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Battling the Ban

Patients and activists react to Kent’s decision to outlaw access points
 

The City of Kent might have shut the door on medical cannabis—but activists and advocates are fighting back.

Ignoring some 150 residents who had gathered to express support for medical marijuana rights, the Kent City Council voted 4-3 last month to ban all cannabis collective gardens and dispensaries

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Patients and activists react to Kent’s decision to outlaw access points

 

The City of Kent might have shut the door on medical cannabis—but activists and advocates are fighting back.

Ignoring some 150 residents who had gathered to express support for medical marijuana rights, the Kent City Council voted 4-3 last month to ban all cannabis collective gardens and dispensaries.

The vote drew angry shouts from audience members, many of who were qualified medical cannabis patients, news reports said. It also stirred the Washington-based group Cannabis Action Coalition to serve Kent Mayor Suzette Cook with a lawsuit challenging the measure.

Kent council members said the ban was necessary because the state’s compassionate-use law was too vague. Advocates with the pro-cannabis legalization group Sensible Washington declared it would fight the prohibition until it was overturned.

The city had been under a six-month moratorium on medical cannabis that was scheduled to expire on June 11.

Councilwoman Elizabeth Albertson, who voted against the ban, said, “I watched people suffer and die with debilitating diseases, and it’s not for me to decide; it’s for them and their doctors.” Councilman Bill Boyce—who voted for the ban along with fellow council members Dana Ralph, Les Thomas and Deborah Ranniger—had a different opinion. “For me, I cannot get beyond the federal law; I cannot get beyond that,” he said.

Councilmembers Jamie Perry and Dennis Higgins also voted against the ban. Boyce’s federal law-vs.-state law argument about why the city should keep cannabis illegal has been, unfortunately, echoed by other politicians across the country as justification for their anti-MMJ actions or prohibitions.

Kent is hardly the cannabis capitol of Washington. Compared to the estimated 135+ dispensaries in the Seattle and Tacoma area, Kent only has two. If these dispensaries close up shop, activists say, the ban will force patients to have to drive to other dispensary-friendly cities—or possibly the black market—to obtain their medicine. And the last thing a person suffering from cancer, epilepsy or a psychiatric disorder needs is to spend more time and (gas) money to find relief and use a plant in the privacy of their own homes.

But the ban doesn’t spell the end of patients’ rights in Kent.

In response, Steve Sarich of the Cannabis Defense Coalition kept a promise he had previously given to the City Council: if the council sued, the coalition would sue the city on behalf of Kent’s dispensary owners and patients. According to news reports, after handing them a court summons, Sarich said, “Madame Mayor, you’ve been served.”

In another show of opposition to the ban, Kent dispensary operator Charles Lambert, of the Evergreen Association of Collective Gardens, says he’ll stay open, according to media reports

“My attorney and I plan to fight all the way,” he says. “If they want to charge me, charge me. Then we can get into court and let the court decide who’s right.”

But Kent officials—including the deputy city attorney and law enforcement—have warned Lambert about closing up shop, and threatened him with fees and jail time.

“I’m waiting,” he says. “I know they will do something. I’m not sure what it is. I’ll find out which option they pick.”

 

“It’s Unethical”

The ban Kent officials approved last month had been recommended by a 2-1 vote from the City Council’s Economic and Community Development
Committee, which cited existing federal marijuana laws and the “potential secondary impacts from the establishment of facilities for the growth, production and processing of medical cannabis,” as its backbone, the Seattle Times reports. The committee had concluded that medical marijuana collective gardens “are not appropriate for any zoning designation within the city.” Notwithstanding, Anthony Martinelli—with Sensible Washington—blasted the ban. “It’s unethical, and beyond being unethical it’s illegal,” he said.

 

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