Arizona’s First Medical Marijuana Collective Opens Its Doors To Patients

Last Monday, an Arizona based medical marijuana group opened the doors to the first Collective offered to Arizona’s registered medical marijuana card holders. Arizona Cannabis Society LLC opened the doors to their first Collective in grand fashion Monday morning at 11am by handing out FREE medical marijuana to the first 100 patients through the door.

The Collective, which is known as Arizona Cannabis Society, launched a program which is designed for medical marijuana patients that are not interested in cultivating their own medical marijuana plants but are approved to cultivate or for patients that do not want to appoint a registered caregiver this early in the states medical marijuana program.

Arizona Cannabis Society accepts “agency rights” in its name from the patients in order to cultivate 12 medical marijuana plants for each patient they sign up. The Collective cultivates marijuana for the patients and in return patients are able to come to the Collective facilities to receive their medication from the staff at the reimbursement cost of the production. This makes it far more affordable for patients to get quality medical marijuana from a legal source. The group gave away free grams of medical marijuana to the first 100 patients that signed up for the Collective.

The Arizona legislation (ARS 28-1) states patients may reimburse caregivers for reasonable production costs of the medication with one exception, labor. The Collective only assists its own members as it cannot cultivate for anyone that isn’t a member. The AZCS Collective offers patients an alternative to Compassion Clubs that are gaining in popularity across the valley and is completely ARS 28.1 compliant.

Arizona Cannabis Society also offers free classes to members as well as the following services; massage therapy, acupuncture, aroma therapy, cultivation consulting, legal consulting and certification services for new medical marijuana patients. The facility also has a paraphernalia room where patients and staff can discuss various usage methods.

Visit or call today for more information regarding membership fee’s or assistance with medical marijuana services.

(Press Release)

Arizona AG Worked With Anti-Marijuana Leader On Lawsuit

Photo: James King/Phoenix New Times

Whack-job Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne started working on a nefarious plan to stop medical marijuana almost as soon as voters had approved it last November.

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Elected state officials busily working to defeat the will of their state’s own voters — it’s an unseemly spectacle, and it’s unfolding as we speak in Arizona. Making the entire scene even more ugly is the fact that seriously ill patients are needless suffering as a result.

Within weeks of Arizona voters approving medical marijuana in their state, the top law enforcement official in the state was devising ways to stymie the will of the people. Whack-job Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne discussed a plan to launch legal action agains the state’s medical marijuana law during a January meeting with the law’s biggest opponent, it has been revealed.

Carolyn Short, who led last year’s unsuccessful campaign to stop Proposition 203, which legalized medical marijuana in Arizona, refers to the meeting in a February 16 letter [PDF] to state Department of Health Services Director Will Humble, reports Ray Stern at Phoenix New Times:

On January 10, 2011, [former Arizona U.S. Attorney] Paul Charlton and I met with Attorney General Horne to discuss our conclusion that implementation of Prop 203 would subject you and other ADHS employees to federal prosecution for violating the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”).

AG Horne suggested that he could file a declaratory judgment action, asking a court to determine whether the implementation of Arizona’s law would subject you and other ADHS employees to the risk of federal prosecution under the CSA.

Horne and Governor Jan Brewer put that idea into action last month, filing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The suit asks the court to make a “declaratory judgment” on the legality of Arizona’s new law.

State officials claimed at the time that a letter to Humble by U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke prompted them to file the lawsuit. Though both Horne and Brewer openly opposed Prop 203 before voters approved it, Horne claimed to reporters last month that he and the Governor were taking a “neutral” (yeah, right) stance on the new law.

“Short’s letter lays rest to the notion of neutrality,” Stern reports in the New Times. “And it makes Burke’s May 2 letter, which merely reiterated that marijuana was against federal law, (okay, there was some new stuff about the potential risk to property owners, landlords and financiers), appear to be little more than political cover for Horne and Brewer to launch a pre-planned attack.”

Besides mentioning Horne’s idea for a federal lawsuit, Short’s letter lays the groundwork for the theory that state employees are at risk of being federally prosecuted for simply carrying out the wishes of Arizona’s voters.

Horne and Brewer claimed last month that their lawsuit — in which they are plaintiffs attempting to defeat the will of the voters — that they’re “concerned” about state employees being prosecuted.

Yet, according to New Times, U.S. Attorney Burke never threatened state employees in his own letter, and the idea that the Obama Administration would arrest state officials in Arizona (or in Washington, where Governor Christine Gregoire used an almost identical excuse to gut a law which would have legalized dispensaries there) is simply far-fetched — as in, it has never happened, anywhere, ever.

“Brewer and Horne could have let Burke and the DEA make the first move against Arizona voters, then defended the medical marijuana law as vigorously as they’re defending the immigration laws,” Stern writes. “Instead, the governor and AG appear to be working in concert with Proposition 203′s opponents to defeat the law by any means necessary.”