[420 Girl]

A man arrested last week along with his wife in raids of the couple's medical marijuana establishments in Waterford also was arrested earlier this month when police said the man's marijuana use impaired his driving and that he possessed a potent form of marijuana called hashish that authorities believe is illegal for medical use, according to a confidential police report obtained by the Free Press.

But medical marijuana advocates said there is no court-approved way in Michigan for police to show that bad driving was the result of marijuana use, and they said hashish is merely a concentrated form of marijuana and thus legal for medical use in Michigan.

Marijuana club owner William Teichman said he planned to speak to the news media today outside the Waterford District Court before his 1:30 p.m. preliminary exam in the case involving his establishments.

The Aug. 2 arrest of Teichman, 50, of White Lake, who has not yet been charged in the traffic stop, points out examples of how police and patients increasingly contend over how to interpret the two-year-old Michigan Medical Marijuana Act.

According to the confidential police report, Teichman's 2010 Jeep Commander -- confiscated by police in last week's raids -- twice swerved across the center line of Airport Road. The report said Teichman failed sobriety tests after being pulled over.

In his pockets were two pills of what the arresting officer -- a former undercover narcotics investigator -- said was "hashish, a marijuana derivative synthetically altered" from the marijuana plant, according to the police report.

It's unclear whether hashish is legal under the state medical marijuana law, a Michigan Department of Community Health spokesman said.

Teichman said he did not swerve across the center line and that the arresting officer told him he merely swerved within his own lane before he was pulled over about 8 p.m. He said he had just left Everybody's Café, a Waterford restaurant he co-owns with his wife, Candi Teichman. At 4 p.m. each weekday the café becomes a so-called compassion club where state-approved patients smoke medical marijuana.

Teichman also denied that the two pills he possessed contained hashish. He said they were "just made of ground-up marijuana," which he did not consider to be hashish. Hashish is a concentrated form of the drug that can be an ingredient in candy for patients who don't wish to smoke, medical marijuana attorney Matt Abel said.

Until legislators in Lansing spell out a regulatory framework for medical marijuana, the courts must decide on hashish and give police guidance on when a marijuana user's driving is impaired, said Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper.


NewsHawk: MedicalNeed: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: http://www.freep.com/article
Author: BILL LAITNER and ELISHA ANDERSON
Contact: Contact us | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
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