A Column by John Sinclair

Highest greetings from Amsterdam, the viper capital of the world. Your correspondent has come a long way from his humble origins in Flint, the city of my birth and equally my young manhood, when I was chasing the music and learning to write and enjoying city life for the first time—and smoking the first of what would become a virtual infinity of joints over the next 50 years.

I grew up in Davison, the little town just ten miles east of Flint and surely a country town when I was coming up in the 1940s and ’50s. I was introduced to the outside world as a youth of 12 or 13 when the fantastic sounds of rhythm & blues were beamed into my bedroom through the airwaves from WBBC in Flint, where my first human idol—and later friend and mentor— the great disc jockey who called himself The Frantic One, Ernie Durham, could be heard every afternoon spinning the latest sounds by Ray Charles, Wynonie Harris, Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters, Big Joe Turner, Guitar Slim, Ruth Brown, and the Moonglows.

Frantic Ernie D’s radio show opened up a window onto a whole different world from the one that surrounded me in Davison, and it felt and sounded better than anything I’d ever experienced. I found out that The Frantic One owned and operated a pair of Ernie’s Record Racks in the north end of Flint, the outpost at 943 Leith Street near Industrial located only blocks from Buick World Headquarters on Hamilton Avenue, where my father worked, and I worked out a deal with my dad where he would take my little $2.00 allowance every Friday and my list of 10 or so new records I was desperate to possess, stop in at Ernie’s Record Rack on his lunch hour, and pick me up the two closest records to the top of the list that Ernie D. had in stock. So I was deep into the music at an early age, this magical thing that came in over the radio and lit up my life. The drug of choice when I was in high school was beer, with maybe a pint of sloe gin for special occasions. I was 15 or 16 before I even heard about marijuana by reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac, published in 1957, and it sounded mighty good but where would you get some?

I went away to Albion College for two years and got turned on to jazz, poetry, and even Dexedrine for staying up all night listening to records and trying to write, but it wasn’t until I returned to Flint in 1961 to complete my formal education at Flint Junior College and the Flint College of the University of Michigan— then housing its student body of 550 in a single building off of Court Street—that I fell in with some cats situated well off the campus who turned me on to codeine cough syrup and sleeping pills and the way that recreational drug use fit perfectly into the life of the streets of the city.

I was working in a place called Hatfield’s Musical Tent Record Shop at Saginaw Street and 2nd in downtown Flint, managing the jazz stock and making friends with my customers when a guy called Bimbo turned aside from his purchase of the new John Coltrane album on Impulse Records and asked me if I got high. He slipped me a couple of pills and came back a few days later to see how I’d liked them. Pleased with my positive response, he invited to come up to the north end and dig some records with him and his friends and cop some Robitussen at the corner drugstore.

One day I was hanging with the fellows in Sweetie’s Barber Shop, high on cough syrup and digging Gene Ammons on the juke box when this fairly mysterious dude called Tom pulled me aside and gave me a little preachment about downers and how that was all wrong for people seeking to grow their intelligence. “Man, it’s time for you to smoke some weed,” is how he put it, and he took me off somewhere to turn me on to my first joint. This was late in 1961, an awfully long time ago for a pothead to remember anything, and the actual details of my initial experience with marijuana have been lost in the mists of time, but there was no question that weed represented a significant step upward for the aspiring young beatnik in Flint. The mental thrills derived from feeling your consciousness actually expand and the physical sensations resulting in greater sensual awareness and increased sensitivity to self and others made life much more hopeful and interesting, and man, the music sounded better and better the more of it you were now able to hear.

After I had started copping regularly from Tom—that would be in $10 Ohio Blue Tip matchboxes, seeds and all—I met a fellow student at Flint Junior College, a piano player from Owosso named Lyman Woodard who became a lifelong friend and collaborator, and I had the honor and privilege of turning him on to weed as soon as we had moved together into an apartment at 923 E. Kearsley. Now both of us could cop from Tom, but since we didn’t know how to prepare our joints properly we had to ask him to roll the weed up for us so we could smoke it. One night after we had finally learned how to roll we had some weed we were dying to smoke but no papers in the house. Racking our feeble brains for a solution, we found an old newspaper from England printed on tissue-thin paper for overseas mailing, so we tore up a page and rolled up a big bomber (as Louis Armstrong would put it) and as we were smoking it down Woodard laughed and said, man, I bet we’re gonna know more about what’s happening in the world after this.

I turned 21 in October 1962 and my birthday present from Tom was a little package of marijuana from the crop he’d grown himself on the banks of the Flint River somewhere. This pot was much more powerful than anything I’d ever smoked and my mind was expanding exponentially the farther I got into the first joint. The popular record in our set just then was the new Miles Davis album, Someday My Prince Will Come, which I’d heard at least 100 times already, but listening to it now on Tom’s big record player the music came to fully to life and I heard every note, every rhythmic surge, every twist and turn of the improvisers’ minds as they worked their way through the musical material, and it opened up a door for me in my mind that I’ve walked through every day for almost half a century.

Yeah, it sort of illuminated the slogan advanced by Louis Armstrong and Mezz Mezzrow and the early American vipers—jazz musicians, most of them—when they said: “Light Up & Be Somebody!” Even in Flint you could do this, and it was a good thing—both then and now.

—Above the Hash Museum
Amsterdam June 20-21
Headpress Bunker London
June 22, 2011

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When Cops Act Like Crooks!

It seems day after day we receive emails about good people being mistreated because they are Medical Marijuana Patients, Caregivers or in the MMMP services i.e. Doctors certifications Compassion clubs etc. And it’s not the criminal element robbing our Michigan residents, it seems to be the Police and Prosecutors! I have never seen such a blatant abuse of police and prosecutor powers in my lifetime like those currently happening today. We should all be outraged at this seemingly complete dismissal of the Medical Marijuana laws that were overwhelmingly passed in 2008.

They were just going after the compassion clubs and dispensaries, now it seems to have gone to awhole new level of thievery and has expanded to the doctor certification centers. Here is the latest! On May 3rd, Clinton Twp. Police led by Lt. Demick raided American Medical Marijuana Professional's certification center. This facility is a licensed medical office by the city of Roseville, not a dispensary, compassion club, growing facility, or anything to do with handling of that the actual medicine. Many of you know Tom French, a hard working construction guy that has branched out to help MMMP patients with doctor referrals. He is also known as the first promoter to really get the this movement more main stream by renting the Suburban Collection (formally known as the Rock Financial Showplace) in Novi , having the best Expo yet that I’ve attended.

They raided this facility during business hours with 20 patients and the doctor in the office. Without any regard for their medical conditions, patients were terrorized and interrogated along with the staff and the doctor for over 5 hours! As if that wasn’t enough, they searched everyone’s car too, according to Mr. French. They confiscated the doctor's car, office computers, office files, & medical records. Simultaneously, they raided the owner Tom French's home in Warren and Dr. Dean Fior's home in Troy. They also confiscated Mr. French's vehicle and his wife's car. Police seized all bank accounts including savings, checking, and also home computers, cell phones & cash. The police also confiscated $ 110,000 from Dr. Dean Firo's personal safe but only giving him a receipt for $92,000 according to reports. No charges have been filed, or expect to be filed,

due to the fact there was no wrong doing at AMMP. Armed with the asset forfeiture law, the police departments have an ideal way to fund their pet projects and line their personal pockets by targeting innocent, hard working people.
Earlier this month as I interviewed Tom French, his attorney indicated to him it may take up to 6 months for all of this property and assets to be returned! Huge legal fees will be paid and no charges will be filed. What would you call this? We call it legal robbery, sanctioned by our elected officials.

We can only wonder what their cut is! AMMP has reopened business at 28349 Gratiot. Please contact Tom French at 1-877-RX-420-99 Macomb County residents take notice, you could be next!

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FREE THE WEED 03 By Jon Sinclair

Cinco de Mayo, the 5th of May, is Liberation Day in Holland. It marks the end of the brutal German occupation of The Netherlands during World War II, and the Dutch people celebrate their deliverance from the evil Nazi regime with festivals and gatherings throughout the country.

Liberation Day is a jubilant affirmation of the inalienable human right to freedom and  liberty and self-determination. And it keeps alive in the national consciousness the triumph of humanism and democracy over the insanely cruel system of oppression and exploitation imposed and enforced by Adolph Hitler and his psychotic Nazi regime. Liberation Day has big meaning for the Dutch people because they know what it was to be occupied and ruled by the Nazis. They know what freedom means because they were not free and then they were liberated. In turn, the Netherlands has helped pioneer the emergent European Union—now 27 member states including former bitter enemies in both World Wars and the Cold War as well—to try to prevent any further wars among themselves and secure enduring continental peace.

The tiny nation’s experience with occupation and liberation seems also to have engendered an extraordinary spirit of tolerance and personal freedom amongst the populace. Dutch people tend to enjoy their freedom as individual citizens to live and comport themselves as they may wish as long as they are not harming others.

Professional sex activity is tolerated and even licensed and allowed to thrive in its own

district. Recreational drug users of every sort are not regarded as criminals, and possession of small amounts of one’s drug of choice is not regarded as a crime.

Most spectacularly, the Dutch allow free use of cannabis and provide for its retail sale over the counters of hundreds of licensed coffee shops around the country. There are nearly 250 operative coffeeshops in Amsterdam itself, warmly and efficiently serving the cannabis-smoking community with top-quality Dutch-grown marijuana and imported hashish which may be smoked and enjoyed on the premises.

For an American, the situation in the Netherlands is as close to a condition of social freedom as one can imagine. In the United States, cannabis users are legally defined as criminals and hounded and persecuted by the police all their lives as smokers. Citizens are subject to drug testing as a condition of steady employment or for the successful completion of a probationary sentence, and they live in constant fear of police raids on their homes and businesses and the incessant stops, searches and seizures of their personal stashes—even prescribed medical marijuana—when arrested in their cars or public places.

The burgeoning American police state has been built on the framework of the government’s 40-year War on Drugs, in which the preponderance of victims of the drug warriors are marijuana smokers. Hundreds of thousands of American pot smokers are incarcerated in federal and state prisons as we speak, but they represent only a mere fraction of the citizenry victimized by the police and courts simply for smoking marijuana.

A vast industry of punishment and social pain has been erected on the backs of American marijuana smokers. Legions of special narcotics police stalk the streets of our communities seeking to harass and arrest every marijuana user or supplier they can find. The arrestees are dragged before special drug courts and tried by special drug prosecutors in front of special drug judges armed with the most draconian set of drug laws imaginable.

Once convicted, usually following a guilty plea arranged by one of the thousands of lawyers who specialize in representinging drug law offenders, the smoker is fined, sentenced to a probationary term and ordered into a drug treatment. Their urine is assessed in drug testing labs and their conduct scrutinized by drug treatment professionals, drug probation officers and the ever-present drug police.

That’s a whole lot of people and facilities lined up against marijuana smokers and dedicated to our capture and punishment. Thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans are employed at taxpayers’ expense by the insane mechanism created by the War on Drugs, and this vast force of drug law enforcers prospers by delivering severe punishment to an entire national community of recreational—and even medicinal— marijuana smokers.

Since my release from prison as a marijuana law offender 40 years ago—and now as a licensed Medical Marijuana Patient in the State of Michigan—I’ve managed to avoid arrest while smoking quietly each day, but the shadow of the drug Gestapo is always hovering overhead no matter where you are. Carrying a small smoking stash in public or even toking in your home can bring serious grief if you’re apprehended, and the pothead lives in a continuous state of terror even if the police remain at bay.

Liberation for the marijuana smoker in America, sad to say, is not on the near horizon. The mammoth drug law enforcement industry built up around the War on Drugs channels billions of dollars each year to the worst segments of our society, and I’m afraid they’re so deeply entrenched that their overthrow will be particularly problematic.

But liberation for the weedhead is real when one arrives in Amsterdam. Purchasing and smoking cannabis is perfectly okay, and the police have no interest whatsoever in the individual smoker. All of a sudden one is no longer a criminal, and the veil of fear and trembling rises and floats away in the breeze. Life begins a new in liberated territory, and we are free to live our lives as marijuana smokers without fear at last.

Liberation from the Nazi oppressors, liberation from drug police terror—these are good things, and we will continue to celebrate them as long as we may live.

Jon Sinclair

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Macc The Knife By JC Trout!

The Isabella County Case is epic. It is a perfect storm that will resolve some of the most controversial issues created by the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act (2008); patient-to-patient transfers, for-profit medical marijuana clubs (dispensaries), as well as a the right to assemble. This new “friend of the court” (amicus curiae) brief submitted by Attorney Matthew Newburg to the Michigan State Court of Appeals, will silencethe A.G. Bill Schuette’s discrimination and lay his legal arguments to rest.

We, as in the “Royal WE,” have been waiting for what seems an eternity for some closure to the legal controversy that surrounds the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act since its passing. Adding insult to injury, Bill Schuette, the anti-medical marijuana leader who had been defeated with the passing of our bill, now darkens the Attorney General’s desk, and has been eager to use that power not to uphold the laws of the state of Michigan, but to destroy a program directly passed by its citizens. Well folks, that time is now! The final battle between light and dark side shall collide in the State of Michigan v. McQueen. On December 16, 2010, Larry Burdick, Isabella’s Prosecutor was unable to convince the court that the actions of the Apothecary Compassion owners Brandon McQueen and Matthew Taylor were in anyway unlawful; the nuisance charges dropped, and the case closed. One would think the Compassion Apothecary would be allowed to return to their lives unabated.

Instead Burdick, with the support of AG Schuette, took the case to the Michigan Court of Appeals to seek a retrial. Schuette, then submitted an amicus curiae to carry his personal vendetta against the program in the higher courts. In his brief, Schuette cleverly rehashed Burdick's original contention citing that the MMMA did not allow for-profit clubs, but only payment for caregiver expenses. Then through a skewed reading of the act’s caregiver system, patients are not to transfer between one another, and that the club owners “exceeded established limits for qualified patients and caregivers.” With this brief, Schuette hopes to reverse the lower courts previous ruling. Then the “journey towards the dark side [would] be complete.”

In plain language, a patient-topatient transfer could be anything from one patient passing a doob to another patient, to an actual transfer of medication for compensation. The amount the club was allowed to have on the premises largely depended on the interpretation of the MMMA’s caregiver system. And lastly, the club owners, in an attempt to run a viable business, charged caregivers 20% commission for vending space; akin to a farmers’ market scenario.

Fortunately, on May 11, Matthew Newburg, Amicus Attorney representing the Michigan Association Compassion Centers (MACC), filed amicus curiae on behalf of the club owners. In the brief, Newburg squarely put Schuette and Burdick against the ropes with logical haymakers and legal jabs citing statutory ignorance and misuse of power. However, Newburg’s elegance is not found in the assertions of Schuette’s clouded actions, but in the bulldog style used to convey the rights of the medical marijuana patients and caregivers. His address focused, among a myriad of other issues, on patient-to-patient transfers, as well as the “sale” of marijuana in the state.

Unlike the actual rules set forth by the MMMA (2008) or the administrative rules of 2009, Newburg addresses Patients and caregivers separately, and using the act itself coupled with current law regarding agent-principle relationships, creates a legal scaffolding to address incongruencies. In the brief he argues that patient-to-patient transfers are legal because the control of “usable marijuana,” is actually the property of the patient. The caregiver is contractually charged with obtaining medication for their patient either through cultivation or using the caregiver system to relieve patient suffering. And the liberal language of the MMMA, gives credit to his claims. Ultimately, the relief of suffering is the main goal of the act and the primary caregiver of the patient. Patient’s that are bed-ridden or shutins are dependent on their caregiver to provide a service they cannot provide themselves. He argues that caregivers ought to be allowed to do their job within the confines of current MMMA regulations.

The most ingenious and advantageous of Newburg’s argument considers the “sale” of marijuana legal! Yes, you can check it out yourself. This does not mean we can all jump up and down quite yet. However, technically, while the “trafficking, manufacture, delivery, or possession” is still considered illegal, because the “sale” of marijuana had never been specifically addressed, there is no prosecution for those who are legally allowed to possess or transfer it. In other words, any patient or caregiver has the legal right to sell, not transfer their marijuana.

As Third Coast owner Jamie Lowell stated, “At stake is the ability for the patients to consistently get their medication as needed; at stake the ability for people to carry out this law and to fully realize its intent!” It is up to the Court of Appeals Judge to choose between the light or dark side of the legal force. Hopefully, the Michigan Court of Appeals Judge will choose wisely and stay the powerful hand of the people.

JC Trout

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Patient Robbed By Thugs!

Imagine taking your dog out for a walk and having an AK-47 shoved in your face.  Three local growers went through this very nightmare in the last month.  “Big Mike” found himself zip-tied, duct-taped and gagged to his basement post, while three masked gunmen not only ransacked his house, but took his entire stock.  They destroyed the entire grow room; busted the bulbs, ripped up the tents, knocked over the cloner, and ruined the ballasts – all gone.  “Big Mike” had just harvested a new crop and had five ounces worth already cured.  Based on that, he believes that the “rippers” scoped his pad ahead of time, and came when he was fully stocked. 

He tried reporting the incident to the police, but they simply laughed at him.  One officer told “Big Mike,” that the robbery was not their concern because he shouldn’t have been involved in the business.  They offered no help.

He then filed a claim with his State Farm home insurance. The insurance agency attempted to deny his claim because they say the equipment in his house was used for illegal activities.  Under contract law, an insurance company does not have to replace stolen items used for illegal enterprises.  “Big Mike” did not let the issue go.  Currently, he has filed a suit against the agency and is expected to receive some compensation, but it will take several months to resolve.

These incidents ought to remind us to be very wary that we are not followed or stalked.  “Big Mike” believes he was targeted at his favorite grow shop.  He remembered purchasing a large amount soil and equipment and filling his truck.  He has since altered all of his previous habits.  First, he no longer shops at his grow shop.  He now makes several smaller purchases and buys from a number of local stores.  He advised that growers pay for all equipment in cash; give no one your name, address, or email.  He now takes the long way home; changes roads, drives a different route, and always check the rearview mirror for familiar cars.   Above all, he says, secure your home.  Investing in surveillance cameras, motion lighting, as well as, an alarm system will go along way to keep “rippers” at bay.  However, a couple of bats and a handgun work wonders too. Remember, just because your paranoid doesn’t mean no one is after you.

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FREE THE WEED! By John Sinclair

Hello, fellow vipers and registered marijuana patients and welcome to the 40th annual Hash Bash in Ann Arbor and the 41st consecutive gathering of jubilant smokers on the Diag to celebrate and advance the cause of marijuana legalization.

The first Hash Bash was called on the Diag for April 1, 1972 and there’s a good story to go with that. But the first smoke-in materialized a year earlier as an unorganized incursion into the very heart of the University of Michigan campus, where a boisterous contingent of local hippies met up on April Fools Day to get down and smoke some weed together.

Although I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, this writer was denied the opportunity to participate in the first celebration on the Diag due to my incarceration at the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson, just 40 miles to the west but a whole different world altogether, where I was serving the second year of a 9-1/2 to 10-year sentence for possession of two marijuana cigarettes and working with my extensive collective of lawyers and fellow radicals to perfect my appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court.

At the time Michigan still callously misclassified marijuana as a narcotic— against all scientific evidence to the contrary—and punished convicted smokers with up to 10 years in prison. My actual crime had been giving the two joints as a gift to an undercover policewoman from the Detroit Narcotics Bureau three days before Christmas in 1966, and I was charged under the Sales of Narcotics statutes which mandated a minimum sentence of 20 years and a maximum of life imprisonment for marijuana transactions of any sort.

I was determined to challenge the constitutionality of the Michigan narcotics statutes from the moment of my arrest on January 24, 1967, about two years after I had founded DETROIT LEMAR as an attempt to challenge the marijuana laws in the court of public opinion. By the date of my arrest I had been blessed with legal representation by the great Detroit attorney Sheldon Otis and his associate, Justin “Chuck” Ravitz, then just out of law school. They agreed not only to defend me in Detroit Recorders Court against this scurrilous charge but also to take up my cause in general.

Over the next five years, many progressive lawyers and legal workers contributed to my defense and post-conviction appeals, with special thanks to a young Kenny Mogill who wrote the appellate brief that conquered the Supreme Court in March 1972. But we challenged the state’s definition of marijuana as a narcotic and the severity of the prescribed sentences for possession and sale in

Recorders Court

, the Michigan Court of Appeals, and the Michigan Supreme Court for two and a half years

even before I went to trial in July 1969. After the Supremes refused to rule on the issue absent an actual conviction, we went to trial and quickly secured a guilty verdict by waiving our defense in order to keep the focus on the constitutional challenge, but the late judge Robert J. Colombo denied my petition for appeal bond and I was remanded to the custody of the State of Michigan, soon to be shipped to the maximum-security Marquette Branch Prison in the U.P. for the first year of my sentence. The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld Colombo’s denial of appeal bond on the grounds that I was a “danger to society”—that ruling makes another story for another time—and I spent a total of 29 months in prison before bond was finally granted and I was released from Jackson

on December 13, 1971.

During this period my comrades in the White Panther Party—later called the Rainbow People’s Party—spearheaded a campaign to gain my freedom that included almost weekly benefit concerts and dances to raise funds for my legal defense and keep my case before the public. The April Fools gathering on the Diag in 1971 had its part in this process, which culminated on December 10 when John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bobby Seale, Phil Ochs, Archie Shepp, Commander Cody, Bob Seger and a host of others congregated at Chrysler Arena for the John Sinclair Freedom Rally. We also pursued my appeal in the courts and lobbied intensively in the state legislature for a new marijuana law. In fact, the Freedom Rally was scheduled in December to try to bring pressure on the legislature to pass a bill removing marijuana from the narcotics statutes and establish greatly reduced penalties for its sale and use. To make a long story short, the bill was passed on December 9, the Freedom Rally was staged December 10, and I was released three days later.

The new marijuana law stipulated that marijuana was to be considered a “controlled substance” with a maximum sentence upon conviction of one year for use and four years for sale. The existing law was to remain in effect until April 1, 1972, but on March 9 the Supreme Court overturned my conviction and declared the existing law unconstitutional, thus creating a beautiful period in Michigan when weed was completely without legal proscription for the next three weeks.

On April 1st the first Hash Bash took place as an act of defiance against the reinstatement of any laws against marijuana—as a declaration that we wouldn’t accept any form of interference with this important component of our way of life. It was a tremendous celebration, and three days later Ann Arbor elected two members of the Human Rights Party to City Council and took the first step toward enacting the infamous $5.00 fine for all marijuana violations in the city.

I always wondered who came up with the name for the Hash Bash, but it wasn’t until five or six years ago when I ran into my old comrade Walden Simper at the Berkeley Patients Collective and she told me she was designing the poster for the gathering on the Diag when the name HASH BASH appeared on her mental screen and she penciled it into the design. It’s been there ever since.

In closing, I’d like to dedicate this first column to the memory of two great Americans who have recently passed on: the heroic attorney for the people, Leonard Weinglass, and the prophet and pioneering mass producer of LSD, Augustus Owsley Stanley III whose products were surely present on that day in 1971 when the Hash Bash came into being. Thank you, gentlemen, for all the good you have done.

John Sinclair

 

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Up In Smoke! By JC Trout

Patients, caregivers, citizens, stand and unite! We are under attack! Senator Rick Jones aims to destroy our state’s Compassion Clubs (CC). Earlier this year, Jones wrote and presented Senate Bill 17 (SB17), which seeks to outlaw all compassion clubs that accept membership fees, from allowing their members to medicate on site. This bill was presented under the guise of public safety, suggesting that medicated individuals are leaving these clubs intoxicated and driving home. The MMMR has been following SB17, and Jones has already managed to get his bill passed by the Committee on Health Policy as of March 8th. It is now up for consideration by the Michigan Senate.

Alarmingly, there has been no statistical or factual information offered by Jones as proof that CCs are a safety hazard. It would also seem if Jones were truly considering the public’s safety, then his bill would also seek to keep people from drinking at “alcohol” bars. Heck, he didn’t even have evidence that proved marijuana negatively affects driving ability; and if he had, the data that is available would toss out his entire claim. Of course, when it comes to discrimination, fact and truth are not necessary.

Many bloggers claim Mr.Jones is playing a procedural game with Senate rules. In order to change an existing act requires a 75% majority. To avoid that super-majority requirement, Jones has focused on section 7 (Scope of Act, Limitations) under the claim that SB17 will only narrow the scope of acceptable medical use. Since the legislature can narrow any law with only a simple majority (51%), Jones hopes to pass SB17 under the Senate’s nose.

However, the MMMA provides protections outside section 7 that have the potential to quash SB17 as well. Section 4 (Protections…), for instance, protects patients and caregivers from “…arrest, prosecution, or penalty in any manner, or denied any right or privilege...;” which would include the constitutional right to assemble and the privileges provided by the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act of 2008.

From a bird’s eye view, conservative law makers have been attempting to destroy the only growth market in this economy – medical marijuana businesses. Earlier this year, a rash of busts were pasted all over the newspapers, claiming that dispensaries were illegal businesses because they did not follow the Caregiver Patient system set forth in the act. Now the tables are turning on the Compassion Clubs (CC), who under the guise of “compassion”, have thus far enjoyed a positive face with the public. With SB17 under consideration, it would seem that CC doors will be under threat to close much faster than their dispensary counter-parts. If CC’s do not address these issues more proactively, it is a safe bet that the word “audit” might be in their future as well.

Surely, most CC’s will simply prohibit patrons from smoking on the premises, but this legislative attack signals the multi-pronged strategy our law-makers will employ to keep our market from blossoming. More importantly, if this bill is going to be stopped, the movement is going to have to quit quibbling over this very debate and protect our interests. WE ARE the ones who are going to have to write the letters, make the phones calls, send the emails, and protest in Lansing. WE ARE under attack!

 

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