Ottawa Compassionate Care

By LaNia Coleman | The Bay City Times
October 01, 2009, 5:24PM

Spurred in part by a raid on an apparently legal marijuana grow in West Branch, supporters of the state’s new medical marijuana law plan to protest on the steps of the state capitol.

The Michigan Medical Marijuana Association is sponsoring the Medical Marijuana Freedom March from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, on the west steps of the capitol building.

Organizers expect more than 1,000 protesters to draw attention to the “continued failure of Attorney General Mike Cox to issue clear guidelines for the newly-enacted, Michigan Medical Marijuana Act,” organizers said.

Lack of direction from the state has led to uneven and “often arbitrary law enforcement,” promoters claim.

“The people have made their desire clear,” said organizer Ron Klug, the West Branch man whose plants were seized Sept. 10.

“By an overwhelming margin, voters said they want to protect patients.”

Klug says Cox “is obligated to issue guidelines for how the program is supposed to work.”

March organizers want the government to clarify vague areas of the law, including what constitutes an enclosed and locked facility, whether patients are shielded from drugged driving laws and whether medical marijuana can be grown outside and, if so, under what conditions.

“Patients and police often differ in answering those and other questions,” Klug said.

Arrests and raids on the homes of authorized growers “are a tremendous waste of police and public resources, plus being extremely distressing to otherwise law-abiding and seriously ill patients,” said John Wells, march director.

“Cultivators can find themselves out thousands of dollars worth of equipment and may see months’ of work destroyed,” Wells said.

“Why do we continue to waste scarce public dollars arresting cancer patients?”

Klug, 59, is permitted to grow marijuana for his personal use to ease severe and chronic back pain from degenerative disc disease and remnants of an old slip-and-fall injury.

The Strike Team Investigative Narcotics Group seized seven 3- to 5-foot-tall plants that Klug had outside in a locked, chain-link fence with a roof.

STING agents left four plants Klug had in the house.

State police have declined to comment on the investigation but a spokesman has said there may be a problem with the outdoor growing area.

In the Nov. 4 general election, 63 percent of voters approved Proposal 1, the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act.

The law allows registered patients and primary caregivers to maintain a crop of a dozen plants plus 2.5 ounces of usable marijuana and “any incidental amount of seeds, stalks and unusable roots.”

Products must be kept in “an enclosed, locked facility,” the law states.