Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Support for AB 2312 (Ammiano) – Medical Marijuana

What is AB 2312?
Existing law provides that qualified patients, persons with valid identification cards, and the designated primary caregivers of qualified patients and persons with identification cards who associate within the State of California in order to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes, collectively or cooperatively, shall not, solely on that basis, be subject to state criminal sanctions for the possession, sale, transport, or other proscribed acts relating to marijuana.
This bill authorizes qualified patients, persons with valid identification cards, and the designated primary caregivers of qualified patients and persons with identification cards, to associate within the State of California as collectives, cooperatives, and other business entities to cultivate, acquire, process, possess, transport, test, sell, and distribute marijuana for medical purposes. The bill would provide that these persons shall not be subject to arrest, prosecution, or specified sanctions for possessing, selling, transporting, or engaging in other proscribed acts relating to marijuana, unless they are not in compliance with the registration requirements described in this bill. 

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April 16, 2012

The Honorable Assemblymember Tom Ammiano
13th Assembly District
Sacramento, CA 95814

Re: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Support for AB 2312 (Ammiano) – Medical Marijuana

Dear Assemblymember Ammiano:

As law enforcement professionals, and California residents we support your efforts to provide and protect patient medical marijuana rights through sound public policy. AB 2312 provides what is currently missing in the medicinal marijuana debate, a clear regulatory framework, and an agency tasked with the oversight to ensure that the intent of Proposition 215 and SB 420 is carried out.

Creating the infrastructure through the Board of Medical Marijuana Enforcement (BMME) and adopting clear language in reasonable land use ordinances will bring accountability, stability and help to professionalize medical cannabis. This bill thus ensures that patients have safe access to their medicine and are not forced into the unregulated and dangerous black market.

More importantly, this bill will prevent California law enforcement from circumventing and trampling the constitutional rights of legitimate business owners and medical marijuana patients, and it will ensure that the will of the people in California is respected and upheld.

As law enforcement professionals we have personally witnessed the shameful behavior of many of our brothers and sisters in the criminal justice community as they have worked since passage of proposition 215 to undermine rather than support and properly implement the will of the people of the sovereign State of California.

Their serial violations of the oath each of them swore to uphold has as its most egregious manifestation the behavior and lobbying efforts of the California Chiefs of Police Association, the California Narcotic Officer’s Association, the California District Attorneys Association and the Prison Guards Union. The testimony, white papers and myth-making they have posited to influence legislation in the past has served only to insure the continuance of a thriving war on drugs and to push proincarceration and anti-rehabilitation legislation that swells their ranks and their budgets at the expense of the communities they serve.

A continuation of similar efforts by these organizations must be exposed as clear conflicts of interest motivated by their addiction to the obscene grants, asset seizure dollars and other perks provided by the federal government in order to insure a continuation of failed federal drug policies. Their past behavior has compromised their word. We urge the members of your committee, Assembly member Ammiano, to view their testimony in this matter as self-serving and compromised. Ours is a voice of criminal justice experience free of conflict. We urge passage of AB 2312. It supports sound regulation and control at the state level and, most importantly; it supports the will of the people as expressed for the past 15 years.

Respectfully,

Stephen Downing
Deputy Chief, Los Angeles Police Department (Ret.)
Executive Board Member, LEAP

Diane Goldstein
Lieutenant Commander, Redondo Beach Police Department (Ret.)

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Support for AB 2312 (Ammiano) – Medical Marijuana