California Supreme Court Bolsters Protection For Marijuana Users

While most folks seemed to be hanging on the U.S. Supreme Court's startling decision to toss out limits on corporate campaign spending yesterday, we found ourselves far more interested in a judicial ruling way out west.

The California Supreme Court issued what amounts to a stay-out-of-jail-free card to authorized medical marijuana users in the state by striking down limits on how much weed those people could grow or possess.

In a unanimous decision, the state's highest court upheld an appellate court's decision in a case involving a man with a long history of chronic pain who turned to marijuana for relief after consulting with a doctor and receiving a written recommendation for the drug.

 

The man was arrested after police, acting on an informant's tip, found a bunch of marijuana plants growing in and around the guy's house in Lakewood, Calif. The cops also found about 12 ounces of dried weed, but none of the typical sorts of evidence, such as ledger sheets, indicating he was in the business of selling the stuff to other people.

A jury ultimately found the guy guilty of possessing more than an ounce of marijuana and of cultivating it. But an appeals court threw out the limits provision that had tripped up the man.

But Thursday's decision in the case snuffs out part of a 2003 law that spelled out limits for use and possession made possible by the 1996 ballot initiative that cleared the way for medical marijuana in the state. Those limits were 8 ounces of dried marijuana, six mature plants or 12 immature plants.

The original initiative set no limits on amounts, so the California Supremes said it's OK for people with doctors' permission to grow or possess "reasonable amounts" of weed, whatever that means.

The upshot of the decision? "The big impact is going to be the change in perception by the district attorney," Allison B. Margolin, a Los Angeles attorney told the Los Angeles Times. "It's going to be difficult for a narcotics expert to testify that an amount is unreasonable."