Patients exploit state's medical pot law

• About 48,000 people participate in the state's medical marijuana program.
• Opponents of medical marijuana have long warned the program would be abused by patients.
• Some sellers say patients buy from the unregulated market because prices at dispensaries are too high.

He advertises himself as a medical-marijuana patient offering extra high-grade pot "with huge buds" for a "reasonable donation."

The seller's Craigslist ad says those with medical-marijuana cards can purchase an ounce of high-quality pot — and get it delivered — for $250, about $150 less than what some medical marijuana dispensaries charge, he told The Arizona Republic. For first-time customers, he throws in a free 2-gram sample.

He maintains his activities are legal. But they're not: The transaction could land him and his buyers behind bars.

While Arizona's medical-marijuana program is intended to be "purely medicinal," some participants are exploiting the law by reselling marijuana they've legally purchased or grown, fueling the illegal drug market. Law-enforcement officials, sellers and dispensary owners say legal marijuana is being illegally purchased by patients who can buy the drug at dispensaries, as well as by those who aren't entitled to buy it.

The law allows people to grow, buy and use the drug to treat ailments but explicitly bans patients and caregivers from selling the drug to each other. But with dispensaries charging as much as $400 per ounce, patients, growers and online sellers say participants in the program are increasingly turning to the underground market to buy medical marijuana at reduced rates.

Even before Arizona voters narrowly approved the medical-marijuana law, police and prosecutors warned such a program would spawn illegal cultivation and sales of the drug.

"It is frustrating to learn that what we predicted is becoming a reality," Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk said, noting supporters promised the program it would be "tightly regulated" andused only by the seriously ill.

"Instead, we now learn that medical-marijuana cardholders are selling their marijuana on Craigslist."

Ariz. marijuana regulations

Arizona is among 21 states and the District of Columbia that allow marijuana use for medicinal or recreational reasons. Arizona voters approved it in 2010 for conditions such as chronic pain and cancer. The program didn't gain momentum until late 2012, when dispensaries began to open.

About 48,000 people participate in the program, overseen by the state Department of Health Services. Under the law, some patients can grow marijuana and provide some to other patients at no cost. Some caregivers can also grow pot for their use and up to five patients.

Most patients cannot legally grow marijuana or do not have a caregiver to provide it to them. They are required to buy their marijuana at any of the 78 dispensaries operating statewide. They can obtain up to 2½ ounces every two weeks.

The law forbids patients from exchanging anything of value for medical marijuana or buying it outside of the regulated market.

"Two patients that meet each other on Facebook and exchange a strain for another is OK," said state health director Will Humble. "If someone with a marijuana card is buying it from their dealer ... or another patient, that is illegal."

Humble said he routinely hears from local police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that it has become "commonplace" for medical-marijuana cultivators, their go-betweens and customers to sell the drug outside of dispensaries.

It is impossible to measure how often the law is violated, two Arizona prosecutors say.

Polk and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said their officesdon't track the number of cases involving medical marijuana. Montgomery says cases often involve the same networks of illegal dealers that flourished before legalized medical marijuana.

Jerry Cobb, spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, said prosecutors handle "many, many" cases involving the illegal sale and possession of medical marijuana from street corners to "compassion clubs" and even online sales.

"In some cases it's people who we suspect just genuinely don't know they can't do it ... and in some cases it's some people who are using the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act as a shield to do drug deals," he said.

State health officials have revoked the medical marijuana cards of 10 patients because they were illegally selling the drug, said Esther Carranza, a legal liaison for the health department's card-registry office.

Controversy over reports

Medical-marijuana advocates like Chris Lindsey of the Marijuana Policy Project said the reports of illegal activity are overblown.

"It doesn't appear to be an epidemic,"said Lindsey, a legislative analyst. "It occurs, but there's no sign that medical-marijuana sales fuel underground market sales."

California, Colorado and other states with medical-marijuana laws similar to Arizona's have participants who have illicitly bought, sold and shipped the pot out of state.

A 2012 Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking area report recorded dozens of instances in which pot grown for patients in Colorado wastransported to Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Tennessee, Iowa, Florida and Wyoming.

In some instances, high-grade pot was intercepted by highway-patrol officers, who reported the drivers said they bought as much marijuana from dispensaries as they possibly could, or that they bought the pot "out of the back door" of a Colorado dispensary. Colorado has legalized marijuana for recreational use but the medical program remains in place.

In other instances documented in the report, law enforcement intercepted shipments of pot through a parcel service and pulled over another driver who said she stands outside of dispensaries and asks people to buy her marijuana. Licensed patients were caught selling their medicine, giving it to others (including children) and supplying a boyfriend, who then sold it.

The findings "support the premise that Colorado's regulations are not working and marijuana is being diverted by patients, caregivers and dispensaries through a variety of different techniques," including Craigslist, the report said.

"Part of the reason (medical-marijuana laws) started was to eliminate the black market — but they've become the black market," said Tom Gorman, director of Rocky Mountain HIDTA. "If you're seeing it in Colorado, you're seeing it in Arizona."

One medical-marijuana patient contacted by The Republic through his Craigslist ad said he sells extra marijuana to other patients — primarily veterans — who can't afford their medicine.

He said he was unaware it is illegal to sell to other patients. He sells an ounce for about $100 less than dispensaries. His prices are lower because he doesn't pay state fees or taxes that dispensaries must pay.

That irks dispensary owner Bill Myer, who said his Glendale operation, Arizona Organix, has paid more than $300,000 in taxes.

"There are farmer's markets you can go buy it at, delivery services, guys standing on street corners, Craigslist," he said.