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.
Actually, I think that was Rene Descartes.
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.
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."
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.
I am humbled by my paltry 124.
(grin)
When you fixed the quote, you should also have fixed the attribution to Descartes.
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.
Marijuana does not seem to impair the ability to drive a car.
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.
...(snicker)...
I'm so jealous. /scathing sarcasm
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.
It's Interstate Commerce. The founding fathers put that in the Constitution so that the government could have nearly unlimited power when needed.
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.
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.
Well, you just need to smoke more pot! LOL
You're brutal. ;-)
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