To the Honorable Judge Wilken

RE: LETTERS TO THE JUDGE FOR SENTENCING To the Honorable Judge Wilken, I come as an independent caregiver to ask for your support and help. I am asking you to reconsider any harsh sentencing and punishment in the matter of Tainted and their edible food products and/or efforts to help or assist CA medical marijuana patients in obtaining safe access. These people are not criminals, and have acted in the best interest of caregivers and their patients everywhere. For this I ask your leniency in reducing or removing any penalties, as they have risked such penalties for the purpose of serving ill patients. Your honor, despite problems with regulations and laws regarding medical marijuana in months of my research it appears there are several problems facing California. First we are criminalizing our caregivers who are desperately trying to help patients due differences of the federal government and CA laws and guidelines provided by SB 420 and Prop 215. We cannot provide for patients properly like normal medical practitioners and businesses. We are becoming scared to help people, and even my own company was forced to shut down because the owner was afraid to do what our state laws openly allow. Hemp Factory is closed until we can legally grow hemp and marijuana products. A moratorium and a $50,000 golden license, and he was still too scared to open his doors. Secondly we are limiting potential state income by not developing programs for medical marijuana and Industrial Hemp (Fiber, Food, Biofuel) farming standards to compete in our global economy and energy crisis. Your Honor... China, Yugoslavia, Thailand, and Romania can Grow Hemp, The US cannot. We are making a huge move with medicine in CA yet we are still holding back and scaring potential advances in modern medicine research because of a reefer madness mentality of modern marijuana. Your choice to punish or set a legal precedence for compassionate justice is critical here. Compassion which was exercised by the defendants in your case. I see everyone take great risks to help people and it is time for our state leaders to make a change to stop prosecuting the caregivers of ill patients and work towards creating viable legislation that helps reschedule marijuana to a proper and more economically viable setting. I wish to provide the following on the benefits of using safer alternatives of medical cannabis, such as edibles. Several of the patients I have interviewed report Edibles are the only way they can ingest or use medical marijuana. I have spoken to several patients who cannot afford medicine or quality edibles to treat extreme illness or pain conditions. In each case they had substantial benefits of relief from a wide range of conditions and ailments with edibles and tinctures as apposed to smoking or vaporization methods. You may or may not know, but like Northern Cal, SoCal has a great disparity in number of dispensaries, that forces patients to travel far distance to obtain quality medicine. SF, Oakland, and Berkley have many and San Jose and outlying areas have very few to local ordinance or fear to open and face public scrutiny/prosecution. Likewise SoCal, LA, OC and San Diego have a huge flux of patients and no dispensaries to serve them? I am currently working on outreach projects to patients where there are no dispensaries... Donations of trimmings will help them make foods that are wholesome and effective since we lost a great resource and patients advocate like Tainted Foods. Please grant your leniency and don't let these honorable citizens suffer imprisonment as they have already provided the community a great service in helping medical patients who are already caught in a bind of mixed medical practice and a fear of their normal HMO doctors/Pain Therapy Practitioners. Let patients choose what to use, and make a ruling that shows the same compassion. Thank You For Your Time Respectfully, HFMS