daily newspaper (considering the Denver Daily News). Moore’s tenure at the Post began in 2002, and in his first week on the job the Hayman fire, the largest in Colorado history, began to burn almost 140,000 acres, becoming one of the biggest local stories of the decade. It was a fitting introduction: The subsequent seven years have proved equally feverish for the Post—and the newspaper industry in general. By hiring some of the Rocky’s most accomplished journalists after it closed, Moore is as close as he’ll ever be to having the kind of talented staff that can help redefine newsgathering at a time when the craft desperately needs a makeover.

19. Pat Bowlen
President/CEO, Denver Broncos
This city lives and dies with the Broncos, a reality that puts Bowlen in charge of no small amount of civic happiness (and dollars). Not long ago, he seemed too wedded to a bygone era, yet in the past 12 months he has proved surprisingly open-minded and nimble. He recognized the Broncos’ recent doldrums and fired his presumptive coach-for-life Mike Shanahan (though one should only be so lucky as to get fired with Shanahan’s buyout), replacing him with the ludicrously young Josh McDaniels. Bowlen then showed everyone who was boss by jettisoning the petulant Jay Cutler. The Broncos’ tumultuous, unexpected revival has been one of the NFL’s feel-good stories of 2009, reminding everyone which team sits atop the local sports throne.

20. Gary Magness and Sarah Siegel-Magness
Producers, Philanthropists
He’s an heir to the TCI cable company fortune. She’s an heir to the Celestial Seasonings tea riches. Together they invested $12 million in personal funds in a film project that had no business succeeding: Precious, the adaptation of a novel about an overweight, impoverished, African-American teenage mother who had been sexually abused by her own parents. The movie had all the hallmarks of a noble, naïve failure by a Denver rich couple who should have known better. Except that this Denver rich couple knew better than anyone else, or didn’t care. And the executive-producing instincts of the Magnesses have paid off with stellar reviews and big-time Oscar buzz (and potential multiple nominations) for the film. With the endorsement of entertainment titan Oprah, the Magnesses have inked a distribution deal with Lionsgate and are already lining up their next project, based on the Judy Moody children’s books. More than Don Cheadle and Jessica Biel combined, the Magnesses have put Denver, along with the Denver Film Festival, on Hollywood’s map.

21. Kelly Brough
CEO, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce
Last year, as Mayor Hickenlooper’s chief of staff, Brough went into budget negotiations with union officials representing the city’s firefighters, set down a jar of Vaseline, and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” The prop was a joke meant to break the ice, but Brough (whose name rhymes with “rough”) wasn’t entirely kidding. This no-nonsense powerhouse had wowed Mayor Hickenlooper so much that he hired her to be his deputy chief of staff after she ran his opponent’s campaign. During her four-year tenure, she rose to chief of staff and orchestrated Hick’s agenda, helping him win a second term with an astounding 87 percent of the vote. Her ascension to the head of the chamber of commerce was something of an upset: Despite her wealth of political chops, she did not have the private sector business pedigrees of her predecessors. A new perspective may help see the chamber through the recession.

22. Pat Stryker and Al Yates
The Liberals’ Dynamic Duo
Stryker’s checkbook and Yates’ political acumen, together, have been instrumental in swinging Colorado from red to blue. A retired president of Colorado State University, Yates has become the point person for wealthy Colorado liberals looking to nudge political races. The reclusive Stryker is his biggest source of cash. While Stryker may have lost a third of her net worth last year—the share price the Stryker Corporation, a medical supply company, is down 30 percent—she’s still worth $1.4 billion. In 2008, she was the 16th-largest political donor in the country, giving nearly $1 million to liberal causes and politically active 527 organizations.

23. Stan Kroenke
Owner, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Rapids, and Mammoth
Melo’s boss is a multibillionaire entrepreneur (married to Wal-Mart heir Ann Walton) whose sports business and entertainment empire has made his interests the community’s interest, and vice versa. (Kroenke also has a stake in American football’s St. Louis Rams and English football powerhouse Arsenal.) As owner of the Colorado Rapids and Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, he’s helped revive and sustain interest in professional soccer in the U.S.—no small task. And to top it off, in 2004 he founded Altitude Sports and Entertainment to broadcast all his teams, so he controls the medium and the message. Melo may be his franchise player, but make no mistake: Kroenke’s the franchise.

24. Carmelo Anthony
(The) Denver Nugget
Denver has had flings with past Nuggets teams, from David Thompson’s ABA refugees in the ’70s to Dikembe Mutombo’s surprise conference finalists in 1994. Thanks to Melo, local hoops fans are finally falling in love. With the help of veteran sidekick Chauncey Billups, Anthony has elevated his team to elite status—making Nuggets games the most coveted ticket this side of Invesco Field—while becoming what some now call the most complete offensive force in the NBA. Still only 25 years old, Anthony is beginning to make Denver sports fans almost as passionate about hoops as they are about football.

25. Walter Isenberg
CEO/President, Sage Hospitality
For the past 25 years, Isenberg and Sage cofounder Zack Neumeyer have presided over Sage’s expanding hotel empire, which now controls almost 50 properties in more than 20 states, including Denver’s Curtis, Oxford, and JW Marriott (which has a Second Home bar/restaurant that has become a late-night hotspot to watch cougars hunt players). Isenberg serves on the board of such prominent Front Range organizations as the Downtown Denver Partnership, the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Children’s Hospital Foundation—and is one of the Colorado Concern(ed). As the economy recovers, look for Isenberg to buy and manage distressed properties, particularly in and around downtown Denver, which will broaden his already considerable influence, both in his businesses and in his philanthropy.

26. Rob Corry
Attorney, Medical Marijuana Advocate
No local story has grabbed more recent headlines than medical marijuana, and Corry—a libertarian Republican—is at the center. He’s the go-to lawyer for medical marijuana supporters, representing dozens of dispensaries around the state and regularly squaring off against Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and others. With taxation guidelines now being established, medical marijuana could become one of Colorado’s most prominent—wait for it—growth industries in an otherwise stagnant economy, and the always-quotable Corry will be leading the charge.

27. Tom Boasberg
Superintendent, Denver Public Schools
Boasberg, the man charged with carrying on the reforms of his former boss, Michael Bennet, stumbled out of the gate when his candidates for the DPS Board of Education failed at the polls in November. The winners, supported by the teachers’ union, aren’t fans of the charter schools that Boasberg and Bennet have pushed. And the fact that the new board met at the pricey Broadmoor Hotel for a team-building “therapy session” on the taxpayers’ dime was not an auspicious start. Still, many politicos have faith that he’ll be able to sway the new union-backed board with logic—and numbers—that show the reforms are working. “Boasberg is on the right side of the issues,” says one politician. “He has the power to lead the district that leads the state, and the ability to get reforms done.”

28. Ted Trimpa
Partner, Hogan & Hartson
Trimpa is the firm’s point man in and around the Legislature. Before the election last year, Trimpa negotiated with unions and the business community to make sure that four anti-business ballot measures—ones that unions had put forward after a tiff—would be torpedoed. Trimpa advises multimillionaire Tim Gill, investing Gill’s millions in advancing gay-rights causes and supportive candidates at the ballot box.

29. Joe Blake
Chancellor, Colorado State University
During his decade-long run as the head of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, Blake was a voice of moderation in the business community, moving the tax-reluctant group to help support both FasTracks and Referendum C. Still, it was a bit of a surprise that Governor Ritter would appoint the Republican Blake to helm CSU, placing two Republicans in charge of Colorado’s higher-education system (along with CU president Bruce Benson). Blake’s selection speaks to his clout on both sides of the aisle.

30. Timothy Marquez
CEO/Chairman, Venoco Inc.
The Denver native and Colorado School of Mines graduate moved his California-based oil and gas company—from which he was once ousted, only to return, Steve Jobs-like—back to his hometown in 2005. Since then, he’s become a major player in philanthropy. After Venoco had a $212 million IPO in 2006, Marquez donated $50 million to set up the Denver Scholarship Fund, which matches college scholarships for graduating Denver high school students.

31. Bruce Jakosky
Principal Investigator, MAVEN Project, CU-Boulder
The lead investigator of the $485 million MAVEN project (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN), Jakosky oversees the largest research contract in CU’s history. He and his team will spend several years building a spacecraft that may finally answer the question of whether there ever was life on Mars. Scheduled to launch in late 2013, MAVEN will explore the red planet’s atmosphere. Jakosky operates in a whole other universe.

32. Federico Peña
Senior Adviser, Vestar Capital Partners
Before the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Peña endorsed Barack Obama, over Hillary Clinton. For the Clintons, the defection was traitorous: Peña had served in the Clinton Cabinet for five years, as secretary of both transportation and energy. Peña, a former Denver mayor, served as Obama’s national campaign cochair and on the transition team. During a trip that Mayor Hickenlooper made to D.C. last February, Peña brokered a 45-minute private sit-down with then-newly installed secretary of transportation Ray LaHood.

33. Michael Johnston
State Senator
One of the newest state senators, Johnston has two rare assets for a freshman: real-world experience and connections. While he was the cofounder and principal of the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, he started advising then-presidential candidate Obama on education issues. In May, after state Senate president (and African-American) Peter Groff ascended to the Obama administration, Johnston—a young white man without political experience—replaced Groff as the representative of the ethnically diverse district.

34. Amory Lovins
Chief Scientist/Chairman, Rocky Mountain Institute
If the U.S. ever overcomes its addiction to foreign oil, Lovins will be one of the first people to thank for it. For the past quarter century, he’s helmed RMI with the unofficial philosophy that “elegant frugality speaks for itself.” Does it ever. Lovins’ genius has helped save countless millions of dollars through improved energy efficiency for companies and organizations worldwide, from Wal-Mart to the Pentagon. His own prolific output—he’s authored 29 books on environmental topics—has made him must-have counsel to CEOs and world leaders alike. As the energy industry evolves through the 21st century, Lovins’ fingerprints figure to be all over the blueprint.

35. Jesse Morreale
Restaurateur
In a city aggressively trying to up its rep as a foodie paradise, Morreale has turned several seemingly modest venues into the type of places where Denver’s hipsters and elite alike mingle to see and be seen. His Mezcal, Tambien, and La Rumba hosted some of the Democratic National Convention’s hottest parties—including those fronted by the Creative Coalition, one of the entertainment industry’s most influential nonprofit advocacy groups—and his revamping of a once-seedy Colfax property into the hipster-friendly Rockbar showed that Morreale is a hit with the youngsters too. All this successful hustling has raised his national profile, and the town’s too.

36. Blake Jones
President/Cofounder, Namasté Solar
This solar-powered entrepreneur became the poster boy for the new (alternative) power generation last February, when he spoke along with President Obama and VP Joe Biden at the signing of the stimulus package at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Since founding his solar-panel installation company in 2005, he’s planted panels at the homes of Senator Udall, Congressman Ed Perlmutter, and the governor’s mansion. Jones has been a vocal advocate for increased funding to Colorado renewable energy businesses, and recently opened a new Denver office. Imagine that—an expanding business.

37. Dick Kelly
Chairman/President/CEO, Xcel Energy
Although Xcel Energy is based in Minneapolis, Denver native Kelly will factor into just about every change (desired or actual) to Colorado’s energy economy in the coming months and years—like, say, adding much-needed solar, wind, or biomass power to the grid. Kelly spends the workweek in Minneapolis and weekends with his family at home in the Denver area. Warming to renewable energy and environmentally friendly technologies, in October he announced that Xcel planned to add about 1,300 megawatts of solar and wind energy to its system, including more than 250 megawatts from solar panels on customer’s homes—more than three times the amount of solar power the company is required by law to add by 2020.

38. Adam Lerner
Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
Art, public and private, is the soul of any community, and Lerner is one of the foremost visionaries charged with keeping Denver’s creative class vibrant. The founder of the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar ascended to his current position when the Lab merged with MCA in February 2009. Under Lerner, MCA has continued to distinguish itself as a renowned repository for and promoter of modern art, with daring exhibits (Damien Hirst, anyone?) and creative educational programs that attract notable artists from around the world.

39. Tom Cech/Leslie Leinwand
Directors, Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biology
Behind Leinwand and Cech, the latter of whom won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1989, this interdisciplinary research center at CU-Boulder is developing a more collaborative environment for scientific and medical discovery. First opened in 2003, CIMB eventually will house more than 20 laboratories for departments including mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and others. By promoting “productive collisions” between disciplines, CIMB has already enabled breakthroughs in cancer screening and tissue engineering to reduce the need for hip and knee replacements, and in 2010 the center will work with CU’s Leeds School of Business to develop biotechnology-focused entrepreneurial programs.

40. Alex Bogusky
Partner, Crispin Porter + Bogusky
If you put Mad Men’s Don Draper through the modern-day Boulder ringer, you’d get Alex Bogusky—a savvy ad man who knows how to create buzz for products like Burger King (he brought the creepy, plastic-masked king to life), Mini Cooper (he placed the wee cars in the stands of sports stadiums), and Guitar Hero (the spoofs of Risky Business). Bogusky’s so hip, in fact, that Microsoft hired his firm to fight back against the damaging “Mac vs. PC” campaign from Apple, which proves that Front Rangers— or, at the very least, Bogusky and his team—are every bit as creative and effective at selling things as those modern-day Manhattan Mad Men.

41. Paul Sandoval
Owner, Tamales by La Casita
Don’t underestimate the self-deprecating hombre in the white apron. Sandoval, a North Denver restaurant owner, was a state senator back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and remains a political puppet master: After City Councilman Rick Garcia emerged as the likely front runner for director of the regional Housing and Urban Development office, Sandoval set the political stage for his wife, Paula (a state senator), to take Garcia’s seat. Sandoval is a member of Ken Salazar’s kitchen cabinet and doles out advice to the likes of DPS’ Tom Boasberg. On top of all that, he finds time to sell 12,000 tamales daily.

42. Scott McInnis
Republican Gubernatorial Candidate
The three-term congressman looked like he was in trouble early in the Republican gubernatorial primary; state Senate minority leader Josh Penry was widely viewed as the GOP’s rising—and possibly present—gubernatorial star. The old-hand politico didn’t fret, though, raising loads of cash and lining up support from his GOP friends—who helped push Penry out of the race in November. McInnis was even able to quell rabble-rouser Tom Tancredo, assuring all concerned that he’ll be able to coast to an easy Republican primary victory and focus his attention—and money—on the weakened Governor Ritter.

43. Diana DeGette
U.S. Congresswoman
As the Democrats’ chief deputy whip and the senior member of Colorado’s congressional delegation, DeGette wields a big stick in Washington. Example: She was instrumental in pushing through the stem-cell reform bill. Back home in Denver, though, DeGette stays out of local politics and isn’t the type to focus on bringing home the bacon for her district, which is liberal enough that she doesn’t have to worry about losing her seat to a Republican. Yet a Democratic opponent could be a problem for DeGette; one Denver politico told us, “If Andrew Romanoff had the balls, he could have given DeGette a good challenge.”

44. Michele Ostrander
Executive Director, Susan G. Komen for the Cure—Denver Metropolitan Affiliate
If you’ve ever stood on Speer Boulevard among the tens of thousands of pink ribbons and inspired—and inspiring—women, men, and children as they embark on the annual 5K Komen Race for the Cure, you could feel the power of Michele Ostrander. Last year, Ostrander’s second as the executive director of Komen’s Denver chapter, 53,849 people participated in the Mile High City’s Race for the Cure, netting about $2 million for the organization. Last year, funds raised by the Denver chapter made possible more than 5,000 mammograms and almost 26,000 meals for patients in need, among many other services. Lance Armstrong may have coined the word “Livestrong,” but in Denver it’s Ostrander—and the thousands of volunteers she and her team turn out each year to raise funds for the fight against breast cancer—who truly embodies that ethos.

45. John Elway
Former Bronco, Entrepreneur
Life after football has proved to be considerably more challenging than opposing defenses were to Elway, the Bronco legend and one of Denver’s chief brands. Though Elway’s eponymous restaurants and car dealerships have made him millions in the decade since his retirement, the sometimes GOP celebrity has also endured a messy divorce; he was chairman of the Arena Football League’s executive committee when the league folded last August; and recently news reports identified Elway as a pitchman for an alleged $30 million Ponzi scheme. To date, there’s no evidence he’s done anything wrong, and the issue seems to have had little effect on how warmly locals still view number 7, flaws and all.

46. Josh Penry
Minority Leader, State Senate
Sure, Penry took a hit by leaving the Republican gubernatorial primary, but in the face of troublesome polls, a fund-raising effort that was falling short of McInnis’, and the big GOP money that was lining up against him, avoiding a damaging primary was the smartest thing he could have done. If anything, that he’s taken as a threat within his own party speaks volumes. The 33-year-old Penry has kept his powder dry for future races and increased his statewide profile, both of which will help him as the state Senate minority leader, where he’ll be able to actively undermine Ritter and the Democrats. And unlike Andrew Romanoff—who jumped into a race where he wasn’t wanted—Penry can remain the GOP’s next great contender.

47. Phillip Washington
RTD General Manager and CEO
When Cal Marsella, the general manager of the Regional Transportation District for 14 years, stepped down last July, he left a gaping hole: RTD is facing a $2.2 billion shortfall in funding for the FasTracks system. The recently hired Washington, RTD’s former assistant GM for administration, will likely have one of the toughest jobs in Colorado: convincing money-strapped voters to support a tax hike to finish the light-rail system.

48. Greg Maffei
President/CEO, Liberty Media
A former high-level adviser to Bill Gates, Maffei leads Liberty Media under chairman John Malone. Instrumental in Liberty’s takeover of Sirius XM radio, he manages properties like QVC, DirecTV, and Starz Entertainment, as well as Fox Sports networks in several regions, including Denver. On the side, Maffei is active in Republican politics, and his name often surfaces as a potential statewide candidate.

49. Christoph Heinrich
Director, Denver Art Museum
The DAM is one of a handful of local institutions that will help determine how quickly Denver can attain its feverishly desired international reputation, so perhaps it’s fitting that a European is now running it. Heinrich came to the DAM from his native Germany, and his knowledge of and connections to the international art community won him the director position after two years as a curator. For Heinrich, Frederic Hamilton and the museum’s board agreed to retire Lewis Sharp after two decades of service. The museum’s latest splashy installation, Embrace!, which was curated by Heinrich and debuted in November, showcases the grand vision for DAM and stamps it as a destination for artists and art lovers from all over the world.

50. Pete Coors
Chairman, MolsonCoors
Lame “cold activated” cans and bottles notwith-standing, Coors and Co. brew a lot of Silver Bullets and a branding power that transcends the tailgate.

Rising Stars

Christian Anschutz
Developer
With fatherly mentoring from business partner David Steel, the son of Phillip Anschutz is emerging from his father’s considerable shadow by taking increasing leadership roles in local real estate and business development.

Peter Karpinski
Chief Operating Officer, Sage Restaurant Group
Having served as the operations director for Philadelphia’s wildly successful Starr Restaurant Organization, Karpinski knows a thing or two about running restaurants. Since taking over at Sage, he’s opened up the Corner Office downtown and Second Home in Cherry Creek North—only the first two of his many future conquests, we suspect.

Josh McDaniels
Head Coach, Denver Broncos
Had we compiled this list three months ago, McD would’ve been in the top 30. The brash boy wonder figures to be a local fixture for years to come.

Jonathan Vaughters
CEO, Slipstream Sports
In a sport where doping has been unchecked for decades, Denver native Vaughters made worldwide headlines in 2007 when he announced that his Boulder-based pro squad, Team Garmin-Transitions, would have the most rigorously tested cyclists in the world. The tough policy hasn’t hurt the team’s success—Garmin riders placed in the top five in the 2008 and 2009 Tour de France.

Roxane White
Chief of Staff, Mayor’s Office
The former manager of Denver’s Department of Human Services took over as Hickenlooper’s chief of staff last September. Insiders say she’s a quick study and already has the mayor’s office running better than any of her high-powered predecessors.

Plummeting Stocks

James Dobson
Evangelical Leader
At one time, Dobson was one of the most powerful evangelical Christian leaders in the country; today, after stepping down as the chairman of Focus on the Family and leaving his radio show, the 73-year-old has talked himself into irrelevancy.

Dan Hawkins
Football Coach, University of Colorado
At the beginning of last season, Hawkins proclaimed that he’d lead the Buffaloes to “10 wins, no excuses.” After a rash of injuries—and several top players leaving the program—the team barely squeaked out three measly wins, bringing Hawkins’ record on the gridiron to 16-33 over the past four years. One likely factor in why he still holds a clipboard is that CU didn’t want to drop $3.1 million to buy out his contract.

Tom Martino
Troubleshooter
The consumer advocate—whose referral can be bought for a mere $3,000—was shown as the bombastic blowhard he is last year, after local stand-up Adam Cayton-Holland filmed a withering, hilarious YouTube take-down.

Andrew Romanoff
Aspiring Public Official
The former speaker of the House wunderkind has looked lost since being term-limited out of his seat a year ago; Romanoff was passed over for both the secretary of state and Senate positions. Challenging Michael Bennet in a party-damaging primary reads as a petulant ego trip.

John Temple
Former Editor, Publisher, and President, Rocky Mountain News
He used his Rocky to wield his agenda and satiate his ravenous ego. With the paper no more, Temple is revealed to all (but himself) as a mere mortal with an out-of-town consulting gig and semi-consequential media blog.

Colorado’s Green Rush: Medical marijuana

By Jim Spellman, CNN

December 14, 2009 9:31 a.m. EST

Zack Moore says he will make about $6,000 after six months of growing marijuana.

Denver, Colorado (CNN) — Driving down Broadway, it’s easy to forget you are in the United States. Amid the antique stores, bars and fast-food joints occupying nearly every block are some of Denver’s newest businesses: medical marijuana dispensaries.

The locals call this thoroughfare “Broadsterdam.” As in Amsterdam, Netherlands, these businesses openly advertise their wares, often with signs depicting large green marijuana leaves.

“The American capitalist system is working,” said attorney and medical marijuana advocate Rob Corry.

It’s a matter of supply and demand.

“The demand has always been there,” he said, “and the demand is growing daily because more doctors are willing to do this, and now businesses, entrepreneurs, mom-and-pop shops are cropping up to create a supply.”

Colorado voters legalized medical marijuana in 2000. For years, patients could get small amounts from “caregivers,” the term for growers and dispensers who could each supply only five patients. In 2007, a court lifted that limit and business boomed.

Between 2000 and 2008, the state issued about 2,000 medical marijuana cards to patients. That number has grown to more than 60,000 in the last year.

State Sen. Chris Romer, a Democrat whose south Denver district includes Broadsterdam, said the state receives more than 900 applications a day.

“It’s growing so fast, it’s like the old Wild West,” Romer said. “This reminds me of 1899 in Cripple Creek, Colorado, when somebody struck gold. Every 49er in the country is making it for Denver to open a medical marijuana dispensary.”

They’re calling it the Green Rush.

Corry, who has represented defendants in medical marijuana cases for years, is taking a different role: He has formed the Colorado Wellness Association, a trade group representing medical marijuana growers and providers.

“We want to be the Better Business Bureau of marijuana,” he said.

On the 28th floor of a downtown building with a great view of the Rocky Mountains, Corry’s office is adorned with vintage posters. One reads “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth!”

In the corner sits a plastic 6-foot marijuana plant. It’s a prop from the TV show “Weeds,” about a suburbanite mother who begins selling marijuana to make extra cash, Corry said.

The lagging economy has created an opening for medical marijuana, Corry said. As governments struggle for new sources of revenue, the prospect of taxing medical marijuana can be enticing.

The dispensaries are “paying taxes, hiring employees, renting out space, purchasing supplies and moving this economy along,” he said. “Local governments need to get on the bandwagon and start realizing this is a major source of revenue and it can help us cure our bankrupt governments.”

The association aims to get a larger supply of marijuana into the dispensaries and make sure it is safe, Corry said.

See the different ways to use marijuana

“What we’re looking at is quality control,” he said. “We have the technology to make sure there’s no harmful toxins, pesticides.”

Bob Winnicki is a 35-year-old analyst and co-owner of Full Spectrum Laboratories, which the wellness association uses for testing.

“We’re trying to get away from smelling, texture, color” as a measure of quality cannabis, he said, adding that he prefers “hard analytical data.”

Wearing a dress shirt and tie under a white lab coat, Winnicki opens envelopes with samples of marijuana dropped off by growers and dispensers. He puts the marijuana into test tubes and mixes it with a solution to create a greenish liquid. The test tube goes into a machine that performs a chemical analysis.

The active ingredient in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. But Winnicki said it’s other, less understood components that may provide much of the claimed medicinal benefits.

Winnicki is not a marijuana user, he said. In July, he took a break from medical school to start the lab because he loves “the science” behind medical marijuana and thinks the market is wide open, he said.

“There’s a lot of money to be had in it, and there’s a lot of jobs and growth that can come out of it,” he said.

Across the city, entrepreneurs are trying to get in on the Green Rush. In a northwest Denver neighborhood, Aaron Randle is tending to his new shop, Sunnyside Alternative Medicine.

He opened in September and said he has about 100 customers so far.

“I’ve been an electrician for eight years and before that I had a cable contracting company. It’s always been a dream to work for myself,” he said. “I’m very passionate about marijuana.”

Customers drop by his modest storefront operation and take a seat in a small waiting room. It’s no different than a dentist’s office except the magazine rack is stuffed with High Times, a publication for marijuana buffs, instead of Sports Illustrated and parenting magazines.

One at a time, customers survey a display case full of marijuana strains as well as marijuana-infused brownies, taffy and lollipops. Maui Waui and Purple Kush are popular strains. It costs $50 for an eighth of an ounce, $54 with tax. Purchases go into a plastic prescription bottle and then into a white bag that reads, “Prescriptions. Thank You!”

Randle proudly displays his business license on the wall.

“There’s a lot of jobs created because of medical marijuana,” he said. “You have employees that work at the dispensaries, then you have vendors that are getting paid. … Real estate is booming right now. Warehouses are getting rented out for grow operations.”

What Randle calls “vendors” are marijuana growers, a mix of people who operate “grow houses,” where the plants are cultivated using elaborate lighting systems, or small-scale farmers who operate in rural areas.

Zack Moore is a grower with a small greenhouse operation in southern Colorado. He also is a medical marijuana patient. A snowboarding accident knocked out his two front teeth, and he smokes marijuana for relief from various aches and pains, he said.

He rolls a joint and lights up before having a seat in a rocking chair in the afternoon sun. With a basket of marijuana in front of him, he uses toenail scissors to trim the dried plants. When he’s done, he will have made about $6,000 for six months work, he said.

Though he hopes to do better next season, he’s happy to be working.

“I build houses for a living. There’s not many houses to be built right now.”

Not everyone is happy with the changes the legalization of medical marijuana has brought to the state.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said the amendment to the state constitution that allowed the new businesses is flawed.

“Colorado has seen a rapid proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries and patients since the Justice Department earlier this year announced it would not actively prosecute medical marijuana businesses — despite the fact that marijuana remains an illegal drug under federal law,” he said in an October statement.

“Amendment 20, written by marijuana-legalization proponents, is very vague. Our state lawmakers must give clarification to Amendment 20 and create a regulatory scheme for the growing medical marijuana industry.”

State Sen. Romer concurs. “Right now it’s easier to get a medical marijuana license than it is to get a liquor license,” he said.

Currently, patients need to see a doctor only one time to get a recommendation that enables them to buy medical marijuana. Patients can choose to pay $90 to file with the state and receive a card identifying them as medical marijuana patients. The cards do not expire.

To become a provider or grower of medical marijuana, entrepreneurs need to have a patient name them as a caregiver when they file for a medical marijuana card.

Romer said he doesn’t want to limit legitimately sick people’s access to medical marijuana, but he doesn’t want to see the state law turned into de facto legalization of marijuana.

“Amendment 20 never dealt with where you got the medical marijuana,” he said. “We’re going to license the growers and we’re going to license the caregivers.”

Romer wants to keep marijuana out of the hands of teenagers and hopes to channel some of the revenues into programs to treat substance abuse.

One of the most difficult aspects for lawmakers is how to define true medical need. Romer is keeping an open mind.

“I think you’re having a lot of baby boomers who, all of us, are feeling a lot of aches and pains [and] are going to decide to try medical marijuana,” he said. “I personally haven’t tried it yet, but I’m not saying someday before I’m done I won’t.”

Pot patients sue Centennial over closed dispensary

By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press Writer

CENTENNIAL, Colo.—A medical marijuana lawsuit in suburban Denver could test the limits of how far Colorado cities can go to stop pot shops.

A dispensary and three patients sued the city of Centennial Monday after the town shut down a marijuana dispensary last month.

Centennial originally gave CannaMart a business license but then forced the dispensary to close after about a month, saying town officials didn’t know the business was selling pot.

Kirsten Lamb, 41, one of the patients suing, said she has multiple sclerosis and can’t find an alternative dispensary she likes as well.

“They have always been there to take care of me, but now they’re not there,” she said.

The lawsuit could answer a question many Colorado cities are struggling to answer as pot shops proliferate: Do cities have to allow dispensaries just because state voters in 2000 allowed some patients to possess marijuana?

Lawyers for CannaMart say yes.

The Centennial lawsuit is the first of its kind in Colorado, and the message should be sent that towns can’t ban dispensaries, the attorneys said.

“They cannot ban a constitutional right,” said Robert Corry, one of CannaMart’s lawyers.

The plaintiffs want a judge to force Centennial to allow the dispensary to reopen.

But Centennial has the right to ban businesses that violate federal drug laws, said Centennial lawyer Robert Widner said Monday. And CannaMart wasn’t honest on its application for a business permit, he said.

“They had a license for medical supplies. We had no clue it was for marijuana,” Widner said.

Centennial did not pass a law banning dispensaries but simply revoked CannaMart’s business license because the establishment does not comply with federal drug laws, he said.

Cities in other states that allow the sale of medical marijuana have also been baffled by how to regulate it.

Earlier this month, Los Angeles officials put off a decision on whether to make permanent a moratorium on businesses selling it. The California towns of Sacramento and Santa Cruz are also considering banning pot shops.

In Colorado, Castle Rock banned marijuana dispensaries earlier this month after receiving at least two business permit applications for dispensaries. Those permits are under review.

The owners of CannaMart said the difference in Centennial is that the shop was given a license, then shut down without due process. One of the owners, Stan Zislis, said CannaMart was even in the process of paying city taxes.

“They cannot legitimize a business” by taking taxes, then shut it down, he said.

CannaMart, which had about 600 patients, was briefly located in the nearby suburb of Greenwood Village but was kicked out under a nuisance citation before its business permit there could be approved, Zislis said.

Eric Frasher, 41, said he has multiple sclerosis and joined the lawsuit because CannaMart’s closure forces him to “drive around all day” looking for a dispensary.

“I’d just like to see it back in my neighborhood,” Frasher told reporters.

denver and the west

Colorado medical-pot backers form trade group

By John Ingold
The Denver Post

Posted: 11/12/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/12/2009 02:24:29 AM MST

A group of medical-marijuana advocates — striving for legitimacy for their still-nascent industry — announced the formation of a new trade group Wednesday.

The Colorado Wellness Association, its founders said, will formulate regulations for the state’s booming medical- marijuana dispensary business, develop quality-control guidelines to protect patients, produce a regular magazine and perhaps even start an online medical-marijuana commodities market for dispensary owners to purchase their product.

“This industry is growing up,” said medical-marijuana attorney Rob Corry, the new group’s chairman.

The founding of the association is another step by members of Colorado’s broad medical-cannabis community in recent months to cast a mainstream light on what had for years been an in-the-shadows business. A group of medical-marijuana patients and dispensary owners in Boulder County have formed a similar group. Advocates have begun to lobby state lawmakers for regulations to better define and protect the industry.

Wednesday’s announcement came at the offices of Full Spectrum Laboratories, a recently opened Denver company that tests samples of medical-marijuana products and quantifies their potency. The lab not only provides quality-control assurances but also helps patients determine their needed dosage of the drug, lab founder Bob Winnicki said.

“We’re just bringing stuff that is already being done in other industries and focusing it on this industry,” said Winnicki, who dropped out during his third year of medical school to start the lab.

The lab will charge dispensaries about $60 per test and will provide the dispensary with a certification that can be shown to patients. Understanding the potency of an item of medical marijuana — which can vary widely based on the plant strain, growing technique and how the drug is consumed — is another step toward mainstreaming the industry, Winnicki said.

“Doctors are not going to write prescriptions for things that are not a given dosage,” he said. “No doctor is ever going to say, ‘Take two hits off a joint and call it good.’ ”

The new association also is working with former state Sen. Bob Hagedorn, a one-time head of the Senate’s health committee, to craft policy proposals for the upcoming legislative session.

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com

Judge overturns board’s medical marijuana decision

posted by: Sara Gandy written by: Jeffrey Wolf TaRhonda Thomas

DENVER - While questioning an attorney defending the decision to change a rule regarding medical marijuana caregivers, Judge Larry Naves realized he was getting pretty intense.

“If I seem a little upset about this, it’s because we’re doing the same thing we did two years ago,” he said.

Tuesday morning, Naves presided over a hearing in which plaintiffs from the medical marijuana community filed a complaint in response to a decision by the State Board of Health.

He overturned a decision that the board made last week, redefining what it means to be a caregiver.

On Nov. 3, the board met in an emergency meeting and voted to redefine the term caregiver, as it applies to medical marijuana. The board’s ruling, which wasn’t permanent, stipulated that caregivers have more personal relationships with their clients.

“Being a primary caregiver and having a significant responsibility for managing the well-being means more than simply supplying marijuana,” Colorado First Assistant Attorney General Anne Holton said.

The attorney representing medical marijuana caregivers and patients argued that the board had no reason to meet in emergency session. And, when it did have that emergency meeting, it did not take the proper steps to notify everyone who would be affected by the decision.

Therefore, attorney Robert Corry argued, the decision to redefine the term caregiver should be thrown out.

“This is what happens when government moves hastily,” Corry said, “when they forge ahead without following the proper procedures.”

Holton argued the board was justified in meeting in an emergency fashion because the members did so in response to an appeals court ruling, which upheld the conviction of a Longmont woman who was found guilty of growing marijuana plants even though she said she was a caregiver and the plants were for her patients. The ruling, board members say, meant a change in state law; therefore, their guidelines had to reflect that.

“The board had been attempting to provide clarity so there wouldn’t be confusion by what it means,” Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spokesperson Mark Salley said.

Corry, however, disagrees. He says the appeals court ruling is an interpretation of the law, not a law itself.

In 2007, both sides were in the same courtroom. They came to an agreement on the procedures the state board would follow in order to make any changes to medical marijuana guidelines.

“Our intent was to avoid the previous shenanigans,” Corry said. “Those shenanigans involve putting things through without adequately notifying the public… and letting the public participate in the process.”

Public comment was not allowed in the Nov. 3 meeting. In July, the same board did allow public comment in the meeting it held to originally define the term caregiver. At that time, the board accepted a broad definition, much to the liking of medical marijuana advocates.

Tuesday’s decision by the judge reinstates the old, broader definition of the term caregiver.

The board will bring up the same issue of defining the duties of a caregiver in its meeting on Dec. 16. Written comments from the public will be allowed. A decision has not been made on allowing verbal public comment.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has a record of more than 11,000 state-registered medical marijuana patients, as of its last official check in July. The department does not regulate or keep track of medical marijuana dispensaries.

(Copyright KUSA*TV, All Rights Reserved)

By Robert J. Corry Jr.
Posted: 11/02/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_13691103

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” — Ronald Reagan

Today, not much about Colorado’s economy moves. The state is broke and releases prisoners because it cannot afford to keep them. The governor slashes the higher education budget 40 percent. People lose jobs, homes and financial security. Our leaders face serious issues.

And what keeps some politicians up at night? That sneaking suspicion that some suffering cancer patient may gain limited pain relief through medical marijuana, coupled with that gnawing certainty that someone, somewhere, actually grew the plant for that patient.

But government cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand, and cannot extinguish the spark of freedom in peoples’ hearts. Now, the marijuana distribution chain becomes legal. Responsible entrepreneurs open shops to supply a skyrocketing demand for medicine. These small businesses serve needy patients. They pay taxes. They hire employees. They lease space. They advertise. And the drug war industrial complex can’t stand it.

Most elected leaders have a good sense of proportion regarding this issue. A minority of politicians, however, avoid reasonable proposals to tax and regulate marijuana, and instead irresponsibly fear-monger in the worst tradition of Prohibition-era “Reefer Madness” propaganda. We hear racially charged tales of “Mexican cartels” supposedly running the medical marijuana business, when the truth is Colorado homegrown marijuana puts foreign cartels out of business, and it is law enforcement that enriches cartels through hostility to medical marijuana.

We hear local bureaucrats complain about dispensaries, and then in the same breath enact moratoria, thus granting government-enforced monopolies to the very shops that offend them, and shutting out newer entrepreneurs who would do more responsible business. Government can help lower the high cost of medicine, but artificially restricting supply has the opposite effect.

We hear unsupported anecdotal government propaganda about how dispensaries “attract crime,” when the truth is these shops, which are generally open only in daylight hours, have security systems and are not open to the general public and only admit registered patients, and are safer than convenience stores, liquor stores, bars, gas stations or banks.

We hear government hysteria about how these shops should not be near schools, without a single documented case of a child obtaining marijuana from a dispensary. On Ninth and Corona streets in Denver is a small liquor store and a pharmacy, both legally dispensing drugs far more potent that marijuana, and both directly across the street from a large public elementary school. And this is not a problem. Children are not wandering in to buy narcotics or liquor. It is another example of an imaginary concern designed to justify irrational restrictions.

We also hear government officials with no formal medical training demonizing and second-guessing private confidential decisions of trained physicians who advise patients. Government should not interfere with private medical decisions.

Some officials even contend that although medical marijuana is legal, it is not legal to actually produce or distribute it. However, the Colorado Constitution legalizes “acquisition, possession, manufacture, production, use, sale, distribution, dispensing, or transportation of marijuana” for medical use.”

If “sale,” “distribution,” and even “dispensing” are legal, then a “dispensary” is legal. And if “manufacture” and “production” are legal, then growing is legal.

Many of these proposals would drive vulnerable patients away from the well-lit, safe, secure, private, confidential medical marijuana dispensary and put them and their wheelchairs back in the dangerous black market.

There are two positive results of this government hysteria: Thousands more Coloradoans are aware that they have the option of being legal medical marijuana patients; and voters continue discussions of the wisdom of continuing Prohibition. This is a debate that freedom wins and government nannyism loses.

Robert J. Corry Jr. (www.RobCorry.com) is a Colorado attorney specializing in medical marijuana.

Memorandum for Selected United State Attorneys on Investigations and Prosecutions in States Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana

October 19th, 2009 Posted by Tracy Russo

Today Attorney General Eric Holder announced formal guidelines for federal prosecutors in states that have enacted laws authorizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Those guidelines are contained in a memo from Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden which was sent to United States Attorneys this morning.

The text of this memo is provided below for reference. You may also download a PDF version of the memo by clicking, http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/192

———————————————————————————————-

October 19,2009

MEMORANDUM FOR SELECTED UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS

FROM: David W. Ogden, Deputy Attorney General

SUBJECT: Investigations and Prosecutions in States Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana

This memorandum provides clarification and guidance to federal prosecutors in States that have enacted laws authorizing the medical use of marijuana. These laws vary in their substantive provisions and in the extent of state regulatory oversight, both among the enacting States and among local jurisdictions within those States. Rather than developing different guidelines for every possible variant of state and local law, this memorandum provides uniform guidance to focus federal investigations and prosecutions in these States on core federal enforcement priorities.

The Department of Justice is committed to the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in all States. Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug, and the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime and provides a significant source of revenue to large-scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels. One timely example underscores the importance of our efforts to prosecute significant marijuana traffickers: marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels.

The Department is also committed to making efficient and rational use of its limited investigative and prosecutorial resources. In general, United States Attorneys are vested with “plenary authority with regard to federal criminal matters” within their districts. USAM 9-2.001. In exercising this authority, United States Attorneys are “invested by statute and delegation from the Attorney General with the broadest discretion in the exercise of such authority.” Id. This authority should, of course, be exercised consistent with Department priorities and guidance.

The prosecution of significant traffickers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, and the disruption of illegal drug manufacturing and trafficking networks continues to be a core priority in the Department’s efforts against narcotics and dangerous drugs, and the Department’s investigative and prosecutorial resources should be directed towards these objectives. As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. For example, prosecution of individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law, or those caregivers in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law who provide such individuals with marijuana, is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources. On the other hand, prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department. To be sure, claims of compliance with state or local law may mask operations inconsistent with the terms, conditions, or purposes of those laws, and federal law enforcement should not be deterred by such assertions when otherwise pursuing the Department’s core enforcement priorities.

Typically, when any of the following characteristics is present, the conduct will not be in clear and unambiguous compliance with applicable state law and may indicate illegal drug trafficking activity of potential federal interest:

•unlawful possession or unlawful use of firearms;
•violence;
•sales to minors;
•financial and marketing activities inconsistent with the terms, conditions, or purposes of state law, including evidence of money laundering activity and/or financial gains or excessive amounts of cash inconsistent with purported compliance with state or local law;
•amounts of marijuana inconsistent with purported compliance with state or local law;
•illegal possession or sale of other controlled substances; or
•ties to other criminal enterprises.
Of course, no State can authorize violations of federal law, and the list of factors above is not intended to describe exhaustively when a federal prosecution may be warranted. Accordingly, in prosecutions under the Controlled Substances Act, federal prosecutors are not expected to charge, prove, or otherwise establish any state law violations. Indeed, this memorandum does not alter in any way the Department’s authority to enforce federal law, including laws prohibiting the manufacture, production, distribution, possession, or use of marijuana on federal property. This guidance regarding resource allocation does not “legalize” marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law, nor is it intended to create any privileges, benefits, or rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable by any individual, party or witness in any administrative, civil, or criminal matter. Nor does clear and unambiguous compliance with state law or the absence of one or all of the above factors create a legal defense to a violation of the Controlled Substances Act. Rather, this memorandum is intended solely as a guide to the exercise of investigative and prosecutorial discretion.

Finally, nothing herein precludes investigation or prosecution where there is a reasonable basis to believe that compliance with state law is being invoked as a pretext for the production or distribution of marijuana for purposes not authorized by state law. Nor does this guidance preclude investigation or prosecution, even when there is clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state law, in particular circumstances where investigation or prosecution otherwise serves important federal interests.

Your offices should continue to review marijuana cases for prosecution on a case-by-case basis, consistent with the guidance on resource allocation and federal priorities set forth herein, the consideration of requests for federal assistance from state and local law enforcement authorities, and the Principles of Federal Prosecution.

cc: All United States Attorneys

Lanny A. Breuer
Assistant Attorney General Criminal Division

B. Todd Jones
United States Attorney
District of Minnesota
Chair, Attorney General’s Advisory Committee

Michele M. Leonhart
Acting Administrator
Drug Enforcement Administration

H. Marshall Jarrett
Director
Executive Office for United States Attorneys

Kevin L. Perkins
Assistant Director
Criminal Investigative Division
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett has requested that all charges be dropped against a Nederland woman who faced drug charges stemming from her use and distribution of medical marijuana.

Sherri Versfelt’s home was raided by law enforcement in July 2008. She spent 27 days in jail because she did not have the money to post bond, her attorney Robert Corry Jr., said.

Corry also represented Jason Lauve, a wheelchair-bound medical marijuana user was acquitted earlier this year.

Versfelt’s case was scheduled to go to trial next week. Corry called on Garnett not to pursue the case in a guest opinion published in Thursday’s Daily Camera.

Garnett has said prosecuting medical marijuana cases is his office’s lowest priority, and he thinks marijuana eventually will be legal.

Amendment 20, approved by Colorado voters in 2000, allows patients and caregivers to possess marijuana for medical purposes.

Garnett filed a motion to dismiss all charges against Verfelt Thursday morning. He said he was motivated by recent rulings in other court cases, not the publicity around the case.

Corry called the decision “a victory for the taxpayers of Boulder County, the voters of Colorado and medical marijuana.”

These are promising times for Colorado`s medical marijuana patients. For years, they`ve suffered in the dark, desperately seeking only to follow their physicians` orders to use marijuana to address their debilitating medical conditions, taking their wheelchairs at midnight to the streets to purchase low-quality medicine at inflated prices, or struggling in the difficult and physically-taxing endeavor of growing it themselves in expensive indoor gardens. But finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Patients can visualize a world where the supply of medical marijuana is almost as safe to obtain as more dangerous and addictive hard narcotics such as Oxycontin, Percocet, or Fentanyl.

The optimism hasn`t come easy. In August, the Boulder District Attorney`s Office prosecuted Jason Lauve, a wheelchair-bound medical marijuana patient for two felony charges of possessing low-quality medical marijuana for his own use. While two high-level prosecutors participated in the four-day trial, these talented attorneys could not overcome simple facts: Jason was protected under the Colorado Constitution, which allows him to consume marijuana to treat extreme pain associated with his broken back.

In addition to understanding Lauve`s legal rights, many jurors saw the light about marijuana`s continued prohibition. Marijuana has alleviated human suffering for thousands of years, is not physically addictive, does not rip apart internal organs like harsh narcotics, and presents an all-natural and organic alternative to synthetic medicine.

After the verdict and an ensuing firestorm of taxpayer outrage, Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett opened his mind. He said that it would be better if marijuana were legal outright, and not just for medical purposes. This is an extraordinary statement from a prosecutor, and Garnett should be applauded for seeing that prohibition is a failed policy that only hurts those that have already suffered too much.

Garnett then reached out and explored clarifying Colorado`s law through civil litigation, rather than criminal prosecution. In a letter to the Daily Camera on Sept. 20, Garnett wrote, “I would like to see these issues clarified outside the context of a criminal prosecution, .. . I have assured them that I will not prosecute dispensaries since I don`t want the obvious lack of clarity about their operations to be resolved in a criminal context.” (emphasis his.) Then, a week later, Garnett told County Commissioners that prosecuting marijuana cases (not just medical marijuana cases, but marijuana in general) is his office`s lowest priority.

We can only hope that Garnett`s words are met with action. Because before any civil discussions can occur, Garnett must begin by dismissing the current criminal charges pending against Sherri Versfelt, a young Nederland woman guilty of nothing more than suffering from a debilitating medical condition and legally consuming and dispensing small amounts of medical marijuana to other patients.

When government agents showed up at her home without a search warrant, they were dealing with someone who has no prior criminal convictions, no money, and no weapons. She did, however, have a state-issued Medical Marijuana Registry Card. Versfelt has already spent 27 days in jail because she could not afford to post bond. This coming at a time when we face a distressed economy, high unemployment, and the prospect of violent criminals being released from prison because the government has run out of our hard-earned tax money.

Versfelt is currently pregnant, due in December, and the extreme stress of a felony jury trial (scheduled to begin Oct. 19 at the Boulder County Justice Center) might be too much for her and her unborn son, especially because Sherri suffers from a severe long-time medical condition stemming from an adolescent surgery that makes her pregnancy itself a miracle. At age 14, she had a watermelon-sized growth removed, along with one of her ovaries.

For voters to take seriously Garnett`s desire to be “the most progressive DA in Colorado,” he must cease the fearsome prosecution of sick people and those who care for them. As long as peaceful citizens fear pounding on their doors by armed police, criminal charges, and the humiliation that comes from being accused, there can be no open and civil discussion, no trust.

Colorado voters made medical marijuana legal. Patients and caregivers are dispensing and consuming it legally. Jurors and taxpayers should not be subjected to lengthy trials over a plant. After a long dark road, Colorado`s suffering medical marijuana patients finally have hope that better days lie ahead. Garnett can lead the way by turning words into action.

Robert J. Corry, Jr. is a Colorado defense attorney specializing in medical marijuana. He represents Jason Lauve and Sherri Versfelt.

October 13, 2009 3:47 PM
LANCE BENZEL / THE GAZETTE

Marijuana’s pungent odor filled the lobby at Colorado Springs police headquarters Tuesday afternoon as former drug suspect Stephan Thomas showed off nearly a half pound of the drug he reclaimed from police custody.

“Liberating medicine!” his attorney, Robert J. Corry Jr. of Denver, cried out as the pair emerged from a back room holding three large Mason jars filled or partially filled with aromatic marijuana buds.

The surreal tableau inside the Police Operations Center on South Nevada Avenue unfolded before a small group of medical marijuana users and their supporters and marked the end of what Corry described as the latest battle over dueling interpretations of the state’s 9-year-old medical marijuana laws.

At issue, Corry said: Whether the constitutional amendment voters ratified in 2000 limits medical marijuana providers to possessing 2 ounces of the drug per patient, or whether, as Corry contends, the law merely includes that amount as a “guideline.”

“The law says you can have whatever is necessary medically,” said Corry, a medical marijuana advocate who says he has defended more than 100 people who were charged with crimes while following the controversial law, including a Boulder man recently acquitted at trial in an unrelated case.

Thomas, 26, of Fountain, was arrested at a traffic stop in December 2008 even though he presented his medical marijuana registration card and signed documents showing that he was the caregiver — or a lawfully appointed supplier — for several medical marijuana users, court documents show.

Dan Zook, an assistant district attorney in the Fourth Judicial District, said the paperwork was incomplete and out of date.

Thomas disputed that claim, and said detectives with the Colorado Springs police Metro Vice, Narcotics and Intelligence Unit scoffed when he protested that he was a caregiver: “They kept laughing and saying, ‘Medical marijuana is not real. You don’t know what you got yourself into.’”

Authorities seized just less than 8 ounces — about $4,000 worth of marijuana — and $3,500 in cash, court documents showed.

The felony case against Thomas was dropped Oct. 5, and a judge in Colorado Springs ordered that his marijuana and money be returned. Colorado Springs police referred questions about the dropped charges to the District Attorney’s Office. Zook said the decision was made after a district attorney’s investigator interviewed Thomas’ clients.

Corry chalked it up to the law-enforcement community’s reluctance to follow the law.

“It’s inertia,” he said. “It’s business as usual and old habits dying hard. They’re trained to identify it and prosecute it, and that’s what they did.”

Thomas’ supply was about 40 grams lighter than when police seized it, his attorney claimed, a discrepancy police attributed to sending some of the drug to a lab for testing.

–

Gazette writer John Ensslin contributed to this report.

Posted: 9:29 PM Oct 13, 2009
Reporter: McKenzie Martin
Email Address: mmartin@kktv.com

A Colorado Springs man arrested on drug charges reclaimed his marijuana from police Tuesday.

Stephan Thomas has a medical license to use and sell medical pot and after an 8-month battle in court he went to the Police Operation’s Center to reclaim almost a half pound of his marijuana that police seized last December.

“Liberating some medicine,” said Thomas’s attorney Robert Corry. “This is how the law is supposed to work where if somebody is encountered by law enforcement and law enforcement confiscates their medicine it’s supposed to come back to them,” Corry said.

Last December Thomas was pulled over for speeding. Inside the car police found three mason jars filled with about 4,000-dollars worth of marijuana.

“I told them I was medical and they pulled us out, they didn’t care, they put us in hand-cuffs,” Thomas said.

Thomas not only has a medical license to use marijuana, he is also a caregiver, he has a license to sell to other patients. “I had the license, I had copies of the patients that I caregive for,” Thomas said.

After dealing with his case for months in court it was dismissed by a judge last weeks ago. The judge ordered that police give him his pot back.

“Just took a very long time to do this, I attribute that to old habits die hard,” Corry said.

And now after so long Corry and Thomas say the marijuana isn’t even good any more because it wasn’t stored properly. But it’s still a victory they say for them and for everyone else who uses marijuana to help ease their pain.

The DA’s office did not return phone calls to 11 News regarding Thomas’ case. Police said they couldn’t comment on this specific case, but said they would never arrest someone unless they believed they were breaking the law.

More than 11-thousand people have medical licenses to use marijuana in our state.

Woman Appeals Pot Verdict, Says It Was Medical

IVAN MORENO, Associated Press Writer

DENVER (AP) ― A woman who claims she was a medical marijuana provider to clients she never met is appealing her conviction on drug charges, saying she wants another trial to prove she’s not a criminal.

Attorneys for Stacy Clendenin presented arguments on her behalf Tuesday at the Colorado Court of Appeals, in a courtroom that was packed with about 60 spectators.

“I hope they’ll allow me to have a new trial and prove that I’m not a drug dealer,” Clendenin said after the hearing.

Medical marijuana use is legal in Colorado, but municipalities have been struggling recently to come up with regulations for dispensaries as the number of registered users in the state continues to increase. Colorado doesn’t license or regulate dispensaries.

Clendenin was convicted in Boulder County of charges that included cultivation of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute. She was sentenced on February 2008 to one year of unsupervised probation and 48 hours of community service.

Prosecutors argue that someone who doesn’t have personal contact with clients cannot be their medical marijuana provider.

Authorities found 44 marijuana plants when they searched Clendenin’s Longmont home on October 2006. She came to their attention after someone told them a lot of people came in and out of her house. Investigators also found three marijuana stalks in a garbage bin in front of her home.

Clendenin claims a lower court wrongly prevented her clients from testifying that she was their provider through a cooperative she supplied.

“She would’ve brought on about a dozen witnesses who would’ve testified that she was growing medical marijuana for their benefit,” said Robert Corry, Clendenin’s attorney. “So the jury was deprived of the complete picture.”

Corry said it could be months before the Appeals Court reaches a decision.

Colorado voters legalized marijuana use and cultivation for medicinal purposes in 2000. Thirteen other states, including California, Washington and Rhode Island, have also legalized the drug for medical use.

John Lee, a Colorado assistant attorney general, said there needs to be more direct contact between a medical marijuana provider and a registered user.

“When the voters passed it, they probably thought it was someone who was providing direct care to the patient, someone who does more than just cultivation,” he said.

Clendenin, a waitress and registered medical marijuana user, said she uses the drug for migraines. She said all the people she supplied also were registered users.

About 10,000 people in Colorado use medical marijuana. There are about 60 medical marijuana dispensaries in the state, but some municipalities, including Durango, Silverthorne and Northglenn, have frozen the permit applications for new businesses until they craft rules for them.

The state health department proposed limiting medical marijuana suppliers to helping only five patients at a time, but the state health board rejected the idea in July. The decision allowed dispensaries to continue.

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Photo by Marty Caivano

Jason Lauve, center, his brother Alex, left, and his attorney, Robert Corry, are greeted by cheers from supporters as they exit the courtroom at the Boulder County Justice Center on Thursday. Lauve, who was accused of possessing an illegal amount of medical marijuana when his home was raided last year, was acquitted on all charges.

Photo by Marty Caivano

Jason Lauve, right, is hugged by a juror (who refused to give her name) after his trial ended at the Boulder County Justice Center on Thursday. Lauve, who was accused of possessing an illegal amount of medical marijuana when his home was raided last year, was acquitted on all charges. At left is jury foreman Roger Grady.

BOULDER, Colo. — Rolling out of the Boulder County Justice Center in a wheelchair Thursday with a jumble of once-confiscated pot in his lap, Jason Lauve smiled and waved to supporters after a jury acquitted him of possessing too much medical marijuana.

Eight men and four women found the 38-year-old Louisville resident not guilty of a felony drug possession charge, as well as lesser charges of possessing marijuana and marijuana concentrate.

Lauve, who was prescribed marijuana to relieve the pain from a back injury, burst out crying, grabbed his defense attorney and nearly fell to his knees when the verdict was announced.

“Thank you so much,” he yelled out to the jurors.

Boulder District Judge Maria Berkenkotter had to pause and admonish Lauve’s supporters as they applauded and called out during her reading of the verdicts.

She ordered that more than two pounds of Lauve’s marijuana supply, which had been confiscated by police in a raid of his home last summer, be returned to him.

“I have a right to live,” Lauve said afterward. “All of us as patients have a right to have our own life, not the government’s life. We should not be treated like criminals.”

Laurie Borgers, a medical marijuana patient from Denver, said she was elated by the verdict.

“I am happy and relieved as expected to see justice was served today,” she said outside the courtroom. “They need to stop picking on sick people.”

Lauve could have spent up to three years in prison had he been convicted of the most serious charge.

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said Thursday his office will not appeal.

“That’s the way the system works and we respect the jury’s verdict and the work they put into it,” he said.

State law at core of case

Lauve’s case cast a bright light on Colorado’s 9-year-old medical marijuana law, which lets patients with chronic pain and in debilitating health obtain a state-issued ID card clearing them to grow and buy pot.

Lauve joined the state’s medical marijuana registry after he was severely injured by a snowboarder who plowed into him at Eldora Ski Resort in 2004. He said the collision reduced him from an avid cyclist and expert telemark skier to someone who relies on a cane and wheelchair to get around.

He testified during his four-day trial that he smoked pot three times a day and mixed the drug into his food once daily to relieve his pain. Medical marijuana was the most effective pain management tool he had come across, Lauve told the jury, and the drug allowed him to wean himself off of several addictive opiate-based painkillers.

Law enforcement authorities, acting on a tip from a neighbor, seized 34 ounces of marijuana from Lauve’s home on June 26, 2008. Prosecutors claimed he violated the law by possessing far more than the 2 ounces of usable pot and six plants permitted by the statute.

But Lauve and his lawyer countered that the constitutional amendment voters approved in 2000 contains a provision that allows patients to present an “affirmative defense,” ultimately giving them the power to determine the amount of marijuana appropriate for their needs.

Prosecutor Karen Lorenz contended in closing arguments that by ignoring the limits in the statute, patients and caregivers would essentially have “carte blanche” to possess whatever amount of pot they wanted, gutting the law’s intent.

“There’s no doctor to support this, there are random numbers being thrown around based on what he thinks he needs on a day-to-day basis,” Lorenz told the jury. “That’s not what the medical marijuana statute is for.”

Lauve’s attorney, Rob Corry, argued that prosecutors never came close to proving that his client was doing anything other than legally medicating himself and treating pain that only he could gauge.

“There is no evidence that he had more than what was medically necessary to treat his severe debilitating medical condition,” Corry said. “Who gets to decide what is medically necessary?”

‘We believed you’

Jury foreman Roger Grady said after the trial that he and his 11 colleagues simply attempted to interpret the state law as “common men” would.

“We believed you,” he told Lauve outside the courthouse.

Grady, 64, said it was clear that the best person to determine how much medical marijuana a patient needs is the patient himself.

“We don’t know what the limit is for medical marijuana, and the prosecution didn’t produce anyone who knew what that limit was,” he said.

If prosecutors were using Lauve as a “test case” for how the state’s medical marijuana law should be applied, Grady said, they chose the wrong man. Grady accused prosecutors of not doing their “homework” and bringing a relatively weak case against Lauve.

“We thought, ‘This guy is doing everything in the law as it was written,’” Grady said.

Garnett, the DA, said he didn’t see the trial as a medical marijuana test case.

“It’s a careful process we pursue to analyze a case,” he said. “We try to treat every defendant individually and fairly.”

But medical marijuana advocate Laura Kriho, of Boulder, said the case was a waste of public resources that brought misery upon a man who did nothing wrong.

She said she hopes Thursday’s verdict will bring a fresh understanding of the importance of letting patients take the lead in determining the best treatments for themselves.

“The DA shouldn’t be spending taxpayer dollars telling people how to medicate themselves,” she said. “This sets a precedent that Boulder County juries are not going to convict medical cannabis patients for using the amount they see fit.”

Contact Camera Staff Writer John Aguilar at 303-473-1389 or aguilarj@dailycamera.com.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/aug/06/boulder-medical-marijuana-patient-acquitted-jury/

POSTED: 4:45 am MDT July 20, 2009
UPDATED: 1:16 am MDT July 21, 2009

DENVER — The state Board of Health has voted down a proposal to limit medical marijuana providers to five patients each.

The vote was a big victory for dispensaries that have sprouted up to serve a growing number of patients across Colorado, and for patients who depend on marijuana to ease nausea and pain.

Dispensary operator Todd Young, who provides marijuana for nine patients, testified against the proposed limit.

“If this passes, I would have to sit down and cut off half of my patients,” Young said. “How will I decide who to choose?”

One of his patients, Damien LaGoy, is a long term AIDS survivor, who uses marijuana to help cope with the side effects of the multiple drugs he takes to stay alive.

“If they don’t allow my caregiver to have more than five patients, I’ll be back on Colfax looking for marijuana,” LaGoy told 7NEWS.

Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the state health department, said the rules require that a caregiver be “someone who has significant responsibility for managing the well being of a patient.”

“Dispensaries are like pharmacies,” Calonge said, “and neither is synonymous with the term caregiver.”

Calonge said that by limiting the number of patients to five, caregivers can spend more time with them and provide better care.

But attorney Robert Corry, a medical marijuana advocate, said health officials are trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.

“The health department already admitted back in 2007 that they picked the number five because the DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, suggested the number five to them,” Corry said.

Calonge countered that the medical marijuana program is susceptible to fraud and that some large-scale marijuana growers busted by police are falsely claiming to be medical marijuana suppliers.

There have been other issues.

Jade Thomas of the Colorado Alliance for Drug Endangered Children told board members about a Westminster man who shared his medical marijuana with his children, ages 9, 11, 14 and 18.

“He even took pictures to document the event,” Thomas said.

Opponents said the vast majority of users shouldn’t be punished because of a few “bad apples.”

They said limits would make it harder for patients to get medical marijuana.

Patients like Kevin Grimsinger, a war veteran and double amputee, use the plant to help with pain.

Grimsinger, who was awarded two purple hearts and a bronze star, told 7NEWS that regular pain medication lead to anxiety, so he tried marijuana.

“Until dispensaries began to open in Denver, I had to get my medicine from the street, where it was of low quality and dangerous to obtain,” he said.

Cliff Riedel, of the Larimer County District Attorney’s Office, told the board that many law enforcement groups would like to see more regulation.

“The state limits the number of children that a day care provider can deal with,” Riedel said. “Why shouldn’t there be limits on the number of people that a primary caregiver can treat?”

More than 300 people attended the hearing, and the vast majority opposed the rules.

Colorado voters allowed the use of medical marijuana in 2000 by passing Amendment 20.

The board voted to limit caregivers to five patients in 2004, but a Denver judge threw that out three years later because the limit was enacted without a hearing.

Copyright 2009 by TheDenverChannel.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/20113746/detail.html

Changes are in CAPS

Alternative Proposal Designed to Protect Confidentiality of Vulnerable Patients and Caregivers from Criminal Acts
Regulation 2: Application for a registry identification card

A. DEFINITIONS
i) An “adult applicant” is defined as a patient eighteen years of age or older. A “minor applicant” is defined as a patient less than eighteen years of age.
ii) “PRIMARY CARE-GIVER” MEANS A PERSON OR PERSONS OTHER THAN THE PATIENT AND THE PATIENT’S PHYSICIAN, WHO IS EIGHTEEN YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER AND HAS SIGNIFICANT RESPONSIBILITY FOR MANAGING THE WELL-BEING OF A PATIENT WHO HAS A DEBILITATING MEDICAL CONDITION. THE CHOICE OF CAREGIVER OR CAREGIVERS IS AT THE SOLE DISCRETION OF THE PATIENT.
iii) “SIGNIFICANT RESPONSIBILITY FOR MANAGING THE WELL-BEING OF A PATIENT” MEANS ASSISTING A PATIENT OR PATIENTS WITH CULTIVATING, MANUFACTURING, TRANSPORTING, OBTAINING, STORING, PURCHASING, DISTRIBUTING, PREPARING, OR OTHERWISE PROVIDING MARIJUANA FOR MEDICAL USE.

B. In order to be placed in the registry and to receive a registry identification card, WHICH IS OPTIONAL AND NOT REQUIRED TO ASSERT AN AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION, an adult applicant must reside in Colorado and submit an application form supplied by the department, COMPLETED AND NOTARIZED, OR SIGNED IN THE PRESENCE OF AN EMPLOYEE OF THE DEPARTMENT AFTER SHOWING APPROPRIATE PICTURE IDENTIFICATION. The adult applicant must provide the following information with the application:
i) The applicant’s name, address, date of birth, and social security number; HOWEVER, NO PORTION OF THE PATIENT’S SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER SHALL BE SHOWN ON THE REGISTRY IDENTIFICATION CARD;
ii) The name and address of the applicant’s primary care-giver, if one is designated at the time of application; HOWEVER, NOTHING HEREIN REQUIRES A PERSON BE FIRST DESIGNATED AS CAREGIVER TO ACT IN SAID CAPACITY; THE PATIENT IS PERMITTED TO MAINTAIN THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF THE CAREGIVER AND NOT DISCLOSE THE CAREGIVER’S IDENTITY OR ADDRESS IF SUCH CONFIDENTIALITY IS NECESSARY TO PROTECT THE SAFETY AND PROPERTY OF THE CAREGIVER; NOTHING HEREIN RESTRICTS THE PATIENT FROM USING MULTIPLE CAREGIVERS AT THE PATIENT’S SOLE DISCRETION TO OBTAIN MEDICAL MARIJUANA THROUGH THE SAFEST MEANS POSSIBLE.
iii) Written documentation from the applicant’s physician that the applicant has been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition as defined in regulation six and the physician’s conclusion that the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana; and
iv) The name, address, and telephone number of the physician who has concluded the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana; AND
v) A COPY OF A SECURE AND VERIFIABLE IDENTITY DOCUMENT, IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE SECURE AND VERIFIABLE IDENTITY DOCUMENT ACT, C.R.S. § 24-72.1-101 ET SEQ., FOR THE PATIENT AND PRIMARY CARE-GIVER, IF ANY IS DESIGNATED.

C. In order for a minor applicant to be placed in the registry and to receive a registry identification card, the minor applicant must reside in Colorado and a parent residing in Colorado must consent in writing to serve as the minor applicant’s primary care-giver. Such parent must submit an application form supplied by the department. The parent of the minor applicant must provide the following information with the application:
i) The applicant’s name, address, date of birth, and social security number,
ii) Written documentation from two of the applicant’s physicians that the applicant has been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition as defined in regulation six and each physician’s conclusion that the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana;
iii) The name, address, and telephone number of the two physicians who have concluded the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana;
iv) Consent from each of the applicant’s parents residing in Colorado that the applicant may engage in the medical use of marijuana; and
v) Documentation that one of the physicians referred to in (iii) has explained the possible risks and benefits of medical use of marijuana to the applicant and each of the applicant’s parents residing in Colorado.

D. To maintain an effective registry identification card, a patient must annually resubmit to the department, at least thirty days prior to the expiration date, updated written documentation of the information required in paragraphs B and C of this regulation.

[STATE OF COLORADO SEAL]
UPDATED NOTICE OF PUBLIC RULE-MAKING HEARING
BEFORE THE COLORADO BOARD OF HEALTH
NOTICE is hereby given pursuant to the provisions of Section 24-4-103, C.R.S., that the Colorado Board of Health will conduct a public rule-making hearing to consider the promulgation of:
Amendments to 5 CCR 1006-2 – Rules and Regulations Pertaining to the Medical Use of Marijuana
Date: July 20, 2009
Time: 9:00 a.m.
Place: Turnhalle
Tivoli Student Union, Conference Room 250
Auraria Campus
900 Auraria Parkway
Denver, CO 80204-1852
NOTE: The Turnhalle is disabled accessible and will accommodate approximately 450 people. See next page for directions to the Tivoli Student Union.

Hearing Subjects/Issues Involved
The purpose of this hearing is to receive public comments on proposed rules pertaining to the Medical Marijuana Registry Program. The proposal submitted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and published on February 10, 2009 and May 10, 2009 (“department proposal”) further define the term “primary care-giver” and clarify the phrase “significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient”; require that signatures on Medical Marijuana Registry applications and related forms be notarized; provide parameters for the number of patients to whom a primary care-giver may provide services; require compliance with the Colorado Secure and Verifiable Identity Document Act, C.R.S. § 24-72.1-1-101 et seq.; and alter the process for changing a care-giver’s listing in the Medical Marijuana Registry.
The department proposal has been developed by the Center for Health and Environmental Information and Statistics Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment pursuant to Section 25-1.5-106, C.R.S.
In addition, alternative language to the department proposal has been proposed for the Board’s consideration by Robert J. Corry (“Corry alternative”). This amended notice is to ensure that scope of the hearing notice is sufficiently broad to consider the Corry alternative. The Corry alternative defines the term “primary care-giver”; defines the phrase “significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient”; modifies the legal requirements and effect of a patient being placed on the registry and receiving a registration card; requires that signatures on Medical Marijuana Registry applications and related forms be notarized or signed in the presence of a department employee; prohibits certain information from being included on a registry identification card; provides certain protections to a caregiver; allows a patient to have multiple caregivers; and requires compliance with the Colorado Secure and Verifiable Identity Document Act, C.R.S. § 24-72.1-1-101 et seq.
Contact for more information and/or copies of the Corry alternative: Robert J. Corry, Jr. Attorney at Law, 600 Seventeenth Street, Suite 2800, South Tower, Denver, CO 80202, (303) 634-2244.
Contact for more information and/or copies of the department proposal: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Center for Health and Environmental Information and Statistics Division, CHEIS-ADM-A1, 4300 Cherry Creek Drive S., Denver, CO 80246, (303) 692-2184.
The department proposal and the Corry alternative will also be available on the Board’s Web site at http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/op/bh/index.html under “Notices of Upcoming Public Rulemaking Hearings and Draft Proposed Rules.”
(Continued)
Participation in Public Rule-Making Hearing/Submission of Written Comments

The Board of Health strongly encourages all interested parties to participate in the hearing by providing written data, views, or comments prior to the hearing. At the discretion of the Chair, oral testimony at the hearing may be limited to five minutes or less, depending on the number of persons wishing to comment. Additionally, the Chair may limit duplicative or repetitive testimony.
The Board requests submission of written materials on the Corry alternative no later than Monday, July 6, 2009, to allow the Board sufficient time to review the comments prior to the meeting. Persons that submitted written comments to the department’s proposal should not resubmit those comments.
Persons wishing to submit written comments or views on the Corry alternative should submit them to:
Colorado Board of Health
C/O Linda Shearman, Program Assistant
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
4300 Cherry Creek Drive South EDO-A5
Denver, CO 80246-1530
FAX: 303-691-7702, e-mail: linda.shearman@state.co.us

The proposed rules, together with the proposed statement of basis and purpose, specific statutory authority and regulatory analysis, will be available for inspection at the above address by any person at least five working days prior to the hearing.

Dated this 29th day of May 2009.

/S/ James B. Martin
James B. Martin
Executive Director

PLEASE NOTE: Arrangements will be made to accommodate individuals who wish to participate in the hearing via telephone conference. Instructions for accessing the teleconference will be published on the Department of Public Health and Environment website at http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/medmj.html at least 20 days before the hearing.

The Turnhalle is disabled accessible and will accommodate approximately 450 people. The Auraria campus is accessible by light rail and RTD bus. Parking is also available for an hourly fee. A map of the Auraria Campus is available at http://www.ahec.edu/campusmaps/maps.htm.

DIRECTIONS TO TIVOLI STUDENT UNION

Traveling North on I-25
Take I-25 North to Auraria Parkway exit
Take Auraria Parkway Exit (only goes towards downtown area)
Take Auraria to 9th Street
Turn Right onto 9th Street
Tivoli Student Union is on the corner of Auraria and 9th Street
Parking is on your right

Traveling South on I-25 (or South on Speer Blvd.)
(Use these directions is coming from Boulder also)
Take I-25 South to Speer Blvd. South Exit
Take Speer South past Elitch’s to Auraria Parkway
Turn right onto Auraria Parkway
Take Auraria Parkway to 9th Street
Turn left onto 9th Street
Tivoli Student Union is on the corner of Auraria and 9th Street
Parking is on your right

Traveling North on Speer Blvd. (See next page)
Traveling North on Speer Blvd.
Take Speer Blvd. North to Auraria Parkway
Turn left onto Auraria Parkway
Take Auraria Parkway to 9th Street
Turn left onto 9th Street
Tivoli Student Union is on the corner of Auraria and 9th Street
Parking is on your right

###

BRIGHTON HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR EXCLUDED FROM PROM BECAUSE HER DATE “SMELLED LIKE MEDICAL MARIJUANA”

BRIGHTON, COLORADO—On May 6, 2009 over the noon hour, Brighton High School Senior Sarah Heideman and her lawyer Robert J. Corry, Jr. will hold a press conference to discuss her recent exclusion from Prom.

When Sarah, age 18, and her date Jason R. Schweinsberg arrived, the school principal advised that they were not permitted to enter the event because Sarah’s date allegedly “smelled like marijuana.” A police search of both of them and their vehicle revealed no marijuana. Jason then advised the off-duty Brighton Police Officers present that he was a Medical Marijuana patient on the State of Colorado Medical Marijuana Registry and showed his State-issued card. Both Sarah and Jason denied using any marijuana that night, and denied smelling like it.

Sarah does not use marijuana or any other illegal drug, and voluntarily took a urinalysis this week to demonstrate that she was not using marijuana on Saturday or any other recent occasion. “What should have been a treasured memory of Sarah’s youth was turned into a nightmare because of the current insanity of the War on Drugs,” said Corry. “Sarah will never have her Senior Prom back, and she did absolutely nothing to deserve this callous treatment.”

WHAT: Sarah Heideman and her attorney, Robert Corry, Jr., will hold a press conference discussing her exclusion from Senior Prom.

WHEN: 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 6, 2009.

WHERE: Brighton High School, 270 South 8th Avenue, Brighton, Colorado 80601.

CONTACT: Website www.RobCorry.com; Robert Corry, Jr., at 303-634-2244 (ofc), 720-629-7112 (cell) or Robert.Corry@comcast.net.

# # #

Credit: Westword

Attorney Rob Corry delivered a rousing keynote speech at 4:20 pm on 4/20/09 at the second annual Denver 420 Rally held in Civic Center Park, in the shadow of the State Capitol and the City and County Building, to a fired-up crowd of freedom lovers. Police made zero citations or arrests.

Citizens In Charge Foundation Names Robert Corry November Lilburne Award Winner

(Woodbridge, VA) … Citizens in Charge Foundation (CICF), a national group that works to educate citizens and opinion leaders on the importance of the voter initiative and referendum process, today named Colorado attorney Robert Corry as the December winner of the John Lilburne Award.

“John Lilburne struggled to establish the peoples’ right to petition their government, and Robert Corry should be remembered for his efforts to defend that right.” Said CICF President Paul Jacob.

Corry is honored for his work to defeat Colorado Referendum O, a measure placed on the ballot by the Colorado general assembly which would have effectively gutted Colorado’s initiative process increasing the number of signatures required to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot, required signatures meet a geographical distribution, and reduced the time period that initiative proponents have to circulate petitions. The measure failed to pass on November 4 by a margin of 52% ‘No’ to 48% ‘Yes’.

“Referendum O was aimed at killing Colorado’s initiative process, and by taking the initiative to fight against this destructive measure Robert helped preserve Coloradans’ ability for citizen-led government,” said Jacob.

The John Lilburne Award is given monthly by CICF in honor of 17th Century English pamphleteer, political activist, and champion of individual rights John Lilburne, who advocated constitutional government and pioneered the use of petitioning and referenda for redress against government power and abuse.

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Brandon Holmes at (703) 492-1776 or brandon@citizensincharge.org.

State politicians are nearly united in backing Referendum O, which would radically cripple the people’s constitutional right to petition government, while leaving untouched legislators’ ability to promote unlimited constitutional changes at will.

Referendum O’s permanent strangling of our basic right to control government is receiving little attention this election. Legislators conspire with special interests to sneak Referendum O past voters with the least possible outcry in defense of our precious constitutional rights.

Proponents cynically tout Referendum O as an innocuous “good government” or “housekeeping” measure to “clean up” the constitution. Their stated excuses are that Colorado’s petition process is outside their control, and voters are too busy or ignorant to make “the right choices” on ballot issues.

Politicians sometimes stray from these official talking points to reveal utter contempt for the Constitution they swore to uphold. For example, Referendum O sponsor Rep. Al White called our Colorado Constitution “a roll of toilet paper.” Listen to his words at www.NoRefO.com.

Referendum O would make government reform petitions nearly impossible. Here are seven examples:

l”O” requires 50% more signatures for petitions proposing meaningful change.

l”O” gives citizens 1/3 less time to obtain that 50% greater number of signatures.

l”O” imposes seven geographic quotas; based on your residence, your otherwise valid signature may not count.

l”O” denies equal treatment by stopping non-metro voters from proposing reforms.

l”O” increases taxpayer costs twenty-fold, to check more signatures more often.

l”O” adds two hearings at taxpayer expense so politicians can attack citizen reforms.

l”O” sets an early filing deadline, to prevent changing bad new laws for 2 ½ years. Earlier deadlines push back signature collection from spring and summer to winter, using Colorado’s frigid weather as yet another weapon against outdoor signature gathering.

Politicians claimed to follow a University of Denver panel that examined the petition process. Although we should never cede our constitutional rights to self-proclaimed experts, none of whom has ever led a statewide petition drive, that panel’s good ideas were rejected.

For example, the DU panel’s Recommendation #8 states, “the panel does not recommend increasing … the number of signatures required … for constitutional initiatives.” But this is precisely what Referendum O does, and is its worst feature.

One good way to determine any measure’s true motives is to identify its proponents. Referendum O has a slick web site and lengthy donor list, a “who’s who” of powerful, wealthy, corporate interests in and outside of Colorado.

They hire lobbyists to maintain their grip over politicians. They dislike and do not need citizen petitions, although they are more than happy to finance constitutional changes by politicians. Their power would increase greatly if we citizens foolishly voted away forever our rights to reform political abuses.

Proponents exploit the length of this year’s ballot - ten petitions (down this week from 14) and four legislature-referred constitutional amendments. Their argument for “O” is shockingly inconsistent.

We are told voters are “too busy” to consider these myriad choices, yet also say Referendum O allows more statutory petitions on the ballot. The truth is Referendum O will let legislators repeal any statutory petition a mere two months after it passes.

Have you noticed the politicians’ “dirty little secret?” If constitutional amendments are such a problem, why does Referendum O propose only to limit the people’s constitutional right to propose amendments, while preserving intact the politicians’ ability to do so?

Two-thirds of constitutional amendments come from legislators, not petitioners. Why not attack the greater source of this alleged problem? Because politicians believe they know better than you.

Referendum O ignores the current process letting politicians offer constitutional amendments; they have FOUR on the ballot now, including Referendum O, a constitutional amendment to stop constitutional amendments!

Referendum O decimates only the people’s rights to petition and to vote; it does so permanently and irreversibly. Deceitful politicians want higher barriers for us peasants than for themselves. They want to remove our system’s main “check and balance” against them.

Citizen groups ranging from Common Cause to fiscal conservatives all make the same request: Defend your rights. Save our system of checks and balances. Please vote NO on Referendum O.

Robert J. Corry, Jr. is an attorney in Denver.

Ahmad Terry / Rocky Mountain News
PICTURE: THE RESULT: James Masters shows evidence bags containing some of his medical marijuana that was ruined for lack of care while held by authorities.
After the case against the Colorado couple fell apart, they were given back their seized property — which had gone unmaintained in a police evidence room.
By DeeDee Correll, Special to The Times
September 21, 2008
DENVER — When the Fort Collins police arrested James and Lisa Masters and carted away their 39 marijuana plants, they put the plants where they normally put confiscated property involved in alleged crimes: the evidence room.

And there they sat, without a grow lamp, water or pruning.

A year later, the case against the Masterses — who claimed they used the drug for medical purposes — fell apart, and a judge ordered the police to return their property.

“All the plants were dead,” said Brian Vicente, one of the attorneys for the couple. “Some had turned to liquid — this black, moldy liquid. There was mold over everything.”

Incensed, the couple asked the Police Department to reimburse them $200,000 for the destroyed plants. City officials refused, and the Masterses are now considering a lawsuit to compel the northern Colorado city to compensate them.

Of the 12 states that have legalized marijuana for medical use, Colorado stands out for its law specifying that police must not “harm, neglect or destroy” seized plants in such cases, said Noah Mamber, legal services coordinator for Americans for Safe Access, an advocacy group.

But in the eight years since voters approved the law, no law enforcement agency has had to grapple with that aspect of it, said attorneys familiar with medical marijuana cases.

“There’s not a whole lot of case law on this, frankly,” Vicente said.

Many situations are resolved without police seizing the plants because it becomes apparent to police that the suspect is authorized to have marijuana, said Rob Corry, another attorney for the Masterses.

In other states, police often destroy the plants during or after an arrest. But that may be changing, Mamber said. He cited a recent case in Burlingame, Calif., where police found a number of marijuana plants and confiscated them until they could find the owner and ascertain whether he was a medical marijuana user. He was.

Police in that case kept the plants less than a week. They didn’t water or tend them during that time, Burlingame Police Capt. Mike Matteucci said, adding that the department is not equipped to serve as a nursery.

The outcome of the Colorado case, he said, could help define law enforcement’s responsibilities in such matters. “It’s uncharted waters here,” Matteucci said.

In 2006, James Masters and his wife, Lisa, were arrested on suspicion of felony cultivation and intent to distribute. At the time, they were growing marijuana for themselves and for at least five other people with medical problems, their attorneys said. Lisa Masters, 33, has fibromyalgia and tendinitis; her husband, 31, suffers from chronic nausea and pain from knee and hip problems, Corry said.

Both had doctors’ recommendations that they ingest marijuana for their medical issues, but they had not joined the state’s registry, Vicente said, because they could not afford the $110 fee.

Those in the registry may possess up to 2 ounces of marijuana and as many as six plants, and caregivers may keep up to six plants for each person in their care. Because the Masterses were also serving as caregivers, Vicente said, they were allowed to have the 39 plants.

Because the Masterses weren’t listed in the registry, police treated the plants as they would evidence in any other drug case, said Fort Collins police spokeswoman Rita Davis.

“At the time they were confiscated, they didn’t have documents to prove it was medical marijuana. They have to have some proof,” Davis said.

The Masterses’ attorneys maintain that the law doesn’t require people to produce documentation when claiming the marijuana is medicinal.

The law says that property should not be neglected or destroyed in cases “where such property has been seized in connection with the claimed medical use of marijuana.” It does not specify a criminal penalty when the law is not followed.

In any event, Corry said, the Masterses did provide paperwork showing their doctors’ recommendations that they use marijuana.

A judge eventually dismissed the charges, ruling that the police search had been illegal. Until then, the Masterses, who have since joined the state registry, continued to use marijuana provided to them by others, Vicente said. He argued that police should care for the plants they take just as they would an animal or child removed from a home.

“If the police take your pit bull, do they put it in an evidence locker for two months or do they take care of it?” Vicente said. “We plan on holding the police accountable. We’re talking about people’s medicine here.”

deedee.correll@latimes.com

Link for Video: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/17529410/detail.html

POSTED: 11:19 am MDT September 22, 2008
UPDATED: 11:57 pm MDT September 22, 2008

BOULDER, Colo. — A University of Colorado student, who was suspended last May for possessing marijuana in his dorm room, got his cannabis back from campus police Monday.

“We liberated this medical marijuana today,” said Cole Nicholson’s attorney, Robert Corry.

Nicholson, now a sophomore, was celebrating as he exited police headquarters, but he told 7NEWS that this summer was stressful.

“I was worried about whether I’d be allowed to come back to school,” he said.

Nicholson was suspended from CU last semester when a security guard smelled marijuana in the basement of Libby Hall.

“I remember a night security officer told me it didn’t matter if I had a hemp card,” Nicholson said. “He didn’t want me smoking in my room. I told him I wasn’t.”

The CU sophomore said that security officers started harassing him early in the morning.

“They would knock on my door until I woke up,” he said. “I would answer the door in my underwear and talk with them and tell them that their noses were deceiving them, that the smell was not coming from my room.”

School officials handed down the suspension.

Nicholson said he was told he had to complete 24 hours community service, submit to random drug and alcohol tests, and write a so-called “reflection paper” on the subject of how marijuana use can negatively impact academics.

“That was an extreme violation of the first amendment,” Corry said. “To force the man to say something he doesn’t believe in.”

Corry said after he was hired, the Boulder District Attorney dismissed all charges, and CU reversed the entire suspension and fully reinstated Nicholson.

“I wish I had a chance to talk to the two police officers who handed me the ticket and were so sure I would never get this back,” Nicholson said. “But unfortunately they’re not here.”

Campus police did not return a call seeking comment about this case.

Nicholson said he does not use the marijuana himself but is registered to dispense it as a caregiver.

The CU student said his brother, who lives in Aurora, uses the marijuana for chronic debilitating pain.

When asked why his brother can’t get his own medical marijuana, Nicholson said, “Because it’s easier to get it here (in Boulder) and it’s cheaper.”

Copyright 2008 by TheDenverChannel.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Photo by Mark Leffingwell

Edward Nicholson, sophomore, holds up the bag of marijuana that was confiscated from him last winter at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado September 22, 2008. Nicholson is registered caregiver for his brother and carries a state-issued medical-marijuana card. CAMERA/Mark Leffingwell

Outside the University of Colorado Police Department on Monday, cheers erupted from a crowd of marijuana advocates — some of whom were dressed as giant pot leaves — when a student was given back medical marijuana that police took from him in May.

“I wish I had a chance to talk to the officers who said I’d never get this back,” said CU sophomore Edward Nicholson, 20, who’s a medical-marijuana cardholder in Colorado.

CU police confiscated about 2 ounces of marijuana from Nicholson in his residence hall last spring, even though the then-freshman has a card legally certifying him to hold and administer the drug to his brother. Nicholson said his brother suffers from chronic, debilitating pain from football injuries and has been prescribed marijuana to help deal with the discomfort.

Nicholson faced criminal charges for drug possession and was suspended from CU over the summer. But, after he hired an attorney and threatened to sue CU, the school has dropped its case against him and changed its rules.

CU hasn’t changed its policy against campus drug possession, but students living on campus who hold medical-marijuana cards can now request to move off campus to avoid school punishment if they are found with the drug. Someone with a card who is living on campus still will be held to the no-drugs policy at CU.

Nicholson was certified to be a caregiver for his brother more than a year ago because, he said, it’s easier and cheaper to get marijuana in Boulder than in Aurora, where his family lives.

After police confiscated Nicholson’s marijuana, CU ordered him to serve 24 hours of community service and submit to drug and alcohol testing in addition to his suspension. He also was told to write a “reflection” paper about the harmful effects of marijuana on his schooling.

Three days before the fall semester began in August, Nicholson learned that CU had dropped his case and he would be allowed to remain a student. He also learned that officers would give him back the marijuana they confiscated.

When Nicholson left CU’s police department Monday with a large, half-full bag of marijuana, a small crowd cheered. One man, who had a large silver marijuana leaf around his neck, raised his arms in victory.

“I’m hoping he’ll whip it out and let us all smoke a joint,” said Kyle Marsh, who’s making a documentary on medical marijuana.

Nicholson’s attorney, Robert Corry, said he’s glad to have helped educate a law enforcement agency on Colorado’s marijuana law, which passed in 2000.

“Today, CU police had to go back to school,” Corry said.

CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said Nicholson’s case “underscores the difficulties that institutions face in confronting a new law and reconciling that new law with our needs on campus to be drug-free.”

From the enforcement side, CU police Cmdr. Brad Wiesley said his officers did nothing wrong.

“We’re just doing our best job to enforce the law and follow the provisions of the law, as confusing as they might be,” Wiesley said.

About 1,955 people have medical-marijuana cards in Colorado, according to state health department statistics from last year.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers didn’t comment Monday on CU’s decision to clear Nicholson and give him back the marijuana officers took. But, attorney general spokesman Nate Strauch said, Suthers believes the law is “vaguely written” and has “led to problems for law enforcement.”

By Allison Sherry
The Denver Post
Article Created: 09/20/2008 07:54:31 PM MDT

A University of Colorado at Boulder student who has a medical-marijuana card will be given his pot back by campus police Monday.

CU officials relented when threatened with a lawsuit after campus police confiscated less than 2 ounces of pot from Edward Nicholson’s dorm room, and officials threatened him with suspension.

Nicholson, 20, said he was holding the drug for his 23-year-old brother, a chronic- pain sufferer.

State law allows doctor-recommended marijuana use for those “suffering from debilitating medical conditions.” Caregivers of patients must carry state-issued medical-marijuana cards.

Nicholson is the cardholder because he says pot is easier to buy in Boulder than in Aurora, where his family lives.

The ordeal started last winter when an officer smelled pot in Nicholson’s dorm lockbox during a room walk-through on winter break. When Nicholson brandished his registry card, that officer didn’t cite him.

But in February and March, Nicholson said he was awakened several nights in a row by CU-Boulder police officers who said they could smell pot coming from his room. Nicholson said he doesn’t smoke pot and called the late-night door knocks obnoxious.

“They were on an unbelievable power trip,” he said.

CU officials couldn’t talk about the case, citing student privacy laws.

In May, campus authorities threatened to suspend him for a semester, to commit him to community service and drug and alcohol testing, and make him write a paper about the harmful effects of the drug on his schooling.

After Nicholson hired lawyer Robert Corry, who threatened a lawsuit, CU officials threw the case out.

“They didn’t do any harm to me, but they sure tried,” said Nicholson, who is now in his second year at CU and living off-campus. “I was never really worried about the court case because I was following the state law.”

CU officials revised their policies this fall to accommodate the 8-year- old medical-marijuana law.

CU students — even medical-pot cardholders — are not allowed to store the drug in dorms. But officials say they’ll release first-year students from the on-campus residency requirement if they are cardholders “at their prerogative,” said CU lawyer Jeremy Hueth, who worked on Nicholson’s case.

“If they (medical-marijuana cardholders) would rather move off campus . . . we’re not going to penalize them for it,” he said.

There are 1,955 cardholders in Colorado, according to last year’s statistics from the state health department.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said in a statement responding to the CU case Friday that the medical-marijuana law has become a “front for widespread marijuana distribution.”

“The proponents of these laws make them intentionally ambiguous, causing significant problems for law enforcement in Colorado and elsewhere,” he said.

Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com

DENVER DEFENSE ATTORNEY ANNOUNCES FREE MARIJUANA DEFENSE DURING WEEK OF DNC CONVENTION

DENVER, COLORADO—Denver criminal defense lawyer Robert J. Corry, Jr. announced today that he will defend — free of charge — any person cited, summoned, or arrested in the City and County of Denver for a possession of under one ounce of marijuana or possession of paraphernalia during the week of the Democratic National Convention.

“This City must be safe for freedom for all of our residents and guests during convention week,” said Corry. “For too long our government has frittered away our resources on the failed experiment of Prohibition.”

Denver residents voted to legalize marijuana in 2004 and 2006, made marijuana enforcement the lowest law enforcement priority in 2007, and created an advisory panel that recently voted for a moratorium on marijuana prosecutions during the week of the DNC.

Mr. Corry has defended dozens of individuals cited for the petty offenses of possession of under one ounce of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia, and has never lost one of these cases, or even had a client plead guilty to any offense.

Mr. Corry is notable for successfully litigating numerous marijuana cases throughout Colorado. He is the 2008 recipient of the “Friend of Reform” Award given by marijuana reform organizations SAFER and Sensible Colorado.

Interested persons should contact Mr. Corry as soon as possible after being issued a citation. Formal legal representation commences only upon the signing of a retainer contract.

CONTACT: Website www.RobCorry.com; Robert Corry, Jr., at 303-634-2244 (ofc), 720-629-7112 (cell) or Robert.Corry@comcast.net

# # #

Judge orders medical marijuana returned to Craig man

Tim Martin, 24, of Craig, retrieved two ounces of medical marijuana Thursday afternoon from Moffat County authorities. A Moffat County District Court judge ordered the marijuana, which was seized by the All Crimes Enforcement Team in October 2007, be returned to Martin, who is registered with the state’s Medical Marijuana Registry program. Patients in the program are allowed to use the drug for medical purposes, such as severe pain. Enlarge photo — Photo by Hans Hallgren

By Joshua Roberts, Craig Daily Press

May 2, 2008

Craig — Tim Martin, a 24-year-old Craig man, said he has battled a “well-documented” history of severe pain caused by migraine headaches and stomach ailments for almost 10 years.

Medical marijuana, which seven months ago he cultivated in his Craig apartment for himself and others, helps alleviate that pain.

“That is the only reason I use marijuana — for pain,” he said.

“This medical marijuana is a right for me. It’s something that treats my illness, and it helps.”

Backed by a court order, Martin was able to complete an unusual transaction Thursday that entailed him retrieving marijuana and items used to grow it from Moffat County authorities.

The All Crimes Enforcement Team arrested Martin in October 2007, seizing marijuana and other cultivation items from his apartment. He was charged with felony counts of cultivation, possession with intent to distribute and distribution, among other charges.

The catch: Martin was registered as a patient and caregiver at the time with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Medical Marijuana Registry program, which allowed him to legally possess and use designated amounts of marijuana and plants and provide marijuana to other registered patients.

Under a plea agreement, five charges against Martin were dismissed. He pleaded guilty to one count — possession of 8 ounces or more of marijuana, a Class 5 felony.

On Wednesday, Moffat County District Court Judge Shelley Hill sentenced Martin to three years probation, 15 days in jail, 24 hours community service and to pay about $3,523 in costs and fees. He has no prior criminal history in Moffat County, according to court records.

The judge also complied with a request from Martin’s attorney, Robert Corry, of Denver, and ordered the return of his client’s marijuana and other property. The 14th Judicial District Attorney’s Office objected to the drug being returned.

Martin was able to retrieve about 35 items seized from him, including two ounces of marijuana, a portable air conditioning unit, two 1,000-watt grow lamps, horticulture books, smoking pipes and a vaporizer. A handgun that was seized will not be returned to him because of his felony conviction.

Corry said law required the judge to order marijuana that Martin is legally permitted to possess be given back to him. The District Attorney’s Office had no comment.

Martin, a former media director for the local group, Communities Overcoming Meth Abuse, said his problems with the law stemmed from providing marijuana to a person who wasn’t listed on the state’s registry. Admittedly, doing so was a “large mistake,” he said.

“I became too trusting of a person and was told that person was in the process of being in the program,” he said.

“That was a mistake on my part. I take responsibility for that mistake. … Ultimately, I broke the rules. You have to follow the rules. That’s the bottom line.”

He was scheduled to report to jail Thursday afternoon to begin serving his sentence.

Martin said he provided marijuana to three other people who were registered with the state. Those patients suffered either from cancer or AIDS, he said.

“It helps them with their nausea and pain with relatively no side effects,” Martin said.

Prescribed pills for his medical condition caused harsh side effects, Martin said, and prompted him to use marijuana to ease the pain.

“This helps me and I have no side effects,” he said.

Amendment 20, passed in the November 2000 general election, tasked Public Health and Environment with implementing the Medical Marijuana Registry program. According to the department, 54 counties have registered applicants; Moffat County is listed as having less than three patients and Routt County is listed as having four patients.

Martin said he continues to use medical marijuana, but no longer grows it. He now obtains it through a caregiver, like he once was.

“Part of taking that responsibility was I (voluntarily) gave up my caregiver-ship,” he said.

Martin said he is an advocate for drug reform, specifically for more treatment in lieu of prison sentences for users. He also has worked as an unpaid volunteer for Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation Colorado, a group that has campaigned for legalizing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use.

However, he said his case was not about the pros and cons of legalizing drugs, rather the court upholding rights given to him by an authorizing doctor and the state’s voters.

“This is a health issue,” he said. “This is a right given to me by a medical doctor. … It falls in line with the will of the people of Colorado. (The judge) made a fair decision, the right decision.”

April 20, 2008; Denver, Colorado: Lawyer Rob Corry gave the keynote address to a fired up crowd of approximately 5,000 at the historic first ever Denver 420 Rally in Civic Center Park, in the shadow of the State Capitol and Denver City Hall. Corry’s rousing speech sounded themes of freedom, civil rights, personal responsibility, limited government, and ending Prohibition. Corry helped the event organizers get the first-ever permit from the City and County of Denver to legitimize the use of the park’s Greek Ampitheatre, which was packed with thousands of people for the event. Organizers promised to be back next year for the event.

Dropped charges in medical pot case called ‘huge victory’
By Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Chalk up another one for supporters of medical marijuana.

Two weeks after a judge in Fort Collins ordered that 39 pot plants seized from a couple be returned to them, an Aurora man is banking on the same outcome.

Felony drug charges against Kevin Dickes, 39, a state-certified medical marijuana user and Desert Storm veteran, were dropped Friday by 18th Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers. He could have faced six years in prison.

“It was somewhat of a surprise for us,” Dickes’ attorney Robert Corry Jr. said. “This is a huge victory - a decisive victory. The times they are a-changin’. It’s time for police to figure out that medical marijuana is legal.”

On Monday, Dickes and his attorneys filed a motion in Arapahoe District Court to get the 71 plants seized April 27 from his Aurora basement returned. Police have said the plants are dead.

A constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2000 allows the use of marijuana to alleviate pain and symptoms of various illnesses. The law also stipulates that medical marijuana or plants seized from state-certified patients during criminal investigations be returned in good shape at the end of court cases.

“He was carefully and meticulously cultivating this. Mr. Dickes should get his medicine back,” Corry said.

Marijuana recently returned to state-registered medical marijuana patients James and Lisa Masters in Fort Collins was moldy, and only a small amount could be used for medicinal purposes. The couple plan to sue to recoup the value of the marijuana.

The Drug Enforcement Agency attaches a $5,200 price tag to each pound of pot. If that standard applies, Dickes’ confiscated stash is estimated at $369,200.

Dickes suffers from chronic vascular disease and pain from shrapnel injuries. The decorated Marine said pharmaceutical narcotics have made him sick.

Police - unaware of Dickes’ status as a registered user of medical marijuana - executed a search warrant in April and put him in handcuffs in his driveway.

“This means to people in my neighborhood I’m not a criminal,” Dickes said. “I’m a decent, law- abiding citizen.”

Aurora Detective Shannon Lucy said the episode could have been avoided if Dickes had told authorities he was licensed.

“We probably wouldn’t have taken him into custody and we wouldn’t have destroyed the plants,” Lucy said.

After he was taken to jail, his girlfriend alerted authorities to his status. Police left 4 ounces of marijuana and six plants in his home, as well as all his growing equipment, she said.

poppenj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5176

Dec 17, 2007 7:00 am US/Mountain
Aurora Veteran Fights For Return Of Pot Plants
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (CBS4) ―
A former Marine from Aurora who argued that marijuana helps him deal with injuries suffered during Operation Desert Storm planned to ask for the return of his plants on Monday.

Criminal charges were dismissed against Kevin Dickes, 38, on Friday in Arapahoe County District Court. Dickes is a state-certified medical marijuana patient, and the district attorney dismissed marijuana cultivation charges against him following his not guilty plea.

Dickes was wounded by shrapnel from a grenade in 1991.

“It helps with my nervousness, it helps with the pain, with my mood swings,” Dickes told CBS4. “When I’m in pain, I kind of get upset, angry; it calms me down and it’s better than narcotics.”

Police seized 71 plants from Dickes’ home on April 27. A neighbor told police Dickes was growing the marijuana in his house, but Dickes’ attorney, Robert Corry Jr., says police were not told the pot was for pain and the DA said officers didn’t know he has a medical card allowing it.

Corry said state law requires the police to maintain the quality of whatever they confiscate.

“The police officers must maintain it, must cultivate it, they must water it, feed it, preserve it,” he said.

Dickes was set to file a motion for the marijuana plants’ return and said that if the plants are dead, he’ll be asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars ($2,500 per plant).

In a similar case in Fort Collins earlier this month, police returned 39 plants seized from another couple with a medical marijuana card. Those plants were dead and now the couple is suing the police department.

(© MMVII CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

SPEAKOUT: Voters want medical marijuana accessible
By Robert J. Corry Jr.
Friday, December 7, 2007

Medical marijuana is legal in Colorado, but where do you get it? This is a question that Mabel (not her real name), a 64-year-old silver-haired grandmother, deals with every day. Mabel suffers from debilitating arthritis and chronic back pain. When her conditions flare up, she is barely able to turn the pages of a children’s book with her 4- and 2-year-old grandchildren sitting on her lap. After years of trying dozens of prescription medications, and screaming out in pain as she developed a tolerance to each of them, and vomiting up dozens of pills as her stomach, liver and kidneys were overtaxed, Mabel tried medical marijuana for the first time in her life at age 60.

It worked. It helped her pain. She had her life back. She consulted with her doctor, who agreed that medical marijuana benefited Mabel, and recommended that she use it. In the 2000 election, Colorado voters decided that Mabel and others should have a safe and legal source for medical marijuana.

For Mabel, access was far from easy. She couldn’t go to the corner pharmacy for it. She didn’t know any dealers. She has found herself alone, in bad neighborhoods, after dark, with wads of cash, trying to purchase low-quality street-grade marijuana.

She has no idea of even how to start growing it herself, and cannot afford the high cost of indoor cultivation equipment. She lives in an apartment, so has no yard for outdoor cultivation.

A year ago, Mabel found someone she calls her “lifesaver,” a medical marijuana grower who has a strong passion to help suffering people. Mabel’s caregiver consistently supplies her with high-quality medical-grade marijuana at a price below market rate.

In July 2007, Mabel’s “lifesaver” was helping more than five patients. In doing so, both he and Mabel risked arrest and prosecution because of a state health department policy arbitrarily limiting caregivers to five patients each.

The Rocky Mountain News got it right in its editorial of Nov. 26, “Regulating caregivers/State should closely monitor those who assist medical pot patients,” when it condemned this illegal backroom limitation, enacted in secret without any input from voters, scientists, physicians, experts, patients, caregivers and others.

Court testimony from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment established that the number “five” was picked randomly by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents looming over the state agency. It’s not like Granny Mabel had lots of choices of caregivers. How many medical marijuana cultivators do you know personally? They aren’t exactly in the Yellow Pages, mainly because of the climate of fear created by prosecutors.

The state’s illegal DEA-spawned limit had a devastating effect on the health of sick people following their doctors’ advice. A government that operates in secret will inevitably do evil, and hurt innocent people for no legal or scientific reason. This is why, in response to a lawsuit brought by medical marijuana patients and caregivers, Chief Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves enjoined this damaging policy in July, and threw it out permanently in November.

The Rocky, however, missed the mark when it advocated increased government regulation of medical marijuana caregivers. The editorial ignored basic laws of logic, economics, science, and the Colorado Constitution itself. Patients should be allowed select their caregivers without government interference. If six patients select a particular caregiver, government should not stand in the way of this important relationship.

Caregivers with multiple patients can provide the best medicine at a lower cost and more efficiently. They can develop plants with superior genetics.

They benefit from economies of scale. Nobody advocates that the corner pharmacy - which carries far more addictive and dangerous substances than marijuana - be prohibited from providing medicine to more than five patients. And Colorado voters, in overwhelmingly legalizing medical marijuana, enacted no restrictions on the number of patients per caregiver, preferring patient choice.

The voters wanted sick people like Mabel to obtain the highest quality medicine in the most efficient, safest way possible, instead of banishing them to wander alone on dark and dangerous streets.

*****MEDIA ADVISORY*****

DESERT STORM VET TO SEEK RETURN OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

CENTENNIAL, COLORADO—Today the Arapahoe District Attorney dismissed criminal charges against Kevin Dickes, a State-certified medical marijuana patient and Desert Storm vet. The case had garnered widespread media attention. Monday, Mr. Dickes and his lawyer Robert J. Corry, Jr. will file a motion for return of medical marijuana after today’s dismissal of felony charges. The motion will be filed on December 17, 2007 at 11:00 a.m. in Arapahoe District Court. The Colorado Constitution provides an exception to criminal laws regarding marijuana for registered Medical Marijuana patients.

“This is a victory for compassion and for the voters of Colorado. We commend the District Attorney for doing the right thing and dismissing criminal charges, now Mr. Dickes needs his medicine back as the Colorado Constitution requires,” said Mr. Corry.

Dickes, who suffers from chronic vascular disease and extreme pain from combat injuries suffered during the first Gulf War in 1991, had a physician’s recommendation and a State-issued registry card for medical marijuana.

WHAT: Kevin Dickes and his attorney, Robert Corry, Jr., will file a motion for return of medical marijuana.

WHEN: 11:00 a.m., Monday, December 17, 2007.

WHERE: Arapahoe District Court, 7325 S. Potomac Street, Centennial, CO

CONTACT: Website www.RobCorry.com; Robert Corry, Jr., at 303-634-2244 (ofc), 720-629-7112 (cell) or Robert.Corry@comcast.net, for a copy of the motion filed in the case.

# # #

Couple gets marijuana back, but plants are dead

written by: Sara Reed, The Fort Collins Coloradoan, and posted by: Jeffrey Wolf , Web Producer
updated by: Ward Lucas , Anchor/Reporter created: 12/3/2007 3:22:03 PM
Last updated: 12/4/2007 4:01:24 PM
Couple waits to get marijuana back from police
Judge rules couple should get their marijuana back

Couple gets marijuana back, but plants are dead. 9NEWS at 6 p.m. 12/03/07

FORT COLLINS - After a prolonged legal battle, on Monday police finally returned medical marijuana seized from a couple in August 2006, but James and Lisa Masters say the plants were dead.

The Masters say they grow medical marijuana at home for themselves and for others who are allowed to legally use the drug. Their home-growing operation was raided by Fort Collins Police more than a year ago. The case was thrown out in June because of a defective search warrant. Last month, the same judge ordered police to return everything that was seized.

The Masters and their two attorneys showed up Monday morning to retrieve all that was taken. However, in the police department’s parking lot, they showed reporters how the seized drugs had fared while in police possession.

James Masters said he was “very, very happy to see this come to fruition,” but that he was sad to see the plants had not been maintained.

“This is how they preserved it. They shoved it into a plastic bag, and you can smell the mold,” he said.

Attorneys Brian Vicente and Robert Corry, who represented the couple, said the state medical marijuana law is clear.

“The Fort Collins Police absolutely did not obey the state law,” said Vicente, who’s also the director of Sensible Colorado, a legalized marijuana advocacy group. “If marijuana is seized in relation to the claimed use of medical marijuana, it should not be damaged in any form. And that comes directly out of the Colorado Constitution.”

The Masters, meanwhile, say they intend to go back into the business of growing and providing medical marijuana.

James Masters told reporters if police need any help with cultivation problems: “I would definitely give them advice.”

None of the plants seized, including about 15 that were nearly ready for harvest, survived. The Masters’ attorneys plan to go back to the judge later this month and request financial compensation for the destroyed plants, which could be valued at more than $100,000.

(Copyright The Fort Collins Coloradoan and KUSA*TV. All rights reserved.)

Couple reclaim marijuana
Some see handover of 39 moldy pot plants as precedent-setting
By Julie Poppen, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Originally published 12:30 a.m., December 4, 2007
Updated 05:57 a.m., December 4, 2007

Ahmad Terry / The Rocky

James Masters shows destroyed marijuana property after he, his wife and their lawyers went to the Fort Collins police department Monday to retrieve the items after a judge ruled cops had seized them improperly.

James and Lisa Masters pulled a broken 2-foot glass bong, large sacks of moldy marijuana - a total of 39 dead plants - and a small, usable quantity of the drug from the back of a white minivan.

The public display of illicit drugs in the parking lot of the police department Monday morning marked a critical step in a 16-month saga that began with the Masters being busted for growing pot in their home.

Supporters view the return of the substantial amount of marijuana as a precedent for how law enforcement agencies comply with the state’s voter-backed medical marijuana laws.

“This is a historic day,” said Brian Vicente, one of the Masters’ attorneys and executive director of Sensible Colorado, a drug policy reform organization.

Vicente said this was the largest quantity of medicinal marijuana ever returned to a grower since voters backed the law in 2000. Attorney Robert Corry Jr. called the return of the pot “a victory for the voters of Colorado” and “a victory for compassion.”

“I’m hoping this sends a message to police departments around Colorado that the Constitution is the highest law of the state and voters put it in there for a reason,” Corry said.

Not everyone is convinced of the significance of Monday’s action, though.

Larimer County District Court Judge Larry Abrahamson said the city attorney filed a request Wednesday to have the ruling reconsidered, but it was shot down. City Attorney Steve Roy could not be reached for comment.

Abrahamson said he was hoping a higher court would offer clarification on how federal drug laws - which ban the cultivation and use of cannabis - intersect with the state’s implementation of medical marijuana laws.

Because the law was a constitutional amendment approved by voters, “we don’t have a way to fix the law through the legislature,” Abrahamson said, “only through a Supreme Court ruling.”

“We were anxious to see a ruling,” Abrahamson said.

Medical-use paperwork filed

The court-mandated return of the Masters’ marijuana is the most recent in a string of court cases related to medical marijuana.

Colorado is one of 14 states that allow the medical use of marijuana under strict regulations. After getting a doctor’s recommendation, patients can pay $110 to be listed on a confidential registry and receive an ID card saying they have permission to grow a small amount of marijuana or more, if medically necessary. Other states, such as Michigan, are considering similar laws.

“There is a lot of momentum,” Vicente said. “I think public sentiment is really behind us on this issue.”

Supporters estimate that as many as 1,800 people use medical marijuana in Colorado - at least 1,458 are on the state registry. Some 636 people are designated “caregivers” who may legally provide them with the drug.

Licensed patients are able to designate “caregivers” who legally can grow small amounts of marijuana and are immune from prosecution. The Masterses subsequently have completed all the paperwork and are licensed medical marijuana users and caregivers, their attorneys said.

Judge: Pair met requirements

The Masters case began in August 2006, when their home was raided by authorities. They spent a night in jail. Their two daughters, ages 6 and 7, were taken from them for eight weeks.

James Masters admitted that, at the time, neither he nor his wife was on the state’s medical marijuana registry, nor did they have the card required to grow medical marijuana. He said they didn’t have the money and his doctor’s recommendation had expired.

Masters, 30, said he was using the drug to alleviate chronic hip and knee pain and cyclic vomiting and nausea. His wife, Lisa, 32, uses the drug to alleviate symptoms of fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome and three herniated discs in her neck. The couple were also helping several other people licensed by the state by providing them with medical-grade marijuana.

Masters said he was open with the police, who accompanied social services workers on a child welfare visit to their home, thinking he was protected by the law. Later, police raided the home using the earlier visit as the basis for a search warrant. In June 2006, Larimer County District Court Judge James Hiatt ruled the search warrant was illegal.

Hiatt ruled Nov. 26 that the plants and growing equipment must be returned, saying that while the couple weren’t on the registry, they had fulfilled the definition of medical marijuana caregiver in the practical sense.

At the time, the law allowed caregivers to grow five cannabis plants per patient. Each caregiver could provide marijuana to six patients. In court, Vicente said he proved that the Masterses grew an amount that was medically necessary for their licensed patients. Four of their patients testified in court, describing how they were helped by the Masterses.

Fort Collins police spokeswoman Rita Davis disputed that the Masters home was raided. She said police accompanied social workers to the home and responded when they saw illegal activity.

“At the time the marijuana was confiscated they did not have any documentation that they were on a list or were registered,” Davis said. “It wasn’t until after the fact that they started to claim it was medical marijuana.”

Not every court challenge has gone well for the pro-medical marijuana supporters.

But Corry believes even the losses help draw out supporters.

“The harder prosecutors and police come down on people, they are only helping our cause,” he said.

What’s next

* The Masters’ case isn’t over. Attorneys plan to pursue compensation because most of the marijuana was destroyed. In a previous interview, the couple’s attorney put the value of the plants at $100,000.

Related: http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_6922092

(Post / RJ Sangosti)
Americans compromise on pot

Marijuana is a “gateway” drug that leads directly to use of harder drugs, such as cocaine or heroin.

The short answer is no. Police continue to make the claim, although they now acknowledge that their argument is based on gut feeling and anecdotes. Academic researchers, including RAND, note there is a “correlation” but not a “causation.” In other words, many people who use marijuana eventually use other drugs as well. But that’s like saying many people who drive blue cars have brown eyes - does one cause the other?

Study after study has not proven a causal link, instead stating other likely causes, such as that people who have access to marijuana are likely to have easy access to other drugs. Or some people may be biologically prone to addiction. “We’ve done a lot of good studies,” said Rosalie Pacula, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center in California, “and the evidence is fundamentally inconclusive.”

Society must keep marijuana laws in place, or teenage use will grow rampant.

Even as more states have decriminalized and sanctioned medical marijuana, and about 85 percent of 12th-graders report easy access to pot, the number of young users has fallen steadily since the 1990s. About 16.6 percent of Colorado teens ages 12 to 17 admitted smoking pot over the past year in 2005, down from 19.6 percent in 2003. Researchers point out, though, that the number of young heavy users has held steady at a worrisome 5 to 6 percent rate nationally.

Police defy public will by continuing to harass simple pot smokers.

It’s true that national arrests for marijuana possession rose to 696,000 in 2005 from 646,000 in 2000, even as the percentage of Americans reporting that they used pot continued to fall. “Anyone who spends any time in courts, like me, knows the current system is an utter disaster,” said Denver attorney Robert Corry Jr., who has defended prominent marijuana cases.

Yet police and the state attorney general insist they have not stepped up enforcement against small-time users or holders of marijuana. “No one goes to prison just for possessing marijuana,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said. “You might go to prison if you have 400 pounds with intent to distribute, but even then, it’s usually when you have a number of prior offenses. I think in the scheme of things, we have given it the proper priority.”

RAND’s recent research also refutes the protests about higher arrest numbers, saying a careful review of the arrests and convictions paints a more complex picture. Those convicted on minor marijuana offenses are often pleading down from more serious crimes, such as possessing on school grounds, Pacula said. “A lot of the arrests come from alcohol checkpoints. The police also find joints, and then they’re in jail for both offenses,” she said. “People’s images of the casual user getting hauled off to jail are not true.”

Other nations that have legalized marijuana report no problems, and people use less pot than in the U.S.

Partially true, but not the whole story, researchers say. It is true that in the Netherlands, where shops can sell state-sanctioned marijuana, use in all age groups is at a lower level than in the U.S. But use did go up in the Netherlands, particularly among youths, when laws were liberalized there, Pacula said. In both the Netherlands and Australia, she said, treatment admissions for marijuana abuse went up after restrictions were loosened.

“There’s evidence that we should be concerned about who is using and how much they’re using,” Pacula said. “Not all use is harmless.”

Marijuana is a medically dangerous drug; alternately, proponents may argue marijuana use is harmless.

It’s true that a quarter-century of research has debunked many anti-marijuana myths, including that smoking pot kills brain cells. Modern studies have specifically disproved that claim. Multiple studies also have shown that while marijuana can be classified as addictive along with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, such as caffeine, the percentage of users who become hooked is lower than with other substances.

Researchers have not found strong connections between smoking marijuana and lung cancer. Marijuana smoke does contain impurities and potential carcinogens, but most users smoke far less often than tobacco users.

Government pamphlets continue to warn of dangers to youth, including impaired judgment, depression or risky behavior. Legalization advocates respond that they are adamantly against minors using pot or any other controlled drug.

Sources: National Survey on Drug Use and Health; RAND Drug Policy Research Center; U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics; “Marijuana Myths/Marijuana Facts,” by Lynn Zimmer and John P. Morgan, M.D.; Denver Post interviews.

LIMITS FOR CAREGIVERS

By Howard Pankratz Denver Post Staff Writer

Article Last Updated: 07/03/2007 11:28:19 PM MDT

A Denver judge suspended a state rule Tuesday limiting the number of medical-marijuana patients a caregiver can see, saying the policy jeopardizes the lives of the patients.

“This (policy) was done without public input and appears arbitrary and very unfair to the plaintiff,” said Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves.

Naves’ ruling came in the case of Denver resident David “Damien” LaGoy, a severely ill, state-licensed medical-marijuana patient who suffers from AIDS and hepatitis C.

LaGoy, 47, went to court after the state refused to allow Daniel J. Pope to be his medical-marijuana caregiver because Pope is already caring for five other medical-marijuana patients.

In 2000, voters approved Amendment 20, allowing medical-marijuana caregivers to provide the drug for patients who need it. The Colorado Department of Health introduced a policy prohibiting a caregiver from providing the service to more than five patients.

But Naves, in issuing his preliminary injunction, said the policy was improperly written and a danger to patients.

“He (LaGoy) suffers from severe nausea. If he doesn’t take his medical marijuana, he may throw up his medications,” Naves said. “He suffers from severe illness. He could die if the effects of the nausea are not reduced. He has no reasonable alternate source for medical marijuana” other than Pope.

Mark Salley, Colorado Department of Public Health spokesman, said the law defines a caregiver as someone who “has significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient.”

“As a result, we thought it was prudent to set a limit” on the number of patients per care giver, Salley said.

LaGoy said he has not been taking his medications because he had not been receiving his medical marijuana. He said he was “relieved” by the ruling and would immediately start taking his pills and the marijuana that Pope can now provide.

LaGoy said he needs Pope’s assistance because Pope can provide the medical marijuana essential for easing the nausea he encounters when he takes 10 powerful and high-dose medications a day.

“I don’t want to say I feel like I won the lottery,” LaGoy joked.

LaGoy testified that caregivers provide an invaluable service to medical-marijuana patients, allowing them to obtain the marijuana at reasonable prices without having to seek it on the streets.

Pope testified that a policy limiting a caregiver to only five patients was inappropriate because it keeps seriously ill people from getting medicine.

The trial to determine whether the state can limit the number of patients assisted by medical-marijuana providers will likely happen next year. The state has not decided whether it will defend the policy at trial, scrap the limit on the number of patients or conduct a rule-making process with public input, Salley said.

Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.

http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/onpoint/archives/2007/06/

Pointless harassment. What else is it when police arrest and prosecutors charge someone for growing pot even though the fellow possesses a Colorado medical marijuana registry card?

Why bother squandering supposedly scarce public resources on such an effort — even if the marijuana user has exceeded the official six-plant limit?

Pointless harassment. What else is it when police arrest and prosecutors charge someone for growing pot even though the fellow possesses a Colorado medical marijuana registry card?

Why bother squandering supposedly scarce public resources on such an effort — even if the marijuana user has exceeded the official six-plant limit?

When police stormed into the home of 38-year-old Kevin Dickes a month ago in response to a tip, they apparently weren’t aware of the Auroran’s registry card. Or at least that fact wasn’t mentioned on the warrant, his attorney tells me. But prosecutors obviously knew about the card when they charged him with cultivating marijuana — an unfortunate waste of their time and your money.

Yes, police say they found 71 plants, although attorney Robert Corry insists most were inch-high starters hardly worthy of the name. You need to grow more than six in order to get the right number of plants to root and bloom, he insists.

But even if he’s wrong, voters didn’t lay down a hard-and-fast limit of six plants when they approved the use of medicinal marijuana in 2000. They also created the following exemption: “For quantities of marijuana in excess of these amounts, a patient or his or her primary care-giver may raise as an affirmative defense to charges of violation of state law that such greater amounts were medically necessary to address the patient’s debilitating medical condition.”

If this case goes to trial, in other words, Dickes will argue — or, better yet for this Desert Storm veteran, perhaps his doctor will argue — that he needs to cultivate more than six plants to manage the pain of injuries he suffered from an exploding grenade. What kind of hard-hearted jury will want to call him a liar?

By the way, the authors of Colorado’s medical marijuana amendment were so incompetent — or maybe so downright devious — that they basically gave a card-carrying patient like Dickes only two ways to obtain enough of the stuff: Exceed the six-plant growing limit and hope to persuade a court that he had no choice, or head to the black market to buy from a pusher.

Now that Dickes’ basement farm has largely been seized as evidence, where do you suppose he’s likely to get his pain reliever of choice these days?

Some victory for law enforcement.

VIDEO: http://cbs4denver.com/crime/local_story_165215320.html

Terry Jessup
Reporting

(CBS4) ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. A combat veteran of Desert Storm, who said he uses marijuana to ease the pain from a war injury, is now the focus of a court case in Arapahoe County. He faces prison time for a charge of cultivating the plant.

Kevin Dickes, 38, a former Marine who was badly wounded by an enemy grenade while serving in Kuwait, said he smokes marijuana to ease his pain and has a state-approved medical marijuana license to grow it. However, he was still arrested in April when Aurora SWAT teams entered his home after a neighbor complained.

“They took me down,” Dickes said. “They didn’t give me a chance to speak. They had guns to my face. I never had that happen before in my life, even in Kuwait.”

In Kuwait, a grenade tore Dickes’ leg from his ankle to his stomach and he said marijuana is the only thing that helps his pain.

“I use it for pain,” Dickes said. “It helps me tremendously. The narcotics get me sick, nausea, you throw up.”

Dickes’ attorney, Robert Corry, Jr., said he has a license to possess, cultivate and use medical marijuana.

Police confiscated at least 60 plants from Dickes’ home. The state medical marijuana law sets a guideline of six, but Corry said there is confusion as to how many plants are actually permitted.

“Whatever number he had was the number that he needed medically,” Corry said. “And that’s what the law says. You can have as many plants as you medically need.”

Corry said he thinks the district attorney is hanging his hat on the fact they say there were too many plants.

“I think we can easily show the amount of plants he had was medically necessary to address his debilitating medical condition,” Corry said.

Dickes’ is charged with marijuana cultivation which is a class-four felony that carries a possible six-year prison sentence.

There are 1,500 to 2,000 people in Colorado licensed to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Prepared for cbs4denver.com by Matthew J. Buettner, Web Producer.

[photo caption] Kevin Dickes, 38, of Aurora exits Division 204 Courtroom at the Arapahoe County Courthouse after an appearance with his attorney. Dickes was arrested when his home was raided by Aurora SWAT team for possessing and growning marijuana. Dickes, who was a Lance Corporal in the US Marine Corp and injured in the first gulf war by a grenade, has the medical permission to use marijuana to ease the pain to his right leg. (Post / Cyrus McCrimmon)

Centennial - A Desert Storm veteran is challenging the state’s medical-marijuana law after he was arrested on charges of growing 71 of the plants in his basement.

Kevin Dickes says he needs the marijuana to help him with the pain he has suffered daily since a grenade landed next to him in Kuwait when he served there as a Marine in 1991. He has no feeling below his right calf and suffers from chronic vascular disease. Dickes said he may lose part of his right leg.

“I use it for the pain. It helps me tremendously,” Dickes said Thursday in Arapahoe County District Court after pleading not guilty to marijuana cultivation, a Class 4 felony.

Dickes, 38, faces up to six years in prison if convicted of the charge. His attorney has filed a motion to dismiss the cultivation charge. That matter will be discussed at a hearing next month.

Under Colorado’s medical-marijuana law, approved by voters in 2001, patients under a doctor’s care who get a medical-marijuana card, as Dickes did, can have up to 2 ounces of pot or six plants.

But there is a provision in the law called an affirmative defense that could allow for more plants. That issue is decided at trial.

“In general, what happens is the individual has testimony from a physician that their particular condition warrants the additional amounts,” said Ron Hyman, registrar of vital statistics for the state health department. “Whether the judge buys it or not is up to the judge.”

Hyman did not know whether that defense has been successful in other cases, but only one medical-marijuana case has even gone to trial, a case out of Gunnison last year in which a man was acquitted.

Police swarmed Dickes’ Aurora home on April 27 on a tip from a neighbor. About three or four SWAT officers opened his door and threw him to the ground and pointed their guns directly at him, Dickes recalled.

“They took me down in my own home,” said Dickes, who is out on bail. “They had guns to my face. I never had that happen to me before, not even in Desert Storm.”

Dickes did not immediately show police his medical-marijuana card. His common-law wife came home while Dickes was in custody in a police car and then pointed out the card.

In addition to the plants, police seized grow lights, fans, electrical timers and a watering system.

The district attorney’s office waited several weeks before filing charges. District attorney’s spokeswoman Kathleen Walsh said officials cannot discuss the case because it is ongoing. But she did say the DA’s office believes there is enough evidence to move forward in the case.

Defense Attorney Rob Corry said many more marijuana plants than six are needed to get enough of them to bloom and provide the needed medication. Some plants don’t produce buds or don’t grow enough roots to provide any useful marijuana to smoke, he said.

“Most of the plants were tiny, tiny starter plants with no roots,” Corry said.

Dickes got his medical-marijuana card in March, and it is good for one year. About 1,300 people have medical-marijuana cards in Colorado, according to the state.

Before he got his card, Dickes said he took prescription painkillers, but those had side effects and were addictive, he said. Now, Dickes said, he is getting his medical marijuana on the “black market” until his case is decided.

He added: “I feel I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Staff writer Carlos Illescas can be reached at 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com.

Correction made, 6/15/07 - Because of a copy editor’s error, this story was orginally incorrect in calling Rob Corry a district attorney. He is a defense attorney.

Kevin Dickes, 38, of Aurora pleaded not guilty Thursday in Arapahoe County District Court to marijuana cultivation after police said they seized 71 plants from his home

http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070615/NEWS/70615003

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 15, 2007

CENTENNIAL — A former Marine who said marijuana helps him deal with injuries suffered during Operation Desert Storm is challenging the state’s medical marijuana law.

Kevin Dickes, 38, of Aurora pleaded not guilty Thursday in Arapahoe County District Court to marijuana cultivation after police said they seized 71 plants from his home on April 27.

He faces up to six years in prison if convicted. A hearing on a motion to dismiss the charge is set for next month.

Dickes says marijuana helps ease the pain in his right leg since a grenade landed next to him in 1991 while he was serving in Kuwait.

Under Colorado’s medical marijuana law, approved by voters in 2000, patients under a doctor’s care who get a medical marijuana card may legally possess up to 2 ounces of pot or six plants. However, a provision in the law could allow for more plants.

“In general, what happens is the individual has testimony from a physician that their particular condition warrants the additional amounts,” said Ron Hyman, registrar of vital statistics for the state health department. “Whether the judge buys it or not is up to the judge.”

Dickes’ attorney, Robert Corry Jr., argued there is no limit to the number of plants a person may cultivate for use as long as they are “medically necessary.”

District attorney’s spokeswoman Kathleen Walsh said she could not discuss an ongoing case but that prosecutors believe there is enough evidence to proceed.

Dickes is one of about 1,300 holders of medical marijuana cards in Colorado, according to the state.

Dickes said he continues to use marijuana obtained through the black market. He is free on $6,000 bond.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5586957,00.html

A decorated Marine approved by the state to use marijuana for medical purposes is fighting to get back the dozens of marijuana plants seized from his basement by Aurora police in April.
“I felt that I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Kevin Dickes, 38, of Aurora.

Dickes, who was wounded by a grenade in Kuwait in February 1991, was arrested April 27 for cultivation of marijuana, a felony that could send him to prison for six years. He was in court Thursday trying to get the case dismissed based on the medical marijuana exception in the state constitution, which was passed by voters in 2000.

“This is a waste of taxpayers’ time,” said Dickes’ attorney, Robert Corry Jr. “The voters of Colorado said medical marijuana is legal.”

According to police, 71 marijuana plants were seized from -Dickes’ basement. At the time, officers reported that Dickes “knew he had cultivated too many marijuana plants” and that he told them he “enjoyed growing the marijuana plants.”

On Feb. 2, 1991, he was with a unit that was escorting prisoners of war in Kuwait when a grenade went off, killing three of his comrades and injuring Dickes.

In January, he started using marijuana and in March, he got his doctor to sign off on the use of pot and obtained a medical marijuana registry card from the state after paying the $110 fee. He also started growing marijuana plants in his basement, using hydroponics.

On April 27, he said he was working at his computer when Aurora SWAT members burst into his home. Dickes said the officers left him six marijuana plants but they all died while he spent six hours in jail.

*****MEDIA ADVISORY*****

MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENT/DESERT STORM COMBAT VETERAN SEEKS DISMISSAL OF CHARGES TOMORROW AT 1:30 P.M.

CENTENNIAL, COLORADO—Kevin Dickes, a State-certified medical marijuana patient, and his lawyer Robert J. Corry, Jr., will argue a motion to dismiss felony criminal charges tomorrow in Arapahoe District Court. Mr. Dickes faces a felony charge of Cultivation of Marijuana carrying a maximum penalty of six years in prison. The Colorado Constitution provides an exception to criminal laws regarding marijuana for registered Medical Marijuana patients.

“Hopefully the Court will follow the law that the voters of Colorado intended to protect a good man who served his country in combat, and who is guilty of no crime whatsoever,” said Dickes’ lawyer, Robert J. Corry, Jr.

“When the police broke into my home, knocked me down, and pointed guns at my face, I had never been treated this bad by anyone, including in the darkest days of Desert Shield/Desert Storm combat in Kuwait, when a grenade blew up right next to me and gave me a lifelong injury,” said Dickes, who suffers from chronic vascular disease and extreme pain, and may lose his leg from combat injuries suffered during Operation Desert Storm in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. Mr. Dickes had a physician’s recommendation and a State-approved license for medical marijuana after every other prescription failed to resolve his debilitating medical condition.

WHAT: Kevin Dickes and his attorney, Robert Corry, Jr., will appear in Court and argue that a marijuana cultivation charge should be dismissed immediately.

WHEN: 1:30 p.m., Thursday, June 14, 2007.

WHERE: Arapahoe District Court, Courtroom 204, 7325 S. Potomac Street, Centennial, Colorado.

CONTACT: Robert Corry, Jr., at 303-634-2244 (ofc), 720-629-7112 (cell) or Robert.Corry@comcast.net

# # #

Standing outside the Larimer County Justice Center on June 1, James Masters smiles publicly for the first time in months. Since being arrested last August for growing 39 pot plants inside their home, James and his wife Lisa have faced jail time and losing custody of their two daughters. Now, the county district attorney’s office has dropped its case against the medical marijuana providers, just three days before a scheduled jury trial that the Masters’ lawyers called a “test case” for Colorado’s medical marijuana law.

The prosecution began falling apart last month when Chief Judge James A. Hiatt ruled that a police search of the Masters’ home was illegal. (Read “Stoned — again — in court,” from the May 17 issue, online at rmchronicle.com). A follow-up defense motion claimed evidence in the case was gathered during that illegal entry. Deputy D.A. Michael Pierson gave in to that argument, resulting in no admissible evidence and a case dismissal.

“I think the grassroots campaign and the media campaign we mounted really had an effect on them,” says Brian Vicente, one of the Masters’ two lawyers and the executive director for the pro-cannabis organization, Sensible Colorado.

“This case was dismissed because of issues with the search warrant, not because of the merits,” responds Linda Jensen, spokesperson for the D.A.’s office. The outcome will not influence how the county prosecutes future, similar cases, she adds.

By law, police are required to return all confiscated property. The judge gave the D.A.’s office five days to comply. If law enforcement hasn’t kept or maintained the Masters’ plants, the couple could receive monetary compensation, which Vicente roughly calculates at a minimum of $78,000 in marijuana and grow-room equipment.

While pleased with the outcome, Vicente and his co-counsel, Rob Corry, say a favorable jury decision could have further defined aspects of the voter-approved medical marijuana law, including providers’ rights to sell weed to patients.

The Masters are still growing and supplying cannabis through the Larimer County chapter of the Colorado Compassion Club.

“This is a huge victory for medical marijuana patients,” James Masters says, “but only if the Larimer County sheriff’s department and the [Fort Collins] police department realize we have a right [to grow and smoke cannabis].”

The DA drops the prosecution of an ailing couple after a judge ruled the search of their fort Collins home was illegal.

By Monte Whaley
Denver Post Staff Writer

Advocates are hailing a prosecutor’s decision to drop criminal charges against an ailing Fort Collins couple who use medical marijuana and distribute it to other ill patients.
…
Larimer County Drug Task Force agents neglected to say in their search affidavit that the couple’s marijuana was for medical purposes and that they were distributing pot because they are “caregivers,” said defense attorney Rob Corry. “A man’s home is his castle, and that applies to medical marijuana use, as well,” Corry said.

Corry said that there have been several dozen instances of medical marijuana cases being dismissed, but this was “rare” because it was a caregiver case.
…
Corry said he wants Larimer County to return the seized pot and pot-growing equipment. That’s the Master’s property, Corry said, “and they now have every right to it.”

Photo caption: James Masters, center, is consoled Friday by his attorney Robert Corry, right, and wife Lisa, outside of the Larimer County Justice Center after marijuana charges were dropped against the couple. James broke down while talking about missing his children after charges were brought against them.

Article published Jun 2, 2007
Drug case against pair dropped
Dismissal comes after it was determined agents illegally searched the couple’s home
BY SARA REED
SaraReed@coloradoan.com

In a decision heralded by defense attorneys as the “legally and morally right thing to do,” prosecutors dropped marijuana cultivation and possession charges against a Fort Collins couple who use and provide medical marijuana to other patients.

James and Lisa Masters were set to stand trial Monday morning, but instead, deputy District Attorney Michael Pierson announced during a hearing Friday afternoon that his office was dropping the case.

The dismissal came in the wake of a recent ruling by Chief District Court Judge James Hiatt that a Larimer County Drug Task Force agent illegally searched the couple’s Fort Collins home Aug. 2, 2006.

The two sides originally were due in court Friday to argue a defense motion to exclude the evidence seized from the home because the warrant was obtained using information gathered during the illegal search.

“(This was) a hearing we genuinely felt we could not win,” Pierson said. “It takes away all of our evidence.”

However, Pierson said, it is the office’s position that the dropping of the case “does not vindicate” the couple.

Outside the Larimer County Justice Center after the hearing, it was quite clear the couple and their lawyers felt vindicated, declaring the result “a huge victory.”

“Justice has come,” said Rob Corry, one of the couple’s attorneys.

James Masters also declared the day a victory, but also expressed some frustration.

“If only (police) had realized we were protected under the (Colorado) constitution,” he said. “It’s important they realize they can’t keep knocking down peoples doors.”

The Masterses’ attorneys also were prepared to argue against the admissibility of the evidence seized from the couple’s home because the affidavit for the search warrant made no mention that the two told police they were medical marijuana patients and caregivers.

James Masters said that before his arrest, medical marijuana helped him regain his health, only to have it deteriorate again with the stress of the case.

“I got myself back to the state I wanted to be,” he said. “But (the case) reversed everything marijuana brought to me.”

However, there was a more difficult side of the case, which the couple said broke them down.

“The hardest part was not having our babies for eight weeks,” James Masters said, choking back tears.

The couple’s daughters, 4 and 6, were removed from the home by the Larimer County Department of Human Services. The family was later reunited, and no child abuse charges were filed.

Police seized 39 marijuana plants, 12 of which were ready for harvest, from the couple’s home. The couple served as caregivers with the Colorado Compassion Club, providing medical marijuana for other patients in the area. Both are also medical marijuana patients.

The case was being hailed as a “test case” for the caregiver provision of the medical marijuana amendment.

Voters passed Amendment 20 in November 2000, which established Colorado’s medical marijuana law.

Medical marijuana providers James and Lisa Masters and their lawyers enjoyed a 20-second victory in court on May 14, before a judge dismissed most of their latest round of motions. Larimer County Chief Judge James A. Hiatt ruled that a drug task-force officer illegally searched the Masters’ house, but he then refused to throw out the evidence gathered during a follow-up search.

The Masters are charged with possession and intent to distribute marijuana, stemming from a child-welfare check at their home on August 2, 2006. At the time, the couple advised county child protection staff and accompanying police that they were medical marijuana caregivers and agreed to allow them into their grow rooms. The couple was arrested. Then Det. Todd Brubaker arrived and entered the home.

The drug task force later used Brubaker’s report to gain a search warrant and confiscate the plants, which the Masters claimed as medicine for 30 patients (Read “High noon,” from the January 17 issue).
“The police cannot engage in deception, and that is what they did,” Masters’ co-counsel Rob Corry argued at the recent hearing, adding that the warrantless search was a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Pierson responded that probable cause had been established when the child-welfare staff saw the marijuana plants.

Judge Hiatt only partly agreed with the defense claim. Although the Masters “basically were tour guides” during the child-welfare check, Hiatt said, Brubaker acted illegally by searching the house without consent or a warrant. But the judge ruled that evidence gathered after the warrant was issued is still admissible during the upcoming June 4 trial, which the Masters’ lawyers are calling a precedent-setting case for Colorado medical marijuana providers and patients.

The defense attorneys say they plan to file yet another motion, because the warrant was mostly based on the evidence gathered during the illegal search.

“This is the fourth motion we’re having, so it shows you the extent to which the state will go to prosecute medical marijuana patients,” says Brian Vicente, another attorney representing the Masters.

The Masters’ lawyers also asked Judge Hiatt to drop the intent-to-distribute charges, arguing that state laws regulating marijuana distribution are “unconstitutionally vague.” Hiatt ruled against the motion, saying the matter is an issue of proof that will be decided during the trial.

The Colorado Health Department recently responded to Rob Corry’s Colorado Open Records Act request for all documentation and evidence bolstering the State’s arbitrary limit of five patients per caregiver. The State admitted that its decision to limit patients’ rights was arbitrary and that the State possessed no logical basis, studies, scientific documentation, nor any other evidence to support its harmful limitation. “The State obviously picked the number five completely out of a hat,” Corry said, “this would be laughable if people weren’t suffering as a result of it.” There are many medical marijuana patients who are unable to grow or obtain their medicine without the help of a courageous and knowledeable caregiver. That is why the voters provided that people can act as caregivers for medical marijuana patients. The five-patient limit unreasonably restricts a patient’s choice of caregivers.

As with most arbitrary government actions, the State refused to reveal the secret government memo creating this five-patient limitation and refused to name the lawyers who concocted the limit. There is no law that authorizes the State to restrict patient choice. Neither the legislature nor the voters approved this restrictive policy, which was enacted without public comment in a secret meeting.

Apparently we Americans have nothing better to do with our resources than to wage war on an herb and those who use it for medicinal or recreational purposes. But the war on the plant marijuana is a failure. It doesn’t work. And it wastes money, undermines our liberty, creates violence, funds criminals and corrupts law enforcement. Following are a few news items from the front.

On Jan. 4, Sensible Colorado (SensibleColorado.org) sent out a press release about James and Lisa Masters of Fort Collins. The release states, “The Masters, who are both medical marijuana patients and caregivers, are charged with one count each of felony marijuana cultivation… They are the first medical marijuana caregivers to go to trial in Colorado and the defense team, led by attorneys Rob Corry and Brian Vicente, will pursue the Caregiver Defense arguing that Colorado’s Amendment 20 allows caregivers to cultivate and sell marijuana to seriously ill individuals.”

Vicente said, “The Masters are being targeted for providing help to sick people.”

Check out Joshua Zaffos’s two outstanding articles for the Feb. 8 Colorado Springs Independent (csindy.com) for more information about the case. One twist that Zaffos recounts in his piece, “Tokin’ opposition,” is that, while Vicente was “schooling a roomful of defense lawyers on how to represent medical marijuana patients,” Larimer Deputy District Attorney Thomas Lynch was caught observing the meeting and was ejected.

The persecution of medical-marijuana providers is obscene. The proper purpose of government is to protect individual rights. In this case, government agents are actively violating people’s rights. State agents are initiating force against citizens who are both innocent of wrongdoing and physically disabled.

Does marijuana work? It is not the legitimate job of politicians or law enforcement agents to make such calls. It is a decision properly left to patients and their doctors. But the evidence is in: Marijuana is effective for some medical uses.

For example, Sabin Russell writes for the Feb. 12 San Francisco Chronicle, “Doctors at San Francisco General Hospital reported today that HIV-infected patients suffering from a painful nerve condition in their hands or feet obtained substantial relief by smoking small amounts of marijuana in a carefully constructed study funded by the State of California.” The full study, led by Dr. D.I. Abrams, may be found in Neurology’s Feb. 13 edition (neurology.org).

According to a Feb. 14 e-mail from the Marijuana Policy Project (mpp.org), David Murray of the White House drug czar’s office replied, “People who smoke marijuana are subject to bacterial infections in the lungs. Is this really what a physician who is treating someone with a compromised immune system wants to prescribe?”

But practically all drugs have side-effects, and it is the responsibility of doctors working with their patients, not stooges of federal “czars,” to make such decisions. Besides, marijuana can be consumed in ways other than smoking, and presumably that would maintain the health benefits while eliminating the problems related to smoke.

However, even some drug-war insiders are questioning some of the excesses of this war. A Feb. 13 article by Michael Doyle of McClatchy Newspapers (linked through The Denver Post’s web page) reports, “In an emphatic but nonbinding opinion, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s own judge [Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner] is recommending that a University of Massachusetts professor be allowed to grow a legal pot crop. The real winners could be those suffering from painful and wasting diseases, proponents believe.”

Ironically, the professor, Lyle Craker, is working on vaporizers, a technology that reduces the risk of smoke. “The Bush administration… has remained hostile to Craker’s research efforts,” Doyle reports. So this administration simultaneously criticizes medical marijuana for its unhealthy smoke and undermines efforts to remove this risk.

While the government’s war against the sick is particularly heinous, the general marijuana war is also immoral and impractical.

A Feb. 13 AP article reports, “A judge has resigned to protest a proposal to impose stiffer city penalties in Lafayette for marijuana possession. Leon Frieling, a Boulder attorney, resigned Monday as an associate municipal judge, citing an ordinance that would set a fine of up to $1,000 and a jail term of up to a year for marijuana. The existing city fine is $100, the same penalty set under state law.”

A Feb. 16 e-mail from SAFER (SaferChoice.org) reported that the Lafayette council withdrew the measure. SAFER warns, “Although this particular ordinance has been killed, it may be back in a couple months.”

Finally, a new report indicates the massive failure of the war on marijuana. Jon Gettman’s “Marijuana Production in the United States (2006)” is available at DrugScience.org.

The executive summary states, “Marijuana is the largest cash crop in the United States, more valuable than corn and wheat combined. Using conservative price estimates domestic marijuana production has a value of $35.8 billion…

“Despite intensive eradication efforts domestic marijuana production has increased tenfold over the last 25 years from 1,000 metric tons (2.2 million pounds) in 1981 to 10,000 metric tons (22 million pounds) in 2006, according to federal government estimates.”

Colorado ranks 27, with an estimated 67,514 plants, 29,768 pounds, and a cash value of $47,807,000. This war has been lost. It is an immoral war that should never have been started. It’s time to end it.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com

Brighton - The trial of an AIDS patient accused of flaunting Colorado’s medical-marijuana law was delayed Wednesday because of the unavailability of a key defense witness.

The attorney for Jack Branson, 39, wants Dr. Cynthia Firnhaber to testify that she verbally recommended in 2002 that Branson use medical marijuana. The drug helps Branson deal with nausea and loss of appetite caused by HIV.

But attorney Robert Corry said Wednesday that it’s nearly impossible for Firnhaber to come to Colorado since she is working in South Africa fighting AIDS.

“We looked for months, and we were finally able to locate her,” Corry told Adams County District Judge C. Scott Crabtree. “It’s quite a hardship.”

Corry asked that Firnhaber be allowed to testify by telephone. Crabtree set a July 20 hearing to decide and scheduled a Aug. 27 jury trial.

Branson faces charges of cultivation of marijuana and possession of more than 8 ounces of marijuana, both felonies.

Branson has lived with the virus that causes AIDS for 20 years, said his mother, Margaret Branson. He also has hepatitis B and a slipped disc in his back. The marijuana allows Branson to control his nausea so he can take medication needed for his survival, she said.

Under Colorado’s medical- marijuana law, doctors can recommend marijuana for patients they believe would benefit from it. But Branson was not registered with the state as a medical-marijuana user when he was arrested in October 2004 after police found up to 12 marijuana plants in his backyard.

Colorado’s law allows patients to have six plants. Branson has since registered with the state.

If convicted of a crime, Branson could lose his Medicaid or Social Security benefits.

Prosecutor Trevor Moritzky told Crabtree he is leery of any telephone testimony. “There is no way of knowing the person on the phone is the person they say they are,” Moritzky said.

Adams County district attorney’s spokesman Michael Goodbee said prosecutors will not seek prison time for Branson if he is convicted.

Still, Goodbee said, Colorado’s medical-marijuana law - including provisions limiting the amount of pot - must be strictly followed.

“The voters passed the law with the idea that people would comply with all its provisions,” Goodbee said. “We are simply seeking compliance.”

Staff writer Monte Whaley can be reached at 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com.

THORNTON - Jack Branson sits in the cluttered living room of the modest house he rents from a family member on the ragged edge of this Denver suburb. On the table between us are vials containing eight different medicines.

Branson, a slightly built man who will turn 39 the next day, is seriously ill. For nearly 20 years he’s lived with the HIV virus that causes AIDS; in addition he has hepatitis B, and a slipped disc in his back. Some of the medicines keep him alive, while others, including oxycodone and methadone, help control the chronic pain in which he lives.

Like many people with HIV, Branson finds it difficult to tolerate the drugs that suppress the virus. Indeed, the drugs tend to make him so nauseated that on several occasions he stopped taking them, causing him to develop full-blown AIDS.

And, like many other seriously ill people, Branson discovered that by smoking marijuana he could control the nausea well enough to take his medicine regularly. It was precisely to help people like Branson that the voters of Colorado amended the state’s constitution in 2000, to allow doctors to recommend marijuana for patients they believed would benefit from it.

Six years ago, a doctor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine - an expert on the treatment of AIDS - told Branson he ought to smoke marijuana if that would allow him to take his medicine regularly (each time Branson stopped taking the medicine his body became more resistant to its effects).

The Colorado medical marijuana law doesn’t require a doctor’s recommendation to be in writing, and Branson began to grow a few marijuana plants in his backyard, Eventually he had 14 plants, which, given the relatively short Colorado growing season, was only enough to supply him with enough medical marijuana to get him through two thirds of the year.

In October of 2004, the North Metro Drug Task Force, a local law enforcement consortium that gets considerable funding from the federal government, showed up at Branson’s house. They didn’t have a warrant, but according to Branson they told him they would do serious damage to his house if he forced them to come back with one.

Branson had every reason to believe he had done nothing illegal (he in fact has no criminal record of any kind), and he consented to the warrantless search. He was then charged with felony cultivation of a controlled substance, and possession with intent to distribute.

Branson shows me the approximately 10-foot-by-4-foot plot of earth where he had grown his plants. “This is the east side and this is the west side of the plot,” he tells me. “I labeled the bags in which I kept the marijuana East and West, depending on which side of the plot the plants came from. The drug task force’s theory is that I intended to distribute the stuff on the East and West coasts.”

Branson’s lawyer, Robert Corry, describes himself as a strong Republican (he was the Republican committee counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in Washington in the 1990s.) In other words, he’s hardly a bleeding-heart liberal, yet he’s genuinely outraged by what the government is doing to his client. He estimates that Branson’s trial, which starts tomorrow, will cost the taxpayers of Adams County at least $100,000.

That seems like a steep price to pay for the privilege of persecuting a harmless, desperately ill man, who doesn’t appear to have committed a crime in even the most technical sense, and who might well die in prison if he’s sent there.

Prisons don’t allow medical marijuana use, and Branson says he would consider a prison sentence of more than six months to be the equivalent of capital punishment, since he probably can’t live longer than that without his HIV medicine.

I suppose in our government’s eyes that outcome would just prove once again how dangerous smoking marijuana really is.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

Colorado AIDS Patient to Face Jury Trial- and Potential Death Sentence- for Medical Marijuana in Adams County.

Patients and Supporters to protest in front of Courthouse.

Brighton, CO – On Wednesday, April 4, 2007, Colorado medical marijuana patient Jack Branson will face a felony jury trial in Adams County. Branson, who uses medical marijuana to treat the nausea and loss of appetite arising from his treatment for HIV, believes that if convicted and sent to prison, he will die without access to medical marijuana.

Branson was arrested in October 2004 when officers from the North Metro Drug Task found about a dozen marijuana plants in his Thornton home. He currently faces charges of felony cultivation and possession with intent to distribute. These charges carry a sentence of up to 6 years in prison.
The morning of the trial, Colorado medical marijuana patients and advocates will be holding a protest at the Adams County Justice Center. Protesters will ask the Adam’s County District Attorney’s office to call off its prosecution of Branson.

“The Adams District Attorney’s Office should have higher priorities then prosecuting a sick man for growing his medicine,” said Brian Vicente, medical marijuana advocate. “We call on the prosecutors to use their discretion to drop this case and allow Mr. Branson to cope with his illness in peace.”

WHAT: Jury Trial of Medical Marijuana Patient, Jack Branson
Protest to ask the Adams District Attorney’s Office to cease prosecution
WHEN: Wednesday, April 4, at 8:30 am.
WHERE: 1100 Judicial Center Drive, Brighton, CO 80601
WHO: Jack Branson, Patient and Defendant
Colorado Medical Marijuana Patients and Activists

Sensible Colorado is a non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and advocate for effective and humane drug policy in Colorado. Learn more about Sensible Colorado at www.sensiblecolorado.org.

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Act now to save a Colorado medical marijuana patient’s life

In October 2004, officers from the North Metro Drug Task Force (from the Denver area) knocked on the door of Jack Branson, a medical marijuana patient in Thornton, Colorado. Branson consented to a search of his home. The officers then arrested him for growing marijuana, which he does to treat the nausea and loss of appetite arising from his treatment for HIV.

Branson was using the marijuana after an oral recommendation from his physician. She did not want to put her recommendation into writing because she feared losing her job at Colorado University, a federally funded facility. His doctor later moved out of the country and now teaches in South Africa.

The Colorado State Constitution allows people who do not have written documentation, but who do have an oral recommendation, to assert medical necessity as a defense in medical marijuana cases. By now, Branson has obtained a written medical recommendation for the use of medical marijuana. However, because his first doctor is on another continent, he may not be able to obtain her testimony. You can read more about the case here.

Jack Branson now faces felony charges for growing his medicine. Colorado voters clearly did not intend for bona fide patients to be arrested and threatened with felony drug convictions when they passed the medical marijuana law. If Branson is convicted and sent to prison, he believes that, without his medicine, he will die.

The trial is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 4th in Brighton, Colorado. In a sensible world, this case would never come to trial, because the prosecutor would use his reasonable discretion not to pursue the case. Thus far, however, the Adams County District Attorney’s office has not chosen to use such discretion.

Here is what you can do to help Jack Branson — and perhaps save his life:

1. Write a letter to the editor to either the Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News calling on the prosecutor to drop the case against Jack Branson. Click here for information on how to send a letter by email or fax to the Rocky Mountain News. You can send a letter to the Denver Post at openforum@denverpost.com (only straight text; no attachments). Please remember to keep all letters short, at fewer than 150 words. Don’t attack the prosecutor personally — instead, point out that sending a sick man to prison is unjust and a poor use of state money, and call on the prosecutor to use his discretion to drop the charges. Please do this as soon as possible as the trial is only days away.

2. Contact Adams County District Attorney Don Quick and ask him to dismiss the case. Point out that while technically possible, a conviction would violate the spirit of the Colorado constitution and be a grave injustice. You can call D.A. Quick at (303) 659-7720 or fax him at (303) 835-5522. Don Quick is a decent man and well respected, so please be respectful in calling upon him to do the right thing. If you prefer to mail a letter, please do so right away, as the trial is Wednesday. The mailing address is: Don Quick, District Attorney, 1000 Judicial Center Drive, Suite 100, Brighton, Colorado 80601. (You may want to use an overnight carrier.)

3. Call into any local talk or news radio stations in your area (especially if you are in Adams County or the greater Denver area), expressing your support for Jack Branson and calling for the dismissal of all charges against him.

4. Appear at the trial to support Jack. Please dress appropriately and do not bring provocative signs. Supporters will be meeting at the main entrance to the Adams County Justice Center at 8:30 a.m. (again, on Wednesday, April 4). The address is 1100 Judicial Center Drive, Brighton, CO 80601. Click here for directions. Supporters will hold “Stop Arresting Patients” signs and protest outside, and then will have the chance to move into the courtroom and sit behind Jack Branson, showing their support. A strong presence will help ensure that justice prevails, so please come if you can.

If you take action and do any or all of the above, please e-mail MPP Legislative Analyst Anthony Wagenseil at awagenseil@mpp.org, so that we can monitor developments in the case.

Thank you for supporting the Marijuana Policy Project. Please pass this alert on to your friends and family in Colorado as soon as you can, so that they may also learn about this story and take action.

Sometimes there’s a fine line between consent and coercion.

Jack Branson learned that lesson the hard way in October 2004 when officers from the North Metro Drug Task Force knocked on his door.

Would Branson give consent to these officers to conduct a warrantless search of his home in Thornton?

Well, of course he would consent - especially after, as Branson tells it, the dozen or so armed cops explained, in detail, the needless tragedies that would befall his home if they were forced to go through the trouble of returning with a warrant.

In they went.

The police, naturally, knew exactly what they were looking for and quickly seized about a dozen marijuana plants Branson was growing in the backyard.

Charged with felony cultivation and possession with intent to distribute, the 38-year-old Branson, who is in a 20-year fight with HIV, is now facing a maximum six years in prison.

Branson, who had no previous criminal record, claims that a physician named Dr. Cynthia Firnhaber verbally recommended medical marijuana to him in 2002 to help ease his pain.

“That or pick out a hospice which you’d like to die in,” Branson alleges the doctor told him.

Firnhaber, who was then at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, refused to put the marijuana recommendation in writing, according to Branson’s lawyers, because CU is a federally funded institution and she would be in danger of losing her job.

Branson has since obtained the proper medical marijuana paperwork from a doctor - proving only that his need for medical marijuana was not fabricated.

“Physically it helps with the nausea and my appetite,” Branson explains. “It’s the only way I can keep food down and my medications. Plus, I’m able to focus a little better. Rather than being so anxious and depressed about my prognosis, I think about what I need to do to try and survive rather than always feel the anxiety of dying.”

The main problem for the defense will be Firnhaber. She now teaches in South Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, where she’s a specialist in fighting AIDS. Securing her live testimony in court could prove difficult. Written testimony won’t do. And even if they can get her on the phone, a judge would have to allow it.

Yet, the most difficult aspect to understand is why this case is going to trial next week in the first place.

Colorado voters passed Amendment 20 in 2000, allowing doctors to recommend marijuana to patients with debilitating diseases - just like Branson’s.

Pleading down the case might have been possible for Branson, were it not for two factors:

The first is principle. Branson doesn’t believe he did anything wrong. The second is self-preservation. Any drug conviction could mean Branson might lose his Medicaid or Social Security benefits.

As Branson is too weak to hold down a job, he needs the assistance to survive.

“I don’t want to die in jail,” Branson tells me. “Actually, I wanted to see if there was some way I could have a sentence of lethal injection if I was found guilty. … If I need to take it into my own hands, I will do so.”

Pretrial drama? Who knows? But it is clear that a peaceful man using marijuana for medicinal purposes, just as voters had intended in 2000, may now die in prison.

Of course, however tragic our situations, we can’t pick and choose which laws to follow. And Branson did not have the proper paperwork.

But district attorneys (and the one in Adams did not return my call) do pick and choose whom they prosecute - by prioritizing and weighing the importance of each case.

At the very worst, Branson was engaged in a victimless crime. This isn’t a burnout deadhead with a debilitating case of bad vibes looking for a legal toke.

Does Branson deserve jail for this crime? Do the taxpayers of Adams County deserve to pay for this prosecution?

I’m not sure any reasonable person would say yes.

David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.

Today, Robert J. Corry, Jr. requested under the Colorado Open Records Act, C.R.S. § 24-72-201 et seq., access to any and all “writings,” as defined by C.R.S. § 24-72-202(8), and “public records,” as defined by C.R.S. § 24-72-202(6)(a)(I), relating to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s policy of prohibiting a medical marijuana patient from designating a particular individual as his or her caregiver if that particular caregiver has already been designated as such by five other medical marijuana patients.

Corry’s request includes, but is not limited to, any and all scientific studies, legal analyses, internal memoranda, draft and other documents reflecting the reason or rationale behind the Department’s limitation of five patients per caregiver. The limitation appears to be wholly arbitrary and has no justification in science, medicine, or the Colorado Constitution Article XVIII § 14 governing medical marijuana, or any other statute, regulation, or law. In fact, the policy, which appears to be enforced informally and is not codified in Department regulations, violates the state constitution and has the practical effect of denying many patients the medicine that they need, because many patients cannot obtain medical marijuana without a caregiver, and the universe of individuals with the knowledge, expertise, time, and inclination to serve as caregivers and provide medical marijuana to patients is limited. In voting in favor of Amendment 20 in 2000, Colorado voters intended that patients have access to the medical marijuana they need, as evidenced by the state constitutional provision enacted by voters, which contains no limit on a patient’s constitutional right to designate any person over the age of eighteen as caregiver, other than the patient or the patient’s physician.

Corry hopes to receive the documents shortly and would share them with any interested person upon request. Hopefully, “sunshine will be the best disinfectant,” and this arbitrary policy can be overturned and patients will be free to receive the medicine they need as the voters intended.

Please contact Mr. Corry at 303-634-2244 with any questions, or if you are a patient who has been denied the caregiver of your choice.

Yesterday, more than 20 CCDB Members and witnesses made a strong showing at the State Capital to support the Record Sealing Bill (HB07-1107).

I am happy to report that because of the work of many inside and outside the CCDB, the Bill has moved forward with solid Bi-partisan support. After a five hour delay, more than a dozen testified in favor of the bill with compelling, personal stories of being haunted by a remote past. Each person asked only to be given the opportunity to ask a jusge to permit them to move on from their past.

On a 9 to 2 vote, the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve the Record Sealing Bill. Voting in favor of this bill were Terrence Carroll – D, Morgan Carroll- D, Mike Cerbo- D, Andy Kerr- D, Steve King – R, Claire Levy- D, Rosemary Marshall- D, Debbie Stafford – R, Amy Stephens- R. Voting against the bill were Bob Gardner - R and Ellen Roberts – R.

If one of these folks that supported the bill is your representative, please call them and let them know that you appreciate their vote. As we told the committee last night, this legislation is an important small step in the right direction.

As a member, you should know that the CCDB Legislative Committee (of course including the spear-heading efforts of Maureen Cain), has worked extremely hard on moving this legislation forward. Special, thanks should go out to Scott McComas of Boulder who arrived at 1:00 p.m., spent the entire afternoon in the Capital and testified at 7:00 p.m. on behalf of his current and former clients – his testimony was compelling. Also, many citizens thankfully and generously gave their time to be on hand to tell the committee what this legislation would mean to their lives.

We have much work to do, but this is a first major step.

In the near future, the Bill will appear at the House Appropriations Committee. No testimony is permitted at this committee however we will shepherd this though that committee at every available turn. If the Appropriations Committee approves the Bill, it will go onto the full House of Representatives for a full vote. If (WHEN!) the full House votes on the Bill EVERYONE (and I mean EVERYONE) in the CCDB will have to pick up their phone to talk with each Representative. This bill will only pass if your representative knows that this bill is important and why.

I will keep you posted about the future developments of this bill.

Feel free to contact me regarding this legislation if you have any questions.

Regards,

Guss Guarino

Executive Director

Colorado Criminal Defense Bar

789 Sherman Street, #660; Denver 80203 (Mail)

1544 Race Street, Denver 80206 (Physical)

T: 303-758-2454

F: 303-830-1392

C: 303-919-6650

E-mail: gussguarino@ccdb.org

Website: www.ccdb.org

Wednesday Febuary 7 House Judiciary Room 0122 at 1:30

Contact the Judiciary Committee

It only takes a moment to make your voice heard!! Send an email or make a phone call

that simply states that you support HB07-1107!! The links and phone numbers are provided

within this message. If you can show up on Wednesday at 1:30, please send a quick RSVP.

This bill can make a very real

difference in thousands of lives across the state.

Representative Mike Cerbo (D-Denver) introduced HB 07-1107 on January 15th that

would allow people to petition the court to seal a criminal record after 10 years following

the completion of a sentence or release from supervision. This bill is coming before the

House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday February 7 at 1:30.

In an effort to show support for this legislation please call the committee members and

attend the committee hearing so that they realize how serious this issue is.

This legislation will survive only if this committee votes for it. If you cannot attend the hearing,

please call your House Representative and ask them to support this legislation

(don’t know your Representative – go to www.votesmart.org) .

For continually updating news go to Think Outside The Cage

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Rep. Morgan Carroll

Arapahoe Democrat Attorney/Small Business owner

Cap: 303-866-2942
E-mail: morgancarroll@webaccess.net

Rep. Terrance Carroll Chair of the Judiciary Committee

Denver Democrat Attorney

Cap: 303-866-2909
E-mail: terrance.carroll.house@state.co.us

Rep. Mike Cerbo (Sponsor)

Denver Democrat

Attorney Cap: 303-866-2911
E-mail: mpcerbo@yahoo.com

Rep. Bob Gardner
El Paso/Fremont Republican

Attorney Cap: 303-866-2191
E-mail: bob.gardner.house@state.co.us

Rep. Andrew “Andy” Kerr

Jefferson Democrat

Educator Cap: 303-866-2923
E-mail: akerrhd26@earthlink.net

Rep. Steve King

Delta/Mesa Republican

Cap: 303-866-3068
E-mail: steve.king.house@state.co.us

Rep. Rosemary Marshall
Democrat

Denver Public Policy

Cap: 303-866-2959
E-mail: rosemary.marshall.house@state.co.us

Rep. Ellen Roberts

Republican

Archuleta/La Plata/Montezuma/San Juan

Attorney Cap: 303-866-2914
E-mail: ellen.roberts.house@state.co.us

Rep. Debbie Stafford

Arapahoe/Elbert Republican

Ordained Minister/Counselor/Auctioneer Cap: 303-866-2944
E-mail: debbie.stafford.house@state.co.us

Rep. Amy Stephens

El Paso Consultant /Republican

Cap: 303-866-2924
E-mail: amy.stephens.house@state.co.us

Rep. Claire Levy

Boulder/Clear Creek/Gilpin Democrat

Attorney Cap: 303-866-2578
E-mail: claire.levy.house@state.co.us

We need your help to move this legislation forward. If passed this legislation could be significant in the lives of so many.

To read the bill in its entirety go to
http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/Clics2007A/csl.nsf/fsbillcont3/47C2AA09A5B311CB87257251007C484A?Open&file=1107_01.pdf

Or you can find the link at Think Outside The Cage

Pamela Clifton
Outreach Coordinator
CCJRC
1212 Mariposa St. #4
Denver, CO 80204
pam@ccjrc.org
work (303) 825-0122
cell (303) 931-2101

Washington - The Supreme Court, with its new chief justice joining the majority, made clear Monday that juries, not judges, must determine facts that justify harsher prison sentences.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court struck down California’s Determinate Sentencing Law, the latest in a series of decisions limiting judges’ discretion in sentencing.

In California, thousands of inmates may be eligible to have their sentences reduced, in many cases, by about a year.

“This court has repeatedly held that, under the Sixth Amendment, any fact that exposes a defendant to a greater potential sentence must be found by the jury, not a judge, and established beyond a reasonable doubt, not merely by a preponderance of the evidence,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court.

The majority was one vote larger than the 5-4 rulings that have been the norm in sentencing cases. In his first major case dealing with the constitutionality of prison terms, Chief Justice John Roberts joined Ginsburg’s majority opinion.

By contrast, the other new justice, former federal prosecutor Samuel Alito, issued a strong dissent, saying California’s law “is indistinguishable in any constitutionally significant respect” from the federal sentencing guidelines that have been approved by the Supreme Court.

Alito’s dissent also suggested that the court may not be done tinkering with the federal sentencing scheme, if the justices apply the same line of reasoning to two federal sentencing cases they will hear next month. Justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy also dissented.

Several states have changed their sentencing laws to require prosecutors to prove to a jury aggravating factors that could lead to longer sentences. The court did not prescribe a way to fix the California law. “The ball lies in California’s court,” Ginsburg said.

Justices Antonin Scalia, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas also were in the majority on an issue that confounds the typical conservative- liberal split on the court.

The ruling Monday in Cunningham vs. California could shave four years off the 16-year sentence of former Richmond, Calif., police officer John Cunningham. He was convicted of sexually abusing his 10-year-old son after the boy moved in with Cunningham and his girlfriend.

California had argued that a 2005 state Supreme Court decision interpreting the state law effectively brought the state into compliance with the U.S. high court’s rulings. The law instructs judges to sentence inmates to the middle of three options, unless factors exist that justify the shorter or longer prison term.

The judge in Cunningham’s case imposed the longest possible term.

The state warned that its criminal justice system would be burdened by having to resentence thousands of inmates.

But Peter Gold, Cunningham’s lawyer, told the court that in many cases the standard term and longer option differ by just a year. In practical terms, many of those who might be affected by Monday’s ruling might already have finished serving their time in prison.

A Fort Collins couple who say they were growing marijuana for medical use pleaded not guilty this afternoon on felony cultivation and distribution charges.

James and Lisa Masters are now set to go to trial March 27. They face up to six years in jail.

The Masters were arrested Aug. 2 when police were called to check the welfare of the couple’s two children, ages 4 and 6, according to an affidavit from Fort Collins police. The officer smelled marijuana in the house and the couple told the officers they had a doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana and they were growing it for that purpose.

At a press conference following the Masters’ arraignment, the couple’s lawyer, Rob Corry, said they were within the bounds of Colorado’s Amendment 20, an initiative approved by voters in 2000 that allows people with certain medical conditions to grow, possess and use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

“The majority of voters in this state said medical marijuana should be available. My hope here is the jury will follow the law and show some compassion for patients who need help,” he said.

James Masters said he has a condition that renders him with chronic nausea and muscle spasms. Masters will not reveal the exact condition until the trial so as not to influence a jury pool, Corry said. Lisa Masters said she suffers from joint swelling, muscle spasms, carpel tunnel syndrome and protruding disks.
The couple said that in addition to growing the marijuana for themselves, they distributed mari-juana for solely to patients in Colorado’s medical marijuana registry.

However, in October District Judge Jolene Blair rejected a dismissal motion, saying the Masters didn’t have the required state documentation showing they are caregivers for people au-thorized to use marijuana for medical purposes.

Co-counsel Brian Vicente said this is the first case in the state to use Amendment 20 as a defense.

“The Masters are being targeted for providing help to sick people,” Vicente said.
“This test case has the potential to increase vital access to medical marijuana by expanding the legal definition of ‘caregiver’ to allow those with significant responsibility for the care of seriously-ill individuals to cultivate and provide them with medical marijuana.”

September 13, 2006

Sponsors of a statewide measure to legalize marijuana said Tuesday they’re unhappy with wording used in the voter information booklet and are seeking to stop its distribution.

But the Legislative Council, which is in charge of writing the impartial analysis of ballot measures, is set to begin printing the booklet Thursday, and that agency’s director said he plans to go forward unless ordered to stop by a court.

To stop printing and distribution, an injunction must be sought. Sponsors of Amendment 44 said they planned to file a lawsuit in Denver District Court on Tuesday, but Rob Corry said they will instead file it this morning.

They consider the wording inaccurate and accuse the Legislative Council of deliberately misleading voters to ensure the measure fails.

The amendment, which qualified to be on the November ballot, would allow adults over the age of 21 to possess less than an ounce of marijuana without legal repercussions.

The amendment also would allow adults to give marijuana to those between the ages of 15 and 17 - as long as the drug were given and not sold to them, according to wording approved by the Legislative Council.

“That is, in no uncertain terms, a lie,” said Mason Tvert, campaign director for a group pushing Amendment 44.

Tvert said his campaign’s position is that it should be illegal to transfer marijuana to anyone under the age of 21, although he admitted there is a current loophole in the amendment that is murky on whether it can be transferred to anyone between the ages of 18 and 20.

He said that if the amendment passes, legislators “will climb over each other to be first to introduce such a bill.”

Kirk Mlinek, director of the Legislative Council staff, said his group has complied with the law to provide a fair and impartial analysis of the amendment.

He also said the booklet wording was reached with the input of many people during public hearings last week.

“If I knew it was wrong, then the first person you’d find outside the House speaker’s door with a proposed change is me,” Mlinek said. “The simple fact is we stand by the language that’s in the final draft.”

However, Mlinek said if the court ordered him to stop, he would do so immediately.

denver & the west
Cops slip up on medical marijuana
By Felisa Cardona
Denver Post Staff Writer

[photo]

Larisa Lawrence, joined by her husband, Thomas, stands in the lobby of the Denver Police Department inspecting the 2-ounce bag of medical marijuana she retrieved from police officials. The marijuana was mistakenly seized by police on Tuesday. (Post / Brian Brainerd)

Not many people go to the Denver Police Department to pick up bags of marijuana, but Thursday a police officer handed Larisa Lawrence about 2 ounces of the drug.

“It’s squished,” she said, scrunching her nose and pressing down on the red evidence bags. “It’s just not the same.”

Late Tuesday, Lawrence’s marijuana was seized by Denver police during a traffic stop even though she produced proof that she was allowed to carry it under the state’s medical marijuana law.

Lawrence, 30, and her husband, Thomas, are caregivers who run a medical-marijuana support center in Denver. The couple said they are also patients allowed to use marijuana for medical purposes under a doctor’s approval.

The police returned the marijuana Thursday after the couple had their lawyer, Robert Corry, contact the Police Department.

Corry says this is the second time the couple has had their marijuana confiscated and later returned by the Denver police.

He says the same thing has happened to six more of his clients.

Corry suspects there are more users of medical marijuana around the state who have had problems with police.

“I can’t imagine how they would not know this is the law,” Corry said. “Police officers take an oath to uphold the laws of Colorado. Obviously, this is a severe gap in their training.”

Corry has offered to hold an educational seminar about Amendment 20 for law enforcement officers so that the law does not continue to be misunderstood.

Denver police Detective John White said the Lawrences did not have the proper documentation with them during the traffic stop, as they claim.

The law, enacted in June 2001, allows people with specified ailments to use marijuana for medical purposes.

Hundreds of Coloradans have obtained medical-marijuana registry ID cards through the state’s Department of Public Health for ailments such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, muscle spasms, severe pain and nausea.

Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-820-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.

Section 14. Medical use of marijuana for persons suffering from debilitating medical conditions.

(1) As used in this section, these terms are defined as follows:

(a) “Debilitating medical condition” means:
(I) Cancer, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or treatment for such conditions;
(II) A chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition, or treatment for such conditions, which produces, for a specific patient, one or more of the following, and for which, in the professional opinion of the patient’s physician, such condition or conditions reasonably may be alleviated by the medical use of marijuana: cachexia; severe pain; severe nausea; seizures, including those that are characteristic of epilepsy; or persistent muscle spasms, including those that are characteristic of multiple sclerosis; or
(III) Any other medical condition, or treatment for such condition, approved by the state health agency, pursuant to its rule making authority or its approval of any petition submitted by a patient or physician as provided in this section.

(b) “Medical use” means the acquisition, possession, production, use, or transportation of marijuana or paraphernalia related to the administration of such marijuana to address the symptoms or effects of a patient’s debilitating medical condition, which may be authorized only after a diagnosis of the patient’s debilitating medical condition by a physician or physicians, as provided by this section.

(c) “Parent” means a custodial mother or father of a patient under the age of eighteen years, any person having custody of a patient under the age of eighteen years, or any person serving as a legal guardian for a patient under the age of eighteen years.

(d) “Patient” means a person who has a debilitating medical condition.

(e) “Physician” means a doctor of medicine who maintains, in good standing, a license to practice medicine issued by the state of Colorado.

(f) “Primary care-giver” means a person, other than the patient and the patient’s physician, who is eighteen years of age or older and has significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient who has a debilitating medical condition.

(g) “Registry identification card” means that document, issued by the state health agency, which identifies a patient authorized to engage in the medical use of marijuana and such patient’s primary care-giver, if any has been designated.

(h) “State health agency” means that public health related entity of state government designated by the governor to establish and maintain a confidential registry of patients authorized to engage in the medical use of marijuana and enact rules to administer this program.

(i) “Usable form of marijuana” means the seeds, leaves, buds, and flowers of the plant (genus) cannabis, and any mixture or preparation thereof, which are appropriate for medical use as provided in this section, but excludes the plant’s stalks, stems, and roots.

(j) “Written documentation” means a statement signed by a patient’s physician or copies of the patient’s pertinent medical records.

(2) (a) Except as otherwise provided in subsections (5), (6), and (8) of this section, a patient or primary care-giver charged with a violation of the state’s criminal laws related to the patient’s medical use of marijuana will be deemed to have established an affirmative defense to such allegation where:
(I) The patient was previously diagnosed by a physician as having a debilitating medical condition;
(II) The patient was advised by his or her physician, in the context of a bona fide physician-patient relationship, that the patient might benefit from the medical use of marijuana in connection with a debilitating medical condition; and
(III) The patient and his or her primary care-giver were collectively in possession of amounts of marijuana only as permitted under this section.
This affirmative defense shall not exclude the assertion of any other defense where a patient or primary care-giver is charged with a violation of state law related to the patient’s medical use of marijuana.

(b) Effective June 1, 1999, it shall be an exception from the state’s criminal laws for any patient or primary care-giver in lawful possession of a registry identification card to engage or assist in the medical use of marijuana, except as otherwise provided in subsections (5) and (8) of this section.

(c) It shall be an exception from the state’s criminal laws for any physician to:
(I) Advise a patient whom the physician has diagnosed as having a debilitating medical condition, about the risks and benefits of medical use of marijuana or that he or she might benefit from the medical use of marijuana, provided that such advice is based upon the physician’s contemporaneous assessment of the patient’s medical history and current medical condition and a bona fide physician-patient relationship; or
(II) Provide a patient with written documentation, based upon the physician’s contemporaneous assessment of the patient’s medical history and current medical condition and a bona fide physician-patient relationship, stating that the patient has a debilitating medical condition and might benefit from the medical use of marijuana.
No physician shall be denied any rights or privileges for the acts authorized by this subsection.

(d) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions, no person, including a patient or primary care-giver, shall be entitled to the protection of this section for his or her acquisition, possession, manufacture, production, use, sale, distribution, dispensing, or transportation of marijuana for any use other than medical use.

(e) Any property interest that is possessed, owned, or used in connection with the medical use of marijuana or acts incidental to such use, shall not be harmed, neglected, injured, or destroyed while in the possession of state or local law enforcement officials where such property has been seized in connection with the claimed medical use of marijuana. Any such property interest shall not be forfeited under any provision of state law providing for the forfeiture of property other than as a sentence imposed after conviction of a criminal offense or entry of a plea of guilty to such offense. Marijuana and paraphernalia seized by state or local law enforcement officials from a patient or primary care-giver in connection with the claimed medical use of marijuana shall be returned immediately upon the determination of the district attorney or his or her designee that the patient or primary care-giver is entitled to the protection contained in this section as may be evidenced, for example, by a decision not to prosecute, the dismissal of charges, or acquittal.

(3) The state health agency shall create and maintain a confidential registry of patients who have applied for and are entitled to receive a registry identification card according to the criteria set forth in this subsection, effective June 1, 1999.

(a) No person shall be permitted to gain access to any information about patients in the state health agency’s confidential registry, or any information otherwise maintained by the state health agency about physicians and primary care-givers, except for authorized employees of the state health agency in the course of their official duties and authorized employees of state or local law enforcement agencies which have stopped or arrested a person who claims to be engaged in the medical use of marijuana and in possession of a registry identification card or its functional equivalent, pursuant to paragraph (e) of this subsection (3). Authorized employees of state or local law enforcement agencies shall be granted access to the information contained within the state health agency’s confidential registry only for the purpose of verifying that an individual who has presented a registry identification card to a state or local law enforcement official is lawfully in possession of such card.

(b) In order to be placed on the state’s confidential registry for the medical use of marijuana, a patient must reside in Colorado and submit the completed application form adopted by the state health agency, including the following information, to the state health agency:
(I) The original or a copy of written documentation stating that the patient has been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition and the physician’s conclusion that the patient might benefit from the medical use of marijuana;
(II) The name, address, date of birth, and social security number of the patient;
(III) The name, address, and telephone number of the patient’s physician; and
(IV) The name and address of the patient’s primary care-giver, if one is designated at the time of application.

(c) Within thirty days of receiving the information referred to in subparagraphs (3) (b) (I)-(IV), the state health agency shall verify medical information contained in the patient’s written documentation. The agency shall notify the applicant that his or her application for a registry identification card has been denied if the agency’s review of such documentation discloses that: the information required pursuant to paragraph (3) (b) of this section has not been provided or has been falsified; the documentation fails to state that the patient has a debilitating medical condition specified in this section or by state health agency rule; or the physician does not have a license to practice medicine issued by the state of Colorado. Otherwise, not more than five days after verifying such information, the state health agency shall issue one serially numbered registry identification card to the patient, stating:
(I) The patient’s name, address, date of birth, and social security number;
(II) That the patient’s name has been certified to the state health agency as a person who has a debilitating medical condition, whereby the patient may address such condition with the medical use of marijuana;
(III) The date of issuance of the registry identification card and the date of expiration of such card, which shall be one year from the date of issuance; and
(IV) The name and address of the patient’s primary care-giver, if any is designated at the time of application.

(d) Except for patients applying pursuant to subsection (6) of this section, where the state health agency, within thirty-five days of receipt of an application, fails to issue a registry identification card or fails to issue verbal or written notice of denial of such application, the patient’s application for such card will be deemed to have been approved. Receipt shall be deemed to have occurred upon delivery to the state health agency, or deposit in the United States mails. Notwithstanding the foregoing, no application shall be deemed received prior to June 1, 1999. A patient who is questioned by any state or local law enforcement official about his or her medical use of marijuana shall provide a copy of the application submitted to the state health agency, including the written documentation and proof of the date of mailing or other transmission of the written documentation for delivery to the state health agency, which shall be accorded the same legal effect as a registry identification card, until such time as the patient receives notice that the application has been denied.

(e) A patient whose application has been denied by the state health agency may not reapply during the six months following the date of the denial and may not use an application for a registry identification card as provided in paragraph (3) (d) of this section. The denial of a registry identification card shall be considered a final agency action. Only the patient whose application has been denied shall have standing to contest the agency action.

(f) When there has been a change in the name, address, physician, or primary care- giver of a patient who has qualified for a registry identification card, that patient must notify the state health agency of any such change within ten days. A patient who has not designated a primary care-giver at the time of application to the state health agency may do so in writing at any time during the effective period of the registry identification card, and the primary care-giver may act in this capacity after such designation. To maintain an effective registry identification card, a patient must annually resubmit, at least thirty days prior to the expiration date stated on the registry identification card, updated written documentation to the state health agency, as well as the name and address of the patient’s primary care-giver, if any is designated at such time.

(g) Authorized employees of state or local law enforcement agencies shall immediately notify the state health agency when any person in possession of a registry identification card has been determined by a court of law to have willfully violated the provisions of this section or its implementing legislation, or has pled guilty to such offense.

(h) A patient who no longer has a debilitating medical condition shall return his or her registry identification card to the state health agency within twenty-four hours of receiving such diagnosis by his or her physician.

(i) The state health agency may determine and levy reasonable fees to pay for any direct or indirect administrative costs associated with its role in this program.

(4) (a) A patient may engage in the medical use of marijuana, with no more marijuana than is medically necessary to address a debilitating medical condition. A patient’s medical use of marijuana, within the following limits, is lawful:
(I) No more than two ounces of a usable form of marijuana; and
(II) No more than six marijuana plants, with three or fewer being mature, flowering plants that are producing a usable form of marijuana.

(b) For quantities of marijuana in excess of these amounts, a patient or his or her primary care-giver may raise as an affirmative defense to charges of violation of state law that such greater amounts were medically necessary to address the patient’s debilitating medical condition.

(5) (a) No patient shall:
(I) Engage in the medical use of marijuana in a way that endangers the health or well-being of any person; or
(II) Engage in the medical use of marijuana in plain view of, or in a place open to, the general public.

(b) In addition to any other penalties provided by law, the state health agency shall revoke for a period of one year the registry identification card of any patient found to have willfully violated the provisions of this section or the implementing legislation adopted by the general assembly.

(6) Notwithstanding paragraphs (2) (a) and (3) (d) of this section, no patient under eighteen years of age shall engage in the medical use of marijuana unless:
(a) Two physicians have diagnosed the patient as having a debilitating medical condition;
(b) One of the physicians referred to in paragraph (6) (a) has explained the possible risks and benefits of medical use of marijuana to the patient and each of the patient’s parents residing in Colorado;
(c) The physicians referred to in paragraph (6) (b) has provided the patient with the written documentation, specified in subparagraph (3) (b) (I);
(d) Each of the patient’s parents residing in Colorado consent in writing to the state health agency to permit the patient to engage in the medical use of marijuana;
(e) A parent residing in Colorado consents in writing to serve as a patient’s primary care-giver;
(f) A parent serving as a primary care-giver completes and submits an application for a registry identification card as provided in subparagraph (3) (b) of this section and the written consents referred to in paragraph (6) (d) to the state health agency;
(g) The state health agency approves the patient’s application and transmits the patient’s registry identification card to the parent designated as a primary care-giver;
(h) The patient and primary care-giver collectively possess amounts of marijuana no greater than those specified in subparagraph (4) (a) (I) and (II); and
(i) The primary care-giver controls the acquisition of such marijuana and the dosage and frequency of its use by the patient.

(7) Not later than March 1, 1999, the governor shall designate, by executive order, the state health agency as defined in paragraph (1) (g) of this section.

(8) Not later than April 30, 1999, the General Assembly shall define such terms and enact such legislation as may be necessary for implementation of this section, as well as determine and enact criminal penalties for:
(a) Fraudulent representation of a medical condition by a patient to a physician, state health agency, or state or local law enforcement official for the purpose of falsely obtaining a registry identification card or avoiding arrest and prosecution;
(b) Fraudulent use or theft of any person’s registry identification card to acquire, possess, produce, use, sell, distribute, or transport marijuana, including but not limited to cards that are required to be returned where patients are no longer diagnosed as having a debilitating medical condition;
(c) Fraudulent production or counterfeiting of, or tampering with, one or more registry identification cards; or
(d) Breach of confidentiality of information provided to or by the state health agency.

(9) Not later than June 1, 1999, the state health agency shall develop and make available to residents of Colorado an application form for persons seeking to be listed on the confidential registry of patients. By such date, the state health agency shall also enact rules of administration, including but not limited to rules governing the establishment and confidentiality of the registry, the verification of medical information, the issuance and form of registry identification cards, communications with law enforcement officials about registry identification cards that have been suspended where a patient is no longer diagnosed as having a debilitating medical condition, and the manner in which the agency may consider adding debilitating medical conditions to the list provided in this section. Beginning June 1, 1999, the state health agency shall accept physician or patient initiated petitions to add debilitating medical conditions to the list provided in this section and, after such hearing as the state health agency deems appropriate, shall approve or deny such petitions within one hundred eighty days of submission. The decision to approve or deny a petition shall be considered a final agency action.

(10) (a) No governmental, private, or any other health insurance provider shall be required to be liable for any claim for reimbursement for the medical use of marijuana.

(b) Nothing in this section shall require any employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any work place.

(11) Unless otherwise provided by this section, all provisions of this section shall become effective upon official declaration of the vote hereon by proclamation of the governor, pursuant to article V, section (1) (4), and shall apply to acts or offenses committed on or after that date.

Source: Initiated 2000: Entire section added, effective upon proclamation of the Governor, L. 2001, p. 2379, December 28, 2000.

Editor’s note: This section was added by an initiated measure and numbered as section 14 as it appeared on the ballot, which leaves a gap between sections 12b and 14.
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USA — Jessica Peck Corry hopes her daughter will never smoke marijuana. Since that’s the case, she should hope it remains illegal. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes the legalization of marijuana, cautioning that “any change in the legal status of marijuana, even if limited to adults, could affect the prevalence of use among adolescents.”
Marijuana is against the law because it’s a dangerous, addictive drug.

This is a health issue. According to the American Lung Association, marijuana smoke contains 50 to 70 percent more cancer-causing material than cigarette smoke. A June United Nations report refers to cannabis use as a “pandemic,” noting an increase in cannabis- related health damage. This might explain why more teens now enter treatment for marijuana dependency than for all other drugs combined, including alcohol.

Today’s marijuana is at least eight times more potent than marijuana of the 1970s. Accordingly, thousands of adolescents, whose brains are still developing, suffer from depression, memory impairment and diminished judgment because of marijuana.

Under most legalization plans, drugs would remain illegal for those under 21. But nearly a third of current drug users are teens - so a black market would still exist to supply them.

You only need to look at Prohibition to see that criminalizing an activity suppresses it, and legalization increases it. During Prohibition, alcohol consumption fell almost 60 percent and related liver cirrhosis and deaths fell dramatically. Today, alcohol consumption is more than three times greater than during Prohibition, and is estimated to cost our country at least $184 billion a year in lost productivity, crime, and health-care costs.

In addition to directing the DEA, I’m a soccer mom, too. I’m doing everything possible to keep drugs away from my own children and everyone else’s - not making drugs easier to get.

Note: Re: “One soccer mom’s take on the drug war,” June 28 Colorado Voices column.

Karen P. Tandy, Administrator, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

I hope my daughter will never smoke marijuana. Regardless of whether she does one day, I know one thing for sure: Keeping it illegal can only harm her future.

Since 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy has spent more than $2 billion in taxpayer dollars on twin advertising campaigns seeking to discourage marijuana use. The first speaks to parents, calling them the “Anti-Drug.” It fails before it begins. Good parents are going to talk to their children about drugs. All the feel-good ads in the world aren’t going to get indifferent parents to engage in such an awkward but essential dialogue.

The second campaign fails as well. In these, youthful but sophisticated graphics tell kids not to use marijuana. If there is one sure way to get adolescents to smoke pot, tell them that the government and their parents don’t want them to. In fact, a recently published national study indicates that after viewing commercials for this campaign, young people were more likely to exhibit positive responses about the drug.

Politicians whisper quietly behind closed doors about the insanity of the drug war. Neither party, however, has had the courage to take a stand against prohibition publicly. Just imagine if the $2 billion invested in these ads - or the billions more spent prosecuting peaceful marijuana users every year - had been diverted instead into tuition grants for needy students or back to taxpaying parents who could directly invest in college funds.

Earlier this year, many Colorado Republicans - myself included - expressed outrage against a new statewide smoking ban, saying it runs contrary to our American ethos of individual rights, private property rights, and personal responsibility. But where is the GOP’s outrage now as the government spends billions to tell people they can’t make the decision to use marijuana, a drug proven to be less harmful than cigarettes?

Democrats are no less guilty. They silently watch as our government’s addiction to prohibition becomes a national epidemic, taking money out of the pockets of working families and sending thousands behind bars every year.

Both parties do nothing because they believe in the same urban myth. They know they must get the “soccer mom” vote if they want to win, but they are confused on how to achieve this. Their logic goes like this: Moms don’t like drugs. Moms don’t want their kids to use drugs. Do not advocate legalization or decriminalization if you want moms to vote for your party.

This strategy is tied to reliable studies demonstrating that women are now the decisionmakers in most American families. Just as mom decides which brand of toilet paper to buy for her family, she increasingly plays decisionmaker when it comes to voting. Democrats and Republicans alike believe they would gain nothing by advocating an end to prohibition, but both have failed to consider that they might just gain votes if they could learn to speak to mothers about drugs in a way that they could relate to.

Parents across America are trying to find a way to fund college. By legalizing marijuana, taxing it, and turning this revenue into college scholarships and treatment programs, the future of every child could be just a little bit brighter.

Compare this with the system we have now. Marijuana prohibition, violated by millions every year, has become the laughing stock of American public policy. Kids have seen first-hand that it’s not as damaging as they’ve been led to believe. In the process, they begin to believe that some laws aren’t meant to be obeyed. This is by far prohibition’s most damaging side effect and only makes the job of being a mom that much tougher.

When I sit my daughter down to talk about marijuana, I’m not going to sugar-coat the facts. Marijuana can be addictive and destructive - just as alcohol can be - when abused. I’m going to let her know that life is exciting enough without turning to drugs for fun. She will learn that every law should be respected and that she should work to change those she believes are unjust.

At the end of the day, our government knows it cannot enforce marijuana prohibition. In the absence of being able to do so, it sends the damaging message to our young people that marijuana should be illegal simply because “I’m the government, and I said so.” Moms know better - and may ultimately be the single key to bringing sanity back to American drug policy.

Jessica Peck Corry (Jessica@i2i.org) is a public policy analyst with the Independence Institute, where she specializes in civil rights, higher education, and land use policy. This column originally appeared in The Denver Post on June 28, 2006.

A fire at Ryan Margenau’s Gunnison townhouse last spring ignited a court case that made him an unwitting pioneer for medical marijuana in Colorado.

Out of town at the time of the fire, Margenau directed officers by phone to his garage, where combustibles were stored. The officers also found Margenau’s medication for chronic back pain stemming from a car accident—four marijuana plants thriving under a grow light in a cupboard, as well as less than an ounce of dried and concentrated marijuana.

Margenau, who used marijuana under a doctor’s order but wasn’t on the state registry, was arrested upon his return and charged with four felony counts of possession and cultivation. A costly nine-month legal ordeal ensued.

In Colorado’s first medical-marijuana trial, Margenau was acquitted last month by a jury in conservative, ranching-based Gunnison County. Medical-marijuana advocates called it a landmark victory. Law enforcement labeled it a good example of why the medical-marijuana initiative approved by voters in 2000 is flawed.

“This should put a pall on prosecutors and law enforcement for pursuing these cases,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

“One of the lessons that came out of this trial was, in my opinion, how poorly drafted the medical-marijuana initiative was,” said the prosecutor in the case, Deputy District Attorney Geoff Nims.

The state doesn’t require that a person be on the registry. A verifiable disability or illness and a physician’s recommendation are enough to be within the law. The measure also attempts to limit patients to no more than six marijuana plants at varying levels of maturity.

Nims said the issue could be simplified if marijuana were prescribed by doctors in the same manner as other drugs.

Margenau had been using the drug since the summer of 2004 after he became fed up with the narcotics that doctors had prescribed for the pain caused by 14 herniated discs and four displaced ribs suffered in a car accident.

Margenau’s attorney, Robert Corey of Denver, who handles most of Colorado’s medical-marijuana cases, called the case “a victory for medical-marijuana users across the state” and also “a victory for compassion and … for the voters who voted this in.”

Corey said other such cases have been dismissed before they went to trial. Charges are never brought in many other cases when patients show medical-marijuana registry cards or prove a medical need.

Margenau said he elected to stay off the Colorado Medical Marijuana Registry for fear that it could bring unwanted law enforcement attention.

Now, he’s one of the 713 Coloradans who’ve signed up but said he continues to look over his shoulder as he treats his ailing back with the drug. He worries that the muddle of state and federal marijuana laws could land him in trouble again. Any marijuana possession is still a crime under federal law.

“I am terrified,” said Margenau, who had faced a possible two- to six-year prison sentence. “I don’t grow my own medicine anymore. I’m now spending money to buy it from a caregiver in Denver.”

He said marijuana hasn’t proved to be a perfect pain antidote, but drugs like OxyContin and Talwin made him woozy, lightheaded and nauseated without being very effective. Margenau, a 2000 graduate of Western State College in Gunnison, said that while using those drugs he had difficulty working at any of his three jobs—property manager, liquor-store clerk and supervisor for a cleaning company. He said he tried marijuana after a friend’s father told him he had used it and found relief from chronic pain without the side effects of synthetic narcotics.

Corey said there is still confusion about what medical-marijuana patients need to do in Colorado.

“There is a little bit of an educational process going on. Medical marijuana goes against the grain of what prosecutors and law enforcement have been doing for so long,” he said.

“It’s an ambiguous law at best. It seems to be the trend that marijuana is in the same position now that alcohol was in during Prohibition,” said Gunnison County Sheriff Rick Murdie, who said Margenau would not have been arrested if he had been on the registry—or possibly if he had immediately made it clear that he was using marijuana under a doctor’s order.

Margenau, who spent more than $13,000 on attorney fees and lost plants valued at more than $30,000 by law enforcement, is considering other legal action to recoup his losses, but he said he’s happy for now to have his medicine.

“Not even marijuana helps all the time, but it allows me to live,” Margenau said. “I can do things now. I can get relief.”

Jessica Corry electrified the gathering with her remarks about being a “pro-life conservative Republican who is also against our government’s expensive and failed effort to criminalize marijuana.” Ms. Corry wrote a recent piece for the Denver Post as a mother against prohibition, and was attacked by Karen Tandy, Administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA’s attack has galvanized the pro-freedom movement in Colorado, and hopes are high that the required number of signatures can be gathered in time to put the issue of legalization to Colorado’s voters.

05/03/2006 03:29:47 AM MDT

Opponents of RTD’s FasTracks plan on Tuesday asked Colorado’s second-highest court to void the 1 1/2-year-old election that authorized the transit expansion because what they say was a phony ballot summary was mailed to voters before the election.

Their lawsuit has stalled bond sales for the $4.7 billion project, costing taxpayers up to $250 million over the long term, according to RTD.

A member of a pro-FasTracks campaign committee submitted false and misleading comments against FasTracks to state election officials to “dilute” the arguments of legitimate opponents, attorney Robert Corry Jr. told the three-judge Colorado Court of Appeals panel.

“This case is about the integrity of elections in Colorado,” Corry said, adding that the ruling “will set the rules” for all similar ballot measures in the state.

Corry represents Taxpayers Against Congestion, which led the fight against FasTracks.

The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) requires that elections on tax measures have ballot summaries, including pro and con commentaries, sent to voters.

The question over the FasTracks statement is another in a string of controversies about who provides such information for local or statewide elections.

With statewide measures, nonpartisan staffers at the legislature prepare draft ballot summaries and pro and con statements, then solicit comment on the proposed text, said Pete Maysmith, executive director of the public interest group Colorado Common Cause. Legislators can also contribute to the final language sent to voters.

That legislative intervention has led some to try to change the process of preparing the resulting “blue book,” either by legislation or lawsuit.

Maysmith said his group favors removing legislators from the process.

A month and a half before the November 2004 FasTracks election, Rebecca Barnes, an official with the FasTracks Yes committee, submitted comments against the transit measure to the Colorado secretary of state.

The law requires Barnes, or anyone else, to submit comments as individual voters, without reference to affiliation.

Barnes said FasTracks was too limited and should provide rail service to Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, the mountains and along E-470.

These and other comments were folded into the con statement that was sent to voters.

As the designated election official, Regional Transportation District attorney Marla Lien prepared the pro and con summaries. Corry told the court that RTD and Lien took on the role as “editor” of the submissions and “censored the legitimate comments of real opponents.”

Lien told the judges her role was defined by law: Voters had a right to file comments and it was the government’s responsibility to accurately summarize them.

The appeals court will rule on the case at a later date.

RTD “performed the duties assigned to us” by TABOR for the FasTracks ballot summary, said RTD manager Cal Marsella, after attending Tuesday’s court session.

But Independence Institute president Jon Caldara, a leader of Taxpayers Against Congestion, said the court’s decision will affect every future tax election in the state.

If the law continues to allow false comments to be incorporated into ballot summaries, he said, “That will be standard operating procedure.”

Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.

http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6823&wtm_format=print

Mr. Corry has made a standing offer to any police department, sheriff’s office, or District Attorney’s office in Colorado that he will hold training for deputies who wish to learn more about Colorado’s far-reaching constitutional provision protecting medical marijuana patients from criminal prosecution.

27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

6 CCR 1006-2

STATE BOARD OF HEALTH
Rules and Regulations Pertaining to the Medical Use of Marijuana
(Last Amended May 19, 2004, effective July 30, 2004)

State of Colorado
Board of Health
Rules and Regulations
Pertaining to Medical Use of Marijuana

Regulation 1: Establishment and confidentiality of the registry for the medical use of marijuana

A. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (“the department”) shall create and maintain a confidential registry (“the registry”) of patients who have applied for and are entitled to receive a registry identification card. All personal medical records and personal identifying information held by the department in compliance with these regulations shall be confidential information. No person shall be permitted to gain access to any information about patients in this registry, or any information otherwise maintained in the registry by the department about physicians and primary care-givers of patients in the registry, except for authorized employees of the department in the course of their official duties and authorized employees of state and local law enforcement agencies which have stopped or arrested a person who claims to be engaged in the medical use of marijuana and in possession of a registry identification card issued pursuant to regulations two and three. The department may release information concerning a specific patient to that patient with the written authorization of such patient.

B. Any officer or employee or agent of the department who violates this regulation by releasing or making public confidential information in the registry shall be subject to any existing statutory penalties for a breach of confidentiality of the registry.

Regulation 2: Application for a registry identification card

A. An “adult applicant” is defined as a patient eighteen years of age or older. A “minor applicant” is defined as a patient less than eighteen years of age.

B. In order to be placed in the registry and to receive a registry identification card, an adult applicant must reside in Colorado and submit an application form supplied by the department. The adult applicant must provide the following information with the application:
i) The applicant’s name, address, date of birth, and social security number;
ii) The name and address of the applicant’s primary care-giver, if one is designated at the time of application;
iii) Written documentation from the applicant’s physician that the applicant has been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition as defined in regulation six and the physician’s conclusion that the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana; and
iv) The name, address, and telephone number of the physician who has concluded the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana.

C. In order for a minor applicant to be placed in the registry and to receive a registry identification card, the minor applicant must reside in Colorado and a parent residing in Colorado must consent in writing to serve as the minor applicant’s primary care-giver. Such parent must submit an application form supplied by the department. The parent of the minor applicant must provide the following information with the application:
i) The applicant’s name, address, date of birth, and social security number;
ii) Written documentation from two of the applicant’s physicians that the applicant has been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition as defined in regulation six and each physician’s conclusion that the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana;
iii) The name, address, and telephone number of the two physicians who have concluded the applicant might benefit from the medical use of marijuana;
iv) Consent from each of the applicant’s parents residing in Colorado that the applicant may engage in the medical use of marijuana; and
v) Documentation that one of the physicians referred to in (iii) has explained the possible risks and benefits of medical use of marijuana to the applicant and each of the applicant’s parents residing in Colorado.

D. To maintain an effective registry identification card, a patient must annually resubmit to the department, at least thirty days prior to the expiration date, updated written documentation of the information required in paragraphs B and C of this regulation. In addition, the patient must provide the name and address of the primary care-giver, if any is designated at such time.

Regulation 3: Verification of medical information; issuance, denial, revocation, and form of registry identification cards

A. The department shall verify medical information contained in the patient’s application within thirty days of receiving the application. Verification of medical information shall consist of determining that there is documentation stating the applicant has a current diagnosis with a debilitating medical condition as defined in regulation six by a physician who has a current license to practice medicine issued by the State of Colorado.

B. No more than five days after verifying medical information of the applicant, the department shall issue a serially numbered registry identification care to the patient. The card shall state the following:
i) The patient’s name, address, date of birth, and social security number;
ii) That the patient’s name has been certified to the department as a person with a debilitating medical condition, whereby the person may address such condition with the medical use of marijuana;
iii) The date of issuance of such card and the date of expiration, which shall be one year from the date of issuance;
iv) The name and address of the patient’s primary care-giver, if any is designated at the time of application;
v) How to notify the department of any change in name, address, medical status, physician, or primary care-giver.

C. Except for minor applicants, where the department fails within thirty-five days of receipt of application to issue a registry identification card or fails to issue verbal or written notice of denial of such application, the patient’s application for such card will be deemed to have been approved. “Receipt” shall be deemed to have occurred upon delivery to the department or deposit in the united states mails. No application shall be deemed received prior to June 1, 2001.

D. The department shall deny the application if it determines that information has been falsified or it cannot verify the medical information as provided in paragraph A of this regulation. A patient whose application has been denied by the department may not reapply during the six months following the date of denial. The denial of a registry identification card shall be considered a final agency action.

E. In addition to any other penalties provided by law, the department shall revoke for a period of one year the registry identification card of any patient found to have willfully violated the provisions of Section 14 of Amendment 20 of the Colorado Constitution or the implementing legislation of Section 14.

Regulation 4: Change in applicant information

A. When there has been a change in the name, address, physician or primary care-giver of a patient who has been issued a registry identification card, that patient must notify the department within ten days. A patient who has not designated a primary care-giver at the time of application to the department may do so in writing at any time during the effective period of the registry identification card, and the primary care-giver may act in this capacity after such designation.

B. A patient who no longer has a debilitating medical condition as defined in regulation six shall return his registry identification card to the department within twenty-four hours of receiving such information by his or her physician.

Regulation 5: Communications with law enforcement officials about patients in the registry

A. Authorized employees of state or local law enforcement agencies shall be granted access to the information contained within the department’s registry only for the purpose of verifying that an individual who has presented a registry identification card to a state or local law enforcement official is lawfully in possession of such card. The department shall report to authorized state or local law enforcement officials whether a patient’s registry identification card has been suspended because the patient no longer has a debilitating medical condition.

B. Authorized employees of state or local law enforcement agencies shall immediately notify the department when any person in possession of a registry identification card has been determined by a court of law to have willfully violated the provisions of this section 14 of the Colorado constitution or its implementing legislation, or has pled guilty to such offense.

Regulation 6: Debilitating medical conditions and the process for adding new debilitating medical conditions

A. Debilitating medical conditions are defined as cancer, glaucoma, and infection with or positive status for human immunodeficiency virus. Patients undergoing treatment for such conditions are defined as having a debilitating medical condition.

B. Debilitating medical condition also includes a chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition other than HIV infection, cancer or glaucoma; or treatment for such conditions, which produces for a specific patient one or more of the following, and for which, in the professional opinion of the patient’s physician, such condition or conditions may reasonably be alleviated by the medical use of marijuana: cachexia; severe pain; severe nausea; seizures, including those that are characteristic of epilepsy; or persistent muscle spasms, including those that are characteristic of multiple sclerosis.

C. Patients who have had a diagnosis of a debilitating medical condition in the past but do not have active disease and are not undergoing treatment for such condition are not suffering from a debilitating medical condition for which the medical use of marijuana is authorized.

D. Beginning June 1, 2001, the department shall accept physician or patient petitions to add debilitating medical conditions to the list provided in paragraphs A and B of this regulation. The department shall determine if a public rulemaking hearing to modify this regulation is appropriate, and if so, shall petition the Board of Health to set a date for such hearing within one hundred twenty days of receipt of the patient or physician petition. If the department determines that a public rulemaking hearing is not appropriate, it shall notify the petitioner of its action within one hundred eighty days of receipt of submission of the petition. In making its determination, the department will consider whether there is information that the proposed condition is chronic, debilitating, and may be specifically diagnosed, and whether there is scientific evidence that treatment with marijuana may have a beneficial effect.

Regulation 7: Determination of fees to pay for administrative costs of the medical use of marijuana program
The department shall provide each applicant with information concerning the medical use of marijuana program. The department shall collect one hundred ten dollars from each applicant at the time of application to pay for the direct and indirect costs to administer the medical use of marijuana program. Such fee shall not be refundable to the applicant if the application is denied or revoked or if the patient no longer has a debilitating medical condition. The amount of the fee shall be evaluated annually by the department, and the department shall propose modifications to the board, as appropriate. If the patient provides updated information at any time during the effective period of the registry identification card, the department shall not charge a fee to modify the registry information concerning the patient.

By Felix Doligosa Jr., Rocky Mountain News
August 30, 2005

Timothy Haas felt equal parts redemption and queasiness Monday as he picked up a plastic bag containing half an ounce of marijuana at the Denver Police Department.

“I just want to go home and lie down,” said Haas, 38. “The marijuana will calm me down.”

Denver police returned the marijuana to Haas after authorities confiscated the drugs more than a month ago. Haas, who is from Denver, is prescribed to use medical marijuana for post-traumatic stress syndrome and post-concussion syndrome.

Haas said he suffered the ailments when he was hit in the head with a bat and stabbed three times in the chest in an attempted robbery at his wine business in 2001. Haas started using medical marijuana three years ago to deal with pain such as muscle spasms and ringing vibrations in his body.

On July 22, Haas said he was stopped for a security check at Denver Health Medical Center when he visited his brother, who was hospitalized from an automobile accident. Haas showed his medical papers to police when they found marijuana in his backpack.

The drugs were taken away. Haas was never charged.

Robert Corry Jr., Haas’ attorney, said he had threatened to file a lawsuit if the marijuana was not returned to his client. The drug was returned in a plastic bag and was dry, Haas said.

“This shows Colorado’s medical marijuana program is alive and well,” said Corry. “He wishes he didn’t have to go through a lawyer to get it back.”

Haas said he uses marijuana because it is more potent than pills and it lets him be more active. Haas, who is unemployed, said he would get “knocked out” after taking roughly 360 prescribed pills per month.

“It (marijuana) gave me my life back,” he said. “I’m an able-bodied person.”

Colorado is one of 10 states that allows people with certain medical conditions to use and grow marijuana with a doctor’s approval.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people who use marijuana legally for medical purposes can still be prosecuted under federal drug laws. The ruling did not, however, overturn state laws.

Corry said this was the first time in Colorado since the June ruling that police have returned confiscated medical marijuana to a person.

“I’m the voice for all the terminally ill and legitimate marijuana users who can’t get out of bed,” Haas said. “It’s the last thing a terminal man wants to go through.”

MEDIA ADVISORY www.RobCorry.com

DENVER POLICE TO RETURN MARIJUANA TO PATIENT, MONDAY MORNING 8/29/05 AT 10:00 A.M.

DENVER—Timothy Haas, a chronically-ill medical marijuana patient, and his lawyer Robert J. Corry, Jr., will pick up Mr. Haas’ medical marijuana seized by the Denver Police Department. This marks the first occasion in Colorado since the June U.S. Supreme Court decision on medical marijuana where police have returned marijuana to a person from whom it was seized.

“This shows that Colorado’s medical marijuana program is alive and well,” said Haas’ lawyer, Robert J. Corry, Jr., who had threatened legal action on Haas’ behalf under Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Initiative (Amendment 20), which Colorado voters passed in the 2000 election. Corry commended the Denver City Attorney’s Office in reaching a settlement in this case, adding “this is part of the education process in how Colorado police and law enforcement treat medical marijuana patients.”

“I look forward to having my medicine back. I’ve been in a lot of pain without it,” said Haas, who has a physician’s recommendation for medical marijuana, as required under Colorado law.

This comes on the heels of the Denver City Council’s decision to place before voters in November 2005 an initiative that would legalize up to one ounce of marijuana.

WHAT: Tim Haas and his attorney, Robert Corry, Jr., will pick up medical marijuana from the Denver Police Department.

WHEN: 10:00 a.m., Monday, August 29, 2005.

WHERE: Denver Police Department, 14th & Cherokee, Denver, CO.

CONTACT: Robert Corry, Jr., at 303-634-2244 (ofc), 720-364-9269 (cell) or Robert.Corry@Comcast.net, website: www.RobCorry.com.

# # #

By Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News
August 4, 2005

There are grass-roots organizations and then there are grass-roots organizations, like the one that wants Denver to allow adults to possess less than an ounce of marijuana.

The November ballot initiative is mostly symbolic: If voters agree to get rid of the city ordinance making possession a crime, police would charge violators under state laws, which is what they do anyhow.

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Members of Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation, which gathered signatures to put the issue on the ballot, maintained at a news conference Thursday that marijuana is much less of a societal problem than alcohol.

“We are not encouraging the use of marijuana,” said Mason Tvert, the group’s executive director. “We are defending the right of every adult in this city to make a rational choice about how they choose to relax and recreate.”

It still would be illegal to grow or distribute marijuana, or drive under its influence, Tvert added.

Denver police denounced the measure, which comes on the heels of two controversial citizen-initiated Denver ballot issues, one that would have banned circuses featuring exotic animals and another that would have required the city to promote peace and tranquility.

Both attracted international attention and failed.

“If it weren’t for these initiatives, it might be kind of dry down here,” Denver City Councilman Doug Linkhart said.

He predicted a “fun and interesting” debate - which Tvert said is part of the goal.

“Our campaign, whether we win or lose in November, will engage the citizens of Denver in a much-needed dialogue,” Tvert said.

The 23-year-old Denver resident declined to say he if smoked pot, saying he would follow President Bush’s lead about remaining mum on questions regarding the ingestion of illegal substances.

The City Council will discuss the initiative and take testimony at a public hearing this month, Linkhart said, but can’t stop the group. That’s because backers collected enough valid signatures to put it on the ballot.

At their news conference, some SAFER members held signs with statistics to bolster their contention that alcohol, not marijuana, is the more dangerous.

Denver police later offered competing studies that show marijuana is a bigger problem.

Attorney Rob Corry, who supports the measure and attended the news conference, denounced laws making possession of less than an ounce of pot a crime.

“It’s pointless. It’s a waste of money,” said Corry, a defense attorney. “And most cops and prosecutors - off the record - would agree.”

Don’t count Denver police Division Chief Dave Fisher in that group.

“We already have a problem with drug users coming from the suburbs to purchase drugs in Denver, and it’s ruining the fabric of our neighborhoods,” the officer said.

Fisher said he fears that if the measure passes, it will bring more people to Denver who don’t understand that police can still bust them for possession of less than an ounce.

Assault weapons drawn, dozens of black-clad federal agents, in full riot gear and body armor, burst into a peaceful suburban Aurora home at the end of quiet cul-de-sac. No, they don’t seek Osama bin Laden; instead, agents scour every nook and cranny for that pernicious threat to national security: state-approved medical marijuana, used by sick patients for relief from illness and pain, as Colorado voters intended.

Inside the home, agents find a terrified man who peacefully presents his state of Colorado-issued card and certificate, the government’s permission for him to grow, possess and use medical marijuana. This gentle man, Dana K. May, suffers from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a debilitating and potentially lethal nerve disease with pain so intense that some of its sufferers take their own lives. May, a clean-cut Republican and married father of three, describes the pain as though “my feet are in a deep fryer.”

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent snatches his state-issued card, arrogantly saying “we’re DEA, we don’t follow Colorado’s Constitution.” Then, federal agents trash May’s home. Agents find what they seek: May’s modest medical marijuana garden, tucked in his basement behind two locked doors. They rip out of the soil the plants painstakingly tended as a “labor of love” by a man who uses medical marijuana only as a last resort.
May had spent seven years trying every possible prescription drug including synthetic marijuana, none of which were remotely effective for his intense pain, and all of which are expensive and unhealthy. May reluctantly turned to medical marijuana in 2001, only as a last resort for pain, only after his longtime, trusted doctor’s recommendation, and only because medical marijuana is legal in Colorado, having been approved by voters in 2000. May’s three kids fully understand that marijuana is OK only for Dad, only as medicine, and only by prescription and state approval.

After seizing May’s medicine, ruining his life for six months by bringing back the excruciating pain, the federal government eventually backs down in the face of a lawsuit, and return May’s growing equipment. Now, May is growing again - this time at an undisclosed location - living in constant fear that federal agents again might break down his door for doing something the voters of Colorado approved.

On Nov. 29, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could end terrifying incidents like Dana May’s. In the case of Ashcroft v. Raich, the high court will consider whether the federal government can enforce federal drug laws against medical marijuana patients operating under state laws. Currently, 11 states have legalized medical marijuana, and that number is expected to grow.

At issue is the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, the Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” The Constitution created a limited federal government that could act only within its enumerated powers, and did not have general authority to do anything it wanted.

Somehow, the act of growing medicine in your own home, using it in your own home, never selling it, and never even taking it out of your own home, much less the State of Colorado, became “commerce among the several states.” This case is important because if May’s growing medical marijuana is not interstate commerce, then the federal government has no power to seize his medicine. But if his actions completely within his own home are interstate commerce, then everything is interstate commerce.

The Founding Fathers’ dream of a limited federal government of enumerated powers has become a twisted nightmare where the Constitution does not mean what it says, and where there is no limit to federal power because the Commerce Clause is meaningless. This case is larger than just medical marijuana; it concerns the creeping expansion of federal power at the expense of the voters of the state of Colorado who wish to govern themselves.

Obviously, May’s actions are not “commerce” and they are certainly not “interstate.” Common sense and lower courts agree. The distinguished U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote in Conant v. Walters that “Medical marijuana, when grown locally for personal consumption, does not have any direct or obvious effect on interstate commerce. Federal efforts to regulate it considerably blur the distinction between what is national and what is local.” Let’s hope the Supreme Court will make this blurred distinction crystal clear.

Robert J. Corry Jr. is a Denver attorney who represented Dana K. May in the case discussed above.

Source: Denver Rocky Mountain News (CO)
Author: Robert J. Corry Jr., Special to the News
Published: December 3, 2004
Copyright: 2004 Denver Publishing Co.

By Robert J. Corry

Assault weapons drawn, dozens of black-clad federal agents, in full riot gear and body armor, burst into a peaceful suburban Aurora home at the end of quiet cul-de-sac. No, they don’t seek Osama bin Laden; instead, agents scour every nook and cranny for that pernicious threat to national security: state-approved medical marijuana, used by sick patients for relief from illness and pain, as Colorado voters intended.

Inside the home, agents find a terrified man who peacefully presents his state of Colorado-issued card and certificate, the government’s permission for him to grow, possess and use medical marijuana. This gentle man, Dana K. May, suffers from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a debilitating and potentially lethal nerve disease with pain so intense that some of its sufferers take their own lives. May, a clean-cut Republican and married father of three, describes the pain as though “my feet are in a deep fryer.”

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent snatches his state-issued card, arrogantly saying “we’re DEA, we don’t follow Colorado’s Constitution.” Then, federal agents trash May’s home. Agents find what they seek: May’s modest medical marijuana garden, tucked in his basement behind two locked doors. They rip out of the soil the plants painstakingly tended as a “labor of love” by a man who uses medical marijuana only as a last resort.

May had spent seven years trying every possible prescription drug including synthetic marijuana, none of which were remotely effective for his intense pain, and all of which are expensive and unhealthy. May reluctantly turned to medical marijuana in 2001, only as a last resort for pain, only after his longtime, trusted doctor’s recommendation, and only because medical marijuana is legal in Colorado, having been approved by voters in 2000. May’s three kids fully understand that marijuana is OK only for Dad, only as medicine, and only by prescription and state approval.

After seizing May’s medicine, ruining his life for six months by bringing back the excruciating pain, the federal government eventually backs down in the face of a lawsuit, and return May’s growing equipment. Now, May is growing again - this time at an undisclosed location - living in constant fear that federal agents again might break down his door for doing something the voters of Colorado approved.

On Nov. 29, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could end terrifying incidents like Dana May’s. In the case of Ashcroft v. Raich, the high court will consider whether the federal government can enforce federal drug laws against medical marijuana patients operating under state laws. Currently, 11 states have legalized medical marijuana, and that number is expected to grow.

At issue is the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, the Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” The Constitution created a limited federal government that could act only within its enumerated powers, and did not have general authority to do anything it wanted.

Somehow, the act of growing medicine in your own home, using it in your own home, never selling it, and never even taking it out of your own home, much less the State of Colorado, became “commerce among the several states.” This case is important because if May’s growing medical marijuana is not interstate commerce, then the federal government has no power to seize his medicine. But if his actions completely within his own home are interstate commerce, then everything is interstate commerce.

The Founding Fathers’ dream of a limited federal government of enumerated powers has become a twisted nightmare where the Constitution does not mean what it says, and where there is no limit to federal power because the Commerce Clause is meaningless. This case is larger than just medical marijuana; it concerns the creeping expansion of federal power at the expense of the voters of the state of Colorado who wish to govern themselves.

Obviously, May’s actions are not “commerce” and they are certainly not “interstate.” Common sense and lower courts agree. The distinguished U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote in Conant v. Walters that “Medical marijuana, when grown locally for personal consumption, does not have any direct or obvious effect on interstate commerce. Federal efforts to regulate it considerably blur the distinction between what is national and what is local.” Let’s hope the Supreme Court will make this blurred distinction crystal clear.

Robert J. Corry Jr. is a Denver attorney who represented Dana K. May in the case discussed above.