The Piedmont Highlander

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The Piedmont Highlander

The Piedmont Highlander

Marijuana and The Law

Marijuana+and+The+Law

A misdemeanor in the US, a ticket in California and in Piedmont, with the right card,  a call home to the parents.

California’s Proposition 215, also known as the Compassionate Use Act, passed by referendum in 1996 with 55 percent of the vote, opening the doors to the “legal right to obtain or grow, and use marijuana for medical purposes when recommended by a doctor.”maryjane

Medical marijuana is available to any age with a recommendation by a physician.

State Senate Bill 1449, signed into law in 2010 by Gov. Schwarzenegger reduced the offence of possession of cannabis of up to 28.5 grams (one ounce) from a criminal misdemeanor to a violation.

“For the state of California, possession is now an infraction, even if you don’t have a medical marijuana card,” said Sergeant Catherine Carr of the Piedmont Police Department. “It’s a state citation, like if you were jaywalking.”

The possession citation has an associated maximum fine of $100, plus assessed court fees, totaling up to $485, but no criminal record, said criminal defense attorney and activist William Panzer.

“Cannabis is a gray area, somewhere between over-the-counter and prescription medication,” Panzer said. “You don’t get a prescription, but you need a physician’s recommendation.”

A search of Yelp returns 37 card-granting clinics within a five mile radius of Piedmont. One top-rated clinic’s website has an online form offering pre-approval. The symptoms of a mild flu, a brief family history of hypertension and no history of alcohol or prescription drug abuse can lead to an immediate approval.

“The legislature hasn’t legislated, but under the statute, there’s no need for ID or medical history,” Panzer said. “That requirement for an evaluation is the clinics and doctors working on their own.”

Interested parties can make a clinic appointment from the online form, or clinics will call them.  Appointments can take 25-30 minutes.  Walk-ins are also accepted.

The price of a cannabis evaluation: $125. The citation for marijuana possession: $100.

“If someone were to get a medical marijuana card with fake identification, there wouldn’t be any way for us to know,” Carr said. “Unless we got the fraudulent ID, we wouldn’t know, but often when we ask for the card, we also ask for ID and there are ways I can tell if it is false. We have caught people in the city with fake IDs and fake cards.”

Though possession of unlicensed marijuana or a fake ID or are both criminal, the specific punishment is at the discretion of the officer.

“[In the case of minors] it depends on the officer and the situation,” Carr said. “A lot of the times we work with the parents and the school to find the solution that works for everybody in terms of the adults in that juvenile’s life — if it’s meaningful to kick them off a team or if it’s meaningful to have them go through the court system or if it’s meaningful to have a punishment at home.”

With or without a card, possession of any quantity of marijuana on school grounds during school hours is a misdemeanor punishable by a criminal record, a fine of up to $500, and up to ten days incarceration.

Beyond the criminal consequences, the district enforces both the state’s and its own policies. While prescription medication must be checked with the office per education code, cannabis, with a medical card or otherwise, is specifically banned regardless of situation, said assistant principal Eric Mapes. The first action would be to call the parents about the card, he said.

There is no precedent for disciplinary action against a student with a medical card, Mapes said.

Regardless of the validity of a medical marijuana card, a 2008 decision by the state Supreme Court found that card-carrying employees’ jobs were not protected by the state’s anti-discrimination Fair Employment and Housing Act, unlike other physician-recommended treatments. Consequently, employees can be drug tested and fired for off-duty cannabis use, even if it did not hurt their job performance.

Though possession citations do not appear on criminal records, they are publicly accessible in court records.

Possession in a vehicle is a misdemeanor, and DUI convictions are upheld regardless of possession of a medical marijuana card; both affect auto insurance rates, according to canorml.org.

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