Placer County taking steps to regulate pot
Placer County Board of Supervisors this week voted to enact a placeholder ordinance asserting the county’s authority medical marijuana sales and cultivation.
This comes on the heels of December’s decision to move forward with regulating medical marijuana in unincorporated areas of the county. At that time staff was directed to develop comprehensive regulations for their consideration.
The California Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act set a March 1 deadline for jurisdictions to assert local authority over medical marijuana regulation. If they don’t, the state assumes control.
The Jan. 5 vote affirmed that the county’s permitting process will mirror the state’s and established the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office as the lead county agency for medical marijuana regulation.
The goals for staff to consider as it moves forward with developing the framework include:
- Promoting public health and safety
- Reducing the size of the illicit market for cultivation and retail sale
- Preventing non-medical access and use by youth
- Reducing environmental harm to water, habitat and wildlife
- Providing clear criteria for responsible businesses and patients who wish to operate within the law
- Developing a fair system of regulation and taxation that supports public purposes
- Providing flexibility and authority for modification or adoption of additional measures into the regulatory process to ensure effective implementation
Future public meetings will seek community input on the regulations.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
PLACER COUNTY HAS COME A LONG WAY SINCE MY ILLEGAL RAID AND ARREST.
It is good to see such progress after such a long period of terror by Placer County law enforcement. When my family and I were invaded by 21 heavily armed deputies from Placer County, I faced dire circumstances:
–Nineteen felony counts;
–$200,000 bail;
–Involvement by local, state and federal drug warriors;
–A fraudulent DEA document that was used to obtain a search warrant;
–An anonymous note that we now believe was written by law enforcement;
–Judges removed for bias re-entering the case to make me a felony fugitive; and
–A public defender who abandoned my case, leaving me stranded in Canada.
Law-enforcement attitudes were outright hostile to medical marijuana at the time, something I experienced first-hand once I was arrested on Jan. 19, 1999. For 72 hours I was deprived of the only medicine I use, and quickly experienced the classic symptoms of hypertensive crises, as my blood pressure periodically soared, leaving me partially blind and violently ill.
Rather than offer medical care and solace, the jail authorities were openly derisive of my condition, treating me like a criminal who was hiding behind the medical-marijuana law that I helped to write and pass. It took me months to recover from that ordeal.
As a Libertarian, I chose to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and fight back. I chose to fight on behalf of the many qualified patients broken by unfair prosecutions, who did not have the resources or resolve to face their persecutors. Over the next two years, we went through three juries and six judges, and built a legal team and brought in expert witnesses that ultimately outclassed the local prosecutors. During the trial, we discredited the prosecution’s key witness, a state narcotics officer who testified about plant yields at medical-marijuana trials across the state, making ordinary patients sound like drug kingpins.
Jail may be an inconvenience to some, but for me it is a life-threatening experience. That’s why I moved to Canada in 2001 rather than remain under the supervision of authorities I had no reason to trust. My reasons go to the unusual nature of my medical condition, with its potentially lethal episodes of high blood pressure.
When the Canadian courts denied our claims to refugee status, I was given the choice of being deported or leaving Canada voluntarily. On January 26 I returned from British Columbia to turn myself in, and served 40 days of the 120-day sentence imposed on me in 2001 for possession of a mushroom stem and peyote buttons.
The more recent stay was for violating probation by not returning from Canada sooner.
In the seven years since my previous stay in the Placer jail, moreover, I found that law-enforcement attitudes about medical marijuana had changed. Gone was the hostility and taunts that guards directed my way in 1999. This time they called me “Mister Kubby,” and treated me with respect. Especially after all the demonstrations at the Jail on my behalf.
I might have stayed in jail two-thirds longer, but I was released early after receiving a personal visit from the Placer County Sheriff Ed Bonner, who commended me for my work on behalf of medical marijuana. Sheriff Bonner said law enforcement had learned a lot about medical marijuana through the course of my prosecution, and said he was honored to meet me.
Sheriff Bonner then told me he would talk with the district attorney and presiding judge, and advise them to “bury the hatchet.”
My arrest at the San Francisco airport and incarceration in Placer County created a “Media Circus”. Articles have appeared in the L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee and Fox News, and noted by CNN. In a story carried by the Associated Press, I was described as a “medical-marijuana champion,” while a feature story on page one of World Net Daily hailed me as a “crusader for medical marijuana.” KTVU TV in Oakland had the best video coverage.
On Jan. 30, Technorati.com identified “Kubby” as the most-researched term on the Internet, outpacing I-Pods and Ted Koppel.
All this media attention represents millions of dollars of ink and TV time to educate the public on our issues. Meanwhile all charges and convictions against me were thrown out of court and my record is now squeaky clean.
Of course, it goes without saying that I am not abandoning the battle for freedom. When I was fighting for my life, the focus was necessarily on the medical marijuana issue, but now we can go on the offensive against the abuses of our legal system by those who are supposed to uphold the rule of law. More and more Americans, including many in law enforcement are recognizing that the so-called “drug war” is a counterproductive fraud that is a threat to everyone.
That has always been my message.
Let freedom grow,
Steve Kubby