State to issue ID cards to medicinal pot users

San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com

State to issue ID cards to medicinal pot users
Program is designed to halt stash seizures and
prosecutions
- Patrick Hoge, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 16, 2005

California health officials plan to issue
identification cards to medical marijuana users that
would prohibit state and local authorities from
seizing their stashes or prosecuting them, officials
said Tuesday.

The cards will be available this summer for patients
in at least 10 counties, including Marin and Sonoma,
and statewide by the end of the year, said state
Department of Health Services spokeswoman Norma Arceo.

All cards will have photographs, she said, and the
state will have a 24- hour, toll-free number that
police can call to verify that identification cards
are authentic. Five other states -- Alaska, Hawaii,
Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- have similar ID
cards, Arceo said.

News of California's card program came as an advocacy
group in Berkeley filed a lawsuit Tuesday, claiming
the California Highway Patrol has seized marijuana
from people who have provided a written doctor's
recommendation.

"It's a sorry, sorry state of affairs when people fear
having their property taken by cops rather than
criminals,'' said Joseph Elford, an attorney with
Americans for Safe Access, which filed the suit in
Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland.

A study by the group last year estimated the cost to
state and local government of processing such cases
was about $4 million a year.

CHP spokesman Tom Marshall said Tuesday that the
agency would honor the state-issued ID cards but would
continue its long-standing policy of confiscating
marijuana seized from motorists until the cards were
issued.

"We're just continuing the policy that we've had,''
Marshall said. "The change will be when those cards
are issued.''

A voluntary card program was authorized in late 2003
by a law sponsored by former state Sen. John
Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, but money was not available
for implementation until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
approved a $1.5 million startup loan, said H.D.
Palmer, deputy director of the governor's Department
of Finance. The money will be repaid, and the ID card
program will be sustained with fees charged to
cardholders, he said.

Federal law enforcement agencies, by contrast, have
maintained that marijuana use is illegal nationwide.

Vasconcellos' bill, which then-Gov. Gray Davis signed,
attempted to standardize the jumble of local medical
marijuana laws passed after 1996, when state voters
approved Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act,
that legalized medical use of marijuana. The SB420 set
a statewide possession limit of 8 ounces per
authorized individual.

Elford said the CHP's position is illegal because
Vasconcellos' legislation does not require that
patients have a state-issued identification card, only
a written or verbal doctor's authorization.

Anthony Bowles of San Francisco, one of the plaintiffs
in the lawsuit filed Tuesday, said he had been pulled
over in May by a CHP officer because his front license
plate was missing. The officer searched him without
his consent, Bowles said, and found 3 grams of
marijuana that he had for his mother, who suffers from
a chronic anxiety disorder.

He said he had shown the officer the "primary
caregiver'' card issued to him by the San Francisco
Department of Heath, but the officer seized the pot
and issued him a misdemeanor citation for possession
of marijuana.

The possession charge was withdrawn by the prosecutor
at Bowles' first court appearance, and now Bowles is
trying to get the pot back.

"It's horrendous," said Bowles, 28. "I think, 'What if
it was my mother instead of me who was going through
this?' ''

Arceo said the state would begin a pilot program for
the ID cards this summer in Amador, Del Norte,
Trinity, Mendocino, Marin, Shasta, Sacramento, Sonoma,
Santa Cruz and Yuba counties. All 58 counties will be
issuing cards by December, she said.

E-mail Patrick Hoge at phoge [at] sfchronicle.com.

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