Did the Federal Court of Appeals Just Sink Prop 64’s (AUMA) Chances In California?
By WFWP Admin / August 31, 2016 / News
The proponents of Prop 64 or AUMA have planned very well for this November’s election, laying out their strategy to victory via superior financial firepower and obfuscation by intertwining hundreds of pages of law and diverting everyone’s attention with the carrot called “legalization” that if truth mattered in our politics would be more correctly defined as regulatory capture!
The future is rarely a predictable event though, especially when we are talking politics and an election day that is a little over two months away. In the words of Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray”. Well today, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just erected a detour sign for Prop 64 leaving us to ask, will August 31, 2016 be forever known as the Billionaire Boys Club Waterloo.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just dropped a bomb, make that a MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) on Billionaire’s Sean Parker advance to overwhelm the opposition and change the marijuana landscape in California forever. Only time will tell if it’s a dud, but as we see the bomb float down onto the preparations for Prop 64’s victory party we smile, knowing the balance of power may just be about to change.
It is no secret what the Weed for Warriors Project thinks of California’s Prop 64 and we believe it is horrible law. We have written and discussed openly our disdain for the 60 plus page Proposition and it’s conjoined twin the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act or MMRSA passed into law by California’s Legislature and Governor Jerry Brown last year. By conjoined twin, we mean, MMRSA won’t survive the court system given much of MMRSA stands in direct conflict with Prop 215, California’s current supreme law of the land as it relates to Medical Cannabis.
For example, the last time California’s legislature and Governor tried to restrict patients rights was SB420 and in 2008 the appeals court ruled, “In a 3-0 decision, the court ruled: “The prosecutor’s argument was improper. It was improper because the CUA [Compassionate Use Act] can only be amended with voters’ approval. Voters, however, did not approve the eight-ounce limit and other caps in section 11362.77 [of SB420]; hence, section 11362.77 unconstitutionally amends the CUA.” The decision was later upheld by California’s Supreme Court.
See, the only thing that can overturn a “voter” passed initiative such as Prop 215 or CUA (Compassionate Use Act), is another voter passed initiative, such as Prop 64 or AUMA. So besides undermining the power of Prop 215 directing all in the case of ambiguity to side with the most recent voter initiative, whats the big deal with a case related to guns and a Nevada mandated Marijuana ID card? Well all you California Medical Marijuana patients get ready to be forced to register with the State of California for their own version of the State ID program.
Prop 64 requires all medical marijuana patients register with the State ID system to avoid the onerous taxes put in place if AUMA passes. In addition, as widely reported, “This provision in AUMA is also how the State can collect even more money from citizens: by requiring patients to get (pay for) a medical marijuana ID card — which until MMRSA passed, has been voluntary. Why has it been voluntary? Because otherwise, forcing people get these cards is a violation of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination (since using marijuana is still illegal under federal law). But if the federal government re-schedules marijuana, then patients would have no legal excuse to refuse to pay for a marijuana ID card. AUMA says that the ID cards will protect patients’ right to privacy, but how and why do people need an ID card to protect their right to privacy? A right is something you already have, so why should you need to buy a card to protect an existing right?”
The devil is in the details and the 9th Circuit just laid bare one big problem as it relates to Prop 64 and America’s 2nd Amendment. If you plan on using Cannabis as a Medical Patient in California and Prop 64 passes you can kiss your right to gun ownership goodbye! We believe a new front in California’s Marijuana War is about to open and we see a vulnerability the Trust Fund Club didn’t anticipate.
If the old proverb, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” holds true, the reinforcements are about to arrive and the balance of power just shifted!
Authored by WFWP President, Sean T Kiernan
Tagged Topics: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, AUMA, California, Card, Gun Rights, Guns, Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, MMRSA, NRA, Prop 64, Registration, S. Rowan Wilson, Sean Kiernan, Sean Parker, W4WP, Weed 4 Warriors Project, Weed for Warriors, Weed for Warriors Project, Weed4Warriors, WFWP
[…] OMG. Read this article (bottom) and see how, if Prop. 64 passes, then anyone using marijuana — not as medicine but as a dangerous drug, which is what Prop. 64 calls it! — will lose their Second Amendment rights. This is coming from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and applies in nine western states. It will apply in Washington State. But if we keep Prop 215, this cannot legally happen in California. Here’s why. In California, under Prop. 215, we have a California-constitutionally protected right to grow, use and possess marijuana as medicine. That was announced in People v. Kelly, and when Bill Panzer or any other pro-Prop. 64 person says that isn’t true, they are lying. California citizens also have a U.S. constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment of the federal Constitution. And constitutional law says, you cannot impair a constitutional right by conditioning its exercise on forcing the person exercising that right to give up another constitutionally protected right. The government can’t say, “you can confront the witnesses against you, but only if you testify in court.” And it can’t say, “You can keep and bear arms, but only if you don’t use marijuana as medicine.” Want to keep and bear arms and use marijuana? Then keep marijuana as medicine and keep your constitutionally-protected right to grow, use and possess marijuana. Prop. 64 destroys that constitutionally-protected right, so vote NO on Prop. 64. Please pass this one, because you know that NORML and all the pro-Prop. 64 people won’t share it! https://www.wfwproject.org/2016/08/federal-court-appeals-just-sink-prop-64s-auma-chances-california/ […]
[…] Click Here. […]
Thanks for the great article regarding the “mother of all bombs” aimed at the cynical charade called Prop 64. The detailed information you included about the nature of Proposition 215 itself, its mutual co-dependence with its ugly step-sister MMRSA, its constitutional viability, and its unique role in the face of the federal government’s desperate effort to DISPOSSESS the California “patient class” of the PROPRIETARY POSSESSION AND CULTIVATION RIGHTS (FROM SEED TO SMOKE), granted them by California voters voters in 1996. After its unilateral imposition of a self-granted trust (a legal impossibility by any measure) some 80 years ago, the feds have declared itself the sole owner and arbiter of all things cannabis., blocking research, denying medical access, and waging a scorched earth war on botanical evil that’s netted the United States the largest most nonviolent prison population in the world. The greatest tragedy of all however is that they have don4e so knowing full well the safety and medical efficacy of cannabis medicines — and they just let people fucking die.
As the co-author of the California Compassionate Use Act (Prop 215), a member of the seven-person Drafting Committee for SB 420, and the Founder of Southern California’s first patient-based cooperative cultivation project and dispensary, I’m painfully aware of the narrow confines of Prop 215’s exemptions, which were not intended to enable an industry, but simply to allow qualified patients to possess and cultivate marijuana for their own use, without the risk of criminal prosecution or sanction. While many both friend and foe alike, lamented that 215 did not regularize their existing illicit operations, we did not have the capacity to untangle an eight decade multi-jurisdictional fiasco of marijuana.
What we could do in the simple 274 words of Proposition 215 was 1) eject the federal government’s illegal and immoral self-designated death-grip of the cannabis genome, affirm the rights of seriously ill and disabled Calfironians and caregivers to meet their own medical needs for cannabis without undue government interferance or threats of prosecution and sanction, and direct the state legislature to provide for the needs of any patient who could not cultivate for themselves. In his first Post-215 Law Enforcement Briefing the Republican State Attorney General Dan Lungren affirmed that even under th4e narrow provisions of the CUA, and the proprietary rights that it granted groups of patients could “arguably engage in cooperative cultivation efforts for the personal medical uses of those so engaged.
That MMRSA begins and ends attempting to to forbid patient-based cooperatively-owned medical cannabis production, rendering all patients to the whims of the new for profit Big Ag / Big Pharma nightmare that Prop 64 is poised to deliver over and above all other existing cannabis legislation, is the clearest indicator that the feds recognize the hearts of their problem: What the people own — Monsanto can’t.
The one last piece I’d offer here, is the addition of Section 11362.85, which specifically authorizes the State Legislature, without a further vote of the people, to repeal Proposition 215 in its entirety, if and when the feds reschedule cannabis. Prop 64 and MMRSA are not designed to improved medical access or enable Adult Use, the are designed to undermine and destroy the proprietary rights of California patients and their caregivers and reassert absolute federal control over cannabis and to loose their genetically modified corporate thugs to destroy the “evil weed” that has brought so much life, healing, and wellness to so many. for thousands of years.
Grace and peace in struggle,
Pastor Scott
Great article. It well covers the gist of Prop 64’s central problem: it is designed specifically to destroy Proposition 215 and return proprietary control of cannabis to the federal government for another 80 years of tyranny.
In Solidarity.
The problem I have with this stance is two fold:
1) Without passing adult use, you are contributing to every single person who stays in jail, or goes to jail, because of this plant.
2) Prop 215 legalized demand, but was pretty silent on supply. The fiction we have going with people hanging scripts in gardens, selling “extra medicine” to dispensaries, and even people having to lie to a rent-a-doctor to get a script so they can walk into a dispensary, this entire fiction is a good base to create an entire industry on.
You can see it on our 20 year old industry with “trimmers getting raped” as the only news story that breaks out to the main stream.
If your only answer is to try to put your fingers in your ears and say, “Well, I’ve got mine, so screw everything else”, the people will pass Prop 64 because of your in-action.