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Volume 2 # 4. September 2004
 Special
"Yields and Dosage" edition
Contents
- SAN
Guidelines booklet now available
- How to get a
free PDF copy online
- How to get
free printed copies for your officials
- Buy
a copy for your own use
- CHP feeling heat
on medical marijuana non-compliance
- Who we
are
- SAN
Guideline basics
- Donate to
SAN
These newsletters update you on the status of the SAN
medical marijuana guidelines campaign. For more information
on our project and the science behind it, please visit our
website.
SAN booklet now
available
Here's news that has been a year in the making: The Safe
Access Now booklet is back from the printer and available
for activists to use in establishing a
three-pounds-plus-corresponding-garden amount as a safe
harbor for medical marijuana. I'm sure you'll find it is
well worth the wait.
This beautiful 24 page, 8-1/2x11 inch, full color, glossy
booklet, titled "Cannabis Yields and Dosage," covers the
major areas of our campaign through a series of logical
steps:
1) An introduction to why these guidelines are so
important;
2) An evaluation of federal yields and dosage studies in
the context of other scientific studies and "real world"
issues that face patients and caregivers in their quest to
obtain and use cannabis;
3) A copy of the sample ordinance that SAN has been
promoting since last Spring, when we were able to resolve
the question of whether a three or six pound baseline is
more reasonable (we added a clause whereby with a doctor's
approval the amount moves up to six pounds rather than,
e.g., three pounds and one ounce);
4) An analysis of federal and state laws and court
rulings that relate to the topic; and
5) A selection of California legal codes that affect
people who are involved with medical marijuana.
This is not a how-to or a grow book, it is an analysis of
scientific data and the law. We think this is one of the
most important tools that medical marijuana activists in
California or elsewhere can use to explain the complexities
of medical marijuana and the ease of our SAN guidelines.
Getting the SAN PDF booklet
online
To
download a free online PDF copy of the booklet (640k),
click here.
This PDF was designed so that you can search for words
and find them in the text, or copy and paste text from the
document to a word processor or other type of file. We think
you will find it very handy and valuable, but please
remember to credit Chris Conrad and Safe Access Now when you
do so.
You can print out as many copies as you wish, or forward
it to others as either a link or a PDF file. We will try to
get the pages made into html in the near future, but for now
the PDF and print versions are by far the most current and
fully developed literature SAN has produced on the
topic.
Getting the booklet in print
form
The Marijuana
Policy Project (MPP) provided SAN with a grant to print
2,000 copies of this booklet to provide for activists to use
in contacting and lobbying their elected officials who
affect enforcement policy. These copies are intended to
advance our guidelines effort, so we will provide
FREE copies for city governments, county government,
DAs, sheriffs, probation departments, state legislators, the
Attorney General, California Medical Association, police
chiefs, CNOA, etc.
However, due to all the changes in law that occurred
after we asked MPP to fund this booklet (before SB
420 passed or the
Raich decision and injunction), we added in information
on legislation and court cases that expanded the booklet
from 12 pages to 24 (including the cover). This material is
so important to the guideline process and legal situation
that it simply had to be addressed. As a result, we spent
another $1000 on it, and we also need to ship out booklets
and prepare a reprint for when this supply runs out.
Safe Access Now is committed to getting these documents
into the hands of the people who most need to see them. We
will send from 2 to 10 free copies to each and every SAN
representative who is ready and willing to take them to
their state and local policymakers and ask for the SAN
guidelines to be adopted. This includes your own personal
free copy to use as a reference and show people and news
media, plus from one to nine copies to hand to your local
officials. This print run is going fast, so please don't ask
for more than you will really use. We only require that you
let us know to whom you will give a copy of the booklet so
we can manage our supply and report back to MPP.
While SAN can offer free shipping in some hardship cases,
it will be extremely helpful if you can reimburse us for
mailing expenses or pitch in toward the costs of doing a
reprint next year. We hope to use the booklets to raise
money for this. The cost of printing 10 books is $20. It
costs $5 to print and mail a single copy of the book. Inside
California, media rate (slow) postage for 10 books is $3,
parcel post $6, Priority mail $6.50, and Express (overnight)
$22. Prices to other regioins varies. Can you help defer
these expenses?
To
order a single copy, using PayPal, click here. To
order a single copy by mail, please make out a check or
money order for $5 out to either Chris Conrad or Family
Council on Drug Awareness, and mail to: FCDA, PO Box
1716, El Cerrito CA 94530.
CHP feeling the
heat
SAN point person Jason Fishbain got hold of an important
document from the California Highway Patrol that seems to
show a bad-faith effort by the CHP to disregard the law on
patient and caregiver rights when it comes to transporting
medical marijuana. He is heading up a new effort to rein in
the rogue law enforcement agency through a class-action
lawsuit. To do this will require a group of aggrieved
patients to file for the injunction he is seeking to stop
the CHP from enforcing any marijuana laws until the agency
shows that it is competent to enforce and protect state
medical use and cultivation provisions. If you have had an
encounter in which the CHP took your medicine or arrested
you, he is interested in hearing from you. Visit this URL to
learn more or to make a donation to support the injunction
against the CHP. http://www.stophippieprofiling.org/chp/chpguilty.htm.
All this comes at the same time that Americans for Safe
Access (ASA) has filed numerous return of property cases for
patients and caregivers across the state, and maverick
attorney Bill McPike
continues to challenge police in the Central Valley by
serving notice on law enforcement that they are in violation
of State law when they fail to appropriately enforce HS
11362.5 and 11362.7. He is now seeking a court order
requiring them to enforce the medical marijuana sections of
the Health and Safety Code.
Who we are
SAN is a non-partisan organization dedicated to the
proper implementation of uniform guidelines in all of
California's counties in compliance with H&S
code 11362.5, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. It
was founded by Chris
Conrad with Ralph Sherrow and has activists in about
half the counties of California. We are an educational and
activist organization only, and in no way supply medicine.
Our proposal has been to stop the arrests as well as the
prosecution of patients by creating a safe harbor of
presumed compliance with the law.
We work with all levels of government to achieve this
goal.
SAN guideline
basics
Since the federal government's IND program has
established more than six pounds per year of marijuana as a
safe and effective standard, with some patients receiving
even more, SAN proposes that patients should be allowed to
cultivate and consume that amount as a reasonable level of
compliance. However, since many patients use less than that
amount, we offer a compromise of allowing up to 3 pounds of
processed cannabis bud per patient per year, which typically
requires a canopy area of 100 square feet. Any amount of
plants could be grown to fill in this area without exceeding
the yield, but since a 5 year federal sentences is mandatory
for growing 100 or more plants, we advocate 99 plants as the
voluntary ceiling for patients. In addition, our proposals
allow a physician to write a note that will exempt patients
who need more from being bound by these figures. See
our website for more details.
Donate to Safe Access
Now
Safe Access Now does not charge for the time and
materials we expend to advance the safe harbor proposal for
patients, but that does not mean it does not cost money to
run this campaign. If you can help with a donation of any
size, please send it to our financial coordinator, Chris
Conrad, with a note saying it is intended for Safe Access
Now work. If you plan to donate $100 or more and want a tax
deduction, we can arrange a fiscal sponsor. Cash is great,
but something of a mailing risk.
We do not have a bank account in our name, so please make
checks out to either
Chris Conrad or Family Council on Drug Awareness, and mail
to:
Safe Access Now, PO Box 1716, El Cerrito CA 94530.
See
all our past SAN newsletters: Visit our archives
online!
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