Legal News

L.A.?s Dopest Attorney Says Courts Need to Bone Up on Pot Law

By Dan Slater

By now, those of you who read the New Yorker with the same voraciousness that we read it with have probably seen David Samuels’s article, “Dr. Kush,” a first-person journey through California’s medical marijuana industry.

The piece is packed with some, um, helpful information, such as the difference between the two main U.S. varieties of cannabis — sativa (”more heady and abstract,” “better for doing creative work and listening to music”) and indica (”a heavier, numbing drug,” “better for alleviating pain”).

But Samuels also does a thorough job when it comes to addressing the law. He explains that, since 1996, when a referendum known as Proposition 215 was approved by California voters, pot has been legal under state law. This means that authorized patients can possess or cultivate the drug, and that growers can, subject to certain restrictions, cultivate marijuana for a patient, as long as the grower has been designated a “primary caregiver” by that patient.

As Samuels reports, California’s support of a legal marijuana market “has set off a low-level civil war” with the federal government. He writes: “The Drug Enforcement Administration, which maintains that marijuana poses a danger to users on a par with heroin and PCP, has kept up an energetic presence in the state, busting pot growers and dispensary owners with the coöperation of some local police departments.”

In the midst of this drug war stands Allison Margolin (Columbia, Harvard Law), who calls herself “L.A’s dopest attorney.” (We’ve blogged about Margolin before.) Margolin, whose father, Bruce Margolin, wrote the Margolin Guide, which lays out the penalties for the sale and possession of pot in all 50 states, has an office on Wilshire Boulevard. There, she hangs a pictorial layout from Skunk magazine, featuring her in a low-cut leopard-print dress. (”Margolin’s sexpot image is an advantage with clients,” Samuels writes, “who, more often than not, are socially isolated men.”) Click here for Margolin’s blog.

“People are talking about how [marijuana is] being over-recommended and abused,” Margolin said. “I mean, big ******* deal. It’s not toxic!” Margolin told Samuels that she has a doctor’s letter, required in order to buy from a dispensary, because she suffers from anxiety. She said most judges and prosecutors seem to have only a glancing acquaintance with the case law since the passage of Proposition 215. “I’ve gone to court, like, several times where the judge has read only the first half of the case, which talks about how dispensaries are not legal according to Proposition 215,” she said. “I think it’s just intellectual and physical laziness.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 25, 2008 (boomark / email).