There is good reason that it is called Reason Magazine

A few days ago Steve Chapman, columnist and editorialist over at the Chicago Tribune, penned a well-reasoned rebuttal of the Cook County Board's latest nonsensical and misdirected efforts in the gun control realm.

"The levy was dubbed a 'violence tax,' which is exactly what it isn't. It would not target criminals who have malice in mind, but would fall entirely on the law-abiding."

As Chapman points out, these efforts are futile because the burden they impose never falls on the intended target and is instead borne by the population segment the tax purports to want to protect. And neither will it stop the flow of firearms and ammunition into the Cook County area. Nobody with any sense will pay the price within the county when a short drive to some neighboring county with politicians sensible enough to understand that Cook County has just handed their sporting goods shops a plum will provide the savvy shopper whatever firearm or ammunition desired... further shipping sales tax monies out of Cook county to the detriment of the citizens.

All of this is smoke and mirrors. Gun ownership and possession is all but illegal in Mexico, yet which group in Mexico is it that is unarmed (and unprotected) and which is armed to the teeth? Pot (do they still call it that?) is illegal in this country yet I’d wager I could find some and get it bought within the next 24 hours if I was of a mind. 

Prohibition doesn't make anything unavailable... it just makes it inconvenient and expensive and it protects nobody. The bad guys don't mind because if it disarms anybody it will be to their benefit. 

Prohibition by any name and under any guise does not work and history has taught us that it never will. The politicians and bleeding hearts of Cook County would do well to learn this and refocus their efforts on other issues. Education comes to mind.

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Should we should... or should we shouldn't?

So they want to decriminalize cannabis…

Seems some have been advocating that very thing for quite some time now… about 41 years… actually…

But making the stuff legal wouldn’t do much for the hysteria business… now would it?

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The Recession May Accomplish What Common Sense Could Not

California is considering legalization and regulation of marijuana

Last month a California State Assemblyman introduced a bill that would legalize marijuana and establish a taxing structure for the substance. Democrat Tom Ammiano says this would mean millions in tax revenue for the state. Considering that the state is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the funds from a marijuana tax could prove to be California’s salvation.

All things considered, Ammiano is probably correct. Pot is already the largest cash crop in the state, producing an estimated $14 billion annually and dwarfing all other agricultural production. All but a fraction of this money is black market, with only about $200 million in sales of medical marijuana subject to taxation. In addition to lost tax revenues, there is cost involved with interdiction efforts, and the monetary and human toll of the continuing drug wars along the Mexican border. With legalization would come an end to the revenue loss.

California is one of 13 states allowing marijuana cultivation, possession and sale for certain medical uses, but the feds continue to consider pot illegal under any circumstance. Under the Bush administration, the DEA had the authority to arrest medical marijuana providers in spite of legality under California law. There have been several recent incidents where owners and employees of California legal but federally illegal dispensaries have been arrested, charged and jailed. See one recent story HERE.

But with a change in administration in the White House seems to be coming some rational thought. Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced that federal intervention would end, and that states can decide their own rules on medical marijuana. Rep. Ammiano has seized upon this change and is attempting to make the best of it for his state.

The Anti-Saloon League Resurrected

As could be anticipated, however, special interests have pounced. Along with the religious element, the California Peace Officers Association and State Police Chiefs Association have raised all the usual arguments; the same as were used in the early 30’s by the alcohol prohibitionists. It appears to me that the cops' real (but unspoken) argument relates to job security. Once pot is legal, the narcs will have to find a new line of work.

The most common argument is that legalization would promote use. In the 30’s we found this not to be the truth with alcohol, and in fact, the opposite is more likely to be the case. Legally produced and regulated pot will be far more difficult to obtain than that which is currently peddled on the street corner.

The argument ignores the obvious; that pot is readily available even in spite of its illegal status. In an editorial in the Contra Costa Times, columnist Tom Hennessy admits he was once opposed to marijuana legalization. It was due to an interview with retired Orange County Superior Court Judge James Gray, a longtime proponent of legalization, that Hennessy had a change of heart.

Judge Gray was present at the Ammiano press conference announcing the legislation, where he stated "I served 25 years on the bench and I've seen the results of this attempted prohibition. It doesn't make marijuana less available, but it does clog the court system. The stronger we get on marijuana, the softer we get with regard to all other prosecutions because we have only so many resources."

In an earlier interview Judge Gray lamented the financial cost of the unwise laws, estimated to be in excess of $1 billion for California alone, and the lack of effect the laws have had. "We couldn't make this drug any more available if we tried.” Gray further contends that "Unfortunately, every society in the history of mankind has had some form of mind-altering, sometimes addictive substances to use, to misuse, abuse or get addicted to. Get used to it. They're here to stay. So, let's try to reduce those harms and right now we couldn't do it worse if we tried."

A majority of Californians probably recognize the futility in the anti-legalization arguments, so the likelihood that Ammiano’s bill will pass is high. This could establish a trend and steer us away from the draconian War on Drugs. We can hope.

~~

A Bit of History: Part I

I couldn’t sleep for some reason so I started pouring over archived files on my hard drive. I had thought I’d cull some of them to regain a little space, but instead I took a walk through 20 plus years of my past. It was interesting retracing the path. One folder contained a smattering of Eleanor Roosevelt’s newspaper columns, titled My Day. Mrs. Roosevelt penned the column six days a week, from 1935 until 1962. She missed only four days in that time, when her husband died.

The War of Booze in the 30's, and the War of Drugs Today:

Interestingly enough, the topic of her July 14, 1939 column was prohibition.

“A number of letters have come to me complaining bitterly about the fact that I said in an article recently that the repeal of prohibition had been a crusade carried on by women. I know quite well, of course that the Democratic Party took the stand in its platform that Prohibition should be repealed. I have always felt, however, that the women's organization for repeal, which was a nonpartisan organization, laid the groundwork which finally brought about the vote for repeal.

I was one of those who was very happy when the original prohibition amendment passed. I thought innocently that a law in this country would automatically be complied with, and my own observation led me to feel rather ardently that the less strong liquor anyone consumed the better it was. During prohibition I observed the law meticulously, but I came gradually to see that laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law.

Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land.

I could never quite bring myself to work for repeal, but I could not oppose it, for intellectually I had to agree that it was the honest thing to do. My contacts are wide and I see a great many different groups of people, and I cannot say that I find that the change in the law has made any great change in conditions among young or old in the country today.”

That last line pretty much tells it like it is today. Again I have to wonder why it is we have to keep learning the same lessons over and over.
~~

~~

~~

Zero Tolerance Gone Wild

I’m reminded of that oft protested cable television show, Girls Gone Wild. This episode might be titled School Administrators Gone Wild. I mentioned earlier the plight of 13-year old Savana Redding. Since then I’ve done a little surfing, looking for information on similar phenomena. Indeed I did find a few.

Waco, Texas – 4-year old boy charged with “inappropriate sexual contact/Sexual harassment” after he hugged a teacher.

Azel, Texas – 16-year old Junior Varsity baseball player given one year suspension after an 8-inch mini baseball bat was spotted in the back seat of his car, parked in the school lot. After it was determined the mini-bat was a piece broken off of a baseball trophy, the suspension was reduced to 5 days. Ironically, the boy has a full size aluminum bat in his trunk (along with his other team gear), but that was okay. On a sidebar, the boy seems to have overcome this stupidity as my web search found him doing pretty darn well playing for a AAA team.

Hurst-Euless-Bedford, Texas – A 16-year old who had helped move his ailing grandmother’s stuff to the Goodwill box was yanked out of class by an assistant principal and security guards who had spotted a suspicious item in the bed of his pickup. It was a butter knife that had fallen out of the boxes. No matter the explanation, the boy received a 1-year suspension. Public outcry got it reduced to 5 days.

In my search I found hundreds of accusations of overzealousness by school officials enacting Zero Tolerance policies. Several fit into the category of those mentioned, but many had some suspicious ring to them. In a lot of the cases I felt pretty certain the rules were followed and punishment meted out appropriately. The reports were whining parents claiming their little darling could never be guilty of such behavior. So there are two sides to the ZT story.

From reading some of the reports I got a feeling that school administrators were being hemmed in by bad policies and were left with little discretion in their decisions. I sympathize with them. Mandatory sentencing guidelines are pretty much a crock, both in the criminal justice system and in school policy. We have a lot of good educators in our systems, but they are shackled by unwise policy.

We also have more than a few wiener head teachers and administrators, who should not be allowed any closer to a school than we allow a strip club.

~~

Zero Tolerance as a Product of the War on Drugs

On October 08, 2003, 13-year of honor student Savana Redding became an innocent victim of the War on Drugs. The case rises to a Constitutional level based upon a warrantless and unwarranted strip search in an effort to find drugs.

Redding had never been in trouble and never before been disciplined, but was this day standing accused of possessing and distributing a most disturbing and dangerous drug; Advil.

The allegations against Redding originated from an already-caught student trying to wiggle his way out of trouble. When asked by vice Principal Kerry Wilson, the boy identified another female student as the source of the 400mg Advil found in his possession. The female student was brought to the office and questioned, whereupon she identified Redding as the pusher.

When brought to the office, Redding denied it, but vice Principal Wilson instructed a female nurse to see if Redding was hiding the medicine in her clothes. In a private room, Redding disrobed and was instructed to move her bra to the side and pull out her underwear. No drugs were found. In an account of the strip search, Redding described how she was “offended by the accusations,” and how she felt “violated by the strip search.”

Redding’s family sued the school district and school officials with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit was thrown out, but they appealed, and after two rounds got a strongly worded victory from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The margin was a shocking 6-5. If that is the best we can muster from even the very liberal 9th, we are in sad shape. Still, the majority opinion is heartening.

The basis for the search was the school district’s "zero tolerance" policy against drugs. This policy is extended to all drugs, including OTC’s such as ibuprofen, which teenage girls might use to relieve the pain of menstrual cramps.

The court ruled that reasoning to be outrageous: “It does not take a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old girl is an invasion of constitutional rights," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the majority of the judges. "More than that: it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity."

The drug in question was prescription-strength (400 mg) Advil, or the equivalent of two OTC tablets, which is a recommended dose. The court was not swayed by the drug's prescription-only status: “We reject Safford's effort to lump together these run-of-the-mill anti-inflammatory pills with the evocative term ‘prescription drugs,’ in a knowing effort to shield an imprudent strip search of a young girl behind a larger war against drugs. ... Nothing in the record provides any evidence that the school officials were concerned in this case about controlled substances violative of state or federal law. No legal decision cited to us or that we could find permitted a strip search to discover substances regularly available over the counter at any convenience store throughout the United States. ... And contrary to any suggestion that finding the ibuprofen was an urgent matter to avoid a parade of horribles, even if Savana had possessed the ibuprofen pills, any danger they posed was neutralized once school officials seized Savana and held her in the assistant principal's office. Savana had no means at that point to distribute the pills, and whatever immediately threatening activity the school may have perceived by the alleged possession of prescription-strength ibuprofen had been thwarted. The school officials had only to send Savana home for the afternoon to prevent the rumored lunchtime distribution from taking place -- assuming she in fact possessed the pills on her person. The lack of any immediate danger to students only further diminishes the initial minimal nature of the alleged infraction of bringing ibuprofen onto campus.”

Commenting on this affair, Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason magazine, editorialized that "There are two kinds of people in the world,": "the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible." Sullum further says that "Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters."

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court at least paved the way for the school to be sued. The parents did so, and the case is on its way to Washington. The Los Angeles Times reports that the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case in April.

The National School Boards Association told the court that the decision had the "undesirable effect of holding school administrators personally liable for making decisions of constitutional import on which experienced jurists cannot agree," alluding to the earlier court decisions that the search was constitutional.

But the ACLU's brief said the decision "follows clearly established law in finding that a school official cannot strip search a thirteen-year-old girl based on unreliable information that she might have possessed ibuprofen at an unspecified earlier time and in an unknown location."

The attitude of the school officials troubles me deeply. How can a reasonable person believe that suspicion is all that is required to grant authority to strip search a 13-year old girl? Especially over ibuprofen! Is it the goal of our schools to train our children to blindly subject themselves to abuses of their natural rights? How can this kind of behavior be called anything other than child abuse? As I’ve commented before, this War on Drugs has turned into a war on reason. “Zero Tolerance” is a crock that serves only to trample the rights of kids. It’s as absurd as it is unreasonable. As Sullum states in his opinion piece, "It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps."

The 9th Circuit’s opinion (including dissents) may be found at Safford Unified School District 1 v. Redding.

~~

A Bit of History: Part I

I couldn’t sleep for some reason so I started pouring over archived files on my hard drive. I had thought I’d cull some of them to regain a little space, but instead I took a walk through 20 plus years of my past. It was interesting retracing the path. One folder contained a smattering of Eleanor Roosevelt’s newspaper columns, titled My Day. Mrs. Roosevelt penned the column six days a week, from 1935 until 1962. She missed only four days in that time, when her husband died.

The War of Booze in the 30's, and the War of Drugs Today:

Interestingly enough, the topic of her July 14, 1939 column was prohibition.

“A number of letters have come to me complaining bitterly about the fact that I said in an article recently that the repeal of prohibition had been a crusade carried on by women. I know quite well, of course that the Democratic Party took the stand in its platform that Prohibition should be repealed. I have always felt, however, that the women's organization for repeal, which was a nonpartisan organization, laid the groundwork which finally brought about the vote for repeal.

I was one of those who was very happy when the original prohibition amendment passed. I thought innocently that a law in this country would automatically be complied with, and my own observation led me to feel rather ardently that the less strong liquor anyone consumed the better it was. During prohibition I observed the law meticulously, but I came gradually to see that laws are only observed with the consent of the individuals concerned and a moral change still depends on the individual and not on the passage of any law.

Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land.

I could never quite bring myself to work for repeal, but I could not oppose it, for intellectually I had to agree that it was the honest thing to do. My contacts are wide and I see a great many different groups of people, and I cannot say that I find that the change in the law has made any great change in conditions among young or old in the country today.”

That last line pretty much tells it like it is today. Again I have to wonder why it is we have to keep learning the same lessons over and over.
~~

~~

~~

Why Prohibition Doesn’t Work

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

- - George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1, 1902

The Noble Experiment:

In 1898, while a law student at Ohio Western Reserve University, Wayne Bidwell Wheeler became engaged in the temperance effort. This particular cause was very popular with many of the influential people of the time, allowing the ambitious young Wheeler opportunities to mix with the power players of the day. Following graduation, Wheeler joined the Ohio Anti-Saloon League; working his way through the ranks and eventually becoming the League’s Superintendant. With Wheeler at the helm, the League waged a campaign to defeat incumbent Governor, Myron Herrick in 1906.

Wheeler did not campaign FOR John Pattison (who died in office in June of the year he was elected). Instead Wheeler and his gang from the Anti-Saloon League utilized pressure politics to defeat Herrick and ensure his own personal pro-prohibition candidate would win. Young Wheeler was fast gaining a reputation propelling him on to national prominence.

In 1919-20, as the 18th amendment to the Constitution was being debated, Wheeler conceived of and authored a house bill aimed at enacting the prohibition of alcohol as a federal mandate. The bill, sponsored by the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Andrew Volstead, became known as the Volstead Act.

The bill passed congress but was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson. However, on October 28, 1919, the very day the veto was signed, it was immediately overridden by Congress. With Wheeler’s triumph and the ratification of the 18th amendment, prohibition (euphemistically called the Noble Experiment) became the law of the land.

One of the first responses to prohibition was bootlegging. Bootlegging started rather innocently with rum running from the Bahamas, but the mob quickly recognized an opportunity. It can be argued that prohibition gave the mob their first really profitable business, allowing for expansion into other lucrative criminal enterprises and institutionalizing organized crime.

We (the people) eventually recognized the 18th amendment to be a horrible mistake. On December 5, 1933 Prohibition was officially repealed with the ratification of the 21st Amendment, which also established state-based regulatory systems for alcohol. The months and years that followed produced a fair and equitable system of regulation and taxation.

Prohibition Part II

To a large degree, drug prohibition has paralleled the prohibition of alcohol. During the 19th century there was a smattering of attempts at controlling various types of drugs, mostly on the state level. The first substantial federal legislation for drug control was the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, which regulated importation, distribution and production of opiates and cocaine and effectively made anything except physician use of several substances illegal.

In 1932 the first federal law prohibiting the use of cannabis was enacted. The Uniform State Narcotic Act also encouraged the states to pass similar laws, however it wasn’t until 1937 that all states eventually complied. The 1932 law is the first known legislation labeling cannabis a narcotic.

In 1970 Congress passed the Controlled Substance Act to replace the 1965 Drug Abuse Control Act, organizing federally controlled substances into schedules, with varying limits and penalties. In 1986, and 1988, Congress passed Anti Drug Abuse Control Acts, which mandated minimum sentences for a variety of drug offenses. In 1988 we also saw the first “Drug Czar” appointed to a cabinet level position.

Prohibition was in full swing once again.

What Did We Learn?

The turn of the century alcohol prohibitionists were utopian moralists who believed that eliminating the legal manufacture and sale of alcohol would solve America’s social and economic problems.[i] The result proved just the opposite; people continued to drink and through illegal bootlegging the crime element increased.

The alcohol experiment and drug prohibition experiences of the latter part of the 20th century have close parallels. Beginning in the late 60’s, the ineffectiveness of drug prohibition was beginning to be recognized, and still later we would witness the futility of drug prohibition sheer cost, and damage being done to our own citizens. As a result of this ineffective prohibition, Americans ranging from politicians to homemakers to university presidents have advocated changing our approach. Decriminalization and even outright drug legalization has been proposed.

The Solution Remains the Same:

Legalization of drug importation, production and sales, and the establishment of regulation and taxation paralleling what has been done with alcohol are reasonable and practical. The prohibitionists of the last century proclaimed alcohol a substance too dangerous and addictive to be effectively regulated. We now hear the same cries from drug prohibitionists; however our past experience has proven them incorrect.

Like alcohol, drug prohibition is making the situation worse; not better. One interesting observation of the efforts of the drug prohibition experiment is the shift of usage habits from the milder drugs (cannabis) to harsher substances (cocaine, heroin). This can be attributed to the interdiction efforts making it more difficult to smuggle bulky and less profitable marijuana; enticing the smugglers to turn to the more compact, concentrated and lucrative substances. [ii]

The United States places the greatest stigma on drug use, applies the harshest punishment, and expends the greatest effort (and money) on drug prohibition efforts of any western nation. Other countries have prohibition policies that fall somewhere between our heavily criminalized policies and the regulated, decriminalized system of the Netherlands. Since the early 1990s the drug policy in Europe, Canada and Australia clearly shifted away from criminalization; however, these countries are bound by international treaties to have formal, legal, drug prohibition laws in place. [iii]

America’s drug policies are generally ineffective and bewildering, but our official attitudes toward marijuana are particularly incomprehensible. For years the voices in opposition to prohibition have grown louder. The American College of Physicians joined other medical groups this year in calling for legalization of medical marijuana. In a position paper titled Supporting Research into the Medical Role of Marijuana, ACP is asking our federal government to drop pot from the list of substances with “no medicinal value and a high chance of abuse.”

A change in this policy would be a step toward sanity, but the clamor is unfortunately falling on deaf ears. It is not surprising that the White House rejected this recommendation. Berta Madras, Deputy Director of the Whitehouse Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) stated, “What this would do is drag us back to 14th century medicine. It’s so arcane.”

The arguments against legalization or decriminalization of drugs are far from arcane. They can be perfectly understood. The continued prohibition of cannabis is an unsustainable experiment, just as was the 18th amendment.

The very fact that possession of cannabis has resulted in the prosecution of, and exaggerated prison sentences for close to half a million of our children should be sufficient cause for tremendous outcry.

There is no justification for maintaining the prohibition. History and research have proven prohibition a failed experiment, yet we continue very expensive interdiction efforts. Times are tough and we have better ways to spend our money.

The Terrorism Connection:

How do we justify financing a fruitless “war on drugs” when we have the oft trumpeted “War of Terror” to support? It has been estimated that a onetime expenditure of $2 billion would provide the necessary security for our seaports to prevent the smuggling of nuclear weapons into this country, and yet we have only budgeted $93 million to that effort. Marijuana interdiction programs drain an estimated $4 billion annually, and yet school children, who can’t buy a beer or a pack of smokes, have no trouble locating a dealer from which to buy a joint or dime bag.

Where do illegal drugs come from? Who profits from the vast sums of money made possible by our prohibition? By following the supply chains we have found that the very people we are fighting in our “War of Terror” are major traffickers. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and Shining Path are all large-scale illegal drug producers and exporters. The demand is here, and they are the suppliers.

America should reexamine her priorities. Through the very cause and effect of prohibition we are financing terrorist organizations that would destroy us, and imprisoning our children as a byproduct. This is insanity.
~~~
i. Gusfield, J R. 1968. "Prohibition: The Impact of Political Utopianism." In Change and Continuity in Twentieth Century America , eds. Braeman et al. Columbus : Ohio State University Press.
ii. Brecher, E. M. 1972. Licit and Illicit Drugs. Boston : Little Brown.
iii. Levine, H. G. and C. Reinarman, 1998. The Transition from Prohibition to Regulation. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc.

~~~

The War on Drugs ~ Another Victim

From Jim Rongstad's Preserving Freedom:

Friday, December 26, 2008
What Is It That They Don't Understand About This?

Charlie Lynch opened a medical marijuana dispensary in San Luis Obispo, California. Under the laws of California, medical marijuana dispensaries are entirely legal. The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
doesn't care about California laws nor the health of patients helped by medical marijuana.

The oh so brave drug warriors of the DEA only care about fighting their counterproductive war that accomplishes nothing but burdening society with massive costs. Costs of the DEA, prison space, police corruption and gang warfare.

Dr. David Bearman who has 40 years of professional experience in the drug abuse treatment and prevention field including being the Co-Director of the Haight-Ashbury Drug Treatment Program, being a member of Governor Reagan's Inter Agency Task Force on Drug Abuse, a member of both the Santa Barbara and the San Diego County Drug Abuse Technical Advisor Committees, and a consultant to Hoffman-LaRoche, Santa Barbara County Schools and the National PT, says "The Federal Government is a disgrace to science on this issue."

Here is the story of Charlie Lynch:


The trial:


Contrary to what the jury foreperson Kitty Meese says, the jury did have a choice not to convict Charlie Lynch. Under the system of government set up by the founders, a jury is another check on the tyranny of government. Jury nullification is a power jurors have, likely don't know about and certainly aren't told about by the government.

Sentencing for Charlie Lynch is now scheduled for January 12, 2009.

If you would like to express your opinion of the vile actions of San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Patrick Hedges, the sheriff's phone number is (805) 781-4540.

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More on Charlie from Friends of Charles C. Lynch:

Charles C. Lynch is the former owner and managing Caregiver for Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers in Morro Bay.

The dispensary opened on April 1 2006 with the blessing of the city and even joined the Chamber of Commerce. In July 2006 the dispensary was granted a Conditional Use Permit from the City of Morro Bay to include a Medical Cannabis Nursery at the dispensary.

The Dispensary operated for almost one year without any major problems or complaints to the owner. On March 29, 2007 the Local Sheriff and DEA agents raided the Dispensary and Home of Charles Lynch. Lynch was not arrested at the time and reopened the dispensary on April 7 2007 with the blessing of the City of Morro Bay. A week after reopening the dispensary the DEA called the Landlord and threatened him with Forfeiture of his property unless he evicted the Dispensary from the building. On May 16, 2007 the Dispensary closed permanently.

On July 17, 2007 Lynch was arrested at his home and charged with Federal Marijuana Distribution. Now Lynch faces federal Prosecution for operating the Dispensary.

On August 5, 2008 Lynch was convicted in Federal Court for operating the Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers. On November 17, 2008 Charles will appear before Judge Wu to request a new trial on the grounds that he was not allowed to get his defense before the jury. On November 24, 2008 Charles will be sentenced in Federal Court and will most likely appeal the conviction and sentencing. Charles is currently out on a $400,000 bail posted by his loving and trusting family.

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