California patients flex their muscle

You may have noticed that many of my reports on this blog are about how some local public officials in California are subverting the state’s medical marijuana laws. Well, today, headlines in California are telling the story of the patients who are fighting some of these scofflaws in court.

In San Bernardino - a county that refused to implement the state’s patient ID card program and sought to overturn the law requiring it to do so – medical marijuana patient Scott Bledsoe filed a lawsuit yesterday requesting that a judge order the county to follow the law.
 

Bledsoe relocated to California from Florida so that he could follow his doctor’s advice to use medical marijuana without fear of arrest. Little did he know that in San Bernardino, he wouldn’t be able to obtain an ID card to prevent his arrest because the county’s sheriff deputies are actually trained to ignore the state's 12-year-old medical marijuana law.

On the same day, on the other end of the state, patient advocacy group Americans for Safe Access filed a lawsuit against Solano County for its refusal to follow state law and implement the ID program.

California’s courts have already resoundingly sided with patients on this issue; needless to say, the odds are severely stacked against both San Bernardino and Solano counties.