The federal government has basically taken a stance that when it comes to medical marijuana the states have no rights.   They are determined to make it difficult for store front dispensaries to operate.   How long this will last is the question.   The California Supreme Court has decided to review the Pack Case to see if the feds can legally interfere with state law and shut down local collectives.  That will take at least 12-24 months. 

Because of the federal governments stance the city of Long Beach is voting on February 14 whether or not to reverse its ordinance that created a safe haven for a few well run dispensaries to operate.    Los Angeles is in the process of figuring out what to do with its few hundred dispensaries as well.   In the next 2-3 months the landscape could change even more.

So what does this mean for patients?    Certainly they may have to drive a little bit further to find a great collective.  Many will simply turn to delivery services. Many will learn how to grow their own.  Industry experts have been telling patients how hard it is to grow quality medicine but that simply is not the case.    For most patients, a small up front investment and a little time is all it would take to get enough medicine to last an entire year.   The state allows you to grow 12 plants (6 mature at any given time) which should yield 4 ounces per plant.   The average patient uses between 1-5 eighths of an ounce per month.   That means an ounce would last them 4 months.   If you do the math one harvest can yield enough medicine to last a few years.  There are plenty of good resources for patients to grow their own medicine.  Many hydroponic shops have instructions on exactly how to do it.

How did this happen?  How did we go from President Obama saying he was not going to use federal resources to go after states medical marijuana laws to regular raids using federal resources?     In my opinion the industry has no one to blame but themselves.  Let me explain.

1. Lets start with the doctors.  It is inexcusable how doctors have distorted the law for $25 have handed out recommendations to anyone who can fog a mirror.  The state medical board set guidelines for recommending medical marijuana and the bottom line is that they are not being followed.   I can not count how many times over the past 6 months I have told patients that they do not qualify who have presented recommendations previously from other doctors.  The majority of these cases is because the patients have not been adequately evaluated by doctors for the condition they are telling me they are using medical marijuana for.   For example, a 23 year old male came in with a previous recommendation to use cannabis for migraine headaches.   He was never evaluated or even diagnosed for his headaches.  In fact he had not been to a doctor in over 7 years.  The last time he did see a doctor for for a sports physical in high school.    Yet, despite having no documentation of having migraine headaches he was given a medical marijuana recommendation. As a result of this blatant disregard for the state guidelines we had half of the senior graduating high school class partying with medical marijuana.

2.  Dispensaries:  The reality is that the many of the dispensaries were not helping the cause.   Many were blatantly providing marijuana to recreational users and drug dealers.    Many would sell ounces at a time on more than one occasion in the same week to the SAME patient. Clearly they know that he/she was selling it and not using all that medicine for personal use.    Secondly, how many raids of dispensaries also turned up cocaine?!!  Clearly these dispensaries were illegally dealing drugs under the guise of medical marijuana.    When dispensaries advertise “happy hour” and put girls in thongs behind the counter they are not giving any city official the impression that they are interested in taking care of patients.

3. HempCon:   all you to do is walk through a hemp con convention to realize that much of medical marijuana is recreational use.   “Hot girl contests”, “Smoke rooms” and the in your face advertising only hurt the genuine medical marijuana community.   It’s pretty hard to stand in front of the city council and argue why we need good dispensaries in the community when there are so many bad apples hurting the cause.

The difficult thing to accept about this recent crack down is that there are genuine patients who need this medicine who are going to suffer.    I wish the legitimate patients could have a voice in all of this.    Last week I took care of a 61 year old man with end stage cancer who really needs safe access to medical marijuana.  He would not know what to do without it other than suffer tremendously.   It breaks my heart to see good dispensaries go down as a result of all the bad apples.

This “sweep” of local medical marijuana dispensaries comes after similar raid in Oregon.   It is the opinion of many people in the industry that once they use up their resources here in California they will move on to Colorado to do the same thing.    This will give people here in California time to re-group.

The state supreme court recently agreed to review the Riverside decision that stated any city/county can not legally approve something that conflicts with federal law.  Once the supreme court renders a decision will have much clearer guidance on what any individual city can and can not do.  Attorney Anthony Curiale, a specialist in medical marijuana law, told me that because of the supreme courts decision to review the case “we are back back in the game.”  He went on to say that “they are not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.”

In the mean time, the feds are doing everything they can to try and bankrupt local dispensary owners.   In Costa Mesa they did not make one arrest. They just go and take all the plants, lights, medicine, cash and freeze assets.   Essentially they force the businesses to start over from scratch.   These tactics are far from American and will ultimately make the industry stronger in the long run.   More and more patients who are benefiting from medical marijuana will let their voices be heard on election day.   I will be shocked if President Obama wins California without the medical marijuana vote (which is HUGE!).

Stay tuned.

1)Medical marijuana dispensaries in Long Beach, CA are not going anywhere yet.   At a recent meeting with the city counsel they decided to delay making any decisions until the State Supreme Court decides whether or not to hear the case next month.   If they decide to take the case it will be at least a year before the city can do anything.  In the meantime patients will continue to have safe access to quality medicine.  

2) The DEA and Orange County sheriffs department raided three dispensaries in Costa Mesa on Tuesday however made NO arrests.     The city continues to struggle with dispensaries operating in their city and refuse to write a sensible ordinance to allow for safe access to medicine for patients.   Otherside Farms and 2 others closed shop after the Feds took all of their medicine, cash and records.

3) The mayor of Costa Mesa was on a local medical marijuana radio show, hosted by Robert Martinez of Newport Mesa Patients Association, stating that he supports the city writing an ordinance that allows them to operate legally.  Word is that they are trying to get a special election for this summer so the people can decide for themselves if they want it in the city.

4) Two medical marijuana patients made the news this week.   Both were arrested and charged with selling marijuana to non-patients.   One male was stopped while driving after purchasing 7 ounces of marijuana from one dispensary.   When they looked at his phone they found text messages from various people asking where they could meet him to buy marijuana.   The second was a female who was selling marijuana to non-patients at a local high school.   Unfortunately for her two of the people she sold marijuana to were undercover police officers.

**for the record. Dispensaries that sell more than a few ounces to a patient at any given time should be shut down.  It is obvious that these “patients” are buying that quantity of medicine so they can sell it on the black market.  There are RARE exceptions of course**

Here is what I anticipate in 2012:

1. More uncertainty:   More cities will try and create ordinances to limit where dispensaries can operate.    It also looks like Katherine Harris is going to release a new set of guidelines to qualify how the system needs to work.   Word on the street is that California wants to get away from ALL storefront dispensaries. The question is going to be how do patients get safe access to medicine.

2. Patients will still be able to get recommendations from their doctors and grow 12 plants at home at will.   There WILL be dispensary locations to get their medicine but they may have to drive a little bit further than last year.

3. Delivery services will start thriving.    We are already starting to see many delivery services taking over in areas where dispensaries closed.   This is a good thing as it limits the visibility of medical marijuana and hopefully the cities will forget about it and leave them/us alone.

4. Ballot initiative: it looks like proponents of total legalization for recreational use are going to put another ballot measure for vote in November.  I expect this to NOT pass by about 3-4% points just like proposition 19 failed.    However I expect a second ballot initiative to be placed on the books to tax and regulate MEDICAL marijuana.   This I think WILL pass but ONLY IF they do a great job at promoting it as MEDICAL and not recreational.   So how they campaign will be huge.

5. Doctors: expect a handful of doctors to lose their licenses this year for failing to follow the medical board guidelines.   I expect that we will see a lot of these fly-by-night clinics closing and falling like dominos once the medical board takes action.  This is a good thing.

6. Expect President Obama to LOSE CALIFORNIA in the general election.  This will mean the end to his presidency.   The one vote that he had was the left that thought he was a proponent of medical marijuana.  He HAS LOST that vote 100%   Across the board people are fed up with his lip service on respecting states rights.  Expect the next Republican President to be neutral on this issue.   I believe a republican president will be more inclined to respect states rights.

I expect Governor Brown to create a sensible plan for medical marijuana in California.  He is a thinker and a realist.    He will understand the futility of pushing medical marijuana back to the black market.

Stay tuned!

Many patients are not aware that they even qualify to use medical marijuana.  In California, there are over 150 different indications to recommend marijuana but the most common reasons people get recommendations for are:

1. Chronic Pain: for things like arthritis, headaches, back pain, dental pain etc.

2. Sleep disorders: primary insomnia to anxiety related sleep disorders.

3. Nausea, Vomiting or Lack of appetite for any reason.

4. Chronic anxiety in patients that do not want to take xanax or valium.

5. Har reduction for people who are addicted to opioids.

If you are wondering if you would qualify to use medical marijuana feel free to pre-qualify for free on our homepage or call our professional staff at 877-721-0047

These closures are not unexpected.  The medical marijuana industry went from being very profitable, to maybe cover the overhead and take a small salary, to being not profitable at all in a 3 year period.     Why the rapid change?   The simplest explanation is because the playing field was not level and the market priced good clinics out.  Let me elaborate.

Marijuana is considered a controlled narcotic drug by the california medical board and they expect it to be prescribed like any other controlled narcotic.   This means a doctor (MD/DO) has to evaluate the patient, order an necessary tests and prescribe it under the same standard of care as if they were prescribing vicodin.   Clinics like medicann employed professional doctors who followed the rules as set by the medical board.   These doctors were paid $80-$100/hour to issue recommendations.   The overhead to run a clinic was fairly substantial.

ALONG CAME POLLY

What happened fairly quickly is that dispensary owners and entrepreneurs realized that if they put a doctors office next to their dispensary it would serve as an endless source of leads for their dispensary.    These people could care less if the clinic made money as they knew that if they just broke even they would make a fortune in selling marijuana to those patients.    What they did was undercut the going cost of a recommendation ($150 at the time) by 75% and started offering recommendations for $25.00.    Some clinics even had doctors their via skype to limit the cost of having a doctor on location.   Under normal business circumstances, supply and demand dictate where the market is at and the price settles accordingly.

But these weren’t normal business circumstances.   These new clinics that were undercutting the price of legitimate clinics were running illegal operations.   They did not have doctors present (required by the medical board) and more importantly the offices were not owned by doctors.   This is considered an illegal medical practice and is a felony in California.    Only doctors can have ownership in a medical practice.   Secondly, they handed out recommendations to anyone who could fog a mirror.  They didn’t require medical documentation supporting their diagnosis nor examine their patients.    It wasn’t long before these clinics were 30-50 patients deep with lines extending out their doors.

With the economy slumping and unemployment at an all time high, patients that would normally go to medicann and get a legitimate recommendation were lured by the price of a cheap recommendation.   This severely hurt the business of every doctor who ran a legitimate practice.   Ultimately many had to close.

The future:   Just as the mortgage industry went from normal, to insane and now back to being overly cautious to the point of being ridiculous, the same thing is happening in the medical marijuana industry.    The medical board is slowly weeding out doctors who are not following the standard of care and cities are closing dispensaries run by criminals who also operate illegal medical clinics.    Ultimately the situation will return (close) to what it was in 2007.   You will have a handful of good doctors willing to recommend medical marijuana for a legitimate price.

I am going to give you some basic guidelines to help you make the right decision.

1. Call the clinic first and ask them the following questions:

a.  Is the doctor going to physically be present or will I be speaking to a doctor over skype (computer) or phone?   The medical board of California states that to have a legal recommendation the initial consultation MUST be done in person, face to face.   There have been a plethora of clinics that are doing recommendations over skype for dirt cheap.  SAVE YOUR MONEY.  Local dispensaries know who these clinics/doctors are and do not accept their recommendations.   So essentially you just wasted your money and more importantly time.

b. Ask them for your fictitious name permit number?    Any clinics that advertises a name other than the doctors name requires this by law.    In order to obtain one they have to prove that the clinic ownership is a doctor.   In California, only a doctor can own a medical practice.   However what has happened is many dispensary owners and entrepreneurs have opened clinics with hopes of getting rich and just hire doctors to see patients.   This is ILLEGAL and considered a felony (look up “the corporate practice of medicine” and “aiding and abetting an illegal medical practice”)    Clinics that are NOT owned by doctors will not have a fictitious name permit.

c. Ask them if you can still get a recommendation if you do not have medical records with you?    By law, in order for a doctor to recommend medical marijuana, they must first verify that you have an accurate diagnosis.   Many of these clinics you can just walk in and say you have headaches and they will issue you a recommendation.   These clinics will come and go (they eventually get caught) and your recommendation is not valid.

d. Ask them where the nearest dispensary is?   If they tell you it is right next door than run for the hills screaming.  This is the obvious sign that the medical clinic is being run by the dispensary and is most likely an illegal medical practice.

e.  Ask them for the doctors name and medical license number?   You want to see a doctor whose license is in good standing with the medical board.   Many doctors who are issuing medical marijuana recommendations have suspended licenses and are just trying to make as much money until they ultimately lose their license.   You can go to the medical boards website and search for free.

2.  Call a few local dispensaries and ask them if they can recommend a reputable doctor in your area.   Most of the dispensaries know where the good clinics are and can give you non-biased feedback.

I hope that helps!

LASTLY, IF YOU ARE IN THE ORANGE COUNTY OR LONG BEACH AREA YOU CAN CERTAINLY MAKE AN APPOINTMENT TO SEE DR BREEN.   SIMPLY GIVE US A CALL AT 877-721-0047

1. Are you 18 years of age? Most doctors will not recommend medical marijuana to minors even with parental consent and a qualifying diagnosis out of fear of losing their medical license.    Therefore, with some exceptions, you need to be at least 18 years of age to obtain a medical marijuana card.   Also, most dispensaries only help patients 21 years and older.    Legally however you can obtain a medical marijuana card at any age with parental consent.

2. Are you a California resident? You must have a valid California drivers license or state issued ID to qualify in California.   This means out of state residents who are visiting do not qualify.

3. Are you on probation or parole? The law states that patients on parole or probation can not receive a medical marijuana card unless they have official approval in writing from their parole officer.   Convicted felons can not qualify.

4. Do you have a qualifying diagnosis? In California there is a list of diagnosis that qualify automatically.  HOWEVER, in addition doctors can recommend medical marijuana for anything that it provides relief for and that evidence can be backed by patient reports.   Therefore if you have chronic insomnia (for example) and can not tolerate ambien or lunesta and have used marijuana with good results, you would qualify.   Any of these conditions have to interfere with your normal activies or bodily functions as per the American Disability Act of 1990.  This would mean it would be a serious medical conditions.

Before you read the list below, patients with any diagnosis where pain has persisted for more than 3 months (definition of chronic pain) DO qualify.   The other more common things you can get a medical marijuana card are for insomnia, anxiety, back pain, nausea, muscle spasms, headaches, PMS, menopause, arthritis, lack of appetite etc.

“Serious medical condition” means all of the following medical conditions:

1. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS);
2. Anorexia;
3. Arthritis;
4. Cachexia;
5. Cancer;
6. Chronic pain;
7. Glaucoma;
8. Migraine;
9. Persistent muscle spasms, including, but not limited to, spasms associated with multiple sclerosis;
10. Seizures, including, but not limited to, seizures associated with epilepsy;
11. Severe nausea;
12. Any other chronic or persistent medical symptom that either:
    1. Substantially limits the ability of the person to conduct one or more major life activities as defined in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-336); and
    2. If not alleviated, may cause serious harm to the patient’s safety or physical or mental health

5. Do you have medical documentation verifying your diagnosis? It is not enough to walk into the doctors office and tell them you have headaches for example.   You need to have some medical documentation that another physician evaluated you for the condition that you are complaining of.    So if you have back pain, you would probably have an x-ray or MRI report.   Or you may have physical therapy notes etc.    As long as you can document that you have been formally diagnosed you can qualify.

6.  Once you have a documented diagnosis you can then talk to a doctor that is willing to recommend medical marijuana.  In California there a many clinics that specialize in this because patients primary care doctors or specialist are NOT WILLING to recommend it.

7.  Once you make an appointment and bring your medical records you will then see the doctor.   This doctors appointment SHOULD be like any other doctors visit.  For example, in my office, you will fill out a patient medical history form, have your vital signs taken (blood pressure, temperature, pulse) and I will review everything with you.  I will perform a physical exam and then go over all the benefits and risks of using medical marijuana (called informed consent).  I then show you how to use a vaporizer so you don’t have to smoke it and lastly my staff will go over how to find a reputable dispensary.

That is it!  It is not as difficult as you may thing and certainly should not be intimidating.

If you are located in Orange County or Long Beach feel free to call our office at 766-721-0047 or pre-qualify for FREE on our website at www.MCSoCal.com

While many medical marijuana clinics have come and go over the past 4 years, Dr. Breen has been the only physician who has been consistently taking care of patients during this time.    His recommendations are respected and honored at every medical marijuana dispensary in the Long Beach community.    The reason for this is that Dr. Breen adheres to the strict guidelines that the state medical board set up to qualify patients to use medical marijuana.

1. Every patients recieves a thorough review of their medical history.

2. Every patient receives a complete physical exam.

3. Every patient reads and signs an informed consent which is required by law.

4. Dr. Breen personally follows up with each of his patients and monitors their progress on an ongoing basis.  All follow up visits within the first 12 months are free of charge.

5. Our office follows all HIPAA (patient privacy) guidelines.

In short, Dr. Breen treats his patients in a professional manner similar to any other family medicine doctor.   His patients are well informed, well taken care of and have complete legal immunity in the event any legal issues arise.

Dr. Breen is the obvious choice for patients looking to get a medical marijuana card in the Long Beach area.   There is no other doctor more respected by the community and you will receive great care!

To make an appointment please give our professional staff a call at 877-721-0047 or visit our website at www.mcsocal.com

Despite the obvious abuse of prop 215 by the recreational community and the outright bold marketing approach they have taken (see HempCon hot hemp girl contest), I am confident medical marijuana in California is here to stay. The reason I feel this way is sitting in the dark behind all the fed raids, recreational use, money laundering, doctor scams are hundreds of thousand of legitimate patients who are seeing tremendous benefit from marijuana as a medication. These hundreds of thousands of patients are grandparents, mother, fathers, business CEO’s, attorneys, doctors, lawyers, teachers, plumbers, stage hands, web developers and veterans who ALL vote and have a voice.

Every day I am reminded by my patients why those of us in the community do what we do. We break free from the “herd called modern medicine” and give patients another option. They are grateful for us and we are honored to fight on their behalf.

Today I had a 61 year old father of twin daughters (22 years old), a professional musician who came to me one year ago on 5 medications to treat anxiety and intermittent claudication. Today he showed me his list of medications from last year and he was OFF ALL OF THEM! He went to say how his surgeon was “blown away” by how much better he is doing and can’t explain it (the reason being my patient has not disclosed his cannabis use out of fear!). I have thousands of stories just like these and each one is more powerful than the next.

I believe at this point there are enough patients that experience the benefit of medical marijuana that their voices WILL be heard. There is no way for politicians to turn back the clocks in California without taking a beating at the polls.

What is the next step in California? I believe that the community as a whole will come together and collectively fight the federal governments all out assault on states rights. A dangerous precedent could be set if the feds continue to interfere with the medical marijuana community.

Regardless, medical marijuana is not going to go down without a significant and formidable fight. Ultimately I believe the will of californians will prevail. So lets dig in and get ready for a fight!