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I Want To Become A Full-Time Caregiver


saiamne

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"Dropping money on the floor" is a poor way to frame how I'm thinking about this.

 

A better way to state my intention would be to say that my family would leverage the marginal "income" presented by being a CG to relieve their own personal finances allowing them to more generously provide for everyone in their lives.

 

Each relative / caregiver puts the medical income in their pocket. It buys them skittles, tickets to Captain America, and a shovel from Meijer's; cash incidentals which is exactly how this supplemental income is used and expected to be used. How they use it, report it, invest it, ect is completely irrelevant to me. 

 

Now, completely separate from the previous money pool relative 1 buys me groceries when she goes to the store. Relative 2 pays our cell phone bills because we're on his family plan. Relative 3 allows me regular usage of her 3rd vehicle. Relative 4 pays for one of my medical bills. Relative 5 makes a contribution to my children's 501c3. These expenditures come from their regular legal income. The expenditures are normal, justifiable, and perfectly reasonable.

 

In point of fact I believe that any nominally compassionate and human individual with a seriously disabled relative / veteran that lived close by would offer support of the kind I suggest without ever involving caregiving / mmj into the equation.

 

Is this a "wink-wink" scenario? Kind of...Is it crossing a line? I'm not sure; what line are we talking about? How would it play in court if, in some scenario (that I can't immediately imagine), a court decided to round up my entire family and prosecute them for collectively laundering $40,000 in order to help a permanently 100% disabled veteran feed his children and buy his wife chemotherapy.

 

A) I believe it would be very difficult to build the case in a way that would satisfy the requirements of the law

B) Who can select a jury that would condemn them?

 

Should trying to understand the application of law in order to find a way to legally support myself and my family be derided as "cute" and "super clever"? Now...I don't know you and I'm not criticizing you Highlander but it seems like a jerk way of addressing the question by calling me a hypocrite and not recognizing the difference between a convicted felon in possession of loaded firearms allowing others to farm hundreds of thousands of dollars of non medical marijuana on his property (which it's worth noting was designed, fitted, and functioning for illicit non-medical mass production) and a permanently disabled veteran wishing to tend small medical gardens belonging to his family in order to pay for a mobile home and cancer treatments.

 

Am I really clearly in pursuit of the same goals as Jerry Duval? I've made it clear in which one of my posts that this is my intention?

 

I don't imagine that I would, as a single individual caregiver receiving no taxable outside income beyond my 5 patients be subject to enough taxes to be worried about what I can or can't write off...

 

If I had a little less self respect and self worth I would just ask people for money instead of finding a way to enrich a community of individuals.

 

So screw the MMJ idea...I want welfare. I want people to pay for my entire existence without any personal responsibility or vested interest in making it so. Why should I contribute to others in order to receive right? You've got some good points...maybe I'm shady and of low character for trying to game the system here.

 

Good thing you held that mirror up so that I could see what a criminal I was considering becoming...you've saved my very soul

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Responsibility goes at least as far as what you KNOW and maybe as far as what you should know. 

 

But at any rate, with regard to the question posed by GM, the requirement for the CG to limit his drop-offs to 2.5 oz is actually quite clear in the law:

 

. This subsection applies only if the primary caregiver possesses an amount of marihuana that does not exceed:[/i]

(1) 2.5 ounces of usable marihuana for each qualifying patient to whom he or she is connected through the department's registration process

 

If a CG is caught transferring 5oz. to a patient, then there is sufficient evidence to show that the CG possessed an amount of MJ that exceeded 2.5 oz. for each patient.  He possessed 5 oz. for that patient, so he loses his section 4 protections.

as stated(devils advocate only, to be clear. not a personal argument, only a query based on questions and concerns I've encountered over the years, and couldn't definitively answer)

 

As a caregiver for more than one patient I am allowed to possess more than 2.5 ounces yes? I see no reference to "delivery" of 2.5 ounces. I can walk into a patients house with 10 ounces and deliver his supply and leave with 8 ounces completely legal yes? or 9 ounces, or even 7 eh? In any case I will have been committing a crime because I possessed more than 2.5 ounces?(regardless of how much I left the patient with, if I possessed more than his 2.5 I would be breaking our law? consider this)

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Someone looking to start a large caregiving operation in Michigan without a full understanding of how things have played out here is taking a huge risk.

 

My remarks may have come across as “jerky,” but this is not input based on my own personal beliefs of what is right and wrong and what should and should not be.  I came across jerky because I am explaining to you how the system has and is likely to continue to play out for some time.  The status of the MMJ program in Michigan is jerky.  I’m simply the messenger.

 

Regarding Duval, let’s say he was a total dirtbag felon.  And let’s say you’re a squeaky clean family man, disabled veteran.  (Thank you for your service, BTW.)  I don’t see a lot of relevance to one’s background in this discussion.  This is about medical marijuana and what is legal and isn’t and where the grey areas are.   I do take issue with the idea of a person willing to knowingly outright commit a crime and/or bend the rules for themselves and believe this to be OK and at the same time pass judgment on someone who does the same thing, only does it bigger.  If you make $50,000 tax free in a year participating in an organized MMJ ring that’s OK, but geeze, the guy making $250,000/year is a real crook.  Well, I guess to the caregiver making $5,000/year, you are a real crook too.  And, yes, I’ll sit here and pass my own moral judgments and feel good about it.  I think the teenager who steals $10 from his grandma to buy cigarettes is a real piece of trash.  I wouldn’t judge him so harshly if he stole $10 worth of cigarettes.  And I’d have a hard time looking down on grandma is she stole $10 in dog treats from Meijer because she can’t afford them and she gets the most joy from her dog.

 

But none of that matters.  Unless a jury ignores instructions, it won’t matter which of these scenarios was brought to them.  If the evidence is there, the job of the jury is to convict.  And juries rarely disregard the judge’s instructions.   Of course, you would anticipate different sentences handed down for each crime, but what we are talking about is that a crime is a crime, and mitigating circumstances usually do nothing and only sometimes do a little to affect the verdict.

 

What I’m getting at is that you seem to be looking at this as if the overall morality of the situation would lean things greatly in your favor.  I would tend to agree with you that a jury is likely to weigh this even if instructed not to.  But you’re putting a lot of risk on the line with the expectation that it would be tough to find a jury to convict.  Let’s assume that is true.  As tough as that might be, even tougher is actually getting a medical marijuana trial in front of a jury in Michigan.   Some people say that no MMJ case has ever been heard by a jury in Michigan.  This may be true; I don’t know.   I am constantly reading about current MMJ events in Michigan, and I have never heard of an MMJ trial going to a jury in Michigan.   A medical marijuana defense has been available in Michigan for about 5 years and 9 months.  This adds up to some pretty bad odds.

 

Also understand that a judge will have numerous opportunities to, as a matter of law, decide that a medical defense is not allowed.  There was a case in Oakland County.  An older widow had plants on her second floor deck, accessible only through the house.  Unfortunately, she was raided and happened to have left her door unlocked that day.  The judge denied her a medical defense.  Her written ‘confession’ was submitted, and there was so much redacted that it basically said, “…………I grew marijuana……….”  The lady eventually accepted a plea bargain.  Had she not, here we would have had an old lady in front of a jury – a jury without the full story – with a written confession that she grew marijuana.  The fact that she grew MJ was not disputed.  I would not bet much on such a jury acquitting.

 

If I had a little less self respect and self worth I would just ask people for money instead of finding a way to enrich a community of individuals.

So screw the MMJ idea...I want welfare. I want people to pay for my entire existence without any personal responsibility or vested interest in making it so. Why should I contribute to others in order to receive right? You've got some good points...maybe I'm shady and of low character for trying to game the system here.

Good thing you held that mirror up so that I could see what a criminal I was considering becoming...you've saved my very soul

 

I suppose you could throw the baby out with the bathwater.  I tried to give you a view of how things work here in Michigan because, based on my years of keeping up on things, your  plan (in the current regulatory environment) is a really bad idea that puts you and your family at risk.  And it doesn’t do any good to contrast your “good” background with someone else’s “bad” background because that will have little to no impact on whether or not you get arrested, tried, and convicted.  Whether or not you get arrested, tried, and convicted has nearly everything to do with how you conduct yourself with marijuana.  It is that simple.  Grow for only five patients and yourself, and don’t sell outside this framework.  Keep within limits and keep plants locked up.  Try to push beyond this, and you’re looking for trouble.

 

In order to make my earlier post less jerky, I could have offered some additional advice.  But to do so without you acquiring a full understanding  of the MMM Act, case law, and typical LEO actions would do you a disservice.  I could have explained that we very well could have dispensaries by the end of the year, and you could maybe work up to growing 72 HUGE plants yourself and sell the overages…concentrate your efforts on 72 plants rather than spreading the same effort out between 288+.  More plants don’t necessarily mean more yield.  Myself, I yield more with 36 than 72.

 

You really do need to spend more time learning about how things work here.  Even if your plan was rock-solid legally, there is no way I’d even think about starting up something like that right now.  The legal landscape here in Michigan could change rapidly.  Yesterday’s good idea can easily become tomorrow’s failure.

 

I’d also be afraid of trying to keep up with too many plants.  If it’s too much to juggle, everything could be lost in a matter of days…plants and patients.

 

You came to this forum and asked, “What are the conditions like on the ground?”  Not, “what should the conditions be like on the ground.”

 

To summarize, the conditions on the ground are:

  1. Many to most caregivers struggle to find 5 patients
  2. Many to most caregivers don’t make any more income than if they worked a part-time job.
  3. Patients are poor.  Last I heard (stats from the department that issues MMJ cards) about 60% of patients qualified for a reduced application fee (basically meaning that they are living in poverty)
  4. Many patients have been using for years and know multiple growers. Patients can acquire meds anywhere, but CGs can only sell to their patients.   This asymmetrical legal protection puts continuous downward pressure on a CG's product.  In other words, don't make a five-year plan based on today's prices.
  5. Jury trials for MMJ are rare to non-existent
  6. The courts didn’t care that they prosecuted a widow and denied her an MMJ defense.  They aren’t any more likely to care that you are a disabled veteran.
  7. Some of us come across as jerks when we deliver this bad news.
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as stated(devils advocate only, to be clear. not a personal argument, only a query based on questions and concerns I've encountered over the years, and couldn't definitively answer)

 

As a caregiver for more than one patient I am allowed to possess more than 2.5 ounces yes? I see no reference to "delivery" of 2.5 ounces. I can walk into a patients house with 10 ounces and deliver his supply and leave with 8 ounces completely legal yes? or 9 ounces, or even 7 eh? In any case I will have been committing a crime because I possessed more than 2.5 ounces?(regardless of how much I left the patient with, if I possessed more than his 2.5 I would be breaking our law? consider this)

 

I'll assume that we are confining this discussion to how the MMMA deals with this, because clearly there would be other criminal laws that would implicate the CG for assisting the patient with breaking the law.

 

So the question is:  Does Section 4 provide protection to a CG who possesses no more than 12 plants and 2.5 oz. per patient if he delivers MMJ to a patient, knowing that the amount delivered would put the patient over 2.5 oz?

 

Let's take another look at Section 4:

 

(b) A primary caregiver who has been issued and possesses a registry identification card shall not be subject to arrest, prosecution, or penalty in any manner, or denied any right or privilege, including but not limited to civil penalty or disciplinary action by a business or occupational or professional licensing board or bureau, for assisting a qualifying patient to whom he or she is connected through the department's registration process with the medical use of marihuana in accordance with this act. The privilege from arrest under this subsection applies only if the primary caregiver presents both his or her registry identification card and a valid driver license or government-issued identification card that bears a photographic image of the primary caregiver. This subsection applies only if the primary caregiver possesses an amount of marihuana that does not exceed:

(1) 2.5 ounces of usable marihuana for each qualifying patient to whom he or she is connected through the department's registration process; and

(2) for each registered qualifying patient who has specified that the primary caregiver will be allowed under state law to cultivate marihuana for the qualifying patient, 12 marihuana plants kept in an enclosed, locked facility; and

 

The first thing I notice is that the language "for each" is used regarding both the usable marijuana and meds.  So whatever "for each" means, it means the same thing for plants and meds.  Does "for each" mean that there are specific meds designated for specific patients and specific plants designated for specific patients?  Or does it mean that a a CG can have 12.5 oz of meds in one jar and 60 plants with no particular plant or finished bud designated for any specific patient?

 

Based on some quick dictionary reference:

 

The word "each" is used to describe one or more items that are considered individually.

 

The word "every" is used to describe one of a collective group

 

So by my take on this,

 

2.5 ounces of usable marihuana for each qualifying patient  considers each patient individually and ties a specific 2.5 oz to a specific patient

 

2.5 ounces of usable marihuana for every qualifying patient considers each patient as one of a group and therefore does not tie a specific 2.5 oz to a specific patient

 

Similarly, "two girls for every boy" means that there are twice as many girls as boys.  "Two girls for each boy" means each guy gets two girls.

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Keep it Secret. Keep it Safe.

 

:-)

 

 

 I agree with previous stuff.  Understand the degree of risk. Do only what you are comfortable with.  It is all illegal federally. Anyone in the program accepts that risk.  The Act itself states it. 

 

 Every step ahead in the program is one step closer to danger.  It will get better with time. But.....,

 

 Be careful. Be Smart.

 

 Keep it Secret. Keep it Safe.

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Curious why you would say this? 1040 schedule F, profit/loss from farming, takes care of the needs of an agricultural producer.

 

 

Federal tax code 280E,

 

 

 

 

 

No deduction or credit shall be allowed for any amount paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business if such trade or business (or the activities which comprise such trade or business) consists of trafficking in controlled substances (within the meaning of schedule I and II of the Controlled Substances Act) which is prohibited by Federal law or the law of any State in which such trade or business is conducted.

- See more at: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/26/A/1/B/IX/280E#sthash.SwIIP6WM.dpuf

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this is a state law considering cannabis money. it will not apply to federal taxes. I did not say "paying taxes on the income is tax evasion". Paying taxes on this income derived from the sale and distribution of a federally scheduled drug, under the guise of splitting wood, or gardening tomatoes is illegal federally. the irs doesn't care about that , but the feds do, that's why they've stuck to this antiquated law.

 

this is an old, well published issue, but I'd enjoy any new laws written to assist me in legally deducting the costs of equipment and operational expenses/losses. that would rock! loss, loss, loss, loss,

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(stomping feet)

(e) A registered primary caregiver may receive compensation for costs associated with assisting a registered qualifying patient in the medical use of marihuana. Any such compensation shall not constitute the sale of controlled substances.

 

I would have to record sales to have income?  I have no sales ever. occasionally my patients pay for their supplies.

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texas is a great place to make $50-80k on marijuana, dealing.

as far as michigan goes, you missed the window which was 2010 to 2012, until courts ruled and defined what was illlegal (sales to dispenseries).  

now, making that amount in mi requires one be just as illegal as in texas.

for mi your opportunity alarm rang way too late.

mi as now constituted is  net of $1000 per month, maybe.

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