California, Marin

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Article Launched: 07/08/2006 04:42:43 AM PDT

The Marin Independent Journal


Marin Alliance, the county's only medical marijuana clinic, celebrated its 10th anniversary Monday.

The Rev. Lynnette Shaw said she rented an office in Fairfax's School Street Plaza on July 3, 1996, as a campaign headquarters for Proposition 215, the statewide movement to legalize marijuana for medical use. But it turned into a dispensary quickly after the feds busted pot guru Denis Peron Aug. 8, 1996, and left close to 600 patients without medication.

"We had a secret, underground delivery thing going on," she said.

Shaw said staff and patients Monday celebrated with pizza, some cold drinks and É brownies.

"Yep," she said. "How'd you guess?"

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Huge Pot Bust Near Dogtown;
Eco-Terrorists Claim It Wasn't Them

By Don Deane
The Great-Western-Pacific Coastal Post
August, 2006

Millions of dollars of immature marijuana plants were ripped from the ground by federal rangers on July 20th. With the help of helicopters and all-terrain vehicles at the southern end of the Point Reyes National Seashore, plants were hauled to an undisclosed location.

Local eco-terrorists claimed no responsibility for the operation. The sophisticated pot plantation was replete with a well and a drip irrigation system. The Bolinas Border Patrol had no comment on the park police action. No arrests were made.

The typical federal park arrest for growing marijuana produces a charge of "manufacturing" marijuana and possession with the intent to distribute. Park marijuana arrests are aggressively prosecuted.

Park visitors and growers rarely cross paths as pot farms are in areas with little public appeal, according the LA Times which did an August 9, 2005 story titled "War of the Weed."

Park rangers and administrators are concerned that growers tend to poach wildlife, spill pesticides, divert water from streams and dump tons of trash, the Times article said.

In 2004, 100,000 marijuana plants were pulled up from national parks in California.

Rumors that supporters of the park are supplementing shrinking park budgets with growing, harvesting and marketing marijuana are completely without foundation according to one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

And according to the Times, "Pot growers are no longer the stereotype of hapless hippies. They are part of sophisticated criminal organizations schooled on the Colombian cartels' economy of scale," according to William Ruzzamenti, a 30-year Drug Enforcement Administration official.

Californians continue to deal a schizophrenic split between federal and state laws. Marijuana arrests are a low priority in California where citizens can get a card which makes it OK to smoke the herb and grow enough for one or two persons. The federal government continues to see marijuana as "killer weed," a major menace to society.

Marijuana smokers are arrested in the United States at a rate of one every 41 seconds. FBI statistics say there were 771,608 marijuana arrests in 2004. Of those charged with marijuana violations, 89 percent or 684,319 Americans were charged with possession only. The remaining 87,289 were charged with "sale/manufacture," Most of the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.

The total number of marijuana arrests in the US for 2004 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the US for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Marijuana arrests have more than doubled since 1993.

"Arresting adults who smoke marijuana responsibly, needlessly destroys the lives of tens of thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens each year," National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORMAL) Executive Director Allen St. Pierre says, adding that over 8 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges in the past decade. During this same time, arrests for cocaine and heroin have declined sharply, indicating that increased enforcement of marijuana laws is being achieved at the expense of enforcing laws against the possession and trafficking of more dangerous drugs.

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Fairfax man, 65, charged with pot cultivation

Staff Report
Article Launched:11/29/2006 11:25:42 PM PST
The Marin Independent-Journal

A 65-year-old Fairfax man found with 180 marijuana plants has been charged with cultivation of marijuana, according to a spokeswoman for the Marin County district attorney.

Richard Gatica told Fairfax police he was robbed at gunpoint at his Pine Drive home Oct. 27. On arrival, police smelled marijuana and saw evidence of cultivation.

Gatica conceded he had a "grow room" in the basement, according to a police report. When officers entered the basement, they discovered more than 180 marijuana plants, including roughly 100 plants that were mature.

Gatica told officers the marijuana was intended for a medical marijuana dispensary in Santa Barbara. Gatica was not arrested.

Police didn't disclose the amount of money Gatica lost in the robbery, but they did say three individuals were involved.

Mature marijuana plants can yield roughly $2,500 each, depending on the quality and quantity of marijuana buds. Gatica is due in court Dec. 13.

- Joe Wolfcale

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<span class=postbold>See:</span> More of Marin's youngest teens try drugs

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Medical pot figure charged with child molestation

- Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer
The San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, January 5, 2007


(01-05) 16:12 PST SAN RAFAEL -- A retired Marin County podiatrist whose drug arrest made headlines a decade ago when he argued that the marijuana on his property was actually medicine was arraigned today on charges of sexually molesting a 7-year-old boy.

Alan Lawrence Ager, 59, was charged in Marin Superior Court with one count of sexual abuse and two counts of lewd and lascivious behavior with a child under age 14, all felonies. He was arrested at his Nicasio home Thursday morning after somebody reported the abuse to the Sheriff's Department patrol division, prompting an investigation.

Marin County Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Crain declined to provide details about the crime or victim, other than to say the child was not related to Ager.

"It was ongoing, meaning it happened more than once," Crain said. "It's early in the investigation and our main concern right now is to protect the victim."

Ager, who is being held in the Marin County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail, is accused of molesting the boy between Oct. 1, 2005 and Dec. 25, 2006 in two or more jurisdictions, according to the charges. The lewd acts allegedly occurred on Christmas Day.

"These are vile acts and serious felonies," said Superior Court Judge Roy O. Chernus when he read the charges.

Deputy District Attorney Linda Witong said the victim "was more than an acquaintance," but declined to elaborate. She said enhancements alleging that the sexual abuse was continuous make Ager ineligible for probation. He would face a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

In 1999, Ager was sentenced to a year in jail and his son Daniel was sentenced to six months for cultivating and selling marijuana. It was the end of a long battle that started in 1996 when 135 marijuana plants were found at Ager's sprawling home overlooking the San Geronimo Golf Course and Nicasio Valley.

Arguing that he needed the drug for back pain, Ager was the first in California to invoke Proposition 215, the Medical Marijuana Initiative, during trial. The initiative, which was passed two months after his arrest, allowed individuals with medical conditions to grow and use marijuana, but it did not protect pot distributors.

The podiatrist was eventually convicted after one mistrial and a long, bitter fight, including accusations by Ager that sheriff's deputies assaulted him in jail.

In the end, Ager, a former director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, was allowed to possess up to an ounce of marijuana during his five years of probation to treat what he said was chronic pain from a car accident.

Ager had also been arrested in 1993, after more than 1,100 marijuana plants were found hidden in a hollowed-out haystack, in his shed and guest house, but the charges were thrown out because of alleged irregularities in the investigation and Ager was instead convicted of structuring, a form of money laundering, and given probation.

E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com

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The Coastal Post
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 - (415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924

January, 2008



Landlords Of Medical Cannabis Centers Threatened
With Real Estate Forfeiture
By Jacqueline Patterson


Many Bay area medical cannabis dispensary operators, including Marin's own lyrical Lynette Shaw, rallied in Downtown San Francisco on December 20th in protest of the Drug Enforcement Administration's recent execution of another attack on medical cannabis dispensaries.

In an effort to overcome the obstacles raised in the raid tactics the DEA employed in earlier attempts to circumvent a compassionate community of medical cannabis connoisseurs, the feds have resorted to sending letters to landlords who rent commercial space to medical cannabis providers, first in Southern California back in July and more recently here in the Bay area. Landlords who own space occupied by medical cannabis dispensaries in Marin, San Francisco, and Alameda counties received letters the second week in December.

So far, only one landlord has been tried and convicted In May of 2007, 62 year-old Thomas Grossi Sr. was ordered to forfeit nearly $400,000 and sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. When released from prison, Grossi will be required to complete a three-year period of supervised release. Such harsh punishment (in contrast there was a case in this country in which a pedophile was given probation because the judge deemed him too short to go to prison) can only be construed as a deterrent to any property owner who might think to advance the safe legal (under state law) distribution of medical cannabis. Surely productive law-abiding citizens will not risk their liberty or even their personal assets when threatened with such great risk of loss and trauma.

It would seem that inspiring landlords to evict tenants who cultivate, process, or distribute medical cannabis might be more cost effective and less labor intensive than the oft employed raids, but this new strategy has not only instigated potential legal defenses of the medical cannabis community, it has also drawn the attention of members of Congress, many of whom already opposed the use of brutal force against patients who were complying with local law.

Respectively, in a stroke of legal genius, the Union of Medical Marijuana Providers filed a lawsuit on December 6th that charges the DEA with violation of California Penal Code ¤ 518, "which provides that 'extortion is the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, or the obtaining of an official act of a public officer induced by wrongful use of force or fear or under color of official right."

The lawsuit attracted the attention of Michigan Congressman John Conyers who, on December 7, issued the following statement, "I am deeply concerned about recent reports that the Drug Enforcement Administration is threatening private landlords with asset forfeiture and possible imprisonment if they refuse to evict organizations legally dispensing medical marijuana to suffering patients."

The House Judiciary Committee Chairman followed the comment by stating that the Committee had already questioned the DEA in regards to the agency's departure from the limitations of federalism with respect to California' Compassionate Use Act.

Interestingly, the UMMP lawsuit was prefaced by a letter dated October 19th, 2007 to Timothy Landrum, Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Division Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The correspondence claims that on October 11, 2007 the DEA retaliated against the Arts District Healing Center, a medical cannabis dispensary that legally operated in Los Angeles for about 18 months, because that particular collective was the solitary seeker of legal protection from the landlord letters that were sent in August.

Since its inception in 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration has adamantly maintained that "marijuana" is a Schedule I drug with no approved medical value, only recently conceding (notably, in Showtime's independent film "In POT We Trust") that "smoked marijuana" has "no medical value" and is rightly confined to its Schedule I status.

If that is the case, however, then why are tins of machine rolled "marijuana cigarettes" sent to the five remaining patients who receive freeze-dried marijuana from the federal government under the investigational new drug protocol first implemented by Robert Randall in the mid-seventies? For nearly twenty-five years, the physicians of patients who had happened upon the evidence that cannabis alleviated symptoms of disorders or diseases which conventional pharmatherapies failed to adequately treat were invited to wade through years of paperwork so that they might one day receive, for said patient, shiny tin cans of ten-year-old marijuana.

Because the seeds and stems are left in the smokeable plant matter, aging patients, already in pain from rare diseases such as nail patella syndrome and multiple congenital cartilaginous exostoses, must unroll, clean, moisturize, and reroll their medicine into what only the American government refers to as "marijuana cigarettes" because that is the only method of ingestion that our government approved.

"The rights of one American belong to all," states George McMahon in his gravelly wizened voice but another George disagreed. McMahon was the last patient to be granted government shwag (which keeps him alive and kickin) before President George Bush Sr. shut the protocol down in response to an overwhelming flood of applications from AIDS victims dealing with the devastating effects of the disease, and the harsh side effects of the chemical cocktails meant to preserve the patients health.

For many of those patients marijuana meant the difference between life and death and Former President Bush closed the door on their only avenue of legal access to safe effective medicine at that time but when the MANN closes the Door, the rebels open a window and compassionate Californians built a movement that has inspired a nation (slowly) to follow.

In July, a custody hearing was held regarding my seven-year-old son; I didn't have the physical or financial capacity to get to the hearing, nor could I, at that point in time, care for my brave compassionate little boy. So custody was awarded to the petitioning party and as much as that hurts, it happens every day to thousands of medical cannabis patients all over the nation.

In this particular instance, the judge reprimanded me for using my children as "props" at a marijuana rally at which I spoke to garner support for the medical cannabis bill for which Missouri patients had secured a committee hearing.

My parents smoked marijuana recreationally for years when I was a child and I swore that I would never hide my use of the herb from my own children. On the contrary, I have made every effort to teach my children American values, which include making bad laws better, not that a judge in Iowa would ever understand that.

The "Conservative" camp in America's politic circus contends that legalizing medical cannabis would set a bad example for the children but as Patients Out of Time (which is what the POT in "In POT We Trust" really stands for) Director, Mary Lynn Mathre points out, we should be teaching our children that "medicine should only be used when needed and at the appropriate dosage. Medicine should not be used for fun." If the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs prevalent in youth culture today is any indication, I think that message may have gotten lost in the mail.

Meanwhile, medical cannabis providers will brace themselves against the raids, from which they now have a bit of a holiday reprieve, and continue the struggle to provide patients with cannabis and edibles because as Mickey Martin of former Tainted fame says, "providing safe effective reliable medicine to people who need it, gives us a purpose.'

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Jan 16, 2008 3:26 pm US/Pacific

Former Marin Doctor Gets 16-Years For Molestation

CBS 5 CrimeWatch

SAN RAFAEL (BCN) ― A retired Nicasio physician was sentenced in Marin County Superior Court Wednesday to 16 years in state prison for sexually molesting a boy during a 14-month period.

Deputy District Attorney Linda Witong said Alan Lawrence Ager, 59, also must register as a sex offender and pay restitution in an amount to be determined after a court review.

Ager pleaded guilty in September to one count of engaging in three or more acts of substantial sexual conduct with a child under age 14. Two lewd acts on a child charges were dropped.

He was arrested for inappropriately touching a boy on at least 30 occasions between October 2005 and November 2006. Police said the boy was 5 years old when the molestations began.

The boy's mother informed authorities when she came upon Ager in a room standing next to her son whose pants were down, authorities said.

Ager is the former director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana and he served a year in jail in 1999 for growing hundreds of marijuana plants he claimed where for medical marijuana patients.

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Fairfax turf war over medical marijuana

The Marin Independent Journal
Richard Halstead
Article Launched: 02/26/2008 11:32:25 PM PST

<table class=posttable align=right width=300><td><tr class=postcel><img class=postimg src=bin/shaw_lynette-2008></td></tr><tr><td class=postcell><span class=postbold>Lynnette Shaw, founder and director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, is seen at her Fairfax facility.</td></tr></table>The founding director of Marin's only sanctioned medical marijuana dispensary says the spokesman for a new medical marijuana delivery service is out to get her - but he says she is just blowing smoke.

Lynnette Shaw, director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, has obtained a temporary restraining order against Jeffrey Rifkind, the spokesman for We Deliver, a new medical marijuana delivery service that began operating in Marin earlier this month.

Rifkind said he was hired by a Marin couple who are managing the delivery business to help market it. He said he receives no money from sales. Rifkind said the couple want to remain anonymous because they're fearful of reprisals from the federal government.

Rifkind and Shaw are hardly strangers. Rifkind has served as a broker between Shaw's Marin Alliance and the company that processes its customers' credit card payments for a decade.

Shaw claims that Rifkind began making threatening phone calls to her and the staff of her Fairfax dispensary after an article appeared in the Marin Independent Journal on Feb. 5 publicizing the launch of the delivery service.

In documents filed with the court, Shaw states that Rifkind shouted such phrases as, "I'm going to get you. I'm going to take you down. I'm launching World War Three against the club."

Shaw said she fears for her life and has hired a bodyguard. She has asked the court to make Rifkind pay her $500 to cover the guard's salary.

"This is all utter fabrication by Lynnette," Rifkind said. "She doesn't like competition."

When Rifkind visited the Marin Alliance storefront on Feb. 7, Shaw refused him entry and called the Fairfax police to have him removed from the premises. Shaw said Rifkind parked his BMW "with an overly large advertising sign reading, 'Medical Marijuana Delivery'" in the Marin Alliance's parking lot and "tried to sell marijuana out of his car to my incoming clientele."

Shaw said Rifkind has attempted to "buy into my business" several times over the years. The Marin Alliance has 4,800 members and dispenses to about 800 Marin residents each month. Shaw, whose pot clinic logs about $1 million in annual marijuana sales, declined to disclose her salary, or the salaries paid staff members.

The Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, situated next door to a Little League field in Fairfax, is the only sanctioned medical marijuana dispensary in Marin. When clubs tried to open in other Marin cities, local officials moved swiftly to ban them.

Rifkind said he visited the Marin Alliance's office on Feb. 7 to notify Shaw that the cost of her credit card redemptions was about to be raised. Rifkind said she had been refusing to take his calls. Rifkind vehemently denies attempting to sell marijuana out of his car.

"If this statement is not retracted entirely, I may have no choice but to bring an action against her for slander and or libel," Rifkind wrote in a court filing.

As for trying to buy the club, Rifkind said he once made an offer on behalf of his brother, Stephen Rifkind, a lawyer who is representing him in Shaw's civil action. The court has granted a temporary restraining order requiring Rifkind to stay away from Shaw until a court hearing can be held to assess the merits of her request. A medical condition kept Rifkind from attending a Feb. 20 hearing date. The hearing is now scheduled for 9 a.m. March 26.

Shaw's attorney, Fairfax Councilman Larry Bragman, said he helped Shaw with her business permit several years ago. Bragman said it was Shaw, not he, who subpoenaed Fairfax police Officer Hector Rodriguez last week to testify at her hearing. Bragman said he hasn't discussed the merits of the case with Rodriguez, who was called to evict Rifkind from the Fairfax dispensary.

"I met him briefly in court - that was the extent of it," Bragman said.

This is not the first time Shaw has sought a restraining order against competitors in the medical marijuana field. In 1997, she asked the court to protect her from Les and Darice McKay, a Point Reyes couple who sought unsuccessfully to open their own medical marijuana dispensary in Marin.

"This is her mode of operation," McKay said after hearing of her feud with Rifkind.

At the time, Shaw declared that the McKays "were threatening to kill me, rub me out and take over the club."