When police knocked on Josh Brewer’s door to check for marijuana, even one of the nation’s most liberal medical marijuana laws was put to the test.
Officers were fine with the two pounds 10 ounces he and a cousin had grown, harvested, and processed. That was under the pound and a half each allowed by law. And they didn’t care about the 12 plants — six each — growing in the backyard. Also legal.
But after they discovered the additional two pounds 11 ounces drying on coat hangers suspended from the ceiling in the living room, officers arrested Brewer, sparking a legal battle over what was enough — in the maximum sense — for medical use, and what crossed the line into the potential for illegal sales.
After all, even 1.5 pounds by one measure would equal 1,200 joints.
A motion to dismiss the case because the drying marijuana was not “usable” under Oregon law was turned down by a judge. Brewer served 60 days in jail and received three years of probation, putting him back on conventional pain pills for a wrist he said he injured in a construction accident.
But Brewer, 24, beat the rap and has already started a new pot garden after the state attorney general’s office conceded last week that, based on a 2007 Oregon Court of Appeals ruling, the marijuana still drying on coat hangers did not qualify as ready for use.
“Without the hanging marijuana, there is no evidence that defendant possessed more than the lawful amount of `useable marijuana,’” said the state brief on Brewer’s appeal.
The case illustrates that 16 years after California became the first state in the nation to make medical marijuana legal, the legal questions over what is legal and who goes to jail and who doesn’t are far from clear. The 15 states that allow marijuana use for medical reasons each have their own widely-varying approaches.
Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/02/02/new_debate_when_is_medical_marijuana_usable/
