Posted on 11/26/2005 5:10:56 AM PST by JTN
The federal war on medi-pot patients hit a new low last month when Royal Canadian Mounted Police nabbed 38-year-old Steven W. Tuck from his Vancouver, B.C., hospital bed, whisked him to the border, and relinquished him to the custody of U.S. officials, who wanted him on charges related to a 2001 marijuana bust in California. Tuck, an Army vet, uses marijuana to help treat chronic pain associated with injuries he received in a parachuting accident back in the 1980s (reportedly his parachute failed to open during a jump). In 2001, after his marijuana-growing operation in California was busted, Tuck fled to Canada in an effort to avoid prosecution, reports The Washington Post. For four years, he had been navigating the Canadian system, seeking asylum, but was abruptly, and surprisingly, denied that safe harbor last month, says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML.
Police arrested Tuck on Oct. 7 after he checked himself into a Vancouver hospital seeking treatment for prostate problems. According to friend Richard Cowan, Tuck was on a gurney, fitted with a catheter, when RCMP nabbed him, cuffed him, and put him in an SUV bound for the border. "I would not believe it unless I had seen it," Cowan told the Post.
Tuck was turned over to authorities and thrown in jail, where he remained for five days with the catheter in place and with only ibuprofen for his pain – pain for which he'd been prescribed morphine and Oxycontin, among other narcotic drugs, says St. Pierre. He was finally taken to court on Oct. 12. "This is totally inhumane," Tuck's lawyer Douglas Hiatt told the Post. "He's been tortured for days for no reason." U.S. Magistrate James P. Donohue re-leased Tuck, at least temporarily, so that he could be taken to a hospital. Tuck's trip to the hospital was waylaid, however, by law enforcement officials who immediately picked him up on a detainer issued by Humboldt Co., Calif., officials in connection with state drug charges related to his growing medi-pot for him-self and others. (Although Tuck is a California state-registered medi-pot patient – meaning he's authorized under state law to possess and grow marijuana for medical purposes – he was also growing for others. At the time, California law enforcers were working under a patchwork of local regulations that defined who could grow for dispensary purposes and exactly how much each person could grow. Tuck had been busted in two different California jurisdictions for growing more than the local law allowed.)
After a flurry of phone calls, Tuck was taken to the hospital, and since then his attorneys have negotiated his release from jail – with the promise that he'll make his various California state court appearances. Sources tell "Weed Watch" that given Tuck's medical condition and the current state of California's medi-pot laws, his supporters are cautiously optimistic that the state charges against him will be dropped. If that happens, whether Tuck will face any prosecution will be left solely up to the feds, who want him on one count of unlawful flight to Canada to avoid the California charges. Whether the federal narcos will exercise their right to bully the sick remains to be seen.
Most accidents are caused by that particular demographic. It doesn't require drugs to cause a wreck.
...That marijuana impairs the ability to drive. It apparently doesn't. -JTN
"Government protects people from bad drugs. That's one of its jobs."
And just where is that power enumerated?
"To coin a phrase" means to create a phrase. With this usage, Appalled was, in fact, claiming that he/she created the phrase. I think he/she meant "to borrow a phrase."
Hey, it's too early, and I haven't hit a bong! My apologies. :>)
In reality, the evil of man is the reason the founders gave a limited government. They believed that no one was good and wise enough to exercise too much power over others.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question....
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson - First Inaugural Address
You've never done that because you know that even if the judge didn't refuse the case as frivolous it would be highly improbable that you'd ever convince an impartial jury that the mere act of a person possessing drugs caused you harm.
Instead, you'll argue that drug possession and or use causes harm to society -- causes harm to the group. You'll take a communitarian stand. Of course, you'll have to turn a blind eye to reality. That is, for a group of people to exist there is a prerequisite that first the individual must exist.
Each time an individual is sacrificed -- in whole or in part -- the group suffers a loss. Protect the rights of the smallest minority -- the lone individual -- and the rights of all minorities and the majority are protected.
The federal government creates each year, on average, 3,000 new laws and regulations. Each one of those laws has people that support it and will argue why the new law is necessary. Proclaiming that without those new laws people and society will run headlong into destruction.
In reality virtually every person breaks one or more laws several times a year. Yet with every person violating the law people and society have not moved toward self-destruction. Instead, individuals and society have increasingly prospered.
Over the past several years and decades people and society increasingly prospered despite not having the supposed benefits of future laws yet to come. Today, people and society increasingly prosper despite not having the supposed benefits of next years new laws or, new laws to come five, ten fifteen years in the future.
Ninety-eight percent of the people do not knowingly initiate force, threat of force or fraud against any person or their property. Though, through widespread ignorance most people negligently support government initiation of force against persons and their property.
Malum in se offense requires a injured party other than oneself. >>
My friends' families are the injured parties. Not to mention the other person killed in the car wreck.
The interstate commerce clause.
Appalled was making a joke that some people were too stupid to get.
Couldn't have said it better myself!
The name Anslinger comes to mind when I read your words.
The subject of the thread is the 'illegality' of marijuana.....please try to stay on the thread topic.
Government protects people from bad drugs. That's one of its jobs.
No, the job of the government is to protect the natural rights of the populace, not to act in a parental capacity
Also, you are confusing a 'drug' (man-made chemical compound) with a PLANT (naturally growing vegetation).
If governments legitimate authority was to PROTECT us, why has not one single court across this country EVER found police liable for NOT protecting someone?
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"An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed."
Norton ~vs~ Shelby County, 118 US 425 p. 442.
No. God created THC in the pot plant as an insecticide--the chemical kills bugs that eat the plant.
It is our use of a natural insecticide for a purpose for which it was not intended -- for recreation -- that is evil.
You could make the same argument against the car... It only takes a moment of inattention and terrible damage can be done.
If the FDA had done its homework and banned it before it hit America, I daresay the babies' rights would have been better protected.
The subject of the thread is the 'illegality' of marijuana.....please try to stay on the thread topic.
>>
The real thread topic is: does the federal government have the right to enforce drug laws, even when drug dealers and libertarian fools who buy their propaganda think they don't?
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816.
Then you might be able to work out why other people would be more worried about losing 20 of their IQ points
I think Marx was thinking of YOU guys when he said that opium is the religion of the masses.
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