Sparky Rose drives a Porsche Carrera convertible to his medical marijuana clinic. Under California law, clinics are supposed to dispense marijuana just to seriously ill people and clinic owners are to get only “reasonable compensation.” But to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the sports car suggested that Rose might be pocketing big money from his purportedly nonprofit clinic, “New Remedies Cooperative”.
Stories like that of Sparky Rose are but of one among many that the DEA is closely watching among other medical marijuana clinic owners.
Medical marijuana clinics that operate for-profit likely violate California law, according to guidelines that may encourage local police to join a federal crackdown against the enterprises.
State Attorney General Jerry Brown said that formal cooperatives (medical marijuana clinics) registered under the state’s Food and Agricultural Code or organized as less formal “collectives” (medical marijuana clinics) are legal under the law.
But he said anyone running a for-profit storefront (medical marijuana clinics) not operating as either a registered cooperative or collective (medical marijuana clinics) may be arrested and prosecuted by local authorities.
About 300 so-called “storefront” dispensaries (medical marijuana clinics) exist in various business guises, but there is little agreement on how many of those operate for-profit.
If medical marijuana clinics are prosecuted, they must prove they are true nonprofits to operate under the state law, said Bruce Margolin, a West Hollywood criminal defense attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases and who is the director of Los Angeles NORML.
Brown also suggested that all patients receiving doctors’ recommendations to use marijuana obtain identity cards that each county is required to issue.
The nonbinding guidelines aimed to clarify California’s medical marijuana law, which has caused varied and confused responses from local law enforcement but has led to an aggressive federal crackdown on the medical marijuana clinics.
Federal law makes marijuana illegal in all circumstances, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the state law doesn’t shield anyone from federal prosecution.
Northern California’s chief federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, said federal officials are targeting commercial traffickers rather than caregivers. He also said he believes 90 percent of the medical marijuana clinics run afoul of Brown’s guidelines.
Brown advised that each legitimate medical marijuana clinics can grow six mature or 12 immature plants per qualified patient, each of whom need a doctor’s recommendation to smoke marijuana to ease health ills. Each medical marijuana clinics can also have a half-pound of dried marijuana for each qualified patient.
According to the State law of California, the medical marijuana clinics should operate for non profit. Owners can get a “reasonable compensation”. The marijuana should be either grown by the dispensary or donated by patients who can grow it themselves or through a “primary caregiver” who can grow the plants in behalf of the patient in either the patient’s residence or through the “Primary Caregiver’s” residence under strict conditions. Dispensaries are not allowed to procure marijuana through any markets nor are they allowed to sell their excess produce to other dispensaries. These safety measures were set up in order to discourage the trafficking of marijuana to non patients.
Tags: medical marijuana clinic
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