King County Refuses Medical Marijuana Cases Under New State Guidelines, State Senator Considers...

Ten years after Washington voters passed a medical marijuana law, patients trying to comply with the law in King County finally have a decree protecting them from prosecution. Patients with serious illnesses may possess a "'presumptive quantity' ... set at 24 ounces of usable marijuana and 15 plants" without facing criminal charges in King County, says prosecutor Dan Satterberg. On Tuesday, Satterberg wrote a memo to all county law-enforcement agencies, including municipal police and county Sheriff’s deputies, says that the prosecutor’s office “will decline to prosecute legitimate patients who qualify under the law if they reasonably adhere to the dictates of the statute.” The Department of Health set those plant and dried-weight amounts last week, as required by the legislature in 2007. But those amounts are technically only... [read full story]