California, Visalia

[palmspringsbum]

Patients Make Case For Pot

The Visalia Times Delta
Tue, 02 Oct 2007
by Gerald Carroll

<span class=postbigbold>Medical Marijuana Users Want Visalia Dispensary Open</span>

Visalia Compassionate Caregivers have suspended their long-standing practice of quietly dispensing marijuana to patients as a result of the city's nuisance-ticket ordinance.

"We were going to be charged $100 for the first offense, then $200, then $500," said Jeff Nunes, who manages the Caregivers office and its Visalia-based support organization, Medicinal Marijuana Awareness and Defense. "And $500 again and again. We can't afford that."

So to "keep from going bankrupt," as Nunes put it, he shut down the Caregivers side of his offices at 209 W. Main St. in Visalia -- but kept open MMAD's educational office, which is next door.

"We will do the best we can to refer our patients to alternate places where they can get their medication," Nunes said. Dispensaries exist in the city of Tulare but patients say they are badly run and look dangerous, like "doing drug deals."

"It's safe here [at Caregivers]," said patient Shane Maroon of Squaw Valley, who has suffered chronic pain for years and cannot tolerate regular medicines.

Maroon was part of a parade of patients who told the council they suffered from painful conditions untreatable by standard medicines.

"The smoke is all I got, and I'm not going to let go of it," said Anthony Blackwolf, who said he suffers constant pain without regular doses of marijuana.

The actual closing in Visalia was Saturday, Nunes told the Visalia City Council during the public comment segment Monday at City Hall.

"That's right," confirmed Tim Burns, head of Visalia's neighborhood preservation department. "We have not closed any office. It's just that medical marijuana can no longer be distributed from that location."

The fact that medical marijuana was being dispensed from the downtown Visalia office was news to Councilman Don Landers.

"We were under the impression [Caregivers] was educational," Landers said.

Burns said that, in 2005, the city did agree to grant Nunes a "tenant improvement permit" to operate his office for the "distribution of educational materials and conventional office uses."

Earlier this year, the following sequence of events unfolded:

<span class=postbold>May 23:</span> Visalia police reported that Nunes was dispensing marijuana from the location.

<span class=postbold>June 25:</span> The neighborhood preservation department issued a 30-day "formal notice" of violation of the 2005 terms.

<span class=postbold>Aug. 27:</span> Representatives from Burns' group, the Visalia Police Department and Visalia's planning division met to see if Nunes' location could be moved. An extension was granted until Oct. 1.

<span class=postbold>Sept. 10-14:</span> Nunes tried and failed to find another location for Caregivers.

<span class=postbold>Sept. 20:</span> Burns called Nunes and "left a voicemail" reminding him of the Oct. 1 deadline for the stoppage of medical marijuana distribution.

<span class=postbold>Sept. 21:</span> Nunes said he would comply.

<span class=postbold>Sept. 29:</span> The location on West Main Street ceased medical marijuana distribution, but remained open for advice, information, referrals and education, Nunes said.

City attorney Alex Peltzer said there is nothing the council can do at present, but that "administrative" means can be used to try and reach an agreement with Nunes' group.

Councilman Greg Kirkpatrick said that he voted in favor of Proposition 215 and asked that some measure of compassion be shown to Nunes' efforts.

Mayor Jesus Gamboa said that "we haven't shut anyone down yet" but that a settlement of the issue and any reopening of Caregivers "will take time" to sort out.

[palmspringsbum]

Visalia pot shop faces closure

<span class=postbigbold>Medical marijuana dispensary has yet to find a new location.</span>

by Tim Sheehan, Fresno Bee
September 29th, 2007


An organization providing medical marijuana to about 1,500 people is being forced to shut its doors in downtown Visalia.

But unlike dispensaries where closure has come at the hands of federal drug agents, Visalia Compassionate Caregivers organizer Jeff Nunes is closing today to avoid running afoul of a city ordinance governing where marijuana may be grown and distributed for medical use under state law.

Monday is the city's deadline for Nunes to close the dispensary, operating from an upstairs retail space in downtown Visalia for nearly two years, because it does not comply with zoning restrictions adopted in October 2005 limiting medical marijuana operations to the city's service-commercial and agricultural zones.

"The City Council voted in an ordinance that makes it impossible to find land in the city," Nunes said Thursday.

When the ordinance was adopted, Nunes was given four months to find a location that complied with its rules.

"We've been trying for two years to find a different spot in Visalia for our patients to call home," Nunes said. "But it's impossible. Landlords are not willing to risk the [federal] Drug Enforcement Administration coming in and taking their property, and that's completely understandable."

Visalia's service-commercial zones represent quasi-industrial areas shared by auto repair, carpet cleaning and other service-oriented businesses. The building where Visalia Compassionate Caregivers -- and its information and advocacy arm, Medical Marijuana Awareness & Defense -- is now is in the downtown commercial zone, home to banks, salons, restaurants, offices and merchants.

Proposition 215, approved by California voters in 1996, declared that ill people can use marijuana for medical purposes when recommended by a doctor and allows possession or cultivation of marijuana by a patient or "primary caregiver."

Patients use marijuana to help relieve nausea from cancer treatments or AIDS, chronic pain from injuries or arthritis and symptoms from ailments such as glaucoma or anorexia.

But medical use of marijuana is illegal under federal law, and federal agents can enforce that prohibition in California or other states with medical marijuana laws.

Patients lining up at Nunes' dispensary last week said they expect to plead on Monday to the Visalia City Council for flexibility in the city's zoning law.

"This is really a heartbreak for me," said Teresa Douthit, 52, of Visalia. Douthit said marijuana relieves pain and nausea she has from the cocktail of drugs she takes for AIDS and hepatitis C.

"For 18 years, I've taken medications with all of these horrible side effects," she said Friday. "Now I've found something that doesn't make me sick, and the city's forcing this place to close."

Douthit said she will have to either buy marijuana illegally or "where I don't feel comfortable, where I can't defend myself if something happens."

Elby Freeman, 64, of Tulare added that he and others who use marijuana for medical reasons are not "potheads" who just want to get high.

"I don't smoke. I don't drink," said Freeman, blind for more than 30 years from glaucoma. He said he was on various medications for years before enlisting in a medical marijuana trial program in Louisiana, before moving to California.

"When I was taking all those pills, I sat around like a zombie -- I couldn't even function," Freeman said. "Now I'm free of almost all of my medications."

Nunes said he is worried about his patients, whom he considers his extended family.

"They're the ones who are going to get hurt the most," he said. "With this interruption of treatment, there's a serious consequence."

Tim Burns, Visalia's manager of neighborhood preservation and code enforcement, said the city has been patient with Nunes well beyond the initial compliance period set forth in the ordinance.

"He has demonstrated a good-faith effort to find a new location ... and we've tried to enable him to be successful and granted several extensions," Burns said. "But we've done everything we can as a city to help him help himself."

Rick Morse, president of the Tulare County chapter of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group, said he and patients hope to persuade City Council members to grant another extension.

"This is a circumstance where the City Council can do something, but shouldn't necessarily do it," Morse said of the compliance order. "We're going to ask them to allow him to remain in business until a viable option can be found."

Morse estimated there are between 2,000 and 2,500 active patients with doctors' recommendations for medical marijuana in Tulare County. And there may be as many as 13,000 people with cancer, chronic pain, AIDS or other conditions who could qualify for protection under Prop. 215, he said.

"As a patient advocate, I want to make sure patients don't have to go to the black market or to dangerous sources," he said.

Burns said the city is sympathetic to the situation, but added that officials don't believe the ordinance is overly restrictive.

"We're concerned about displacing patients as well," Burns said. "But the city's not responsible for him not being able to lease another site.

"At some point, we have to enforce the ordinance," he said, "and we're at that point."