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.
How is that not stopping them? It's stopping Steven Tuck.
Thank you, you are correct.
When the general public who llives in the concrete canyons finally realizes how many acres of forests and parks your tax money supports is being used by pot growers and meth cookers, maybe they won't be so teary eyed about one finnaly getting caught.
I have NO SYMPATHY for this jerk, as he has sold his product to many a youngster who possible went down a bad path from there.
Do you not see a pattern here? It is in every "study" that you've ever linked/sourced. What about all of the statements regarding the lack of studies and the oft repeated suggestion that further studies be conducted? Did you just happen to forget those parts? I can post them for the edification of others if you would like.
Yeah...same goes for opium, cocaine, pseudoephedrine, and...oh, sorry. Never mind.
"Apparently, there is no limit to government thuggery when it comes to the war on drugs."
There's no limit to their thuggery period. The government is armed and dangerous and has an excellent PR department.
Nice try. Marx said that "religion is the opium of the masses". You have it backwards.
"Small led pellets injected at high speed in the back of the skull, when the skull is owned by someone who didn't pay the organization as much as the organization thought it had coming."
You described the government perfectly.
That's where I got the idea for my tagline.
"But the life of the individual without government is, to coin a phrase, nasty, brutish, and short."
Are you a politician or a bureaucrat? :)
Another outstanding example that we pay too much tax to the federal government.
"I would proffer that the marijuana was for low pain days and the morphine/oxycontin was for high pain days. Makes sense."
MJ can also offset the nausea caused by taking narcotic pain killers as it does for chemotherapy patients.
To hear some of the posters here, you'd think that Marijuana was the curse of Satan and should be punished to all ends. Personally, I don't see why the drug gets so much attention. I've had three friends killed by drunk drivers but none by potheads.
We obviously have cops in here. Their power-mad cries of "Hey, you broke the law! You're going to jail!" echo over our TV sets amid the beathings and gangland shootings. But cops also gassed children in Waco.
I'm not a pot user and believe pot is bad for the youth of this country. I also believe its illegality has promoted more harm than good; it's time to change that and redirect resources.
And, yes, Marijuana causes death. Every person who has ever smoked marijuana has died.
Think of it as a driver's license.
I see this from my own experience as a former cigarette smoker (after 40 years I quit cold turkey), from people who I have known who were either alcoholics or constant pot-smokers, and from people who have indulged in the weaker substances like pot from time to time and never developed any chronic addiction or even chronic use; and from reading books, like: "Addiction is a Choice by Dr. Jeffrey Schaler.
The pendulum has begun its swing backcould it be that drug and alcohol addictions are not diseases after all, but bad personal choices? Can addiction be overcome by mustering the strength of character to turn away from such choices? Psychologist Schaler (Justice, Law, and Society/American Univ.; Smoking, Who Has the Right?, not reviewed)- argues convincingly that society has erred in giving in completely to the AA vision that addiction is a disease, that addicts can't help themselves, and that they need a higher power to be saved. Addiction (which at one time meant only devotion or dedication) has come to mean ``any activity which individuals engage in, deliberately and consciously, and are physically unable to stop themselves from pursuing. Rejecting such a definition out of hand, Schaler maintains that ``people are responsible for their deliberate and conscious behavior. He is sympathetic for those struggling with addiction; he doesn't oversimplify his own or his opponents arguments; and he readily acknowledges his philosophical forefathers (Thomas Szasz, for one, from the last time the pendulum was at this end of its arc). His reading of the results of research into addiction [he has researched dozens of major addiction programs and dozens of addiction research projects] that it fails to support the disease models convincing. And his resulting suggestions for changes in public policy and for individual change demand consideration. If not a new model for viewing addiction, at least a provocative update of an old one. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Comment by Joseph Gerstein, M.D. F.A.C.P., Harvard Medical School - Schaler drives a stake into the heart of the 'disease' concept of addictions. Millions of people have stopped smoking, abusing mind-altering drugs, and drinking addictively on their own, without the intervention of counselors or doctors or programs. And millions have engaged in such substances in limited ways and never developed addictions. Dr. Schaler explains persuasively why and how this happens [addiction is a choice], despite all the genetic and hormonal predispositions.
Schaler essentially argues that when we know what is happening, when we decide that we want to change what is happening and when we chose to commit to that change, we can make it happen - even quitting an addiction.
I believe Schaler is right and, on that basis, much of the war on drugs is wasted, attacking one crutch that would simply be, and often is, substituted for another crutch until the addict changes their behavior.
Like a gun, it is not the gun that kills, it's who uses the gun in a bad way that kills with it. It's not the Mary Jane, it's those who make an addiction of it and those who use it for relief of chronic pain. It does not need to be "legalized" but it should be de-criminalized (Wm F Buckley agrees). They could start by ending most prosecutions for mere possession and instead offer the addict support for treatment, if they turn in their source.
Meanwhile, if it is truly a war on drugs (which it isn't) then the poppy fields in Columbia and Afghanistan should be napalmed, constantly. Oh, we can't do that; lets go arrest some more addicts and let every one stay in business.
Well put. Thanks.
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