War Breaks Out Within The Marijuana Legalization Movement

[Jim Finnel]

i've been trying to guide our conversation into less personal directions. i hope i'm getting through. perhaps we need to re-read the article and try to focus on the issues raised rather than focus on the individuals who raised them. even if a person has dubius background (i'm not saying thats so, i don't know) that doesn't mean that they can't make legitamate points or speak truth. to me the topic should be the issues more so than the speakers.

i'm gonna go to bed now secure in the knowledge that this conversation is going to stay friendly and respectful. its the way we roll

 

[Medifreddie]

imo the first priority is safe access for patients. the needs of sick and suffering people should come before any other considerations. if taxing gets them their meds than i say ok lets do it, for now. of course people in jail are definately suffering also, along with their loved ones. i also dream of a world where Cannabis is free but perhaps expedience is called for right now and when the sick are taken care of we can move on to the other issues.

this is a conversation that needs to be had in the movement. we need to find common ground and build upon that. we don't need to be divided and conquered. we can disagree but lets do it in a positive spirit.

I agree wholeheartedly but unfortunately it is difficult if not impossible to isolate the priority of safe access without addressing the current dispensaries/commercialism situation. Achieving across the board taxation is certainly a step forward but will not help patients in terms of guaranteed quality & reasonable/regulated medicine pricing nor improve the growers/suppliers position. All 3 go hand in hand which is to say, you cant fix one without fixing the others regardless of which you start with first.

Expedience would be wonderful. However, over the long haul, reality tells me we will be better served with tenacity & perseverance. MF

 

[emeraldgreen]

I can't believe at this point and time we should settle for anything but full Legalazation. This should'nt have been illegal to start with. Don't you ever get tired of feeling like a mushroom be'ing fed shit from even the one's you think are on the same side only to find again it's the only the money.It's no suprise look at what's going on in the country. :thankyou

 

[BWC BayArea]

I'm not into character assassination until warranted. Here's one of many links I've found about Dennis Dennis Peron, longtime fighter for legal pot, gay-rights activist and candidate for the Republican nomination for governor of C. Funny thing is if u talk to the man in person he'll tell u the same stories. I can't speak on his more recent actions. But I look at guys like this like Mike Tyson (conceptually,minus the rape accusations). Although they may be shrouded by controversy u can't take away what they've done. This dude took a bullet in the name of the movement. I've seen bullets change lives. Even though he's openly gay I still see a man when I look at him. He's more of a man than a lot of str8 males. This is coming from a str8 male. Much respect to Dennis Peron, Jack Herer, and Ed Rosenthal. I've had the pleasure of being in the company of 2 of the 3. Each a pioneer in their own right.

 

[Botanica]

Funny thing is if u talk to the man in person he'll tell u the same stories. :

Dont be fooled by profiteers in prophets clothing.

I don't source my information from old High Times articles, I was on the front lines in SF in those days and there were thousands of sick people who were the force behind the Compassionate Use Act. There are lots of people who contributed to the political ideology and put themselves at risk. But make no mistake - most "dispenseries" are riding on the backs of sick people for personal advantage.

Just a little reality check, if you read the original article in this post and how it demonizes OU and all the cannabusinesses, your hero was apparantly one of them until his return last week from Burning Man where he must have been absolved of all sin, washed clean of OU capitalism and found himself unemployed. He was one of the OU mainstays since their inception but now that he's been fired, OU is bad and Peron is good? He says he was fired due to the tax issue, do you know that for a fact? Maybe he and Lee thought there wasn't enough room for both of their egos in the same organization, or maybe they were both too greedy, ya think?

I was involved in the compassionate use of cannabis and supported across the board legalization long before the start of the CBC or even 215. I was there and I know what went on in San Francisco, I supported what happened in Santa Cruz and I was happy to go to Santa Monica to work for 215 when the movement was taken over by credible political activists and consultants. Peron reemerged after the fact, larger than life while he and OU continued profiteering from other peoples pain and suffering, just like many of the "dispensaries" do.

I am pretty confident in my position no matter what an old High Times article says because I was there when it happened and I am still here.

 

[sicntired]

This was going to happen sooner or later.I never trusted Norml cause they supported tossing guys like me in prison but wanted smoke.That was all I wanted as well and I paid for it.Till you have the man's boot on your neck you just don't appreciate the concept of legalization.Everybody in the reform movement wants my money.It's really hard to tell who has the right plan but if it isn't complete legalization it's a fraud.

 

[Botanica]

I concur.

 

[Jim Finnel]

I can't believe at this point and time we should settle for anything but full Legalazation.....

i agree. i want full legalization. how we get there is the issue. i doubt that there are many if any of us who want anything less. while i am willing in the short term to go with taxes i understand how difficult it will be to undo once we go down that road. the gov seldom if ever gives back something it takes away.

i'm so conflicted

 

[Pythaglio]

Dennis Peron and his ilk are lining their pockets with the blood of sick people just like the majority of the people in the medical marijuana business. He has hidden behind AIDS and cancer for decades to skim cash off of people who are sick and dying, and then he double dipped as he ripped off the growers who provided him with their hard earned product. You may recall that Peron was kicked out of the 215 movement prior to the 1996 election because his hypocracy and greed were an embarassment to the movement. He was pushed aside and the management of 215 was put into the hands of political consultants who got it passed with the help of Soros, Zimmer and others who saw Peron as the idiot who would guarantee 215's downfall. The fact that OU had him on staff in the first place undermines their credibility and reinforces that they are just like Peron and the rest of the common drug dealers profiteering from the pain and suffering of others.

U got any links or references I can read on this?

You would have to have been there.

Actually, I just read this story the other night when I was attempting to find out what the actual intent of the author's of Prop 215 was wrt dipensaries, making a profit, etc. Couple of things you left out. Support for Prop 215 was over 60% when the Ethan Nadelman coalition took over, and they did their best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and the reason Dennis had to give it to them was because he didn't have the money to make it happen. Money talks, bullshit walks. That's how things work in the US.

Anyway if you want to read the story Botanica was relating google "Fred Gardner" " "September 29 / 30, 2007" (use the quotes) and it pops up #1. The article is named "The Man Behind the MoveOn Ad--Bill Zimmerman or Bill-Did-Us-In?". There's a good laugh about the attorney general dealing sternly with Zonker from Doonesbury. I'd post a direct link but had a post pulled by User for linking to a Media Awareness Project article.

 

[Jim Finnel]

I'd post a direct link but had a post pulled by User for linking to a Media Awareness Project article.

if i pulled a MAP link it was an error on my part. i would usually have just posted the article here if appropraite and then changed your link to the in house version. i get pretty busy some days and ahead of myself. if anyone ever has questions about actions i take i don't mind being asked. feel free to pm me. we're here for you.

heres the article you refered to:


Bill Zimmerman or Bill-Did-Us-In?

By FRED GARDNER

The author of the lame "General Petraeus or 'General Betrayus?'" ad for MoveOn.org was none other than Bill Zimmerman, the Santa Monica p.r. man installed as Prop 215 campaign manager in the Spring of 1996. Zimmerman was assigned to replace Dennis Peron by Ethan Nadelmann (who was bankrolled by George Soros and several other billionaires, including a Rockefeller). Under Zimmerman's leadership Prop 215 started to lose its lead at the polls, but this reality went unpublicized and Zimmerman could and did claim credit for the monumental win in November.

Zimmerman is passing off his "General Betrayus" ad as another triumph. According to Tina Daunt of the Los Angeles Times, "Bill Zimmerman, the veteran democratic campaign manager who produced the controversial ads, said the group is pleased with the outcome.

"'The intent was to elevate these issues by drawing attention to the facts,' Zimmerman said. 'The idea was to jump start the debate. We succeeded in doing that.'"

Elevate what issues? The juvenile mockery of Gen. Petraeus's name diverted attention from the war itself. It could not have come at a better time for the War Party -just as the murder of 11 Iraqi civilians by Blackhawk mercenaries and Maliki's futile expulsion order exposed the pretense of an independent Iraqi government. And it played right into the Administration's hands by elevating Petraeus's personal role (even if there had been no pun on his name).

"With Zimmerman as the ad man, MoveOn has defiantly added more of an edge to its efforts," wrote Ms. Daunt. MoveOn reportedly got a big influx of contributions after Bush attacked the ad; so maybe it actually was a success in their terms.


The Hijacking of Prop 215.

By January, 1996, it was clear that Dennis Peron and his friends and allies were not going to come up with the signatures needed to get the medical marijuana initiative on the ballot. New York-based Ethan Nadelmann agreed to fund a professional signature drive in exchange for which he would run the campaign (via Zimmerman). Zimmerman then submitted ballot arguments emphasizing Prop 215 as an affirmative defense for those arrested (i.e., business as usual for law enforcement). Dennis and his lieutenant John Entwistle submitted alternative arguments emphasizing that the measure would be a bar to arrest and prosecution. Zimmerman's weaker version was approved and his status as campaign manager confirmed by Secretary of State Bill Jones, a Republican.

Prop 215 was ahead in the polls by a 60-40 margin when Zimmerman took over the campaign. Prospective voters said they'd made up their minds based on their own or a family member's experience and/or media coverage of Dennis's San Francisco Buyer's Club. The No-on-215 campaign was led by an overconfident Attorney General Lungren and other politicians and law enforcement officials who assumed the populace would buy their war-on-drugs propaganda forever.

Zimmerman ordered Peron not to talk to reporters and set about projecting a more respectable image -his own. "Every time I debate [Orange County Sheriff] Brad Gates," Zimmerman complained to an interviewer, "he always begins by saying, 'This bill was written by a dope dealer from San Francisco,' and emphasizes the looseness with which the Cannabis Buyers Club was run." Zimmerman said he would counter, "If Prop 215 were law, we wouldn't need such clubs."

Zimmerman produced three TV ads that ran in Southern California depicting doctors and pharmacists in conventional settings, but his modest campaign was overwhelmed by news stories focused on Peron after an Aug. 4 raid by 100 black-clad state Bureau of Narcotics agents closed the SFCBC. When Dennis challenged the legality of the closure order, Zimmerman convinced the northern California ACLU chapter not to file an amicus brief on his behalf.

The raid on Dennis's club came to the attention of Garry Trudeau (thanks to John Entwistle) and soon there appeared a Doonesbury strip in which Zonker's friend Cornell says, "I can't get hold of any pot for our AIDS patients. Our regular sources have been spooked ever since the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco got raided ... " Lungren urged California publishers to spike Doonesbury and held a press conference to reveal the evidence his investigators had assembled against Peron and the SFCBC. He lost his cool during the question-and-answer session. "Skin flushed and voice raised, Attorney General Dan Lungren went head-to-head with a comic strip Tuesday ... " is how Robert Salladay began his Oakland Tribune story.

A gradual, month-long decline in support for Prop 215 ended Oct. 1, the day of Lungren's press conference. The AG had Peron arrested Oct. 5 on criminal charges that included conspiracy to distribute marijuana -one more effort to make the vote a referendum on him and his club. Strong opposition was voiced in the closing weeks by Drug Czar McCaffrey, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Gray Davis, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, C. Everett Koop, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, George HW Bush, and 57 of Calfornia's 58 district attorneys, but Prop 215 passed by a 56-44% margin, with more than 5 million people voting yes. The wall of Prohibition was cracking.

Zimmerman's version of the campaign was relayed thus by Hannah Rosin of the New Republic in February '97: "The passage of Proposition 215 surprised even its most zealous supporters. In the months before the November election, they fought what they thought was an uphill battle against an enemy that tried to portray them as a front for the seedy drug dealers on Market Street... The pro-215 advocates stuck to their line: the referendum was simply about limited, medical use of the drug, and then only in extreme cases... The pro-215 activists tailored their image midstream; they hired a pinstriped professional, Bill Zimmerman, to run the campaign, and to run it at a conspicuous distance from people like Dennis Peron. 'He was pictured on election night smoking a joint and saying, "Let's all get stoned and watch election night returns," Zimmerman recalls. 'That kind of behavior supports the opponents' view that we are a stalking horse for legalization... He could ruin it for the truly sick.' Zimmerman's images stuck."

As soon as Prop 215 passed, Zimmerman was hired by Nadelmann to arrange (progressively weaker) medical-marijuana ballot initiatives in other states. After voters in Oregon and Washington approved theirs in 1998, Rolling Stone published a piece on medical marijuana by William Greider that dubbed Zimmermanm, who happened to be his primary source, "the national head of the movement." Greider proclaimed, "If this year's outcome turns out to be an important turning point, one explanation may be that the 1998 referendum propositions were different [than Prop 215]. They were designed to be law-enforcement friendly, and they included new regulatory rules that avoid much of the legal ambiguity and conflict that followed California's decriminalization vote in 1996." But the '98 election did not turn out to be a turning point. It may have been hard to see, because a super-nova keeps expanding after it explodes, but the movement led by Dennis Peron had begun to cool and lose political momentum from the time he was pushed aside in April 1996.



60 Minutes Rewrites History

The first segment on 60 Minutes Sept. 23 was just plain embarrassing -reporter Scott Pelley asking the President of Iran questions on the level of "When did you stop beating your wife?" Pelley asked, "What do you admire about President Bush?," which drew a look of bemused consternation."What trait ... " Pelley added helpfully. Ahmadinejad tossed it back: "As an American, tell me what trait do you admire?" There was a flicker of fear in the CBS man's eyes but he came up with, "Well Mr. Bush is without question a very religious man." Ahmadinejad still looked bemused as he replied, politely, "What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people, please tell me, does Christianity tell its followers to do that?"

The second segment -"Pot Shops," produced by David Browning, narrated by Morley Safer, and featuring Scott Imler as a Methodist minister- was an outrageous revision of history. Did CBS lay off all its fact-checkers in an economy move? Roll the tape:

Morley Safer: ... Even one of the key proponents of medical marijuana says things have gotten out of hand.

Imler (a 50-something man in a white collar with a prissy voice and a mincing manner): It's just ridiculous the amount of money that's going through these cannabis clubs. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Morley: Scott Imler, a minister in the United Methodist Church (shot of Imler in a white robe preaching to bored people in pews) who has long been active in promoting medical marijuana. Eleven years ago, he was working to pass Proposition 215, the ballot measure that legalized it. Today, Imler has second thoughts.

Imler (smiling, to Morley): The purpose of proposition 215 was not to create a new industry. It was to protect legitimate patients from criminal prosecution.

Morley (over clips of Zimmerman's Prop 215 ads): The aim back then, reflected in television spots, was for a highly regulated system in which licensed pharmacies would dispense medical marijuana to the seriously ill. Proposition 215's backers had people with AIDS, cancer, and glaucoma in mind.

Imler (sounding beleagured as he recalls being under enormous pressure from imaginary lobbyists): What happened when we were writing it was, as you can imagine, every patient group in the state and they all have their lobbies -you know, the kidney patients and the heart patients. Every patient group wanted to be included in the list. And so we didn't want to get in the position of deciding what it could be used for and what it couldn't be used for. We weren't doctors. We weren't scientists. We weren't researchers. We were just patients with a problem."


The drafting of Prop 215 was a collective process. The primary authors were Dennis Peron and John Entwistle; Dale Gieringer of California NORML; attorney Bill Panzer; Valerie Corral, a medical user, caregiver and gardener who insisted that cultivation be protected; and the late Tod Mikuriya, MD, who contributed the all-important opening line allowing doctors to approve use in treating "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." When Imler says, "We weren't doctors," he simultaneously claims authorship credit for himself and denies it to Mikuriya, who interviewed some 200 patients at the SFCBC in the early '90s and documented their ailments.

Gieringer says that Imler attended planning sessions regularly and that his past experience working on an initiative opposing nuclear power proved useful; but Gieringer can't recall anything specific that Imler contributed to the final version of 215, and acknowledges that the image of patients' groups clamoring to be protected is absurd on its face. "He was confabulating," says Gieringer about Imler's claim on 60 Minutes.

In an email to your correspondent dated 22 Aug 2005 Imler made no mention of any pressure from patients' groups seeking protection under Prop 215. He wrote, "Enjoyed your recent article about marijuana's continually emerging efficacy for the wide variety of ailments commonly treated with far more dangerous and expensive pharmaceuticals. You are certainly correct that the 'movement leaders' were aware of this reality in '95 & '96 during the preparation and campaigning for Proposition 215, which is why the 'any other condition' language was included" How and why did Imler came up with his 60 Minutes confabulation? It turned out to be the lynchpin for the whole segment, prefigured by Morley asking in his introduction, "How is the California state law working? The answer involves another statute: the law of unintended consequences." Click that play button again:

Morley: What you're saying is you were forced to make the proposition vague.

Imler: We were, yeah.

Morley (over a long shot of the ballot measure's text): So the law voters passed mentioned not only cancer and AIDS but (suddenly, we see a blow-up of the following words, as if they had been buried in fine print) "...any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." A decade later, if you've got a note from a doctor, you can buy medical pot for just about any imaginable condition. (Cut to a young black woman at a dispensary.)

Producer David Browning did not zoom in for a close shot of the words " any other illness for which marijuana provides relief" because if he had, the viewer would have realized it's not fine print, it's the first sentence of the initiative. This was a very subtle, very duplicitous maneuver. (You're doing a heckuva job, Browning.) The fact that Prop 215 covers people who use marijuana to treat a wide range of conditions is not an unintended consequence of vagueness forced on the authors by patients' groups. It reflects the understanding that Dennis Peron, Tod Mikuriya and the other authors had developed over years of listening to thousands of medical users.

And it reflects the way the components of marijuana actually work, modulating the rate at which neurotransmitters are released in various systems of the body -cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, excretory, immune, nervous, musculo-skeletal, and reproductive.

It often happens that an ardent disciple will wind up viewing the leader as a betrayer. The leader develops, changes his/her line, responds to changing conditions, etc., and wants the flexibility to do so at all times. The disciple has embraced the leader's program and/or philosophy at a fixed point in time, and remains committed to his/her understanding of the program while the leader advances. In the early '90s Dennis's constituents were mainly AIDS patients. He had lost his lover and all his best friends to the epidemic, and when he talked about "the sick and dying" he wasn't doing so for effect. By '96 he had 9,000 club members, many of whom were seemingly able-bodied young men, and he was saying "if they can prescribe Prozac to shy teenagers, all marijuana use is medical." Imler deplored this line. If he had been truly respectful, had related to Dennis as a leader whose vision was keener than his own, he would not have reacted with such fierce outrage.

"He's just jealous of me," says Dennis, sadly. "So, so jealous."

"A minister? How sinister -it finished her." -Pete Seeger

Fred Gardner edits O'Shaughnessy's, the journal of cannabis in clinical
practice.


NewsHawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: CounterPunch
Author: Fred Gardner
Copyright: 2009 CounterPunch
Contact: fred@plebesite.com
Website: Fred Gardner: Bill Zimmerman or Bill-Did-Us-In?

 

[Weed420]

I too wish for full legalization. But its only going to happen by referendum or initiative. Our elected officials will do nothing. This where a lot of the organizations like MPP have done a great diservice to the people who have contributed a lot of hard earned money. We need some people educated on how to get initiatives and referendums before the public and settle this issue once and for all.

 

[Medifreddie]

Wow, thanks for the post. Feinstein & Boxer voted against the 215? The twits. I'll remember that. My take is "We got it done in spite of ourselves". It doesnt really matter the characters involved or who didnt do what and who did. Ihe important thing is Prop 215 did pass and so here we are. A couple things:

1) The purpose of proposition 215 was not to create a new industry. It was to protect legitimate patients from criminal prosecution

Well, we definitely have a new industry, like it or not...

2) What you're saying is you were forced to make the proposition vague. Imler: We were, yeah.

And oddly, Prop 215 remains vague to this day.

Our next impending battle, the full legalization of marijuana should prove interesting. We are certainly a greater voice now than we were in 1996. peace n good luck MF

 

[anthonytaurus]

THERE IS NO WAR WITHIN THE MARIJUANA COMMUNITY. The goal is to legalize. The path to legalization is in regulation and taxation. The regulations and taxes don't matter as long as marijuana is legalized. Regulations and taxation only hurt the commercial growers.

I say this because I'm a personal grower. Most of us here who grow, do so in spite of the laws against growing. The problem is that we can't smoke out in the open or admit that we're marijuana smokers without persecution. Legalization will handle that issue. Regulation and taxation do no affect me because I grow in the comfort of my own home where I can't be regulated and taxed for what I produce and use especially if I don't tell anyone about it, like we all do now.

Anything contrary to that is just fear-ongering and that's just Bush league.

I think the original post is unnecessary and does nothing more than dilute the strength of legalization groups and create a problem where one did not exist. Yes, groups like NORML and MPP are waving the dollar bill. Sure, I'd love to see a return to common sense and simply doing the right thing because it's the right thing. But, we live in the USA. We should KNOW that's NOT going to happen.

The strategy is regulation + taxation = legalization. It's a formula that's working where 70+ years of common sense and "doing the right thing" has failed. I am not about to support a movement that takes us back to a failed path.

 

[Botanica]

Thank you for posting those articles, I had never seen them. My personal experience and perspective is a little different than the authors however, they substantiate what I already know. The 215 medical loophole has made Cannabusiness a huge money maker for the "leadership" and it isn't about helping sick people.

Thousands of sick people gave the movement momentum, from another perspective check out this excerpt from Prop. 215 Campaign Optimistic (DRCNet Activist Guide 10/96):

"On the flipside, the 'Yes on 215' campaign, led by Californians for Medical Rights (CMR), continues to gather steam. Managed by veteran political consultant Bill Zimmerman out of Santa Monica offices, CMR gathered nearly 600,000 of the 750,000 signatures used to quality Prop. 215 for the ballot. CMR also has offices in Sacramento and consultants around the state who bring top-flight expertise to endorsement-gathering, media strategy, fund raising, literature design and other campaign activities.

As of this writing, the key endorsements CMR has brought in are: the California Academy of Family Physicians (7,000 doctors), the San Francisco Medical Society (2,200 specialists), the Older Women's League of California and the California Legislative Council for Older Americans. These organizations demonstrate the wide appeal of Prop. 215 in the medical community and in a key, voting constituency -- senior citizens at high risk of cancer, glaucoma and other diseases for which marijuana can be a useful part of treatment.

CMR's lead proponent and spokesperson is Anna T. Boyce, a Registered Nurse living in Orange County. As an elected member of the California Senior Legislature, Ms. Boyce in 1992 authored a proposal to end criminal penalties for medical use of marijuana. When picked up by the California Legislature, the proposal began a three-year spate of pro-medical marijuana activity that attracted bipartisan support, but ran up against the governor's vetoes in 1994 and 1995 -- convincing proponents that an initiative was needed."

In San Francisco, sick people paid exhorbitant amounts of money for vast profit margins to individuals back then who used it to their financial advantage and its no different today.

It wasn't about compassion and it wasn't one guy who got 215 passed. It's not that different from the health insurance or pharmacutical executives who pay themselves tens of millions of dollars in salaries, it isn't because they want you to feel good or get well. Its about price gouging and limiting who can control the product and it will continue until there is across the board legalization.

 

[marvel]

Regulation and taxation do no affect me because I grow in the comfort of my own home where I can't be regulated and taxed for what I produce and use

Not true. It's entirely possible that marijuana will remain every bit as illegal to grow unless and until you purchase the appropriate licenses, pay the appropriate taxes, and go through the regulatory loopholes. What good has that done you? You're still a felon if you get caught growing your own. Ergo, you're in the same damn situation we're all in now.

 

[Medifreddie]

Not true. It's entirely possible that marijuana will remain every bit as illegal to grow unless and until you purchase the appropriate licenses, pay the appropriate taxes, and go through the regulatory loopholes. What good has that done you? You're still a felon if you get caught growing your own. Ergo, you're in the same damn situation we're all in now.

LOL@marv...So, there's that! Look folks, in sunny ol California the process is simple. Under Prop 215, if you have a doctor's "recommendation", for most statewide counties, you are legal to grow 6 matures or 12 immatures for your own medicinal consumption unless your doctor( approved by the state) deems your illness requires more. You pay the doc $150-200 for an examination, he gives you your recommendation/script and youre on your way. The amount you can grow/possess varies somewhat in a few counties but for the most part, it's 6/12. I should mention that San Diego doesnt want you to breathe without their say so, let alone grow or obtain medicine but that's another story.

You can be a caregiver and also grow medicine for other patients with cards but that gets a bit more tricky. You can go to a dispensary, register and buy your medicine if you cant grow for what ever reason or you just want to avoid the hassles of growing, security etc. If you stay within the guidelines/laws you can do any of the above. It's the law.

So, that's it. It's that simple. And that's where we are and it is what it is.. Taxation is not the same as legalization and if and when across the board taxation comes, it will not help the patients other than when the counties apposing taxation wise up and realize the revenues the sales tax will generate, there might possible more dispensaries for you to visit and spend your money. In the long run it will be a step forward but the patients, IMO, will not benefit a great deal from where we are now. IMO, Brother Jack H. is right. Taxation will just lead to more stores (yes, stores) which simply means more money being spent by the patients.

Full legalization is a whole different matter. Personally, I'm not sure the state of California is ready for it. Hell, we still havent got all the bugs worked out of Prop 215 and it's been 13 years since it was passed!

So, relax folks, one step at a time. If you read the posted article closely, the most important message therein is that the Prop 215 Initiative, loosely contrived as it was, is still such. And therein lies the largest hurdle to achieving full legalization. Think of full legalization as the house you want to build and your trying to use Prop 215 as the foundation. Enough said.

Until we reach the goal of full legalization and that could be a ways off, do your thing in the manner that makes you the most comfortable but just do it within the guidelines set forth. I dont see cause for an endless debate... peace n good luck MF

 

[sicntired]

I have to admit I wondered how long it would take before this exploded in our faces.I fully understand what the medical marijuana movement was all about but never thought it was going to help get us where we want to be.In Canada we have 3000 medical marijuana users with a population of 30 million.It's strictly medical marijuana and very hard to access.I'm afraid that the movement in America may have gone too far to stop and that tax and control may just be the only way we'll ever see legal marijuana.Canada's reform movement is almost entirely composed of a tax and control proponents.People are just trying to figure out the best way to defeat the prohibition of drugs, period.I agree that once the government gets a whiff of the tax revenue they'll never allow full legalization,although we are allowed to make our own beer and wine.

 

[sicntired]

if i pulled a MAP link it was an error on my part. i would usually have just posted the article here if appropraite and then changed your link to the in house version. i get pretty busy some days and ahead of myself. if anyone ever has questions about actions i take i don't mind being asked. feel free to pm me. we're here for you.

heres the article you refered to:


Bill Zimmerman or Bill-Did-Us-In?

By FRED GARDNER

The author of the lame "General Petraeus or 'General Betrayus?'" ad for MoveOn.org was none other than Bill Zimmerman, the Santa Monica p.r. man installed as Prop 215 campaign manager in the Spring of 1996. Zimmerman was assigned to replace Dennis Peron by Ethan Nadelmann (who was bankrolled by George Soros and several other billionaires, including a Rockefeller). Under Zimmerman's leadership Prop 215 started to lose its lead at the polls, but this reality went unpublicized and Zimmerman could and did claim credit for the monumental win in November.

Zimmerman is passing off his "General Betrayus" ad as another triumph. According to Tina Daunt of the Los Angeles Times, "Bill Zimmerman, the veteran democratic campaign manager who produced the controversial ads, said the group is pleased with the outcome.

"'The intent was to elevate these issues by drawing attention to the facts,' Zimmerman said. 'The idea was to jump start the debate. We succeeded in doing that.'"

Elevate what issues? The juvenile mockery of Gen. Petraeus's name diverted attention from the war itself. It could not have come at a better time for the War Party -just as the murder of 11 Iraqi civilians by Blackhawk mercenaries and Maliki's futile expulsion order exposed the pretense of an independent Iraqi government. And it played right into the Administration's hands by elevating Petraeus's personal role (even if there had been no pun on his name).

"With Zimmerman as the ad man, MoveOn has defiantly added more of an edge to its efforts," wrote Ms. Daunt. MoveOn reportedly got a big influx of contributions after Bush attacked the ad; so maybe it actually was a success in their terms.


The Hijacking of Prop 215.

By January, 1996, it was clear that Dennis Peron and his friends and allies were not going to come up with the signatures needed to get the medical marijuana initiative on the ballot. New York-based Ethan Nadelmann agreed to fund a professional signature drive in exchange for which he would run the campaign (via Zimmerman). Zimmerman then submitted ballot arguments emphasizing Prop 215 as an affirmative defense for those arrested (i.e., business as usual for law enforcement). Dennis and his lieutenant John Entwistle submitted alternative arguments emphasizing that the measure would be a bar to arrest and prosecution. Zimmerman's weaker version was approved and his status as campaign manager confirmed by Secretary of State Bill Jones, a Republican.

Prop 215 was ahead in the polls by a 60-40 margin when Zimmerman took over the campaign. Prospective voters said they'd made up their minds based on their own or a family member's experience and/or media coverage of Dennis's San Francisco Buyer's Club. The No-on-215 campaign was led by an overconfident Attorney General Lungren and other politicians and law enforcement officials who assumed the populace would buy their war-on-drugs propaganda forever.

Zimmerman ordered Peron not to talk to reporters and set about projecting a more respectable image -his own. "Every time I debate [Orange County Sheriff] Brad Gates," Zimmerman complained to an interviewer, "he always begins by saying, 'This bill was written by a dope dealer from San Francisco,' and emphasizes the looseness with which the Cannabis Buyers Club was run." Zimmerman said he would counter, "If Prop 215 were law, we wouldn't need such clubs."

Zimmerman produced three TV ads that ran in Southern California depicting doctors and pharmacists in conventional settings, but his modest campaign was overwhelmed by news stories focused on Peron after an Aug. 4 raid by 100 black-clad state Bureau of Narcotics agents closed the SFCBC. When Dennis challenged the legality of the closure order, Zimmerman convinced the northern California ACLU chapter not to file an amicus brief on his behalf.

The raid on Dennis's club came to the attention of Garry Trudeau (thanks to John Entwistle) and soon there appeared a Doonesbury strip in which Zonker's friend Cornell says, "I can't get hold of any pot for our AIDS patients. Our regular sources have been spooked ever since the Cannabis Buyers' Club in San Francisco got raided ... " Lungren urged California publishers to spike Doonesbury and held a press conference to reveal the evidence his investigators had assembled against Peron and the SFCBC. He lost his cool during the question-and-answer session. "Skin flushed and voice raised, Attorney General Dan Lungren went head-to-head with a comic strip Tuesday ... " is how Robert Salladay began his Oakland Tribune story.

A gradual, month-long decline in support for Prop 215 ended Oct. 1, the day of Lungren's press conference. The AG had Peron arrested Oct. 5 on criminal charges that included conspiracy to distribute marijuana -one more effort to make the vote a referendum on him and his club. Strong opposition was voiced in the closing weeks by Drug Czar McCaffrey, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Gray Davis, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, C. Everett Koop, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, George HW Bush, and 57 of Calfornia's 58 district attorneys, but Prop 215 passed by a 56-44% margin, with more than 5 million people voting yes. The wall of Prohibition was cracking.

Zimmerman's version of the campaign was relayed thus by Hannah Rosin of the New Republic in February '97: "The passage of Proposition 215 surprised even its most zealous supporters. In the months before the November election, they fought what they thought was an uphill battle against an enemy that tried to portray them as a front for the seedy drug dealers on Market Street... The pro-215 advocates stuck to their line: the referendum was simply about limited, medical use of the drug, and then only in extreme cases... The pro-215 activists tailored their image midstream; they hired a pinstriped professional, Bill Zimmerman, to run the campaign, and to run it at a conspicuous distance from people like Dennis Peron. 'He was pictured on election night smoking a joint and saying, "Let's all get stoned and watch election night returns," Zimmerman recalls. 'That kind of behavior supports the opponents' view that we are a stalking horse for legalization... He could ruin it for the truly sick.' Zimmerman's images stuck."

As soon as Prop 215 passed, Zimmerman was hired by Nadelmann to arrange (progressively weaker) medical-marijuana ballot initiatives in other states. After voters in Oregon and Washington approved theirs in 1998, Rolling Stone published a piece on medical marijuana by William Greider that dubbed Zimmermanm, who happened to be his primary source, "the national head of the movement." Greider proclaimed, "If this year's outcome turns out to be an important turning point, one explanation may be that the 1998 referendum propositions were different [than Prop 215]. They were designed to be law-enforcement friendly, and they included new regulatory rules that avoid much of the legal ambiguity and conflict that followed California's decriminalization vote in 1996." But the '98 election did not turn out to be a turning point. It may have been hard to see, because a super-nova keeps expanding after it explodes, but the movement led by Dennis Peron had begun to cool and lose political momentum from the time he was pushed aside in April 1996.



60 Minutes Rewrites History

The first segment on 60 Minutes Sept. 23 was just plain embarrassing -reporter Scott Pelley asking the President of Iran questions on the level of "When did you stop beating your wife?" Pelley asked, "What do you admire about President Bush?," which drew a look of bemused consternation."What trait ... " Pelley added helpfully. Ahmadinejad tossed it back: "As an American, tell me what trait do you admire?" There was a flicker of fear in the CBS man's eyes but he came up with, "Well Mr. Bush is without question a very religious man." Ahmadinejad still looked bemused as he replied, politely, "What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people, please tell me, does Christianity tell its followers to do that?"

The second segment -"Pot Shops," produced by David Browning, narrated by Morley Safer, and featuring Scott Imler as a Methodist minister- was an outrageous revision of history. Did CBS lay off all its fact-checkers in an economy move? Roll the tape:

Morley Safer: ... Even one of the key proponents of medical marijuana says things have gotten out of hand.

Imler (a 50-something man in a white collar with a prissy voice and a mincing manner): It's just ridiculous the amount of money that's going through these cannabis clubs. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Morley: Scott Imler, a minister in the United Methodist Church (shot of Imler in a white robe preaching to bored people in pews) who has long been active in promoting medical marijuana. Eleven years ago, he was working to pass Proposition 215, the ballot measure that legalized it. Today, Imler has second thoughts.

Imler (smiling, to Morley): The purpose of proposition 215 was not to create a new industry. It was to protect legitimate patients from criminal prosecution.

Morley (over clips of Zimmerman's Prop 215 ads): The aim back then, reflected in television spots, was for a highly regulated system in which licensed pharmacies would dispense medical marijuana to the seriously ill. Proposition 215's backers had people with AIDS, cancer, and glaucoma in mind.

Imler (sounding beleagured as he recalls being under enormous pressure from imaginary lobbyists): What happened when we were writing it was, as you can imagine, every patient group in the state and they all have their lobbies -you know, the kidney patients and the heart patients. Every patient group wanted to be included in the list. And so we didn't want to get in the position of deciding what it could be used for and what it couldn't be used for. We weren't doctors. We weren't scientists. We weren't researchers. We were just patients with a problem."


The drafting of Prop 215 was a collective process. The primary authors were Dennis Peron and John Entwistle; Dale Gieringer of California NORML; attorney Bill Panzer; Valerie Corral, a medical user, caregiver and gardener who insisted that cultivation be protected; and the late Tod Mikuriya, MD, who contributed the all-important opening line allowing doctors to approve use in treating "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." When Imler says, "We weren't doctors," he simultaneously claims authorship credit for himself and denies it to Mikuriya, who interviewed some 200 patients at the SFCBC in the early '90s and documented their ailments.

Gieringer says that Imler attended planning sessions regularly and that his past experience working on an initiative opposing nuclear power proved useful; but Gieringer can't recall anything specific that Imler contributed to the final version of 215, and acknowledges that the image of patients' groups clamoring to be protected is absurd on its face. "He was confabulating," says Gieringer about Imler's claim on 60 Minutes.

In an email to your correspondent dated 22 Aug 2005 Imler made no mention of any pressure from patients' groups seeking protection under Prop 215. He wrote, "Enjoyed your recent article about marijuana's continually emerging efficacy for the wide variety of ailments commonly treated with far more dangerous and expensive pharmaceuticals. You are certainly correct that the 'movement leaders' were aware of this reality in '95 & '96 during the preparation and campaigning for Proposition 215, which is why the 'any other condition' language was included" How and why did Imler came up with his 60 Minutes confabulation? It turned out to be the lynchpin for the whole segment, prefigured by Morley asking in his introduction, "How is the California state law working? The answer involves another statute: the law of unintended consequences." Click that play button again:

Morley: What you're saying is you were forced to make the proposition vague.

Imler: We were, yeah.

Morley (over a long shot of the ballot measure's text): So the law voters passed mentioned not only cancer and AIDS but (suddenly, we see a blow-up of the following words, as if they had been buried in fine print) "...any other illness for which marijuana provides relief." A decade later, if you've got a note from a doctor, you can buy medical pot for just about any imaginable condition. (Cut to a young black woman at a dispensary.)

Producer David Browning did not zoom in for a close shot of the words " any other illness for which marijuana provides relief" because if he had, the viewer would have realized it's not fine print, it's the first sentence of the initiative. This was a very subtle, very duplicitous maneuver. (You're doing a heckuva job, Browning.) The fact that Prop 215 covers people who use marijuana to treat a wide range of conditions is not an unintended consequence of vagueness forced on the authors by patients' groups. It reflects the understanding that Dennis Peron, Tod Mikuriya and the other authors had developed over years of listening to thousands of medical users.

And it reflects the way the components of marijuana actually work, modulating the rate at which neurotransmitters are released in various systems of the body -cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, excretory, immune, nervous, musculo-skeletal, and reproductive.

It often happens that an ardent disciple will wind up viewing the leader as a betrayer. The leader develops, changes his/her line, responds to changing conditions, etc., and wants the flexibility to do so at all times. The disciple has embraced the leader's program and/or philosophy at a fixed point in time, and remains committed to his/her understanding of the program while the leader advances. In the early '90s Dennis's constituents were mainly AIDS patients. He had lost his lover and all his best friends to the epidemic, and when he talked about "the sick and dying" he wasn't doing so for effect. By '96 he had 9,000 club members, many of whom were seemingly able-bodied young men, and he was saying "if they can prescribe Prozac to shy teenagers, all marijuana use is medical." Imler deplored this line. If he had been truly respectful, had related to Dennis as a leader whose vision was keener than his own, he would not have reacted with such fierce outrage.

"He's just jealous of me," says Dennis, sadly. "So, so jealous."

"A minister? How sinister -it finished her." -Pete Seeger

Fred Gardner edits O'Shaughnessy's, the journal of cannabis in clinical
practice.


NewsHawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: CounterPunch
Author: Fred Gardner
Copyright: 2009 CounterPunch
Contact: fred@plebesite.com
Website: Fred Gardner: Bill Zimmerman or Bill-Did-Us-In?

It's been a long time impression of mine that a lot of people are in this for their own needs and have only a very secondary desire for actual legalization as that would end their gravy train and their public profile.This was a well researched article that did nothing to change that fear and perhaps added to it.When I see backstabbing like was referred to here it makes me ill.

 

[BWC BayArea]

Thanks for the article.
User, what's the last major revenue producing anything in this country that wasn't taxed. Money will be pouring in from exporting. Once its taxed, looks to me like its taxed. I could be wrong tho. I'd rather see it taxed, because it can't be argued that it wasn't voted and paid for annually. That should hush most opposition. I feel if I can't purchase land outright and own it all while adhering to the laws w/out taxes, I can't c anything in this "free, democratic" society going untaxed. Produce I buy in Cali is untaxed, but the cost is low. With cannabis I just think its too big of a cash cow for many govs, corps, or enterprising individual to pass up. Sad, but capitalism runs the world I live in and I live in an area that's part of the heart of this movement.

 

[anthonytaurus]

I understand some folks' concerns over medical marijuana. But, Prop 215 was not put into place to help secure the profits of some "cannabusiness community". If they wanted to secure their profits, they'd simply not open up a dispensary and stay illegal.

We all know a person who sets up a business wants to do so openly and without repercussions from law enforcement. They have to be in favor of legalization because it offers openness and the ability to profit. You can not suggest or believe that the potential of being shut down is better for profits than legalization.

Medical marijuana is just a stepping stone on the pathway to legalization, not the end all. I think Bruce W. Cain, the author of that trash, is delusional in his thinking and does nothing more than try to create a rift where none existed. Read my blog post and see exactly what I mean and how I feel about this Bruce W. Cain fellow.

There is no war within the movement. It simply doesn't exist.