Action Alert: Santa Clara votes this Tuesday on dispensary moratorium!

Santa Clara patients and advocates need your support!

What: Santa Clara City Council to decide on medical cannabis dispensary moratorium

When: Tuesday, May 10th - 7pm

Where: Meeting beforehand at Round Table Pizza, 2615 The Alameda @ Park
City Council meeting in council chambers

Why: We need to show the council the need for medical cannabis dispensaries. We must
protect safe access to medical marijuana!


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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
5/8/2005

Santa Clara City Council Agenda Item Considers a Temporary Pot Club Ban in Santa Clara
by Area 420 Director Jim Lohse contact 408 246-0052 jiml [at] area420.com area420.com

Action Item for Activists:
WE NEED SPEAKERS AND WARM BODIES! Meeting starts at 7pm, we hope our item comes up
by 9pm. Pre-meeting pizza meeting at Round Table Pizza, 2615 The Alameda at Park,
Santa Clara.

-------- Santa Clara Marijuana Distribution Article Below Recounts Experience
Distributing in Skilled Nursing Facility

Cannabis Helps Eighty-Year Old Skilled Nursing Resident Who Already Takes Morphine
for Osteoporosis.

(SANTA CLARA, CA) -- While Kaiser Hospital makes a medical marijuana recommendation
form available to every one of their doctors, and many cancer and AIDS specialists
recommend cannabis for their Kaiser patients, that only creates a demand for medical
marijuana in Santa Clara. The city has yet to solve the supply problem, so for now
it's kept on the streets.

Area 420 discovered that Santa Clara was planning to ban legitimate suppliers from
establishing a co-op location to help these Kaiser patients. While Kaiser patients
only make up a small fraction of the medical marijuana community, these patients
currently have no option but to travel to San Francisco or work with a mobile
caregiver service.

Area 420 is the only group to provide "soup-to-nuts" advice and help to those facing
this confusing situation. One woman called Area 420 Director Jim Lohse last year to
ask about her mother. "The mother was eighty years old, suffering from severe
osteoporosis. I made an appointment to meet the daughter at the skilled-care
facility," says Lohse, who used the caregiver name "Agroshare" at the time.

Jim Lohse has many personal stories about distributing marijuana to needy patients.
"In this case, it was providential that we met at 2pm that day. The daughter and I
checked in at the front desk, and proceeded to her mother's living quarters. We were
shocked to see a nurse attending the mother, who had just fallen!"

Lohse continues, "To you or me a fall is something we brush off. To someone whose
spine is degenerating, it's traumatic. I let the daughter calm the mother down while
I checked her Kaiser note."

Lohse says everything looked in order, so he asked the mother a few questions before
"smoking her out."

Lohse recounts, "It was pretty amazing to see a woman who was already on morphine
get a benefit from cannabis use. The woman had been a tobacco smoker before, so she
knew how to smoke. She just took a few hits and relaxed. Once I saw there were no
side effects, I left them alone. Later the daughter said that aside from the direct
benefit of relaxation and pain relief, the marijuana had stimulated her mother's
appetite! We solved three problems that day."

Lohse declined to name the patient or specify the location except to say it was a
skilled nursing facility in Santa Clara.

--
Rebecca Saltzman
Executive Assistant
Americans for Safe Access
(510) 251-1856
http://www.safeaccessnow.org