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.
"The first person who invokes the Nazis in an argument has just lost the argument."
To a certain degree, yes. At the same time, some ppl mirror the train of thought of a Nazi more than actually looking like and prancing around in a uniform.
Yeah, today's government goons are not running a death camp and making skin lampshades, but they sure come off as an "old time" German socialist would.
Negligent homicide is malum in se. That does not make pot malum in se any more than it makes alcohol malum in se.
IOW - a hyperactive control freak on a petty power trip.
Strange action for a Deity with "An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles"
Too true. The church I attended while growing up was quite fundamentalist on the subject.
"Neither smoked marijuana nor THC are viable approaches in the treatment of glaucoma."
-- American Medical Association, Report of the Council on Scientific Affairs, 10-1-97, Conclusions
"The dose of marijuana necessary to produce a clinically relevant effect in the short term appears to produce an unacceptable level of undesirable side effects such as euphoria, systemic hypotension, and/or dry eye and conjunctival hyperemia in the majority of glaucoma patients in whom the drug has been carefully studied."
-- National Institutes of Health Report, page 12
"Presently, there is no scientifically verifiable evidence that marijuana or its derivatives are safe and effective in the treatment of glaucoma. The availability of a wide variety of alternative treatments that do not have marijuana's psychoactive and other specific side effects argues against the use of marijuana for treating glaucoma. Marijuana offers no advantage over currently available glaucoma drugs and indeed may be less effective than these agents."
-- The National Eye Institute, Fact Sheet on the Therapeutic Use of Marijuana for Glaucoma
Finding - "The American Academy of Ophthalmology Committee on Drugs presently finds no scientifically verifiable evidence that the use of marijuana is safe and effective in the treatment of glaucoma."
I should add the only people I've heard of taking marijuana for glaucoma were not trying to control eye pressure. They were trying to control pain so they could function. They had already tried everything the medical profession could offer.
The bottom line is, if it works for them, I'm not going to stop them.
Decriminalize (more politically viable ) but otherwise "Ditto".
I agree, there are too many statists on FR.
Well, that settles that argument. You are self-inflated tyrannical little s&I$ who is trying to play god for the rest of us. If your own life is a mess don't go crapping on everyone else's.
I have no problem disagreeing with the way the Federal government danced around the Constituion to create drug laws, but I also have no problem banning hard drugs.
In a perfect world without statism - my freedoms are still limited (I can't murder my boss) and I can't force others to do my bidding and visa versa.
The individual's freedom is sacrificed by the drug user when he drives a car or requires public funds for survival or treatment.
I can therefore justify drug laws by putting them into the crime category - in other words.....if you use drugs - OK - but if you step on the toes of others - it's a crime. How's that for a compromise?
"A social system is a code of laws which men observe in order to live together. Such a code must have a basic principle, a starting point, or it cannot be devised. The starting point is the question: Is the power of society limited or unlimited?"Individualism answers: The power of society is limited by the inalienable, individual rights of man. Society may make only such laws as do not violate these rights.
"Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes."
-- Ayn Rand, Textbook of Americanism"
Me neither.
Another thing I won't do is vote for marijuana legalization for any purpose.
Yes, if you conditions that will produce chronic excruciating pain for the rest of your life, and you've got the political clout of major drug companies behind you, then you can take their massively addictive pain killers for the rest of your life - at their obscene prices, or you can be charged with a "major felony" for your "massively criminal behavior" of actually taking care of yourself.
The "massive" majority of people in prison due to the war on drugs are not the leaders of the cartels, not their wholesalers, not their distributors and not their sellers, but they are the victims of the pushers, the addicts who, tyring to save a few bucks on their addiction will buy more than the legally mandated "possession" quantity and then get a second conviction for selling added to their conviction for possession.
The war on drugs has produced nohting better than what came from the war on liquor - prohibition.
The US had a major opium/heroine epidemic from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. It was essentially wiped out, with massive education, public relations and civic affairs programs, both in the schools and to the general public, and with treatment for addicts - not massive arrests. It was after that epidemic was nearly wiped out that drug control laws began to be enacted; as if they would solve an issue that was already being resolved.
Yes. Many, though not all, are very nice people too, and well intentioned. But, as Daniel Webster famously said:
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
You might not have had time to read the whole thread yet, but I posted this link earlier - DUI Marijuana: Does Marijuana Impair Driving? Also, very few drug users are ever going to require any public money for survival or treatment. It happens, but it's relatively rare.
I can therefore justify drug laws by putting them into the crime category - in other words.....if you use drugs - OK - but if you step on the toes of others - it's a crime. How's that for a compromise?
You've pretty much staked out the libertarian position here. Or I should say, the libertarian position is that drug use cannot be used as a defense.
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