Marijuana Patient Gets His Weed Back; Sues State For $6 Million

By Steve Elliott

Here are items that were returned to medical marijuana patient Adam Assenberg
 this week after a criminal case against him was dismissed last week. According
 to Assenberg, more valuable plants were destroyed.

This week, the cops gave Adam Assenberg his marijuana back.

It’s not the first time Assenberg has beat the police in court; in fact, he’s on
 something of a roll in his battle as a medical marijuana patient and activist.
Assenberg now plans to sue the state of Washington for $6 million after his
property was seized in an illegal raid on his home
last year, reports Linda Thomas at MyNorthwest.

The Whitman County prosecutor dropped charges against Adam
 last month, citing a new interpretation of medical marijuana laws in
Washington state. Then, earlier this week, he racked up another in his
string of victories in battling the authorities when a Superior Court judge
ordered that all property seized during a raid of his Colfax home — including
his marijuana — be returned to him.

Adam Assenberg

Assenberg, who was badly injured 18 years
ago when he worked as a security guard for
 a company in Riverside, California, suffered
nine broken bones in his spine and wasn’t
 expected to walk again. He was also having
 dozens of seizures every day.

He started using medical marijuana regularly
in 2004; without it, “every day is a living
hell,” he said.

A few months after he started a dispensary called
Compassion for Patients in January 2011, the police arrested him
for “selling narcotics,”
 even though he was trying to abide by Washington state law.

“They assumed when they went to my house there would be thousands of dollars in
cash and pounds of pot,” he said. “They found $90 and seven ounces of marijuana.”

Also found were 82 immature cannabis plants that were taken out of their
containers, destroying them. “These were strains I worked on for years that
 I can’t replace,” Assenberg said.

Now that case is finally settled, with the prosecutor dropping charges, and
Whitman County Superior Court Judge David Frazier has sided with Assenberg.

But Adam says there’s a “bigger issue here.”

He told his attorney last Friday to initiate a $6 million civil suit against
 the Quad City Drug Task Force, Whitman County and the
State of Washington for violating his rights under state law.