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Boulder DA Stan Garnett Asks for Better Ideas

Below is an email from DA Stan Garnett to Richard L. Everstine, a Colorado attorney and medical cannabis patient. Mr. Everstine's letter to Garnett was in response to the DA's desire to file a civil suit for injunction or declaratory judgment to rule whether dispensaries are legal or not.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Garnett, Stanley" <sgarnett@bouldercounty.org>
To: "greymule" <greymule1@xxx.xxxt>
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 10:06 AM
Subject: Medical Marijuana Issue

Mr. Everstine,

Thanks for your email. I'm assuming that someone told you, as some
medical marijuana groups suggested in the Colorado Daily yesterday, that
I am declaring a "war on patients." Nothing could be further from the
truth.

I understand and appreciate that medical marijuana does a lot of good
for many people. My interest is one that most of the Medical marijuana
supporters that I have talked to share: getting clarity so that
dispensaries, providers and license holders know the parameters of
what's legal and so that law enforcement won't waste its time. I
suggested a declaratory or injunctive action as a means to do so, and a
number of Medical marijuana supporters have called me supporting the
idea as progressive. If the department of health can get the job done,
instead (although they've had some difficulty making much progress)
that's fine with me.

I certainly have no interest in harassing dispensaries. If that were my
goal, I could simply prosecute them and let the chips fall where they
may, as the more conservative DA's in some other Colorado Districts are
contemplating.

I have been a little disturbed by the tone of some of the discussion.
This is a complicated issue that needs to be resolved. I raised the
issue (which everyone familiar with the issue acknowledges is an issue
that must be resolved) and suggested a solution, which is far from
declaring a "war on patients." If someone has a better solution, I have
yet to hear it.

Thanks again for getting in touch. Please feel free to circulate this
email as widely as possible. I will respond to anyone with questions
about my position on medical marijuana which is, I am confident, the
most progressive of any DA in Colorado.

Stan Garnett

-----Original Message-----
From: greymule [mailto:greymule1@xxx.xx}]
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 9:37 AM
To: Garnett, Stanley
Cc: aguilarj@dailycamera.com
Subject: Medical Marijuana Issue

Dear District Attorney Garnett~

I am a 62 year-old Colorado Attorney who has been a Medical Marijuana patient for four years. I traded my body for a college education playing football for Duke University. Of course, that was back when we wore leather helmets. I now suffer from a number of severe, chronic pain sites: Both shoulders have had rotator cuff surgery, the left one is scheduled for a second surgery in a few weeks; traumatic scoliosis of my spine, one surgery; right knee, six surgeries; right wrist, fused by surgical repair; arthritis in just about every joint in my body. I am in constant pain and suffer severe muscle spasms in my back and neck. MMJ does not "take away" the pain, but it reduces the pain, allows me to cope with the pain and live a reasonably normal life. Pharmaceutical medications, opiate pain medicines and muscle relaxers, prevent me from functioning normally because they wipe me out and leave me with terrible hangovers and depression. Those medications are much harder on one's body than MMJ. I consider them a last resort, and more or less an endgame situation because of the poor quality of life offered.

Medical Marijuana is a Godsend for me and many others like me. It allows me to continue to work, to play, and to be a functional husband, father and grandfather. MMJ gave me back much of my life.

We need a balance between the paranoia of abuse and allowing the full enjoyment of the Constitutional rights provided by Amendment 20. By law, Constitutional rights mandate the highest level of protection for citizens.
Just by the nature of law enforcement, there will always be a tendency for raised eyebrows and smirks from police and District Attorneys when MMJ is the topic. Of course, the potential for abuse is always present under a system that provides for greater availability of a controlled substance.

However, we, as a society, cannot afford to quash, limit or otherwise make more difficult the legitimate exercise by citizens of their Constitutional Rights in order "make certain" no abuse occurs.

The Colorado Department of Health reviewed the "caregiver" issue this past summer. It concluded that extensive and intensive review of the rules and regulations for MMJ must be conducted from a health profession standpoint, not from a prosecutorial standpoint. The Department is presently working on updating the rules and regulations for MMJ. It would be an ill-advised effort for you to seek judicial interpretation at this juncture. Not only would it be a waste of the money and resources available to your Office, it could hamstring present and future efforts of the Health Department to construct meaningful and workable rules and regulations in the context of the health perspective. It is the Health Department's job, not your job, to resolve the various issues relating to the rules and regulations governing MMJ.

There is a popular misconception that medical grade marijuana is easy to grow. I have tried twice, and failed quite miserably both times. Growing indoors is very environmentally questionable. The power from the HID lights and the heat exhaust required is very expensive and wasteful. If a hydroponic system used, then once a week partially depleted nutrients must be dumped down the drain, creating pollution.The specialized nutrients are very expensive. It takes a long time and a lot of money to go from seed to usable MMJ medicine. The idea that I or my wife (as caregiver) could
meet my MMJ needs is ludicrous. I know. I have tried.

Dispensaries meet my need for quality MMJ. It is quite expensive. I do not smoke MMJ. I figure that the last thing I need is COPD to go along with my other physical ailments. I tried vaporizing, but I could still sense that it was doing my lungs no good. As a result, I ingest MMJ in baked goods. The "high" effect is not as strong, but the relief is very adequate and the relief lasts a long time. However, baked goods are a very inefficient way of delivering the medicine. As a result, I require approximately 1.5 ounces per month to control my chronic pain and muscles spasms. Without dispensaries, I
would be lost.

Every dispensary with which I have interacted has been extremely cautious and thorough in requiring proper identification to ensure that the MMJ is, in fact, dispensed only to fully and properly qualified MMJ patients.
The dispensaries are operated as legitimate businesses and carefully control the legal dispensing of MMJ. There is your first line of defense- the legitimate dispensary. If some liquor stores dispense alcohol to under age persons, they are at risk of being arrested through frequent police undercover "sting" operations. If a dispensary dispenses MMJ to unqualified persons, its operator(s) is(are) subject to felony arrest and prosecution.

Thank you for not wasting your office's, and the Court's money and resources, and clogging the Courts' dockets with an ill-advised misadventure into trying to regulate a Constitutional health issue that belongs in the bailiwick of the Colorado Department of Health.

Richard L. Everstine

Feedback

District Attorney Stan Garnett
Phone: 303-441-3798
Email: sgarnett@bouldercounty.org

Bcc: info@colorado420.com