Court says patients can share marijuana DetroitFreePress / 1,31,2013 Medical marijuana supporters received a key victory Wednesday -- and the Michigan Attorney General's Office suffered a setback -- when the state Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that patient-to-patient transfers of the drug are allowed for medical use under state law. The court said that state-registered patients can legally deliver the drug to one another, as long as they don't exchange money and they follow other provisions of Michigan's medical marijuana act -- such as staying within the act's 2.5-ounce limit for anyone possessing the drug. "It's a huge deal," said Southfield attorney Neil Rockind, whose practice includes defense of medical marijuana users in criminal cases. "A lot of us have been saying all along that the act allowed this, but police and prosecutors kept going after patients who did this." The published opinion, binding on all lower courts, not only broadens access to medical pot, it also eliminates an illegal step that medical marijuana users were forced to take to begin growing the drug, Rockind said. "Now, anyone who is registered can get started -- they can obtain seeds to grow cannabis legally," he said. The case involved Tony Green of Hastings -- northeast of Kalamazoo -- who was a state-registered patient when police arrested him for giving a small quantity of medical marijuana to another registered patient, said Lansing attorney Matt Newburg, who won the dismissal of the case in Barry County Circuit Court. After the case was dismissed, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's office intervened to file an appeal. A spokeswoman for Schuette said Wednesday that no decision had been made on whether to appeal the ruling to the Michigan Supreme Court. The ruling could be interpreted as legitimizing dispensaries -- the retail distributors of medical marijuana, which Schuette has repeatedly said he vigorously opposes. For medical marijuana supporters who've enjoyed recent court wins after years of setbacks, the only disappointment in Wednesday's ruling is that the man whose side prevailed is not a sympathetic character. Green, 36, is serving a prison sentence on a different charge -- selling marijuana to two undercover agents, his attorney said. I wonder if anyone has checked to see if the AG is heavily invested in anything that depends on marijuana remaining prohibited?
Sad that the person that won this case is locked up for selling marijuana,,his being connected with a dispensary casts a shadow over other dispensaries and keeps politicians armed with evidence to keep putting more regulations in place,,more regs means more costs to the patients,,more money means more illegal interaction.