The Marijuana Issue

By Allan Lee Dollison

How I would look at potential Marijuana prosecutions

The Marijuana laws are correspondingly convoluted and difficult to ascertain and thus policy makers and the Courts find it difficult to reach effective decisions and policy outcomes. The Cultivation and Possession for Sale of Marijuana are only Felonies under California law, whereas Methamphetamine Possession is amazingly either a Felony or a Misdemeanor, sometimes called a Wobbler, despite uniform scientific and community agreement that Marijuana is nowhere near as dangerous as Methamphetamine. In 1996, California passed Prop 215, commonly referred to as the Medical Marijuana initiative. This law unlike other states had many issues and loopholes. Nowhere in the law did it say that Marijuana could be sold. Yet Marijuana Retail Dispensaries have cropped up all over the State, including Humboldt County.

The 4 US Attorneys for California have tried and succeeded in many cases in shutting down dispensaries. They threatened prosecution against our local elected officials, thus no new dispensaries have been established here in Humboldt. The Federal 9th Circuit just recently said dispensaries are not legal. I lost my mother to Breast Cancer. Towards the end of her life she was on a narcotic pain reliever, Morphine. This is the same base ingredient of Heroin, and yet the Doctors gave it to her. California's law did not suggest what type of illnesses or afflictions could be treated with Medical Marijuana. The law did not also state what was meant by a caregiver, and thus Courts tried to refine that definition by saying a caregiver must be more than someone who provides Marijuana. This is further complicated by the fact that Federal Laws have never changed and the US Supreme Court has ruled that California's Medical Marijuana law is not a defense to a federal Marijuana charge.

The legislature tried to establish minimum amounts that could be possessed, and allowed counties to upwardly depart from those limits. Back in 2003 Humboldt County substantially increased the amount of plants you could have, from 10 to 99. Then in 2008, the California Supreme Court said the legislature or counties could not have any limits since the initiative only said what is medically necessary is what you may have. These patchwork of laws and decisions have really made it difficult for everyone in the criminal justice system to effectively regulate the Marijuana industry.

Many people believe that Marijuana will soon be legalized. States nearby, such as Colorado and Washington have taken that step. One of the initiatives currently trying to gain ballot access in 2014, would go much further than those states. There would be no limits. Marijuana could be provided to children with no criminal liability. Furthermore the initiative takes the extraordinary step to provide criminal immunity for Business Organizations and Corporations. This initiative is called California Cannabis Hemp Initiative 2014, and appears nothing more than an attempt at big business trying to take over our local Marijuana industry. Cheap labor will be brought in. The price would collapse, and destruction would be caused to our local economy. I am opposed to this initiative even though some of its supporters reside right here in Humboldt.

I believe that dangerous white drugs such as Methamphetamine, Heroin and Cocaine cause more problems than Marijuana. I would marshal the very limited resources of the District Attorney's office to fight those drugs. I would go after dealers and traffickers. The law under most circumstances requires those offenders to serve time in County Jail, which has lead to overcrowding in our local jail. During my tenure in the District Attorney's Office, the current management required aggressive prosecution against workers at large Marijuana sites, while favorable plea deals were dictated to the actual owners of the enterprises. I believe that approach was wrong, and many defense attorneys told me so. Albeit their activity ay be criminal, but in one case that lasted two days just to prove probable cause, it cost our local courts over $10,000 a day to hire Eastern European translators. That type of misplaced resources, where the actual instigators of the Marijuana growing got extremely favorable deals that prevented the Courts from handing out any jail sentences, while their workers served longer jail sentences seemed the epoch of hypocrisy to me. I would reform the office, set reasonable limits, establish guidelines after community input, and write the proposed regulations myself, as opposed to farming that work out to a Marijuana Defense Attorney, which was actually done.

Violent crime and hard drugs would be what I would fight. Not small marijuana grows. If the voters see fit to legalize it, then I would follow that law.