I submitted my commutation request about a year ago. I keep believing that any day now I am going to get the call that Obama decided to do the right thing and pardon people caught in this battle between state and federal law. Still nothing. In fact, they have yet to issue a pardon to anyone for anything. They must be trying to set a record or something. One of the most important aspects of the President's job is to pardon people who have been unjustly harmed by failed policies of the past. It is a duty that is given to him to ensure that tyranny does not overcome reason in this country. This responsibility has yet to be fulfilled.

I am now to a point in my sentence where I realize that the road ahead is still long, but that the road behind me will never be reclaimed. That these two months away from my children will never be repaid to me. That even when history reflects the greatness of this movement that the many folks who have lost our freedoms in this fight will never get that time back. Yet we press on. It is maddening to be confined in a time where cannabis medicines are widely distributed in every corner of the state and where organizations advertise that they "conspire to manufacture and distribute marijuana" just like I am locked up for. It is nuts. 

But I keep on keeping on. One foot in front of the other. Breathing deeply. Making progress. Working through it. Looking towards the future to when this is all just a distant memory. To when I will enjoy eating out again instead of eating out everyday because I have to. Days where I will wake up to my children climbing on me and snuggling. I look forward to rebuilding and to regaining my strength an confidence. Those days are coming. Whether 10 days or 10 more months, I am ready for this to be in the past and for life to resume. One day the feds will be in my rearview mirror, and this time not because they are following me....

David Bearman: Strong Families Our Best Defense Against Drug Abuse

By David Bearman, M.D. | Published on 03.02.2010

There is an old cliché that says if you ask the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer. When it comes to substance abuse, the question is not, how do we stop the supply? We’ve tried for 100 years. We can’t, and the costs are too dear. The question is, how do we decrease demand?

Railing about the presence or absence of dispensaries that supply medicine to the ill and infirm does nothing toward effecting a decrease in demand motivation.

Santa Barbara City Councilman Frank Hotchkiss had it correct when he observed at a recent Ordinance Committee meeting that the presence or absence of dispensaries has little or no relevance to teenage substance abuse.

This position is supported by the work of Mitch Earleywine, Ph.D., of State University of New York, Albany & Karen O’Keefe, Esq., who rebutted this allegation in their September 2005 article “Marijuana Use by Young People: The Impact of State Medical Marijuana Laws.”

They wrote: “While it is not possible with existing data to determine conclusively that state medical marijuana laws caused the documented declines in adolescent marijuana use, the overwhelming downward trend strongly suggests that the effect of state medical marijuana laws on teen marijuana use has been either neutral or positive, discouraging youthful experimentation with the drug.”

In an effort to pass the blame rather than solve the problem, we have overlooked the obvious solution to continuing to decrease substance abuse: raising a child who feels loved in a nurturing, safe home and community environment. Numerous studies bear this out.

Dr. Ira Chesnoff’s work in Chicago with mothers with a history of cocaine abuse during pregnancy revealed that their children did well when the family was provided a comprehensive program of services, including drug abuse treatment, Head Start, parenting skills, counseling and good nutrition. Chesnoff found that these children of former cocaine-abusing mothers, who had experienced this comprehensive intervention, on entering first grade had an IQ that was higher than children of the prenatal noncocaine-using moms.

When I was medical director of the Santa Barbara Regional Health Authority (now CenCal Health), we received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop a program to stop the cycle of dependency created by dual diagnosis. We came to a similar conclusion as Chesnoff, that dysfunctional families play an important role in the social dynamics of substance abuse. We recognized that comprehensive services to at-risk populations were necessary to reduce the substance abuse risk in those populations.

So, parenting skills, couples communication and relationships based on reality — not fairy tales — should be emphasized as a more realistic and effective approach to substance abuse prevention and early intervention than a strict prohibitionist, law-and-order effort. The criminal justice system should be used rarely, such as when the use of drugs contributes to behavior that is a clear danger to others (e.g., DUI, domestic violence, child abuse, mayhem or murder).

Harvard University economist Robert Barro wrote of the damage caused by our drug policies in his paper “Getting It Right: Markets and Choices in a Free Society.”

“The experience with drug enforcement shows that prohibition of recreational drugs drives up prices, stimulates illegal activity, has only a moderate negative effect on consumption, and imposes unacceptable costs in terms of high crime, expansion of prison populations and deterioration of relation with the foreign countries that supply the outlawed products,” he said.

We should learn from our approach to alcohol and tobacco and focus the lion’s share of our efforts to help people use recreational drugs in moderation or not at all. Our approach should have a family focus and be supportive, primarily educational and medical.

Some years ago, under former Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools Lorenzo Dall Armi, I served as a consultant to a program on substance abuse prevention and intervention. The program created teams that included a parent, student, teacher, administrator and counselor at nearly every school in the county. The focus was on developing self-esteem, accepting and managing personnel responsibility, and teaching decision-making skills. This skill-building approach is very compatible with our educational goal of having an intelligent, responsible citizenry able to think through issues and make sound decisions based on science and solid analysis.

Christopher Farrell, in a Feb. 28, 2005, Business Week article titled “How Is the Return on That Investment?” asks what has been the return on the investment in our drug policy. His answer: “Abysmal.”

He points out that “the demand for illegal marijuana, cocaine and heroin remains strong. Drug lords and their cartels terrorize nations and local communities. Crime and corruption derived from the illegal drug trade flourish. U.S. prisons are crowded with drug-law offenders — more than 54 percent of federal prisoners sentenced in 2004 were sent away for breaking drug laws.”

Farrell suggests that “a shift in focus would free up scarce government resources at a time when the twin demands of an aging population and the war on terror are putting stress on the fiscal purse.”

Until we spend more time and money on promoting family values, teaching acceptable parenting techniques, creating an economy that allows parent and children quality time, addresses anger management and early intervention to prevent family violence, while recognizing the role of genetics and the contribution of dysfunctional families to ADHD, PTSD, OCD and bipolar disorder, we will continue on what has become a more and more destructive and ineffectual drug policy path.

By changing the drug policy paradigm from crime and punishment to medicine, prevention and treatment, we can reduce the level of hysteria on this topic, have stronger families, repair the Constitution and actually help people. This approach could also help decrease the rancor, anger and confrontation in this country being fostered by the forces of demonization of drugs and people who use them.

— Dr. David Bearman has nearly 40 years of experience working in substance and drug abuse treatment and prevention programs.

Today The Honorable Judge Claudia Wilken signed an order allowing for me to use Marinol during my stay of community confinement. This is a great common sense decision, as patients using this medication should not be disallowed to because of arbitrary standards based on testing. It is an FDA approved medication and if my doctor and I feel this is the best medicine for the shooting pains in both my legs that keep me up at night then it should not be denied by the Bureau of prisons. That is interfering with a medical necessity and borders on cruel punishment. Below is the order:

If your collective or organization would like to sponsor a month please contact 888-824-6863  or email compassionfamily@gmail.com for  more details. With your help we will weather the storm of injustice.

To write to me, send letters to:

Mickey Martin

111 Taylor Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

Also thanks to Logan Berrian for dropping off a book for me to read. it has been most helpful and much appreciated. 

Gives many thanks to those who choose to stand behind us in our time of need. Your commitment to our cause makes us fight even harder for cannabis freedoms. Without your support our family would suffer needlessly for providing safe and effective cannabis medicines.

The following are those who have already made a difference:

Sara Zalkin and Tony Serra from Pier 5 Law for their many hours of free legal work since my sentencing to help gain freedoms and ensure my rights were protected.

Berkeley Patients Group for sponsoring my family for a month and always being there to help since this madness began some 2 and a half years ago. As well, they sponsored the flyers and sign-age for the Ring in the New year Rally.

Oaksterdam for a very generous donation to help my family make ends meet in this time of madness and despair.

Erich Pearson and SPARC for a generous donation in my family's time of need.

Mark Sydow and Marin ASA for a generous donation to my family and for the great card they sent to the HWH.

Mountainside Patient Collective in Chico for helping out when and where they can.

Greenleaf Natural Wellness for ongoing support and tireless dedication to my cause.

To all of the patients and providers who have written letters, emails, and made phone calls to help keep my spirits up.

To my mom for sending me some yummy homemade cookies.

To J-Boogie for getting me a TV to make the time go by a little quicker.

AND MOST OF ALL...To my LOVING WIFE for staying strong, keeping me grounded, and taking care of those two little knuckle-heads while I am away. Your strength, courage, honor, and support means the world to me. Without it I would have given up some time ago.

The support has been great and overwhelming. It is a long year and a wild road ahead. To find out what you can do to help please contact Compassion Family Fund at 888-824-6863 or email compassionfamily@gmail.com or hit the "Donate" button on the right side of this page. Your support is greatly appreciated. I cannot tell you the deep gratitude for those who have helped lift me and my family up while we have been down. Many, many, many thanks!

Protesters march downtown Oakland on Monday afternoon.

Mickey Martin stood up before protesters gathered yesterday afternoon at the Oakland Federal Building downtown. He called in his 2-year-old son, who approached shyly from the side and hid behind his father. Martin was about to go to prison. The charge was something both Martin and the State of California say is not a crime: selling medicinal marijuana.

“There’s nobody out here today who looks like a criminal,” said the 35-year-old marijuana advocate, who is preparing to spend the next 12 months in federal prison.

“We want to be part of this community,” he said to the 100 or so supporters, including Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan and Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who met on Monday afternoon to protest Martin’s imminent imprisonment.

Mellody Gannon, 52, was one of Martin’s clients. She used marijuana to alleviate cancer symptoms.

“He brought magic to those of us who were sick. He was our spoonful of sugar,” said the San Francisco resident, raising her shirt to show a long vertical scar from an operation to remove a tumor. “His kids are going to suffer, and that’s not right.”

Martin, an Oakland resident, founded the nonprofit company Compassion Medicinal Edibles in 2000. For seven years, the shop near the corner of 40th Street and Broadway produced brownies, chocolate bars and other sweet treats laced with marijuana to be sold in local medical dispensaries.

Then, on September 26, 2007, the feds knocked on his door.

According to Martin, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency raided five facilities connected with his company, including his shop—which he said operated in accordance with state and city laws. DEA agents also raided his house and a cultivation facility.

“It was a pretty traumatic thing to deal with,” Martin said. “My wife and kids went through a lot.”

After the DEA discovered more than 100 marijuana plants at his growing facility, Martin was charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana, which carries a 10-year minimum sentence. He eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute products containing trace amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and was sentenced to two years in prison. He has already served the first year at home under house arrest.

“It’s senseless,” Martin said. “It’s a pretty violent thing to experience for making brownies for sick and dying people in California.”

Martin is scheduled to report today to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Cornell Correctional Facility in San Francisco, where he will serve the final year of his sentence.

Protesters march in downtown Oakland on Monday afternoon.

“Mickey Martin is not a criminal,” Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington said during speech at the protest yesterday. “Incarcerating Mickey Martin is a crime.” Worthington added that the health-care reform bill in Congress should include provisions to allow people like Martin to provide medicinal marijuana products to patients.

Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who did not discuss Martin’s case specifically during her remarks, said that Oakland has been in the forefront “both of what is beautiful and what has been troubling on this [medical marijuana] issue.”

On the local level, Kaplan said that Oakland has taken steps to protect providers and consumers of medical marijuana—such as awarding legal permits for medical dispensers. She also said Oakland makes sure that the medicinal marijuana dispensary system “is being run in a responsible, accountable way.”

Kaplan said that medicinal marijuana could also become an important source of revenue to the city, which faced close to a $100 million deficit last year. She also referred to the proposal initiated by cannabis guru and Oaksterdam University’s president Richard Lee for statewide legalization and taxation of marijuana, which supporters say will be on the California ballot in 2010.

On the federal level, however, things are complicated. Kaplan cited a 2005 case where the Supreme Court denied one of her constituents with a brain tumor the right to use medical marijuana, even if the woman could prove that the treatment improved her condition.

“Let’s be clear on this,” Kaplan said. “They said even if she would die without it, they would take it away from her. That is the face of what we are up against.”

For consumers of medical marijuana in Oakland today, the risk of getting in trouble with federal authorities is slim. Still, some at the protest said they constantly worry that the murky legal situation means they may inadvertently be breaking the law by purchasing medicinal marijuana.

Cecile Bonaudi, a retired Oakland resident who uses marijuana to alleviate chronic pain, said she follows all the rules. She gets a prescription from her doctor and buys products only from the four legal dispensaries in Oakland. Yet she’s still worried about it.

“I do what I think is legal,” Bonaudi said. “But yet there’s always the fear that if they want me, they could come get me.”

Bonaudi, who said she’s been suffering from chronic pains for over ten years and much prefers marijuana to other drugs such as oxycontin, said that she feels fortunate to live in California.

“I would never live in a place where I didn’t have access,” Bonaudi said. “I couldn’t. I don’t even travel. When I travel, I suffer.”