Tag Archives: Medical Marijuana

US Attorney Warns Calif. Farmers Against Pot Grows

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Don Thompson

Associated Press, 2-29-2012

Sacramento, Calif. — The top federal prosecutor in the Central Valley said Tuesday that he plans a tour this week to tell agricultural landowners they could lose their property or be prosecuted if they permit large marijuana plantations on their land.

U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner will visit the Fresno County Farm Bureau on Thursday and the Kern County Sherriff’s Department on Friday to warn of the federal crackdown.

Investigators have found large marijuana fields primarily in the southern part of the valley, from Stanislaus County to Kern County, Wagner said in an address to the Sacramento Press Club. The crackdown targets landowners who allow their properties to be used for marijuana cultivation.

 

Wagner called the large-scale operations “a hazard to people in those farming communities.”

 

Ryan Jacobsen of the Fresno County Farm Bureau welcomed the news. He said residents are endangered by the marijuana grows, which often are operated by absentee landowners.

 

“It looks like it’s mostly outsiders. It’s not most of the mainstream farmers and ranchers who have been there for generations,” Jacobsen said. “A lot of this is not necessarily being grown for California medicinal marijuana use. A lot of it’s being exported to other states.”

 

He and Wagner said the marijuana plots are often on the scale of industrial farming.

 

“We’re not talking about backyard size. One bust was 55 acres. There’s many, many 20-acre parcels down here that are being fully grown with marijuana. It’s probably on a scale much, much larger than most people are familiar with,” Jacobsen said. “There’s guard towers that have gone up in the middle of ag lands to protect the grows.”

 

California narcotics officers said they found millions fewer pot plants on remote public lands last summer, largely because they believe growers have shifted to growing in plain sight with the hope that California’s medical marijuana law would make prosecution by state district attorneys more difficult.

 

Investigators said growers frequently lease the land, though some growers are small farmers supplementing their incomes. Other crops may be grown to hide the growing marijuana plants.

 

“Those farmers who plant large crops of marijuana or who lease their land to people who do are risking forfeiture of their lands or, in the egregious cases, criminal prosecution,” Wagner said.

 

He was met with criticism before and during his speech from those who said the federal government should not interfere, given California’s liberal medical marijuana law.

 

California law permits the drug to be cultivated and supplied to sick people on a nonprofit basis. Federal officials say many clinics profit under the pretense they are helping the sick.

 

Wagner said investigators have found that some medical marijuana dispensaries were generating $10,000 to $50,000 in profits each day, selling marijuana for twice what they paid for it.

 

“That’s not about sick people. That’s about money,” he said.


Boulder Creek Collective worker says pot gave him his life back

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Rosy Weiser
SC Sentinel:   01/28/2012

SOQUEL – Boulder Creek Collective founder Marc Whitehill, a former nurse, has seen a lot of people come through his doors seeking medical marijuana, enough that he thinks he has a pretty clear idea of the patient demographic at most local dispensaries.

He estimates 60 percent are 40 or older and use cannabis “to avoid taking much harsher pharmaceutical alternatives to treat nausea, sleeplessness, anxiety and aches and pains,” he said. They use the medicine instead of resorting to common prescription painkillers and tranquilizers.

Another 20 percent are youngsters with no visible signs of illness.

“With them, I have to trust the physician that they made the right call,” he said.

But the last category, the 20 percent who are chronically or terminally ill receive special attention at the Boulder Creek Collective. If not for these patients, medical cannabis might not have grown into a burgeoning industry.

One such patient is Gary Goldsworthy, 42, who was given a free membership at the collective in exchange for volunteer hours about two years ago. Goldsworthy was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disorder that triggers the immune system to attack the gastro-intestinal tract, when he was 27.

During a long period of remission, Goldsworthy had been a successful musician who toured nationally with acclaimed blues artist, James Armstrong. But an additional diagnosis of skin cancer and the removal of several lymph nodes a few years ago caused a resurgence of the Crohn’s and sent him downhill fast.

When he first discovered marijuana as medicine, he had been housebound for more than a year, confined to his bed and the bathroom, hardly able to eat and suffering from diarrhea and intense abdominal pain, among other symptoms.

“I kept on getting advised by nurses to try [marijuana] because I don’t get a natural appetite,” he said, explaining that smoking has allowed him to regain some semblance of his former life, bringing him out of the house and allowing him to eat regularly and have more energy.

Against the advice of his doctors, Goldsworthy eventually decided to forgo the mainstream treatments that cost $50,000 a year, in favor of marijuana which he got for free, and which he thought did a better job addressing his symptoms.

“My symptoms are semi-manageable now,” he said. “I was on disability and SSI but I’ve been able to be self-sufficient.”

Goldsworthy now works as a part-time paid employee at the collective handling admissions. He continues to receive enough free medicine to smoke three to four times a day, around meal times.