Memo to Arizona Medical Marijuana Patients Who Grow Their Own Pot – Don’t ever let a Direct TV installer near your plants! East Valley Tribune: “A couple hours after a DirecTV worker saw marijuana and hashish inside a bedroom closet of Ross Taylor’s Gilbert home during the installation process of a satellite dish, 12 Gilbert police officers wearing masks and toting guns busted into his house and took his pot. Taylor, 35, is a card-carrying medical marijuana patient under Arizona’s new voter-approved law”
For more on this story that is outrageous in several ways, read Ray Stern’s story in the Phoenix New Times called “Gilbert Police Storm Home, Seize Two Ounces of Marijuana From Card-Holding Medical Pot Patient. Really,” which states:
“Sergeant Bill Balafas, Gilbert PD spokesman, tells New Times that because Taylor bought the pot from another person, as opposed to growing it himself, the possession wasn’t legal despite his status as a patient.”
If Sargeant Balafas is correct, then every person in Arizona who obtains a medical marijuana patient or caregiver card and who acquires marijuana from a source not authorized by Arizona’s medical marijuana law such as from a licensed Arizona medical marijuana dispensary (of which there are none) can be charged with a crime. Arizona’s medical marijuana law is written in such a way that the only way for an Arizona medical marijuana dispensary to get any marijuana to grow when the industry begins is from patients and caregivers who give the plants or seeds to the dispensary for free.
