Violence Prompts Debate Over Medical Marijuana

SEATTLE — A shooting and a beating death linked to medical marijuana have prompted new calls by law enforcement officials and marijuana advocates for Washington State to change how it regulates the drug and protects those who grow and use it.
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Thom Weinstein/Seattlepi.com, via Associated Press

Steve Sarich, a marijuana grower, who shot an intruder, shows the wound he received in the robbery.

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Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

Marijuana grown for medical use in Washington.


In the past week, a man in Orting, Wash., near Tacoma, died after he reportedly was beaten while confronting people trying to steal marijuana plants from his property. On Monday, a prominent medical-marijuana activist shot an armed man who is accused of breaking into his home in a suburban area near Seattle where he grows and distributes marijuana plants.
On Tuesday, the police arrested five people on robbery charges in connection with the shooting incident. One of those arrested is in critical condition after being shot by Steve Sarich, who runs a group called CannaCare out of his house. Mr. Sarich suffered minor wounds from a shotgun blast fired by the intruder he shot.
The crimes are the most violent that advocates and law enforcement officials said they could recall involving medical marijuana in Washington. In both cases, they said, the victims appear to have been chosen because they were known to have relatively large amounts of marijuana in their homes. They say the crimes underscore conflicts in state policy that have become evident since Washington legalized medical marijuana in 1998.
“Any person making medical marijuana is going to be a target because they have a valuable commodity,” Sgt. John Urquhart of the King County Sheriff’s Department said in an interview Tuesday.
Under state law, marijuana can be recommended for medical use by physicians but the state does not play a formal role in regulating and distributing the drug. While some states allow dispensaries or cafes, most medical marijuana in Washington is distributed from private homes or small offices that are supposed to grow or stock only a certain amount of the drug and serve only one patient at a time.
Though the recent violence has drawn new attention to the issue, robberies have become more common in Washington over the years. Marijuana advocates complain that robberies are underreported because law enforcement officials focus more on confiscating marijuana from the growers than on arresting the thieves. The authorities, in turn, have noted that some growers are exceeding limits on how much of the drug they can possess, and say the circumstances of some robberies are murky.
Mr. Sarich did not respond to an interview request.
A few days before the shooting, Mr. Sarich wrote to State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, a Democrat from Seattle who has pushed to ease sanctions on marijuana use, say growers face dangers both of being robbed and of how they will be treated by the police.
In an interview, Ms. Kohl-Welles said she and another lawmaker would introduce legislation next year to protect access to medical marijuana and protect those who grow it. Dan Satterberg, the King County prosecutor, also called for change.
“By forcing this production to remain underground,” Mr. Satterberg said, “you increase the risk of violence for everybody and you disburse that violence to residential neighborhoods and put everybody at risk.”
Some advocates for legalizing marijuana in general say that medical growers hurt their efforts by not working within legal limits and by not building a relationship with the police. They say making marijuana legal for the general population would reduce crime against those who use it for medical reasons.
Even before he was robbed on Monday, Mr. Sarich had complained that the police were not doing enough to protect him, including after what he said was a robbery attempt in January. He told The Seattle Times on Monday that he and his girlfriend were authorized to have up to 50 plants each and had less than 100 plants in the house they shared.
Sergeant Urquhart said that there was “nothing to investigate” in January because Mr. Sarich had provided little information. Mr. Urquhart also said investigators had found 385 plants in Mr. Sarich’s house after the shooting on Monday.
“He had baked goods with marijuana in them, frozen goods with marijuana in them, chocolate goods with marijuana in them,” Mr. Urquhart said. “He had green butter, which we believe is laced with marijuana. As we interpret state law, he was not in compliance.”
Law enforcement officers, he said, confiscated “everything over and above what the prosecutor believes is legal.”

 

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• Times Topics: Marijuana
  
  News about marijuana, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
• Violence Prompts Debate Over Medical Marijuana

thought the pics would link to story..

 

Being uk and illegal I actually fear being robbed more then being busted. Ok not so many guns about here but ya know somebody is going to get hurt if it happens.
But tell me do ya have a list of growers that is open to the public or are the growers so open about it that every man and his dog know what there upto?

 

too much reading but whatever it says I bet I don't like it one bit

 

Thanks to all the low-life scum bags who think stealing someone's medicine for their own benefit/recreational use, its not making the fight for pro-medicinal use any easier...

leave the violence at home you pussies.... your not helping the cause to get MJ looked at in a different light. Violence is never a good thing, especially when it is linked to medicinal MJ....

very dissapointed : / and feel bad for all the growers who have to live in fear of people robbing them.

 

There is no reason for a care giver to fear being robbed. In the state of Washington, medical marijuana production is a private agreement between caregiver and patient. there is no reason for anyone to know of someone else's "grow op" unless one were involved in general mercantile.