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• Reputation: 39 Q&A: 1 0 0 20 1 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Expert: 1 topic 420: The Straight Dope About Pot Follow Following 0 cdc

  4 0 Yes. But, just as with a single patient growing their own cannabis, it's important to remember that Washington State medical marijuana law, RCW 69.51A, gives a patient one right: to tell a jury of their peers that they qualify for an "affirmative defense" to the crime for which they are guilty. What that means, practically, is that the more attention one draws, and the more plants one has, the more likely one is going to get shit from law enforcement. Even in supposedly lax Seattle, if the Seattle police visit a medical marijuana cooperative grow, they often take all but 15 plants, ignoring the fact that patients have a right to grow pot together. Also, practically speaking, the bigger your collective grow, the more likely it will be that some economically incented (hard up) thug will break in and rob you, perhaps at gun point. Nearly every single medical marijuana cooperative in town has been the victim of a home invasion or commercial burglary. Most of them won't talk about it, and most of the perpetrators are still out there. Some of the incidents involved pretty severe violence. Medical marijuana cooperatives and providers rarely contact law enforcement in these cases, because the usual response of law enforcement to these situations is to execute a raid on the victim that called 911. So patients and providers find themselves in a post-robbery world in which they must decide between seeking justice against a criminal and risking one's safety for a second time that day, or trying to "cut one's losses" and moving forward, usually with a pretty traumatic, life-altering perception of the world in which one lives. So yes, you can do this. But it's not going to make your life any safer or less stressful. cdc answered in 420: The Straight Dope About Pot over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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• Reputation: 68 Q&A: 2 0 0 29 1 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Expert: 2 topics 420: The Straight Dope About Pot Weed Week Follow Following 0 Alison Holcomb

  2 0 I have to disagree with my friends at the Cannabis Defense Coalition on this one. If you're asking what the law explicitly allows, it is not clear at all that 5 patients can grow together in one location - and even less clear that one person can be the primary gardener for a 5-patient garden . The problem you face is the legal concept of "constructive possession." The Washington State Medical Use of Marijuana Act says that a qualifying patient, or his or her designated provider, can possess "no more marijuana than is necessary for the patient's personal, medical use, not exceeding the amount necessary for a sixty-day supply." RCW 69.51A.040(3)(b) . Possession can be actual or constructive. "Actual possession exists where goods are in the personal custody of the person charged with possession. Constructive possession exists where a person not in actual possession still has dominion and control over the object or place whether the object was found . ... Dominion and control need not be exclusive and can be established by circumstantial evidence. ... To determine whether a defendant was in constructive possession of an object, we look to the totality of the circumstances. ... One aspect of dominion and control is that the defendant may reduce the object to actual possession immediately . ... While proximity alone is not sufficient to establish constructive possession, proximity coupled with other circumstances from which the trier of fact can infer dominion and control is sufficient to show constructive possession." State v. Chavez , 138 Wn. App. 29, 34-35, 156 P.3d 246 (2007) (citations omitted). In the context of a collective or cooperative garden, it is likely that patients, their providers, the property owner, and certainly a designated gardener will be in constructive possession of more than one patient's plants at some point in time. On January 13, 2010, the Seattle Police Department issued Directive 10-001, which accommodates two patient supplies in one location, acknowledging that a patient may also serve as a designated provider to one other patient.  Under those circumstances, if identification and authorization for both patients is presented, SPD officers will leave 48 ounces of usable cannabis and up to 30 plants - double the presumptive 60-day supply definition adopted by the Department of Health and codified at WAC 246-75-010 . Bottom line:   yes, patients can grow together as a practical matter - and it's clear that some are doing this in Seattle.  But I think it's questionable whether "patients have a [legally-defensible] right to grow pot together" as CDC suggests.   CDC is right on the money, though, when they describe the considerations that should inform your decision whether to embark on this path. Alison Holcomb answered in 420: The Straight Dope About Pot over 2 years ago | Report 4 comments by Tacoma HempCompany, Alison Holcomb, and Tacoma HempCompany… 0 0 this is one of the issues i have with the aclu stances on the medical marijuana issue in Washington.. if you have 5 patients, they will all generally need their entire legally allotted plant count, EACH, to provide their medical needs each 60 days. trying to reduce each person to 3 plants per 60 days is a completely cruel and heartless approach. they are plants. they are not going to eat your children, rape your dog, or burn your house down.. why is everyone so damned afraid of a plant?????? if your parents were told that they had to reduce their combined use of a heart medication they both happened to have prescribed to them by half, would you think any part of that was fair or reasonable? why is it that everyone seems to be an expert and weigh in on how much cannabis patients need? there are exemptions allowed by state law that can allow for individual patients to exceed the 15 plant count by quite a bit. law enforcement acts as though this possibility doesn't exist. cannabis seems to be the only medication on earth that requires a law enforcement agent to determine the proper dosage. hmmm. Tacoma HempCompany commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 THC, you are preaching to the choir. I was a defense attorney for more than a decade before coming to work for the ACLU. I represented patients both before and after Washington voters passed I-692 - patients who were jolted awake in the predawn hours by the sound of their front doors exploding open as a dozen officers in SWAT gear rushed in and ordered them face down on the floor with semiauto rifles pointed at their heads. I represented a designated provider who watched her patient literally starve to death after her plants and harvested cannabis were seized. When I tell people what the law actually is, rather than what any of us would like it to be, it's because I don't want more people suffering what my clients suffered. Everyone's risk tolerance is different. But people should know the risks. Alison Holcomb commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 absolutely agreed we should all know the risks.. but i still feel that progress towards RElegalization is good progress. thank you for all the work you've done for patients and continue to do Alison.. Tacoma HempCompany commented over 2 years ago | Report 0 0 I'm with you, THC. We definitely need to keep working toward full relegalization. Many thanks to you for the work you're doing toward that goal, and on behalf of Washington's patients. Alison Holcomb commented over 2 years ago | Report Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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• Reputation: 6 Q&A: 0 0 0 7 1 0 Classifieds: 0 0 what's this? Expert: 1 topic 420: The Straight Dope About Pot Follow Following 0 Philip Dawdy

  2 0 I'm not an attorney, so please do not understand my answer as legal advice. My understanding of current medical marijuana is that that should OK, but the law is just vague enough to where I have questions myself. What I can tell you is that our state's medical marijuana law is one of the weakest in the US and is only an affirmative defense. That means that even if you are within regulatory guidelines and have appropriate authorizations from a physician, law enforcement can still search your premises, seize pretty much whatever they want and so on and a local prosecutor can choose to prosecute you, leaving you to go through years of hassle and expense to then offer the affirmative defense of being covered by the state's medical marijuana...all of which a jury of 12 may or may not accept. I-1068 would fix our state's medical marijuana law by making marijuana legal once and for all (for adults) and that would remove all the affirmative defense nonsense that's caused problems for so many patients in this state. It would then be up to the State Legislature to enact various regulations for both the adult use, possession and cultivation of marijuana in recreational, medical and industrial farming (ie, growing hemp) contexts. Philip Dawdy answered in 420: The Straight Dope About Pot over 2 years ago | Report Comment on this answer Enter your comment or ask a new question New comments are not being accepted at this time.

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