CannAssist.com

The beautiful city of Oakland, California is special for many reasons;  Harborside Health Center is one of them. In an East Bay Express article published today, writer David Downs, explores this medical cannabis dispensing collective (MCDC).  Downs talks to operator, Steve D’Angeleo about why he is passionate about the Medical Cannabis Movement.

People are dying because of a lack of research. ~ Steve D’Angelo, Harborside Health Center

It’s true.  People are dying and suffering from the choke-hold the federal government has had over cannabis. The preposterous Schedule 1 Narcotic Classification renders scientists, most of whom rely on national funding programs, legally unable to study Cannabis sativa. But here we are now, March 2009; times are changing.

For the first time in the 3,000-year history of human cannabis consumption, consumers will be provided a scientific assessment of the safety and potency of products prior to ingesting them…

Harborside Health Center, one of California’s premier cannabis collectives, is pioneering laboratory analytical testing.  Testing started in December 2008 and feedback is coming in! Samples of Cannabis sativa are analyzed for health safety and for cannabinoid content.

Molds tested for: E. Coli, yeast & molds, aerobic bacteria and Enterobacteria

Cannabinoids tested for: delta-9 Tetrahydrocannabinoid (THC), Cannabidiol (CBD), Cannabinol (CBN)

Tests are done off site and results are reported to Harborside in 24-48 hours.  Molds are compared to World Health Organization standards.  Cannabinoids are rated on a percentage scale. Testing is done with a gas chromatography machine.

Different compounds vaporize at different temperatures, where they can be detected by the flame ionization detector and mass spectrometer. . .

[A spokesperson from Harborside] said patients are using the new information to get less high and more mellow, drawing correlations between the main psychoactive ingredient THC and other non-psychoactive cannabinoids cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN).

What a great finding! Together, we can learn a lot. The East-Bay Express article describes all of this in greater detail. If you have comments or questions, please post!

JGG

Medical marijuana user to sue SB County - ContraCostaTimes.com:

A medical marijuana user announced this week that he will file a lawsuit Monday against San Bernardino County to compel the county to issue ID cards to medical marijuana users.Scott Bledsoe, of Crestline, will also seek a court order halting the Sheriff Department’s practice of arresting medical marijuana users for possession even when users present evidence that the drugs are for medical use, according to a news release.

Although a state law passed in 2003 compels counties to issue ID cards to medical marijuana users, San Bernardino county and several other counties have refused to do so, citing the state law’s conflict with federal law, which prohibits marijuana possession.

San Bernardino County joined San Diego County in a 2006 lawsuit against the state challenging the constitutionality of the state’s medical marijuana program.

A San Diego County judge ruled in favor of the state, and that ruling was affirmed in July by a State Court of Appeal.

The State Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal of the decision brought by the counties. The counties have said they intend to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Until the appeals process is completed, San Bernardino County will not consider issuing ID cards for medical marijuana users, said county spokesman David Wert.

“The courts have not addressed the conflict between state and federal law,” Wert said.

From the SierraSun.com - Not all high on South Shore pot dispensary

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — A purported medicinal marijuana provider has opened, and at least one South Lake Tahoe official and one resident are expressing concern about the new business.

Patient to Patient Collective opened early this month at 2314 Lake Tahoe Blvd. A post on a message board at cannabis.com says the collective is distributing marijuana for medical use.

A man who answered the phone at the collective and identified himself as a manager also said the collective is distributing marijuana to medical patients.

The business license filed with the city lists the name of the shop at the collective’s address as “Holistic Solutions” and describes the business as being a retailer of “vitamins and herbs,” according to city Finance Director Christine Vuletich.

Vuletich said she was not able to give out contact information for the business.

City code requires businesses in South Lake Tahoe to comply with both state and federal laws, according to an e-mail from City Manager David Jinkens. Jinkens said he would check with community development and the police department regarding the business’ compliance.

People have given the collective a “very positive response,” Matt said, adding that the demand for medical marijuana in the area is “huge.”

At least 30 patients have signed up for the collective since it opened in the first week of December, he said.

Although people can buy marijuana at the collective, they are not allowed to use it on-site, Matt said. Operators want to keep the collective “low-key” as a strictly “patient care-giving place,” he added.

The South Lake Tahoe-El Dorado County Narcotics Enforcement Team is not investigating Patient to Patient at this time, SLEDNET Task Force CommanderJeff Catchings said earlier this month.

The town of Oakley in Northern California has unanimously voted to ban medical marijuana dispensaries.

Oakley cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy who use marijuana to suppress nausea and stimulate their appetite will continue to have to drive out of town to legally pick up their leafy medicine.
The council at its Dec. 9 meeting unanimously agreed to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in Oakley, based on problems the pot clubs have caused in other cities. Residents with a doctor’s authorization will still be able to possess and grow their own, however.
“This in no way impacts people’s right to have marijuana or grow it, consistent with what state law allows and requires. It simply means you cannot set up shop,” City Attorney Alison Barratt-Green told the council.
Oakley’s ordinance follows a similar ban enacted in Brentwood, Contra Costa County and numerous cities throughout California.
“We continue to hear stories of the various problems that occur with these businesses, including crime, blight,” said Barratt-Green.

Although growing and possession of marijuana are allowed for doctor-approved patients in California, “The attorney general’s position is that medical marijuana dispensaries are not covered under the Compassionate Use Act.”

Pot ID cards available in San Joaquin County.

More from the SF CHRONICLE:

Stockton — Medical marijuana users in San Joaquin County will soon be able to apply for identification cards.

Applications can be obtained from the Vital Records Office in Stockton or downloaded from the state Department of Public Health’s Web site starting Monday.

The San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors approved in November the state-mandated program to provide photo identification cards to approved medical marijuana users.

Annual card fees will be $141 for people not on Medi-Cal and $71 for Medi-Cal recipients.

Cardholders must live in San Joaquin County and have written verification from a physician that they have been diagnosed with a serious condition that requires the use of marijuana.

The New York Times had question-and-answer interview last Tuesday, December 22, 2008 with Mahmoud A. Elsohly, who grows marijuana for research purposes. He talks about the improved quality of cannabis in Northern California, thanks to growers using modern genetics techniques.

Q. WHAT EXACTLY DOES THE MARIJUANA PROJECT DO?

A. Though cannabis had been used by man for thousands of years, it wasn’t until 1964 that the actual chemical structure of the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol — THC — was determined. That stimulated new research on the plant.

At this laboratory, which began in 1968, we often investigate marijuana’s chemistry. We also have a farm where we grow cannabis for federally approved researchers. Our material is employed in clinical studies around the country, to see if the active ingredient in this plant is useful for pain, nausea, glaucoma, for AIDS patients and so on. For these tests, researchers need standardized material for cigarettes or THC pills. We grow the cannabis as contractors for the National Institute on Drug Abuse — NIDA. And the only researchers who can get our material are those with special permits. We have visitors at the building now and then who ask, “Oh, do you give samples?” We say, “No!”

Q. WHY BOTHER CULTIVATING YOUR OWN MARIJUANA WHEN LAW ENFORCEMENT ORGANIZATIONS SEIZE BRICKS OF IT EVERY DAY?

A. The most obvious reason is that with confiscated marijuana, you don’t really know what you have. When researchers are performing clinical tests, they must have standardized material that will be the same every time. And it must be safe. You certainly wouldn’t want to give a sick person something sprayed with pesticide or angel dust, substances we’ve detected in some illicit marijuana.

When this project first started in the late 1960s, people thought, “Oh, we’ll get materials for testing after a big bust happens.” So the first batch was acquired that way. They made an extract out of the seized material, and it turned out to be contaminated with tung oil. That brought home the point: if you’re going to do clinical trials on humans, you’d better know what you’re using and where it came from. Hence, our farm.

Another thing: pharmaceutical researchers are often looking at something they call “the dose response.” They want to know what happens to a patient smoking a marijuana cigarette with 1 percent THC versus 2 percent or 8 percent. Without standardized material, you can’t accurately test which produced the best or worst result.

Q. ONE OF THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF AGRONOMY IS TO START WITH GOOD SEEDS. WHERE DO YOUR SEEDS COME FROM?

A. That’s a very good question. Most of the illicit material in the 1960s came from Mexico. So, in collaboration with the D.E.A. and the Mexican government, we acquired those seeds. Later, we acquired others from Colombia, Thailand, Jamaica, India, Pakistan and places in the Middle East. That permitted us to study chemical and botanical differences. By 1976, we were growing about 96 different varieties.

Interestingly, that led us to see that there was only one species of cannabis. It had always been thought that there were many. But you could see that the chemistry of this plant is the same qualitatively no matter where it comes from. What makes each different is the relative proportion of the different chemicals in there, which doesn’t make a different species. It’s really the same species, but different varieties of it. The different types of varieties hybridize very easily.

Q. DOES THIS MEAN THAT ONE COULD MAKE GENETICALLY MODIFIED CANNABIS?

A. Yes. Absolutely. That actually has been the trend over the years in the cultivation in the illicit market, and also in the legal market, where we are doing genetic selection, where we select specific materials that have the genes that produce higher levels of THC or some of the other ingredients.

Q. SO OUT THERE IN RURAL NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, HAVE THEY BEEN IMPROVING THEIR CROPS WITH MODERN GENETICS?

A. They have been doing genetic selection for years. You can see the potency keeps going up. In the 1970s, the seized marijuana had probably 1 percent or less of the active ingredient. Now, it’s about 8 percent, on the average.

The newest marijuana collective in Marin County is Gate Five Caregivers in Sausalito, CA. The Marin Independent Journal posted an in-depth story on the collective this afternoon.

More Details:

Despite a Sausalito city ban on marijuana dispensaries, Gate Five Caregivers opened in September without informing local officials. It joins the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Fairfax as the second local medical marijuana collective, but more may be on the way: Two other groups are seeking to establish medical marijuana collectives in Novato and Corte Madera.

* * * * * *

The Gate Five collective occupies the same space where last December the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force and Sausalito police confiscated $1 million worth of marijuana plants and processed pot. Four men, three of them Marin residents, were booked into Marin County Jail on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana and possession for sale.

Scott called that a “coincidence.” But Sausalito Councilman Mike Kelly said he doesn’t buy that; he said the Gate Five collective is illegal because it violates a city ordinance prohibiting dispensaries passed by the council in 2007.

Sausalito adopted its ban after a group calling itself Capitol Compassionate Care Co-op of Fort Bragg sought to open a medical marijuana cooperative there in 2005.

“The question is, how do we enforce that ordinance?” Kelly said.

Proposition 215, approved in 1996 by 55.6 percent of California voters - and 76 percent in Marin - made it legal for patients and caregivers to possess and cultivate marijuana for medical treatment as recommended by a doctor. The federal government, however, has never recognized the legitimacy of the state law.

David Nix, a San Francisco lawyer who is working with the Gate Five Caregivers, said Sausalito’s ordinance prohibiting medical marijuana dispensaries is illegal.

“You don’t have to be an attorney to understand that if the city of Sausalito passed an ordinance tomorrow that said there shall be no abortion clinics in this town that is not going to hold up in court,” Nix said.

Mary Wagner, Sausalito’s city attorney, said, “The city is exploring its legal options.”

In Marin, San Rafael, Mill Valley, and Larkspur have also adopted ordinances banning medical marijuana clubs.

Attorney General Jerry Brown in August ordered a crackdown on medical marijuana clubs that are generating big profits. Brown also issued an 11-page directive outlining the rules such clubs must observe to be legal: they must operate as nonprofit collectives or cooperatives and pay sales tax, and they are prohibited from buying marijuana from illegal commercial growers. They must obtain their “medicine” from patients or caregivers, who may grow no more than 12 immature or six mature plants.

On Dec. 2, Scot Candell, a San Rafael lawyer, told the Corte Madera Town Council that he represented a group of 20 medical marijuana users who wanted to open a collective there. Since then, Candell said the council has warned him that it would close down the club on the basis that it would violate federal law. Candell is scouting alternative sites in Marin. He declined to say where.

Soon after Candell sounded out Corte Madera, William Ringgold, 33, of San Francisco informed the Novato City Council that he plans to establish a medical marijuana collective in Bel Marin Keys. Ringgold said he has identified two possible sites, but declined to identify them.

Ringgold, who works as a manager at an online dry cleaning delivery service and part-time for a marijuana dispensary in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights, said he has received no response from the city.

“I’m really interested in doing this with the city’s permission,” Ringgold said. “Everything that Jerry Brown set forth as what we need to do to make this legitimate we’re going to do.”

Novato Mayor Jim Leland said, “I didn’t have a reaction one way or the other when he spoke, and I have no opinion.”

The White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy is claiming on their “blog” that in downtown San Francisco alone, there are 71 marijuana dispensaries, compared to 66 Starbucks Coffee shops. However, a closer look reveals that alot of the data is wrong and hence these maps are totally inaccurate.

More details:

• SF Gate “Marijuana hotspots vs. Starbucks - who wins?”
• SFist “Fed Says There’s More Pot than Coffee Here”

Here is the original ONDCP blog posting: [ CLICK ]

Local authorities in San Mateo, CA shut down three cannabis dispensaries last year, and another in 2008. However, a recent article by the San Mateo News on InsideBayArea.com indicates that the city could be changing its tune.

Check out the killer quote from Deputy Mayor Brandt Grotte towards the bottom.

From InsideBayArea.com:

City officials are considering an ordinance that would regulate the cultivation of medical marijuana and the cooperative groups that band together to produce the substance.

At a study session Monday night, members of the San Mateo City Council voiced their support for the legal production and use of medical marijuana but agreed the city should establish clear rules for those activities and educate the public on local and federal law.

Authorities shuttered three pot clubs in San Mateo in 2007 and a fourth in 2008.

The draft ordinance would require medical marijuana collectives, composed of patients and their primary caregivers, to apply for a license and register with the San Mateo Police Department before growing or storing pot. The collectives would operate indoors with barred windows at least 300 to 500 feet from schools, recreation centers and youth centers.

To protect patients, the collectives — rather than city officials — would maintain a list of members, City Attorney Shawn Mason said.

“I’m in full support of the city of San Mateo having a regulation like this,” Deputy Mayor Brandt Grotte said during the meeting.

Nonetheless, “there still remains the inevitable conflict between state and federal law, and eventually I hope the feds will grow up and get over it.“

More on the Santa Cruz City Council’s decision from CBS 5 in the Bay Area:

The City Council decided to suspend the smoking ban for a few hours Saturday after medical marijuana patients pleaded for permission to light up at the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana festival at San Lorenzo Park.

But pot smokers can only smoke dope in a tent designated for that purpose.

Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana is a cooperative started in 1993 for seriously ill medical marijuana patients to grow and share pot to ease various symptoms.