Winter/Spring 2005
O'Shaughnessy's
Journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical
Group
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The Allowable Quantity Expert
You can sing the praises of many courageous doctors,
growers, lawyers, dispensary operators and patients’ advocates, but
who has done more to implement California’s medical marijuana law than
Chris Conrad in his role as an expert witness? Where the rubber really
meets the road —in a rural county courthouse with a zealous district
attorney trying to convince a jury that Mr. Smith’s x number of plants
plus y amount of dried marijuana is proof of intent to sell— you’ll
find Conrad delivering the salient facts in a knowledgeable, persuasive
manner.
Conrad, 51, is from rural Maryland, and came to California in the mid-1970s.
His primary and
Chris Conrad
|
secondary education was in Catholic schools. He got his
BA from Cal State (Dominguez Hills In 1980 and began making his living
as a writer. In the late ’80s he found himself focused on cannabis
after a niece shared some disinformation provided by a DARE instructor.
Since then Conrad has written extensively about cannabis and its cultivation,
and, in the process developed his expertise. In 1992 he and his wife, activist
Mikki Norris, spent six weeks in Nijmegen, Holland working for Sensi Seed Bank,
a government-approved cannabis research and breeding facility.
The next year they visited hemp farms in France, Holland and Hungary, and spent
six months in Amsterdam running the Hash-Marijuana-Hemp Museum. In ’95 he took
20 hours of classes in “cannabis botany, agriculture, pharmo-chemistry, industrial
technologies and medical use” at a symposium in Frankfurt organized by German
hemp-sters.
Conrad was first qualified as an expert witness in ’94 in the Superior Court
of Madera County on an industrial hemp case. “Ron Kiczenski and two of his
friends decided to challenge the ban on growing hemp by planting 4,000 seeds
on somebody’s land,” Conrad recalls. “The judge wasn’t letting in the information
about hemp. I was allowed to testify to the judge, but he wouldn’t let the
jury hear my testimony... the jury acquitted Kiczenski but admonished him not
to do it again.”
Conrad and Norris were in the large circle around Dennis Peron that helped
plan and carry out the Prop 215 campaign in ’95-96. No sooner had it passed
than attorney general Dan Lungren tried to impose very low limits on the amounts
of cannabis that patients and caregivers could grow and possess. In ’97 the
expert-witness phase of Conrad’s career began in earnest. He was –and is— typically
called in to refute a prosecutor’s projection of how much medical-grade cannabis
a given garden will yield, and/or how much a given patient should use. To date
he has appeared in about 100 cases in more than 30 counties. Numerous cases
have been dismissed or settled when prosecutors got wind of the fact that Conrad
would testify.
Conrad recently published a booklet called “Cannabis Yields and Dosage” that,
in 20 pages, discusses every aspect of the contentious “allowable quantity” issue.
It explains the reasoning behind the guidelines adopted by Sonoma, Humboldt
and Santa Cruz counties (100 square feet of plant canopy and three pounds of
bud per patient). It also provides a useful analysis of SB 420, the bill passed
by the California legislature in 2003 to “clarify” Prop 215.
Conrad says he wrote the booklet with “people involved in setting policy” in
mind. He asks rhetorically, “Why should any locality enact guidelines greater
than the SB-420 floor? Because to do so is cost-effective, reasonable and compassionate,
The six-plant, eight-ounce limit is neither scientific nor adequate for many
patients. A compassionate policy would be to stop arresting patients, leave
them their medicine, and not ruin them financially by causing prohibitive legal
costs. The counties would benefit enormously —prosecuting a marijuana case
can cost $100,000.”
Conrad advises growers not to have guns on the
premises.
The booklet should prove useful to growers seeking to confirm that
their gardens are within the legal limits. Conrad advises growers not
to have guns on the premises. “They might think that it puts them at
risk in terms of a strong-armed robbery, but to tell you the truth,
I don’t hear about people saying that having a gun helped out. I DO
know of a number of cases of people getting extra time or injuring
themselves. Guns bring in the feds —a large-scale grow or the presence
of a gun. I don’t think the benefit is worth it.” Conrad is not anti-gun
in general. “When I was growing up in Maryland we had guns to shoot
at ground hogs, which destroyed crops,” he says with a no-BFD shrug.
Safe Access Now, founded by Conrad and Ralph Sherrow, maintains a website (safeaccesnow.net)
that lists the allowable-quantity guidelines in effect county-by-county. As
of January, 2005, Mendocino allows a 100-foot canopy for cultivation but possession
of only two pounds. Del Norte allows 100 square feet but only one pound. Tehama
allows three pounds but only 10 plants. In most counties, however, the six-plant,
eight-ounce “default” limit applies.
The Cannabis Yields and Dosage booklet costs $5 (shipping included) if you
send a check to Chris Conrad at pob 1716 El Cerrito CA 94530, or $7 if you
order through safeaccesnow.net. It’s printed on 8-1/2 by —11" high-gloss
paper that looks like it could stand up to the humidity of a greenhouse.
When we’d talked in December, Conrad was waiting for a verdict from Humboldt. “This
woman would have had a great case if she hadn’t told the cop in an initial
interview that she only uses a gram a day —which is 12 ounces a year, and she’s
growing six pounds. I made a real good argument that it was a personal garden,
based on how it was laid out, but I don’t know what the jury is going to make
of it.”
Now the verdict was in. “It was a split verdict,” Conrad explained, “convicted
of cultivation but acquitted of intent to sell, which I interpreted as the
jury telling her that she was, indeed, growing too much but also telling the
DA that simply having a large supply does not prove intent to distribute marijuana.
This distinction is also borne out by the Arbacauskas Appellate decision, that
although the defendant was growing more than his “current medical need” would
warrant, this was due to inexperience rather than criminal intent. In that
case, all charges were dismissed, the Appeals court reviewed the facts, wrote
favorably of my testimony, and ruled that it was improper for the DA to re-file
the same charges without any new evidence. That decision affects all criminal
proceedings in the state.”