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War on drugs hits new low
The Austin Chronicle ^ | NOVEMBER 25, 2005 | JORDAN SMITH

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.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: bongbrigade; cannabis; marijuana; medicalmarijuana; medicalmj; warondrugs; wod; wodlist
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To: pageonetoo
I think, thereFORE I am. (Sartre)

Actually, I think that was Rene Descartes.

81 posted on 11/26/2005 6:08:40 AM PST by JTN ("We must win the War on Drugs by 2003." - Dennis Hastert, Feb. 25 1999)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
Because it doesn't make you nearly as stupid as pot does.
What evidence do you have that smoking marijuana makes a person stupid?
It takes months to get that stuff out of your system.
THC builds up in the fatty tissue of the body so how does residual THC residue in the fatty tissues of the body make one stupid?
(and, please, show it, don't just say it)
82 posted on 11/26/2005 6:08:52 AM PST by philman_36
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To: hinckley buzzard
In California the law was changed.

That's the point.

In truth the tobacco farmers were subsidized by the government for many, many years. Really dumb move...

MJ is not like tobacco. Anyone can grow it in their own backyard. Few would pay much more for something they can easily produce themselves. They already do...
83 posted on 11/26/2005 6:09:17 AM PST by DB (©)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
Your homework assignment, MamaTexan, is to go to GOOGLE and type in the word "thalidomide."

A drug that causes birth defects is relevant.... how?

Your homework assignment, Appalling but not Surprising, is to read The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu

________________________________________________________

Of the Simplicity of Criminal Laws in different Governments
In republican governments, men are all equal;
equal they are also in despotic governments:
in the former, because they are everything;
in the latter, because they are nothing.

THE SPIRIT OF LAWS Book VI By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

________________________________________________________

Then show us exactly where government gets its authority to tell the People what they can possess or ingest.

84 posted on 11/26/2005 6:10:46 AM PST by MamaTexan (I am NOT a 'legal entity', nor am I a *person* as created by `law`!)
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To: DB

In California the law was changed.>>>
In Washington the law wasn't changed. Washington trumps California. If you want California to trump Washington... well, *your* homework assignment is to GOOGLE "Gettysburg". Then "Sherman."


85 posted on 11/26/2005 6:12:01 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: A Jovial Cad
Thomas Hobbes said that, not some hysterical nitwit on the internet. You should credit those you quote, plagiarist.

Geez. What exactly do you think "to coin a phrase" means? Take a deep breath, junior. The Republic is not in danger just because your representatives think smoking pot is a detriment to the general welfare.

86 posted on 11/26/2005 6:12:02 AM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: mlc9852
My IQ is about 136-139. Not bad, really.

I am humbled by my paltry 124.

(grin)

87 posted on 11/26/2005 6:12:04 AM PST by MamaTexan (I am NOT a 'legal entity', nor am I a *person* as created by `law`!)
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To: pageonetoo

When you fixed the quote, you should also have fixed the attribution to Descartes.


88 posted on 11/26/2005 6:12:11 AM PST by flada (They don't have meetings about rainbows.)
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To: A Jovial Cad
Thomas Hobbes said that, not some hysterical nitwit on the internet. You should credit those you quote, plagiarist.

Geez. What exactly do you think "to coin a phrase" means? Take a deep breath, junior. The Republic is not in danger just because your representatives think smoking pot is a detriment to the general welfare.

89 posted on 11/26/2005 6:12:15 AM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
Unless they're driving

Marijuana does not seem to impair the ability to drive a car.

90 posted on 11/26/2005 6:13:21 AM PST by JTN ("We must win the War on Drugs by 2003." - Dennis Hastert, Feb. 25 1999)
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To: MamaTexan

A drug that causes birth defects is relevant.... how?>>>

If the FDA had done its homework and banned it before it hit America, I daresay the babies' rights would have been better protected.

Government protects people from bad drugs. That's one of its jobs.


91 posted on 11/26/2005 6:14:08 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: hinckley buzzard
St-st-stutter much?

...(snicker)...

92 posted on 11/26/2005 6:14:27 AM PST by A Jovial Cad ("If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting." -General Curtis LeMay)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
I was complimenting my readership in their ability to recognize a quote without attribution.
WOW! A member since 9-3-05 and you have a readership?!

I'm so jealous. /scathing sarcasm

93 posted on 11/26/2005 6:14:28 AM PST by philman_36
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
Malum in se offense requires a injured party other than oneself. Government can not be mandated to protect us against ourselves, else it goes quickly into tyranny with such precedent.

Cannabis does not kill, only those who are attracted to its artificially high prices cause by illegality. Any person can grow cannabis anywhere by and for themselves.

I think you have bought wholesale inaccurate conditioning offered to you by those whose interests are not in favor of your liberty and economic good. I don't see many facts and much reasoning in your statement. Just reaction.

94 posted on 11/26/2005 6:14:42 AM PST by William Terrell (Individuals can exist without government but government can't exist without individuals.)
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To: JTN

It's Interstate Commerce. The founding fathers put that in the Constitution so that the government could have nearly unlimited power when needed.


95 posted on 11/26/2005 6:14:52 AM PST by Sam Cree (absolute reality)- "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised

That same "Washington" law trumps on abortion too, so your point is?

Some of us Republicans believe that Federal law has overstepped its constitutional bounds.


96 posted on 11/26/2005 6:15:26 AM PST by DB (©)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
And one of those laws is to keep a certain green leafy substance off of the grocery store shelves so that stupid fourteen year olds can't all get stoned all the time. Deal with it.



... The fact that it is illegal is what makes it so available to those 14 year olds.

It's much more difficult to get alcohol
But I have a feeling that is not your main issue. Are you one of those warrior wanna bees?


If any one is making money and damaging lives it is the drug war machine. If we lined up everyone every hurt by "drugs" and everyone ever hurt because drugs are illegal , there would be a clear winner.

But the problem starts when people get a taste of power and control. They become addicted to that very fast. There is no drug as strong, addictive or destructive.

Your right , people are evil, and every time we empower a few people with special privileges and POWER ... we see the abuse grow and grow.

A person smoking pot ... or shooting heroin for that matter , will never be as much of a threat to our freedoms and life as are the anonymous black hooded agents of the state.
97 posted on 11/26/2005 6:15:52 AM PST by THEUPMAN (#### comment deleted by moderator)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
Unless they're driving, using heavy equipment, or walking on the street and not paying attention to the light change when they try to cross--the cause of deaths of my three classmates.

You're anecdotes prove nothing. Perhaps they are simply evidence that you aren't the only idiot among your classmates. That is to say that the accidents could have happened with or without drug usage--thousands of similar accidents happen daily to perfectly sober individuals.

98 posted on 11/26/2005 6:16:04 AM PST by flada (They don't have meetings about rainbows.)
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To: MamaTexan

Well, you just need to smoke more pot! LOL


99 posted on 11/26/2005 6:16:21 AM PST by mlc9852
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To: William Terrell

You're brutal. ;-)


100 posted on 11/26/2005 6:18:25 AM PST by DB (©)
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