The Supreme Court has upheld the DEA’s right to go after dispensaries, no matter what state law might say. And even one of the key proponents of medical marijuana says things have gotten out of hand.

“It’s just ridiculous the amount of money that’s going through these cannabis clubs. It’s absolutely ridiculous,” says Scott Imler, a minister in the United Methodist Church who has long been active in promoting medical marijuana.

Eleven years ago, he was working to pass proposition 215, the [statewide] ballot measure that legalized it. Today, Imler has second thoughts.

“The purpose of proposition 215 was not to create a new industry. It was to protect legitimate patients from criminal prosecution,” Imler says.

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.

“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 patient. Every patient group wanted to be included in the list,” Imler recalls. “And so we didn’t wanna 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.”

Imler says they were forced to make the proposition vague.

So the law voters passed mentioned not only cancer and AIDS but “...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.

“Let me just ask you plain and simple. Is there this proliferation because people are simply using, quote, unquote, medical marijuana, to get high?” Safer asks.

“I think there’s a lot of that. And I think you know, a lot of what we have now is basically pot dealers in storefronts,” Imler says.

Many businesses calling themselves dispensaries or cannabis clubs advertise in alternative papers, as do doctors around the state who will give you a quick once-over and, for a price, a permit to buy.

“Most of these cannabis centers are buying their marijuana off the black market. They’re dumping millions of dollars into the criminal black market,” Imler says.

“Marijuana—what? Coming in from Mexico or wherever?” Safer asks.

“Some of it is,” Imler says. “Some of these places sell hashish, which comes in from the Becca Valley in Lebanon.”

“What you’re suggesting is that the traditional black market or part of the traditional black market is now legal?” Safer asks.

“Yeah. That’s essentially what’s happened,” Imler agrees.

....

And looking back on a decade of controversy, Rev. Scott Imler concedes that good Samaritans with good intentions weren’t enough. He argues it’s time for the federal government to step in and legalize and properly control medical marijuana.

“Until that happens, we’re gonna have what we have now, which is chaos,” he says.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 6:16 AM

 Pastor Scott left this comment at December 6, 2009 3:49 AM  
Well Brian . . . it's two years later and if I was "medical marijuana's fallen angel," I just got up and the chaos to which I was referring and that you were dismissing has exploded on the front page of the LA Times and the LA Weekly as the City of Angels grapples with an estimated 600 medical marijuana "dispensaries," only a handful of which operate in compliance with state law.

While I take no joy in saying "I told you so," the fact is I told you so.

Thirteen years after Proposition 215 passed and any high school kid in LA can buy themselves a medical marijuana card and visit a cannabis club near you. the only people who still can't get marijuana are those in the cancer and AIDS wards or who don't have an extra 80 bucks in their pockets to feed the black market beast.

Angel? NO.
Prophet? Well, if the shoe fits.

Rev. Scott T. Imler
Co-Author, Proposition 215
Founder and Federal Felon of the
Los angeles Cannabis Resource Center (Ret.)

 Brian Sorgatz left this comment at December 6, 2009 11:54 AM  
The facts, Reverend, continue to vindicate my argument, not yours. By saying, “I told you so,” you suggest that compliance with marijuana law is an inherent virtue for its own sake. How can you honestly think this way? If federal law can be so outrageously, stupidly wrong about cannabis, why should you put so much faith in state or local law on the subject?

If you think it’s evil for a high schooler to have easy access to pot, you and I will have to agree to disagree. The “black market beast” you mention is clearly a consequence of unjust laws that prohibit marijuana for the general population. Have you no power at all to reason about causes and effects? Again, you’re making my point for me.

 Anonymous left this comment at January 25, 2010 9:35 AM  
This is not medical marijuana's fallen angel but a turn coat on the creator, how can you propose to be so close to God and side with men who want to destroy his creation? How can you think man's laws trumps natures laws? We have a war on a plant that is the 2nd largest absorber of CO2 on the planet next to bamboo and it can be grown in way more environments, in a time when CO2 levels are rising. Could it have anything to do with killing off of our ecosystem coupled with using a fossil fuel that takes 70 million years for the earth to produce vs. a carbon neutral fuel such as methanol, derived from hemp, that only takes 7 months to grow! You all need to do your research and learn why it is REALLY illegal...for it's industrial applications that could help this country on it's way to becoming self sufficient away from the banking cartels! Natural resources are real wealth...NOT MONEY!!! Why do we have a war on one of the best in hemp? Learn here: http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0199/et0199s11.html

 Anonymous left this comment at January 25, 2010 9:57 AM  
I also wanted to add that the only "drug" that has never killed a single person in the entire history of the human race and is still classified as a schedule 1 along with heroin, cocaine and opiates...is hemp. Their has never been one death attributed to cannabis as the primary cause of death...EVER!!! I also believe that those other drugs also could serve a purpose in the medical field as a NATURAL alternative to all the synthetics with horrible side effects! The war on drugs is a war on our own citizens, families and neighbors and has been a horrible failure costing the tax payer BILLIONS if not more in revenue to turn ordinary citizens into criminals and creating new criminal cartels like alcohol prohibition did with the Al Capone's in that day and age. So they tax us to wipe out natural resources and do all this harm to humanity and nature where no one profits, unless you happen to be the people profiting from keeping natural alternatives in the black market while your synthetics in the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex train our physicians to become legal drug dealers. Did you know that our doctors and hospitals kill more people than cancer or heart disease through misdiagnoses, secondary infections and side effects from synthetic drugs! Regulation works as proven with alcohol and tobacco products. Legalization of nature and regulation of any derived drug will be far more successful protecting our children than the war we have on nature and our own citizens like we do now. Some documentaries to watch: "In Pot We Trust" and "Run From the Cure, The Rick Simpson Story"

 Pastor Scott left this comment at March 14, 2010 4:24 AM  
Sorry to be so delinquent in responding to Brian and Mr. Anonymous.

But here goes, one at a time: You are correct Brian, I happen to believe that following the law is an inherent virtue for its own sake, and yes even when we have good reason to disagree with the. It's called a social compact, it’s how civilized folks long before me have decided that society is best served. In American we call it democracy although that concept is highly arguable these day, given the People voted for Prop 215 overshelmingly and still the feds ignore it.

What I think about high school kids smoking pot isn’t the issue, it what their parents and teachers and the rest of society thinks that determines whether they can smoke pot, smoke camels, smoke crack, or smoke a Virginia ham. I happen to agree with most every point you’ve made except that we are free to pick and choose the laws we will abide and those we won’t. Now, the fact is we do that all the time – sometimes surreptitiously like breaking the speed limit or cheating on our taxes. Folks don’t usually shout these infractions from the roof tops unless they have a political axe to grind in which case their “crime” can be construed as an act of civil disobedience – an honorable and time-tested social protest. But inherent in the tactic of C.D is the willingness to pay the price for the disobedience – that’s the whole point.

The fact is Brian almost 20 years ago now, a handful of AIDS patients and their families got together to find a better way. A better way to meet their unique medical needs for cannabis and a better way to address the unique legal predicament in which they founds themselves. They petitioned and wrote letters and made phone and got dragged into court time after time for trying to score a bag, grow a few plant, or smoke a joint just to get through n otherwise miserable day of nausea, vomiting, and pain. In each and every instance they, their doctors, their caregivers and loved ones would quietly and and profoundly speak their truth and plead their plight and in each and every case te presiding judge would offer sympathy often through tears of their own – sincere, intelligent, honorable jurist whose only ambition was service with integrity to the law. Was the law wrong. You’re damn right it was wrong and the judges more often than not would say so, more often than not would chide police and prosecutors for not exercising THEIR discretion to keep these people out of the courts and out of harms way . And without exception the judges would tell us, “I’ve looked and looked and there is nothing in the California statutes I that says marijuana is an acceptable medicine. Then they’d hand down the lightest sentence possible under the law and suggest that we contact our legislators and change that sad fact.

And that’s exactly what we did in ’93, ’94, 95. Every year our bill passed with 2/3 majorities in both house of the legislature only to be vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson. So in ’95, with no money and even less experience we decided to launch a statewide initiative campaign with a rag-tag cadre of AIDS and cancer patients, based solely on hope and a deep and abiding conviction that our cause was just and that the truth would set us free. And you know who the biggest most vociferous nay-sayers of the day were, Brian. The pot legalization movement, who were loathe to have the sharpest arrow in their quiver of legalization arguments taken away by a bunch of homos – that who. But sorry our right to a decent standard of wellness trumps your right to a gluttonous Saturday night at Jack In the Box. [Continued -- Rev. Scott Imler -- 3-14-10]

 Pastor Scott Imler left this comment at March 14, 2010 4:26 AM  
So we told our stories, over and over and over again, just like we had told those judges in case after case, after case. Marijuana is a medicine, we use it to feel better, to alleviate our pain, to ward off wasting disease, to tolerate chemo-therapy, to maintain what little eye-site we have left, to keep our paralyzed legs from jumping involuntarily out of our wheel-chair stirrups. We’re not out to party. It’s not about getting high. It’s about living with some small portion of normalcy and dignity what little time we have left. Please believe us. Please help us.

And you know what Brian, the voters -- armed with some of the best bureaucratic bul-shit detectors known to man -- did just that. They believed us. They trusted us. They heard our truth and they set us free, Brian.

So if yor so damn-fire certain that high-schoolers should be able to smoke pot, then you go tell that to the voters. Go tell your story over and over and over again for six years. You go collect a million damn signatures for the high-school pot smokers initiative and get by the bull-shit detectors of 56% of the voters, and legalize pot brownies for kindergartners. You do that Brian and you’ll solve all of or problems of access to marijuana. But until you do, you and your pot and hemp legalization buddies – the same ones who originally oppose Prop. 215 because it was going to cut in on their action – you should back the hell off. Because I promise you, dude, if you succeed in fucking this up for patients – which you’re well on your way to doing, it won’t be the police OR the feds you‘ll need to be worrying about nor will you be so anxious for folks to take the law into their own hands.

Pastor Scott Imler
Your still falling angel

Rev. Scott T. Imler, Pastor
Crescent Heights United Methodist Church
West Hollywood, CA
Co-Author, Proposition 215
Founder and Federal Felon of the
Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center (Ret.)

PS: My sincere apologies to the owner of this blog for the color of my candor.

PSS: Recent toxicology reports on 200 marijuana samples collected from 200 different non-state compliant Los Angeles cannabis “dispensing collective” ALL tested positive for pesticides at a minimum of 1600 (yes – sixteen hundred) times acceptable human levels for consumption. Just thought the parents of those high-schoolers of your would want to know the unreported cost of picking and choosing what laws we’re going to abide.

PSSS: Sorry Mr. Anonymous. I’ll have to take a rain-check.

 Brian Sorgatz left this comment at March 14, 2010 2:17 PM  
Welcome back, Reverend. As far as I’m concerned, it’s never too late to debate this issue with you.

Respect for the rule of law is one thing; surrender to the tyranny of the majority is quite another. The human individual has a natural right to be free—even when society fails to honor it. For example, I happen to think Socrates was a fool for agreeing to drink the hemlock. When Athens failed to honor his natural rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, it lost most of its legitimate claim to his respect. His was a sanctimonious, empty martyrdom. Let’s none of us follow his example by martyring ourselves so pointlessly.

I’m not only disappointed but also surprised that you encountered such hostility from within the marijuana movement. Most of us acknowledge the medical angle as a particularly urgent subcategory within the drive for all-out legalization—which would serve patients all the better by eliminating the need for a doctor’s note. We’re all in this together. Did they actually say “bunch of homos”? I wouldn’t expect such homophobia from the cannabis community. Some of my fellow libertarians, namely Thomas Szasz and his disciples, oppose Prop. 215 because it “reinforces the therapeutic state.” Although I disagree with Szasz on this, I encourage you to study his argument carefully. His point of view and yours are mirror images of each other. For both of you, a rigid, tight-assed idealism makes the perfect the enemy of the good. Let’s practice moderation in all things, including idealism.

 Jason left this comment at March 14, 2010 6:38 PM  
The most important question to keep in mind when looking legal medical cannabis from a human perspective is, "how important is it for patients who need cannabis to get it?" I submit that their need is more important than the goal of keeping pot away from those who just want to get high. Compare the harm of untreated patients to the harm of cannabis being used as a recreational drug. It's not crack.

So do some people just break the law to get stoned? Yes. It's not exactly what I would call an emergency.

Jason Sterling
Patient/Acitivst

 pastor Scott left this comment at March 16, 2010 2:08 AM  
Thank you all: Brian, Jason, and Mr. Anonymous as well. - It's ironic that you end your response with "making the perfect the enemy of the good." It's the argument I made to Jack Herrer in early december 1995 down at Venice Beach as we began signature gathering for Proposition 215 to get him to drop his Hemp initiative and get behind Prop 215.

For the record I happen to agree will all of you except on the one salient point of this whole discussion.

Jason's contention that cannabis isn't pharmacologically dangerous enough to justify a prohibition that would impede access for patients and thus makes its prohibition little more than puritan social control is a good point. As is Brian’s suggesting on the other hand that trampling personal sovereignty and individual freedom--even fig-leafed with mob-rule at the ballot box -- is still just social control. Mr. Szaz says the therapeutic- nanny-state is just plain and simple social control. And Mr. Anonymous says it’s all a corporate canard to thwart alternatives to their rapacious profit centers in fossil fuel derivatives -- the ultimate social control conspiracy. Like I said I agree. But that’s what all political struggle is about – social control. Social control of space, social control of resources, and social control of that most dangerous and profound and nettlesome thing on the entire planet – consciousness.

Where I disagree is that my position regarding “abiding the rule of law” (especially one you written yourself) and “saying what we mean and meaning what we say” in politics is the position here born of "tight-ass idealism." Quite the contrary, it's alot closer to a "come fuck me pragmatism" capable of absolutely obliterating useless labels and constructs and shattering stale dogma beyond recognition -- it's called the "radical center." And it's the reason Pro 215 has succeeded beyond any of our expectations.

IMHO __ OK __ IMO it’s the puerile vilification of nomenclature and theory like ”social control” that belies “tight ass idealism” and seeks to answers every problem with the same tired old one size fits all mantra like “social control" that we're all suppose to hate by rote. That's the very essence of ideology and propaganda .

Don’t get me wrong, both have their place – “idealism” in debate and “pragmatism” to actually effect social change.

And gentlemen, it has been my pleasure to pragmatically debate social control and the rule of idealism in law and social change with all of you.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Scott

 Brian Sorgatz left this comment at March 18, 2010 4:55 PM  
Scott, have you suddenly changed your mind about Proposition 215? In your last comment, you said it “has succeeded beyond any of our expectations.” That doesn’t sound like what you told 60 Minutes. You said it created unacceptable “chaos”—although I had trouble following your reasoning on the causes and effects of said chaos.

I’m convinced your heart is made of gold, but I would appreciate a little more logic from you.

 panamenya left this comment at June 7, 2010 5:11 AM  
Pastor Scott,

What I would really like to know is how do you feel about legalizing recreational marijuana for adults 21 and over? Is it really anybody's business what adults do in their own time if they're not hurting anyone? Should people be incarcerated for growing this plant? Should they be fined for having it in their possession?

I applaud you and your valiant efforts to get medical marijuana the legitimacy it deserves, but shouldn't this plant be legal altogether? Wouldn't it be better for the medical MJ movement if recreational were also legalized, regulated, and taxed? It would keep people from abusing the spirit of the medical MJ laws. It would drive the prices down for everyone. It would discourage the black market from thriving as it has in the past.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

 Medical Cannabis left this comment at February 14, 2011 12:40 PM  
In 1972, the US Congress placed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act because they considered it to have "no accepted medical use." Since then, 15 of 50 US states and DC have legalized the medical use of marijuana.

 northern lights yield left this comment at August 3, 2011 11:03 AM  
No matter what a court of law says about marijuana, I simply can't accept the hypocrisy around this issue. Cigarettes contain chemicals and nicotine which is an addictive DRUG, but marijuana which is mainly harmless is forbidden by law. How is that possible?

 Carl Olsen left this comment at August 9, 2011 6:26 PM  
There is a big, gaping hole in the logic here. Making marijuana medicine at the state level still leaves it classified as having no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States at the federal level. California should have filed an application to have marijuana removed from the federal classification that says it has no medical use in treatment in the United States. By failing to do that, California dropped the ball and left patients in the position of being federal criminals. Proposition 215 was doomed to failure because of this omission. The chaos is a direct result of its failure to take the next step of federal reclassification.

 Brian Sorgatz left this comment at August 10, 2011 1:23 PM  
Carl,
What makes you so sure it's the federal government's call to make? If Washington, D.C., had enough shame, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution would suffice to shut it the hell up on medical marijuana.

Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

 Carl Olsen left this comment at August 10, 2011 4:58 PM  
Brian,

Well, since that isn't happening, someone really ought to make the first move. I never said it was the federal government's call to make. I said the state should file to have it removed from the federal classification that says it's not medicine. California says it's medicine, right? No?

Carl

 Brian Sorgatz left this comment at August 12, 2011 2:16 PM  
In case you haven't noticed, Carl, activists have been working very hard to change federal policy. In the meantime, please don't blame the victim in this situation. The federal narcpigs have their sanctimonious thuggery on their own conscience. Why should you scapegoat California for its courageous defiance of them?

 Carl Olsen left this comment at August 13, 2011 3:26 AM  
The 9th and 10th Amendments are not self-enforcing. Thanks for proving people would rather make excuses than demand the state stand up for the people and file the necessary application for federal reclassification. That hasn't been done.

 Brian Sorgatz left this comment at August 14, 2011 2:33 PM  
That hasn't been done.

Not for want of trying on the part of activists. Does it offend your bureaucratic sensibility that the paperwork hasn't all been done exactly to your liking? Tough shit, pal. Let's focus our attention on the true outrage here, which has little to do with your precious paperwork.

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