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March 16, 2010 in Region
385 plants at Wash. pot activist’s burgled home
Steve Sarich, a medical marijuana advocate with a legal grow operation in his home, displays wounds he received during an attempted robbery at his home in Kirkland on Monday, March 15, 2010. Sarich returned fire and critically wounded one of the robbers.
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SEATTLE — Sheriff’s deputies said they found 385 marijuana plants at the home of an outspoken medical marijuana activist who nearly killed a robber in a shootout this week. It’s not clear whether the man will face charges, even though he far exceeded the state’s presumptive 15-plant limit.
Sgt. John Urquhart, a King County sheriff’s office spokesman, said Tuesday that investigators also found marijuana products such as butter, baked goods and paraphernalia at the home of Steve Sarich, who uses pot for back pain and runs an organization called CannaCare.
Sarich, 59, awoke early Monday to find intruders in his home. He shot one, sending him to the hospital in critical condition, and suffered shotgun pellet wounds to his face and arm when another intruder returned fire. Four young men and a teenage boy are in custody.
Deputies left Sarich 48 ounces of dried bud and 30 plants for him and his girlfriend but seized everything else, Urquhart said. They had no plans to arrest him but said they would forward their findings to prosecutors.
“No, we’re not going to arrest the guy — he just got shot,” Urquhart said.
Nevertheless, Sarich said he was steamed about having the plants, computers and other items seized, and his home trashed by investigators who dumped dirt from pots onto the floors. He insisted CannaCare’s operation is legal and many of the plants would be provided to other marijuana patients.
Sarich vowed to sue the sheriff’s office.
“If I’m not safe, no patient is safe. It’s not like nobody knows what I do,” he said.
The case highlights the confusion of Washington’s medical marijuana law. Approved by voters in 1998, it says patients can use marijuana for certain conditions if they have a doctor’s authorization. But the state created no dispensary system for obtaining the drug.
It requires patients to grow marijuana themselves or have a caregiver grow plants for them — but doesn’t explain where the patients are supposed to get the seeds or plants. Under state rules, patients are presumed to need up to 15 plants in any stage of growth and 24 ounces of dried bud, but they can have more if they demonstrate need.
Furthermore, designated caregivers can only provide marijuana to one other patient at any time — a provision that could get Sarich in trouble. But the law doesn’t specifically prohibit patients from growing their marijuana together in one location to save money on lights or other expensive equipment.
CannaCare has 7,000 members in the state, Sarich said. It helps patients with legal advice, runs clinics where patients can meet with doctors who authorize marijuana use, provides patients with marijuana clones or starter plants and delivers about 50 patients a week with usable marijuana, he said.
Three years ago, Sarich’s Everett home was raided by state law enforcement officials who seized more than 1,000 plants. The case was referred to the U.S. attorney’s office but no charges were filed.
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg has repeatedly said he’s not interested in bringing sick people to court on marijuana charges if they’re trying to comply with the law. And he has repeatedly refused to prosecute people who were involved in cooperative growing operations, even those that numbered up to 200 plants.
Aaron Pelley, Sarich’s attorney, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, has worked with Sarich in the past on medical marijuana issues and said she was surprised to hear how many plants he had.
Violence at medical marijuana growing sites shows the need for the Legislature to create a system that provides patients with safe access to marijuana, she said.
“We have a gap in our law and that needs to be dealt with,” Kohl-Welles said.
© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Three dead, three wounded in Seattle shootings 
force_vector on March 16 at 5:59 p.m.
Legal or illegal, it is always sad when people become addicted to drugs. The obsession by some with what is nothing more than a plant that kills brain cells is beyond logical explanation. The “medical” excuse is just a perversion of facts to further the suffering of those who have genuine medical problems. Who is pushing for it? Addicts.
empyrius on March 16 at 6:33 p.m.
1) What is it about thirteen states that defy federal law by allowing medical marijuana usage? Uh-ooooo!
2) This article states that, “[Washington’s medical marijuana law] requires patients to grow marijuana themselves or have a caregiver grow plants for them — but doesn’t explain where the patients are supposed to get the seeds or plants. Under state rules, patients are presumed to need up to 15 plants in any stage of growth and 24 ounces of dried bud, but they can have more if they demonstrate need”.
The law itself makes one break the law to acquire seeds/starts (unless one already knows somebody), and lends to further possible legal repercussions with the highly ambiguous “they can have more if they demonstrate need”.
3) “Designated caregivers can only provide marijuana to one other patient at any time”.
So do we now pass another law stating that doctors can only see two patients at a time . . .
Here is some good stuff coming up . . .
D Statler on March 16 at 7:18 p.m.
This appears to be a drug dealer using his medical card for his buisness.This guy is so far over the feds need to bring him down before the addicts do.He is ruining it for people that genuinely need WEED.Marijuanna has helped some of my friends kick the need for perscription narcotics that are far worse than weed.Watch what perscription drugs do to a loved one.Then roll them up a joint and see which one is better for yourselves.Pharmaceutical companies in America don’t want weed legalized.It will take half their customers away.OXYCONTIN and other so called legal perscription drugs appear to be worse on our kids than weed ever was.The Feds need to bring them down too.
empyrius on March 16 at 7:21 p.m.
Here are several points the federal government tries to utilize in rationalizing its war on marijuana:
1) One point they attempt to make is that people who use marijuana knowing it is illegal is proof enough that marijuana is bad b/c people will break the law to consume it. By this logic then, all of those gangsters and citizens who manufactured, sold, and used alcohol during prohibition were simply drug addicts that would break the law to consume their drug of choice. So Americans that can today freely consume alcohol have people who would shoot up government agents and each other so they could consume alcohol to thank!
The moral of this story is that apparently the evildoers won, and b/c evil won you are now free to go buy a beer!
2) Another point they attempt to make is that while they acknowledge that marijuana has a low potential for abuse, there is an exiguous amount of people, primarily “troubled teens” and “mentally challenged” people, that have a tendency to abuse substances, and then they conflate this fact to make the already debunked assertion that marijuana has a “high potential for abuse” to indeed aver that marijuana then has a high potential for abuse.
So basically the government is saying that b/c “mentally challenged people” and “troubled teens” may have significantly higher potentials for abusing marijuana, and of course various other substances, all Americans should be deprived of the choice of consuming marijuana b/c an extreme minority part of our population is at higher risk potential.
If that is the case we better re-criminalize alcohol immediately!
3) The government cites a select few “case studies” (done by government funded agencies such as SAMHSA of course) about mentions of drug usage in emergency room visits. Now these people are asked to state what top four drugs they have consumed in the last year. Alcohol being mentioned on far more occasions than any other drug, then cocaine, and meth, and then marijuana.
Now this is where those ever-mighty statistics come into play.
For instance say a person comes into the emergency room b/c they are suffering from alcohol poisoning, and then that person is asked what type of drugs they have used in the last year, and that person says, “well, a few months ago I took a couple of bonghits”. Now, that person dies from her/his alcohol consumption, but since they mentioned previous marijuana usage, marijuana then gets an “honorable” mention for “reasons for emergency room visit”!
In other words, one hundred people, for example, die to drug-related causes, they can die from alcohol poisoning, a heart attack from too much cocaine, or have simply methed themselves to death; but then say half, to just pick a number, say they have consumed some marijuana in the last year, well then the statisticians can then juggle those numbers around and actually try to leave the impression that “marijuana was the cause of 7% of those emergency room drug related deaths”.
Seriously! Not one person had actually died from marijuana consumption, but they can statistically make that assertion due to “frequency of mentions”. You have to read it, it is simply some of the most disingenuous type of government sponsored “scientific” trash I have ever read!
I got more . . .
empyrius on March 16 at 7:56 p.m.
There are simply so many major flaws in the government’s argumentation that, well, I will simply make the feds look silly in a court of law! I could go on, and in much greater detail, but then I would be letting some lawyer steal my world shattering thunder!
The government uses the seven following criteria; 1) Its Actual or Relative Potential for Abuse, 2) Scientific Evidence of Its Pharmacological Effects, If Known, 3) The State of Current Scientific Knowledge Regarding the Drug or Other Substance, 4) Its History and Current Pattern of Abuse, 5) The Scope, Duration, and Significance of Abuse, 6) What, if any, Risks are There to Public Health, 7) Its Psychic or Physiological Dependence Liability, to ultimately make the assertion that 1) Marijuana Has a High Potential for Abuse, 2) Marijuana Has No Currently Accepted Medical Use in Treatment in the United States, and naturally, 3) There Is a Lack of Accepted Safety for Use of Marijuana Under Medical Supervision.
I have thoroughly dissected the fed’s argumentation, and I can refute the feds point by point! I have just not had the inspiration to put my formal argument together. Somebody give a brother some inspiration and I am willing to share the glory with you the day we formally, lawfully, re-legalize the Lord’s good green herb!
Amen
Ed Byrnes on March 16 at 11:07 p.m.
empyrius states the case well in their March 16 7:21 p.m. posting. This whole story underscores the need for rational cannabis policy now more than ever, which means the legally regulated and taxed production, sale and consumption of cannabis for persons 21 years of age and older.
kayeginter on March 16 at 11:53 p.m.
So many need to ask themselves:
What Mr.Sarich”s purpose and service is to the public?
Pharmacies stock numerious products and medications. If thieves were robbing the pharmacy for drugs and or money, Would there not be criminal charges for theft and breaking & entering? To what level would the crimes be set for marijuana?
Where in the regulations does it state a Marijuana medical patient can not oraly injest the product by the means of being in food? Just Where do you think all this medication will come from for medical patients?
There is no legal farming or nurseries in Washington. which implies there are no LEGAL Dispensaries in Washington State.
There is no patient protection from forces such as the police going beyond the destruction property. We spend in tax payers money approximately One hundred fifty million tax dollars to process marijuana crimes in Washington State.
Mr Sarich avacacy is for the concern of how the patient is being treated by the law enforcement and others in communities.
February at the State Capital meetings with officals where voices where legistaltures heard concerning need to change the laws.
NOW
is the perfect reason to register to vote 2010.
November 2010 is the year, at the polls the public will have for the full rights vote on up comming Initative 1068 to reform marijuana laws.
smarg on March 17 at 8:42 a.m.
The doper receives attention from dopers who want his dope and money, then the doper shoots the other dopers.
Meh.