This column originally appeared on The Denver Post Web site on Dec. 19, 2009

By Jessica Corry, Bob Hoban, Lauren Davis, and Robert Corry, Jr.

Do medical marijuana dispensaries draw crime to their surrounding communities? While recent headlines insinuate this, a coherant examination of crime statistics proves otherwise.

On Dec. 17th, The Denver Post devoted extensive coverage to medical marijuana. A front page story chronicled Denver’s regulatory efforts and the local section was headlined by a piece titled “Pot clinic robbed by pair of men: Denver police report 25 medical-marijuana-related crimes in the last five months.” While any robbery is traumatic and troubling, especially for its victims, it should also be evaluated in a larger context.

When it comes to medical marijuana’s broader crime impact on Colorado’s local communities, law enforcement officials caution against drawing premature conclusions. “There’s no obvious trend at this point,” Denver police spokesman Joe J. Ramirez told Denver Post reporter Howard Pankratz. “It appears to be just random. (Dispensaries) may represent an attractive target for the criminal element but we don’t know that yet.”

Consider this: while the Post was just one of many media outlets clamoring to cover this week’s robbery, the same week saw a much more troubling trend, with as many as 10 bank robberies committed throughout the Denver region in just four days.

Reporters eager to project medical marijuana trends too often turn to the unsubstantiated conclusions of activist opponents for proof . Pankratz’s report referenced an April study released by the California Police Chiefs Association concluding that “drugs, cash and often, guns are a dangerous mix, even when the marijuana sellers have a legal right to possess them.”

Such a polemic must be put into context. According to the Colorado Bureau Investigation, Colorado saw 3,186 robberies and 26,597 burglaries reported to law enforcement agencies in 2008. If recent crime trends hold steady, we can easily conclude that dispensary-related crimes will amount to much less than one percent of all robberies and burglaries reported this year.

An industry-by-industry analysis also demonstrates that dispensary-related crime pales in comparison to crime targeting other industries. Banks are far more vulnerable targets, with a Colorado bank being robbed nearly every other day. According to the FBI, more than 160 banks have already been hit this year alone.

Pankratz also referenced statistics from the Los Angeles Police proclaiming that “robberies at or near medical-marijuana facilities had doubled since passage of California’s Compassionate Use Act” in 1996. Of course they did. Prior to the act legalizing medical marijuana across California, the total number of such legal facilities stood at zero. Today, L.A. alone is home to nearly 200.

As a coalition of attorneys proud to represent medical marijuana caregivers and patients, we’ve witnessed firsthand the many challenges and opportunities that come with building a viable and legal industry that remains hindered by the misconceptions resulting from more than seven decades of federal marijuana prohibition. Our clients are hard working entrepreneurs. They pay their taxes on time, go above and beyond to ensure their facilities are welcoming, safe, secure, and private. They are bringing viable businesses to struggling commercial centers. They create jobs, pay much needed revenue to public coffers, and most importantly, they provide a valuable service to Colorado’s sick and dying, many of whom seek out medical marijuana only after conventional pharmaceutical drugs fail to ease chronic and excruciating symptoms.

Medical marijuana is today’s hot issue and one that generates tremendous reader interest. Ultimately, however, responsible journalism insists that the public be informed of the facts. Legal since 2000 in Colorado, no reliable evidence exists to prove that medical marijuana leads to increased crime. While previously, patients were forced into the dark alleyways of the black market to get their medicine, they can now obtain it from trusted caregivers who know them by name.

We will resist the temptation to rely on the events of the past week to conclude that a visit to the local bank could prove more dangerous than a visit to the local dispensary. Instead, we encourage our fellow Coloradoans to take a moment to look behind beyond the headlines. Medical marijuana means more jobs, more health care options, and more tax revenue. It does not, however, mean more violence.

Jessica Corry, Lauren Davis, Robert Corry, Jr., and Bob Hoban are Denver attorneys currently representing a coalition of medical marijuana patients and caregivers seeking to overturn a Centennial medical marijuana ban.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14027740#ixzz0aFasCIYP

Contact: Jessica Corry
720-628-5756/Jessica@JessicaCorry.com
www.HobanandFeola.com

Friday, Dec. 18, 2009

For Immediate Release:

ARAPAHOE COUNTY DISTRICT COURT TO HOST
HISTORIC MEDICAL MARIJUANA HEARING TODAY
key correspondence and bench brief attached with this release

Centennial, Colo.— In a bench brief submitted to Arapahoe County District Court Judge Christopher Cross Thursday, plaintiffs in a landmark medical marijuana case laid out specifics as to why and how they believe Centennial violated the Colorado Constitution by recently forcing a medical marijuana wellness center to shut down. Plaintiffs submitted the brief after the city indicated it would not accept a proposed settlement also put forth by plaintiffs. A hearing on the case is set for Cross’s courtroom today at 1:30 p.m.

The plaintiffs, including three seriously-ill patients and their two caregivers, hope to reverse Centennial’s October 19th forced closure of CannaMart. The city’s actions came just weeks after officials first approved CannaMart’s business license. At today’s hearing, plaintiffs will specifically seek injunctive relief that would allow CannaMart to reopen.

The case marks a first for Colorado as the inaugural challenge to a home rule municipality’s ability to impose local land use restrictions in such a way as to entirely prohibit registered medical marijuana caregivers from operating dispensaries within city limits.

In a letter sent to attorney Andrew Nathan, who is representing Centennial in this case, plaintiffs provided a series of 14 different regulations they would be willing to accept as part of a settlement agreement. These attempts at compromise included accepting a prohibition on operating the facility at night, limits to signage, and a ban on on-site consumption of products containing medical marijuana. In the absence of a settlement, which had not emerged by late Thursday night, both parties will appear at this afternoon’s hearing.

At this hearing, plaintiffs’ team of four attorneys will argue that home rule municipalities, including Centennial, cannot prohibit certain rights, including medical marijuana, that are otherwise protected under the state Constitution as “matters of statewide concern.”

It was this argument and others that plaintiffs included in the brief submitted to Cross Thursday. “Though cities generally have broad land use planning authority, that authority does not include the right to ban disfavored uses from all zoning districts,” Plaintiffs argued through attorney Bob Hoban. “Rather, local land use authority is to be exercised by designating appropriate areas for different land uses and placing conditions on those uses. . . . this fundamental legal principal is known as a ‘time, place, and manner’ restriction.”

Medical marijuana has been legal in Colorado since 2000, when a majority of voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing individuals suffering from debilitating medical conditions to legally consume and purchase marijuana. The amendment also legalized the sale, distribution, storage, transportation, production, and cultivation of the medicine by caregivers.

WHAT: Arapahoe County District Court Judge Christopher Cross to hear challenge
to the City of Centennial’s decision to shut down CannaMart.
WHEN: Friday, December 18, 2009, 1:30 p.m. Plaintiffs and their legal team (Bob Hoban, Robert Corry, Lauren Davis, and Jessica Corry) will be
available for comment before and after the hearing. For specific press questions or set up interviews with plaintiffs or attorneys, contact Jessica Corry at 720-628-5756.
WHERE: Arapahoe County District Court, Courtroom 405, Judge Christopher Cross,
7325 S. Potomac St., Centennial, CO.

# # #

This column originally appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette on December 15, 2009

By Jessica Peck Corry

Yoga, marketed as a way to find personal peace through perplexing poses, is now at the center of a growing debate over whether that sweaty Saturday morning of downward-facing dogs should be federally recognized as a religious service.

Owners of yoga studios in at least one state might be chanting a few prayers these days in response to a November decision by the state to collect a 4 percent tax on yoga and Pilates, with the studios classified as commercial in nature and places of “amusement, entertainment, or recreation.”

The move has prompted talk about whether yoga should be classified as a religion, and similar to more conventional sanctuaries, would be exempted from paying federal taxes. While the change could mean substantial cost savings for the industry, yoga’s biggest voices remain opposed or conflicted.

The American Yoga Association insists on its Web site that “yoga is not a religion. It has no creed or fixed set of beliefs. The practice of yoga will not interfere with any religion.” The organization maintains that yoga’s rituals predate Hinduism by centuries, and argues yoga shouldn’t be classified as a religion simply because multiple religions, including Hinduism, have adopted many of its positive teachings.

According to Bresee Sullivan, the analysis is more complicated, with yoga’s teachings allowing for either secular or religious observances. As Sullivan, a 24-year-old married Denver mother, celebrates two milestones this month — finishing law school and becoming certified as a yoga instructor — she believes classifying yoga as a religion would lead to massive confusion, even among its most devout participants, and especially in the law. As she explains, the physical practice of yoga is called Asana, an element that “is just one small subset of a larger philosophy also called yoga. This philosophy also includes a religious component.”

While Sullivan has taken yoga classes for six years, she has “only recently begun exploring the spiritual practice,” and believes that “if you are just seeking to make the physical practice of yoga a religion, you are either discrediting the true meaning of the spiritual study of yoga or you’re granting a workout religious status.”

While political correctness often blurs the line between spirituality and religion, Trisha Feuerstein of the California-based Yoga Research and Education Center argues that yoga is not a religion, telling reporters that “really, it’s a spiritual practice, and we don’t equate spirituality with religion.”

Some of yoga’s most devout former supporters allege that at least one yoga sect is a cult. In an ongoing lawsuit, 26 former followers of Dahn Yoga, allege that Dahn requires “absolute devotion to Defendant Ilchi Lee and his ‘vision’ (requiring) that members dedicate all of their available cash and credit to the Dahn organization… and disconnect from their previous life, including friends and family and any personal interests outside of Dahn.”

Dahn, which was imported from Korea and is practiced at more than 130 centers across the United States, is promoted as a mix of healthy physical and mental exercises blending yoga with tai chi and martial arts. Still, cult experts, including Steve Hassan, aren’t persuaded with Hassan classifying Dahn as a “destructive, deceptive, mind control cult.”

With yoga’s popularity soaring across Colorado, some school districts are getting in on the action, not always greeted with the most favorable response. I

n Aspen, public school parents objected when yoga instruction was introduced to the classroom, saying the move violated federal limits on religious activities in public schools. “You can’t separate the religious from the spiritual,” Aspen pastor Steve Woodrow told reporters, advocating a position in stark contrast to Feuerstein’s. “Why not teach Pilates or aerobics if it’s just stretching?”

Aspen schools now offer a watered down version of the real deal. Instead of closing each session with “Namaste,” a Sanskrit term meaning “the light in you is the light in me,” students close with “peace.” More than 100 schools across the nation offer yoga programs. At New York’s Massena High, parents alleged the school’s yoga program indoctrinated students with Hindu rights. As a result, yoga is out at Massena and a more secular “Raider Relaxation” is in.

On that note, Namaste, peace, or as we say in the non-yoga world, until next time.

—

Jessica Peck Corry is area lawyer and mother who appears on Fox News. Visit her website at www.JessicaCorry.com

Contact: Jessica Corry
720-628-5756/Jessica@JessicaCorry.com
www.HobanandFeola.com

December 15, 2009

For Immediate Release:

COURT TO HEAR CHALLENGE TO CENTENNIAL MEDICAL MARIJUANA BAN

Centennial, Colo.—A coalition of medical marijuana patients and caregivers will get their day in court Friday. At an afternoon hearing, plaintiffs will argue that the City of Centennial violated their rights under the Colorado Constitution, as well as related land use statutes, by forcing a Centennial medical marijuana wellness center to close last month.

Three seriously-ill medical marijuana patients, together with their two caregivers, hope to reverse the City of Centennial’s decision to force CannaMart to shut its doors October 19th. The city’s actions came just weeks after it had approved CannaMart’s business license. The case marks a first for Colorado as the inaugural challenge to a home rule municipality’s ability to impose land use restrictions prohibiting registered patients and caregivers from dispensing medical marijuana within municipal boundaries.

Relying on well established Colorado case law, the coalition’s attorneys argue that home rule municipalities, including Centennial, cannot impose restrictions on rights, including medical marijuana, that are otherwise protected under the state Constitution as “matters of statewide concern.” Medical marijuana has been legal in Colorado since 2000, when a majority of voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing individuals suffering from debilitating medical conditions to legally consume and purchase marijuana. The amendment also legalized the sale, distribution, storage, transportation, production, and cultivation of the medicine by caregivers.

WHAT: Arapahoe County District Court Judge Christopher Cross to hear challenge
to the City of Centennial’s decision to shut down CannaMart.
WHEN: Friday, December 18, 2009, 1:30 p.m. Plaintiffs and their attorneys will be
available for comment before and after the hearing.
WHERE: Arapahoe County District Court, Courtroom 405, Judge Christopher Cross,
7325 S. Potomac St., Centennial, CO.

# # #

This column originally ran in the Colorado Springs Gazette on December 6, 2009.

By Jessica Peck Corry

With Thanksgiving behind us, we can at last turn our homes into endless seas of red and green without fear of retribution by overzealous homeowners’ associations. We all throw guilt to the wind, allowing even the most devout vegan to indulge in gluten-rich, non-organic, processed, absolutely divine treats. December just wouldn’t be the same without one of America’s most time-honored holiday rituals: angry lawsuits from misinformed Atheists.

This column isn’t about proclaiming a certain religious truth, nor is it about proving one wrong. So save the angry emails for a moment. Rather, it’s about raising a very simple question with a very complicated answer. Have American courts royally screwed up what our nation’s founders intended as the proper relationship between government and religious freedom?

Perhaps you think it doesn’t matter. Before you tune out, however, take a moment to check out “Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State,” a book co-authored by attorneys Joseph C. Smith and Tara Ross.

Smith and Ross make the case that American courts have wrongly depended on Thomas Jefferson’s reference to “separation of church and state” to purge religion from the public square.

While it’s tempting to believe that the reference must have first appeared in the U.S. Constitution, this simply isn’t true. Its first and only notable appearance came in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. With the exception of this communication, Smith and Ross conclude, Jefferson never publicly advocated again for a “wall of separation” between government and organized religion.

The letter, in fact, was ignored almost entirely for years after its writing. It took another five decades, until Emerson v. Board of Education, for American jurisprudence to embrace “separation of church and state” as legal authority.

“So what?” some Atheists might ask. Whether “separation of church and state” came from the U.S. Constitution or the courts, it’s still an important part of America’s legal fabric. But the philosophy’s origins do matter, as Smith points out. “Whether any particular government policy that accommodates or promotes religion is wise or effective, remains a debatable question,” he told me. “What is less debatable, in many circumstances at least, is whether such policies are constitutionally permissible. Many of them clearly are.”

Smith and Ross are not arguing for a religious state. Notably, they come from different religious traditions. Smith is a devout Roman Catholic, while Ross is a protestant and her husband is Jewish. They count agnostics and Atheists among close friends. “It’s between you and God,” Smith believes.

Instead, the authors argue the true intent of our nation’s founders was a broader embrace of religion in our society, focusing on the views of the man in charge at the time, George Washington.

As Washington saw it, religion — albeit not a specific denomination or theology — was a key foundation to an effective self-governing society, proclaiming in 1796, “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

While the First Amendment demands that Congress “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” this clause does not require an exclusion of religion either. America’s religious diversity grows by the second, and once the government starts to boot Joseph, Mary, and every menorah from all public displays, it’s only a matter of time before the Unitarians, Wiccans, Scientologists, and yoga instructors are kicked out too.

While defining religion can be tough, it is generally seen as a collective philosophy providing us lowly humans an explanation or ultimate truth to help us understand how or why we got here. Most religions observe a devotion to a higher power. Given that many Atheists revere the individual as the source of such truth, however, couldn’t they also be vulnerable to being ordained with religious status? It’s only a matter of time before the issue is litigated.

Across the nation, public holiday displays represent a hodgepodge of different faiths. At first glance, they are cheesy and over-the-top. Upon closer examination, they are everything good about America, representing our ability to come together to celebrate not only religion, but also the lessons of morality, generosity, and the peace it attempts to teach us. If only we will listen.

—

Jessica Peck Corry (www.JessicaCorry.com), is a Denver attorney and serves as a public policy analyst with the Independence Institute.

http://www.coloradocommunitynewspapers.com/articles/2009/12/04/centennial_citizen/news/11_pj_pot_suit_ce.txt

City readies for fight on medical marijuana

By Peter Jones
Published: 12.04.09
A lawsuit brought against the City of Centennial by a medical-marijuana dispensary and three of its patients is the first lawsuit of its kind in Colorado since voters approved marijuana use for medicinal purposes in 2000.

CannaMart and the three customers filed the suit on Nov. 30 after the city forced the dispensary to close on the grounds that its sale of marijuana violated Centennial’s land-development code.

Fourteen states currently allow some degree of medical marijuana use.

According to Jessica Corry, an attorney for the plaintiffs, the city has overstepped its authority by prohibiting a land use that she says is protected in the Colorado Constitution.

“Centennial is a home-rule municipality,” she said. “While that entitles a certain amount of more power, it does not mean a municipal government can trample over constitutional rights.”

Medical marijuana is in a gray area of federal, state and local law. Although Colorado voters approved a controversial constitutional amendment nine years ago allowing it, marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

That simple fact is the bottom line, according to Centennial City Attorney Robert Widner, who emphasizes that Centennial’s land-development code specifically bans businesses that violate federal or state law.

“The federal Controlled Substance Act prohibits any possession, sale or use of marijuana — absolutely,” Widner said.

He would not comment on the specifics of the CannaMart lawsuit.

Earlier this year, Centennial granted a business license to the dispensary, which was in the process of paying city sales taxes when Widner’s office served its cease-and-desist order. The retailer operated for five weeks at 8006 E. Arapahoe Road.

The city revoked CannaMart’s license when officials learned that the retailer’s line of “medical and healthcare products,” as stated on its business license, included medical marijuana.

“We’re a wellness center,” co-owner Stan Zislis said, when asked why medical marijuana was not mentioned on the firm’s original license application. “We offer edibles. We offer consultation. We offer doctor referrals. We offer other healthcare products.”

The name CannaMart is a reference to cannabis, the leafy plant from which marijuana is derived.

The lawsuit could eventually bring some clarity to a question being faced by municipalities across Colorado: What are a city’s responsibilities with respect to medical marijuana’s place in the state constitution?

While some Colorado cities have allowed dispensaries, others have instituted temporary moratoriums, hoping that Congress or the state legislature will eventually clear up medical marijuana’s murky intersection with conflicting state and local laws.

According to Corry, for now, the City of Centennial is obligated to not infringe on a right guaranteed in the Colorado Constitution. She says it is instead essentially trying to usurp the federal government’s authority.

“There are issues when a municipal government seeks to enforce federal law as a way to strip away constitutional rights,” she said. “Such a policy is on shaky grounds, especially when President Obama said the federal government will no longer prosecute patients and dispensary owners who are in compliance with state laws.”

In October, the U.S. Justice Department announced new policy guidelines deeming such prosecutions to not be a good use of federal manpower. The policy was a significant shift from that of the Bush administration.

Widner emphasizes that the recent change in federal enforcement policy was not a change in federal law — a crucial point as far as the land-development code is concerned, he says.

“What [the federal change] says is we’re going to allocate our resources for enforcement in a specific way,” he said. “It doesn’t change the law.”

Further, the city attorney argues that the effective legalization of medical marijuana in the Colorado Constitution does not obligate cities to help facilitate it.

“[The constitution] is merely immunizing the individual who needs marijuana and the individual who’s their caregiver and provides it to them,” he said. “State law doesn’t say anything about dispensaries and the method by which the product is produced or sold at retail.”

Clarity may be on the way. Colorado could soon become the first state in the nation to establish a regulated business model for medical marijuana. Plans are for comprehensive legislation to be introduced next year. Congress may also consider bills at the federal level.

Last month, state Attorney General John Suthers issued an opinion that Colorado has the authority to tax medical marijuana.

Before CannaMart’s business license was revoked, Widner says he met individually with Centennial’s nine city councilmembers to gather consensus on how the city should handle the situation. The matter was not discussed in a public meeting until after the cease-and-desist order was issued.

According to one councilmember, who asked not to be identified, three of the elected officials, including the one who spoke with the Centennial Citizen on the condition of anonymity, did not support the forced closure of CannaMart.