ASA is on the way to Federal Court!
Posted on | August 7, 2012 | No Comments
A message from Steph Sherer, Executive Director, ASA:
The only way to completely protect patients, cultivators, and providers of medical cannabis from federal enforcement is by changing federal law. The Drug Enforcement Administration keeps raiding cultivators and providers, and the Department of Justice continues to intimidate patients, property owners, and lawmakers in several states. Congress is stalled on this issue, but there is another way to break the impasse: federal court.
Late last week Americans for Safe Access (ASA) got some exciting news: the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to hear oral arguments in Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. Ten years after original rescheduling petition was filed, the courts will finally review the scientific evidence regarding the therapeutic value of cannabis!
We need your help to keep fighting this decade-long battle to remove medical cannabis from the federal list of dangerous drugs with no medical value. Make a contribution today if you can afford to support ASA’s work.
Last year, we appealed the Administration’s decision to deny our nine-year old rescheduling petition, knowing that the courts could still choose not to hear our case. The decision to hear oral arguments is huge. This appeal may lead to the first evidentiary hearings of the medical value of cannabis since 1994 – and a lot has happened since then!
ASA can make this happen. We have a strong legal team and recognized expertise in the field. We also have a comprehensive plan to use media, legislation, and strategic grassroots organizing to get the most out of this lawsuit. But we need your help to do it. Please make a special one-time or monthly recurring donation to ASA today.
Victory on this front would literally be the turning point for safe access to medical cannabis nationwide! We can fight this fight and win – if people like you support the effort. Thank you for helping make it happen.
Sincerely,
Steph Sherer
Executive Director
P.S. – Join our online activist “summer camp” – Camp WakeUpObama – and sign up for email alerts regarding the medical cannabis community!
HIGHER HELP: Thomas M.J. Lavigne, Attorney At Law
Posted on | August 7, 2012 | No Comments
- Cannabis Counsel: Thomas MJ. Lavigne, Attorney At Law
Thomas MJ Lavigne, JD has been practicing business law successfully for more than 20 years. He provides business law services for businesses aiming to serve patients and caregivers under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (“MMMA”). Lavigne also provides legal services in criminal defense and civil rights cases.
Lavigne began his career in Hawaii, right out of law school, the 1st of 3 state’s bars to which he is now admitted to practice law: Michigan, Hawaii, and North Carolina. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, the District of Hawaii, and the Eastern and Central Districts of North Carolina. Lavigne is admitted to practice law before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Fourth Circuit.
Lavigne served as General Counsel and VP of Business Development at IDEACore, LLC in Birmingham, Michigan from 2000 to 2010. A powerful software patent was obtained for the company, which involved working closely on prosecuting the patent through several office actions before being granted. Government contracts and Fortune 500 customer contracts were often negotiated to avoid over-reaching. Lavigne himself mastered the systems engineering methodologies of Quality Function Deployment, Analytical Hierarchy Process, TRIZ and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis; all of which he now applies to the practice of law, as an original member of Cannabis Counsel PLC, founded 4/20/2010.
Lavigne worked as a trial lawyer for four years in the sand-hills of North Carolina, where you can golf 12 months per year. His general practice included criminal defense, personal injury, wills, trusts, real estate, and government liability in North Carolina.
Lavigne worked with Riecker VanDam, Barker and Black in Midland Michigan when he first returned to his home state of Michigan in the late nineties, doing a variety of tax law for non-profits, complex business litigation verses Enron, criminal defense.
The day he passed his first bar exam, Thomas Lavigne filed in federal court, in Hawaii, a high profile Civil RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), against a long list of defendants, including the Governor of Hawaii; the Mayor of Honolulu; City Councilmen; the State Senator and State Representative both chairmen of the Land Use Committees, respectively; and several foreign nationals who were bribing said government officials, which bribes were found by the Federal Elections Commission to violate the prohibition against foreign campaign contributions; and their bribery agents were sued too for the pattern of racketeering activity (later implicated in the White House presidential suites for sale to criminal elements from the far east). This was a pro bono case representing a dozen farmer families who had farmed Maunawili Valley, some for centuries. Private Japanese golf course development corporations run by Korean Yakuza gangsters shot farmers’ cattle, served false eviction notices, in order to intimidate the farmers off of their farms. When a political hack was appointed to preside over summary eviction proceedings in State Court, Lavigne successfully argued a Writ of Mandamus granted by the Supreme Court of Hawaii, one of only a few granted in the State’s legal history at the time. One of Lavigne’s first oral arguments was in the US District Court for the District of Hawaii, opposite over a dozen of the top lawyer’s from the biggest Honolulu law firms, including three former state bar presidents.
Lavigne also represented neighborhoods of home owners exercising their rights under Hawaii’s Land Reform Act. This Act allows neighborhoods to petition the State to institute Eminent Domain, or Condemnation actions against the British Missionaries which five entities had owned all of the land in Hawaii until this law rescued homeowners who had all rented the land under their homes. Lavigne successfully argued to uphold the constitutionality of this law at the Supreme Court of Hawaii.
Lavigne also succeeded in an Employment Discrimination case against the University of Hawaii and served as a guardian Ad Litem appointed by the court to represent children in child abuse cases, as well as child abuse defense, reunifying families torn apart by a broken system.
You can reach Mr. Lavigne here: Cannabis Counsel * 2930 E. Jefferson Ave * Detroit, MI 48027 * 313-446-2235 * info@cannabiscounsel.com * The Leaders in Marijuana Law – or via their website here: http://www.cannabiscounsel.com/attorneys/thomas-l-lavigne-attorney-at-law/
Infographic: Alcohol vs. Marijuana
Posted on | August 5, 2012 | No Comments
Landmark Patients’ Rights Decision In Michigan – Townships Cannot Ban Growing or Use of Medicine
Posted on | August 2, 2012 | No Comments
LANSING – Michigan cities and townships cannot bar the cultivation and use of medical marijuana, a state appellate court has decided in a case involving an ordinance adopted by the city of Wyoming and challenged by a patient there.
In an opinion released this morning, a unanimous three-judge panel of the court said the local ordinance was clearly pre-empted by the medical marijuana state law, and that local governments could not use the federal prohibition on marijuana as an excuse to ban it.
The appeals ruling is a significant victory for advocates of medical marijuana, who claim that cities and townships have been attempting to thwart the law, approved by state voters in 2008. Similar legal challenges have been brought against other communities, including Livonia, Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, which enacted similar ordinances.
“The entire medical marijuana community is elated by this decision,” said Tim Beck, one of the leaders in the successful ballot proposal, “It confirms our belief that states have a right to regulate their own affairs.”
The appeals court said Michigan and federal law did not conflict because the voter-approved statute expressly acknowledged the federal marijuana prohibition while providing an exemption for its cultivation and use under state law.
“Congress can criminalize all uses of medical marijuana, (but) it cannot require the state to do the same,” the courts said.
Read The Michigan Appellate Court Decision Here: http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C419280981.PDF
Medical Marijuana Costs Can Be Deducted From Income For Food Stamp Eligibility In Oregon
Posted on | July 7, 2012 | No Comments
Under Oregon state law, some food stamprecipients are permitted to deduct their medical marijuana costs from their income in calculating their eligibility for the federal program.
The provision allows seniors and those who qualify for Social Security DisabilityInsurance to deduct medical costs such as prescription drugs when submitting income information to determine if they qualify for food stamps. Medical marijuana, still illegal at the federal level, has been grouped in this larger category since the state legalized it back in 1998.
“Medical marijuana gets treated just like any other prescription drug,” Gene Evans, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Human Services, told the Oregonian.
Included in these available deductions are fees for obtaining a state-issued medical marijuana card, expenses incurred while cultivating marijuana and the costs of purchasing it from a third-party grower.
In Oregon, some benefits also appear to go both ways. According to an Oregon Department of Public Health pamphlet on medical marijuana, applicants for growsites can receive a reduced fee if they provide documentation that they are currently enrolled in the food stamp program. Reduced rates for medical marijuana registry cards are available for food stamp recipients in other states as well.
According to the Oregonian, Maine and New Mexico both have similar language regarding the deduction of medical marijuana expenses, but an inquiry by the newspaper found the federal government unreceptive to the state practice.
“No state may deduct the cost of any substance considered illegal under federal law, including medical marijuana,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture wrote in response to the Oregonian. “Although there may be state or local laws that permit the cultivation, prescription, and sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes, such activity is not permitted under federal law.”
Evans said most food stamp recipients are unaware of the rules regarding medical marijuana deductions, and though there is some overlap between the two pools, the practice is used only infrequently.
According to the Oregonian, however, their report made enough of a stir to prompt state officials to plan discussions with federal food stamp administrators concerning the law.