By Pam Lichty
The two line ad had been running for a year in the Weekly classifieds: "HI Medical Marijuana Buyer's Club, non-profit. For information call XXX-XXXX." There, under the category "Health and Fitness" - among advertisements for acupuncture, personal trainers, and massage - this modest ad threw out a challenge to law enforcement officials. Could they ignore this intriguing blurb or did they need to act against this latest threat to public health and morals (the statutory term for drug offenses)?
On December 1st officials of the State Narcotics Enforcement Division (NED) took action. An undercover investigator from NED, a unit of the Department of Public Safety, arrested Oahu medical marijuana club operator, Ross Halsted, after he allegedly sold small amounts of cannabis to their agent on two separate occasions . He was charged with second degree promotion of a detrimental drug, a misdemeanor. The investigator acknowledged that Halsted asked him what his medical condition was. According to Keith Kamita, Administrator of NED, his office had only been aware of the ads for three weeks prior to the bust.
Just a few weeks before Halsted's arrest, on October 22nd, Maui County police collared "Pastor Ray" Christl who was allegedly furnishing marijuana to patients under the auspices of his church, a branch of the Religion of Jesus Church, which uses cannabis as its sacrament. The two busts were apparently unrelated.
The Hawai'i medical marijuana buyers' clubs are part of a growing movement in the U.S. which provides cannabis to patients to relieve symptoms of conditions ranging from glaucoma to AIDS Wasting Syndrome to the effects of cancer chemotherapy. The California and Arizona referenda, passed a year ago November, legalized such use in those states (although Arizona's has been suspended due to maneuvering by their state legislature.)
Ross Halsted says his Oahu club has existed for seven years. He began his non-profit enterprise, which uses a "sliding fee scale" starting at zero, to help out a "a 67 year old lady friend, a grandmother, who I saw drop from 135 to 97 pounds as a result of chemotherapy ." Most of his patients, are in fact middle-aged and elderly, many wheelchair bound or bedridden (yes, he makes house calls). These folks, he says, lack the connections to obtain the illegal weed through friends. Although he intended to challenge the illegality of medical marijuana, he admits he's shaken by his arrest. Halsted, a commercial fisherman and merchant seaman, says he's broke and is worried about covering legal expenses; he's hoping to establish a legal defense fund. Despite his worries, he's convinced of the rightness of his cause: "I expect medical use to be legalized before I'm in court".
Maui's Ray Christl takes a different approach. He believes that his religious affiliation legitimizes his provision of marijuana to patients and other parishioners at his Sunday services. He cites an HRS statute which provides a defense to "promotion" of cannabis by "practitioners"; which he defines to include ministers. The Maui police disagree. They have charged him with a Class A felony for commercial production and 3 Class C felonies based on their seizure of plants, processed marijuana, and paraphernalia from his home/church. He faces a possible 35 year sentence.
Pastor Ray ardently believes that medical cannabis is a means of getting people off harder drugs: "Any person that comes to me and says they've had trouble with hard drugs, but they want to smoke cannabis - boom! That's a medical patient. That's what I want the state to understand more than anything, because nobody has given any possibility of what we're going to do with this ice epidemic. Nobody's got a clue except Pastor Ray."
Keith Kamita believes, however, that Halsted and his ilk are just dope dealers using a new marketing strategy. Why would anyone risk running an ad for an illegal product? Kamita thinks it's just a means of attracting new customers: "He's using current events to get people's attention." Meanwhile in downtown Honolulu, "Mika", a wheelchair bound woman with a genetic bone disorder so severe that a sneeze can cause cracked ribs, had been obtaining medical marijuana from Halsted. She used it, she says, in conjunction with prescribed pain killers, to reduce the amount of those drugs needed to ease her persistent pain, to enhance her appetite and to help her sleep. Now that her safe source has disappeared, what will she do? "I guess it's back to the streets", she sighs.
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