Posted on 09/20/2002 5:56:11 PM PDT by chance33_98
Man Fired for Pot Use Plans Court Test of Medical Marijuana Law
A 40-year-old computer specialist from Sacramento is forcing a court test of a controversial state law allowing medical use of marijuana.
Gary Ross was fired when a drug test revealed he had recently used marijuana. Ross had worked at the $74,000 per year systems administrator job for only a week when he was dismissed.
Now he has filed suit against RagingWire Telecommunications, arguing that the marijuana had been prescribed by a physician as a means of relieving chronic back pain. Ross contends that the firing was illegal under the terms of a six-year-old California law allowing the use of marijuana as medicine. "I had gone through all the steps necessary to make sure it was perfectly legal," said Ross. "I don't know why they terminated me. I was very surprised."
RagingWire Telecommunications replied with a written a statement that said, in part, "Mr. Ross signed and accepted an offer for a position that required [full time] on-call availability. Mr. Ross failed to inform the company he was using marijuana for medicinal purposes prior to receiving his offer letter."
California courts must now decide if an employer can choose which medications are off limits. Ross said he doesn't really want to be the flag bearer for a cause. Instead, he said he just wants justice. "I don't really consider myself a test case," said Ross. "I just consider myself an employee who was wrongfully terminated."
Ross claims he tried nearly everything to relieve pain from a 20-year-old back injury before turning to marijuana. He finally tried the drug after his doctor recommended it. "It's been the best medication I've taken for my back since my injury," said Ross.
Ross said he could have avoided using marijuana in the weeks prior to his drug test, but felt that would be admitting he's doing something wrong.
Oh yeah Clinton is really against drugs, especially when he gets on MTV and says yeah he would try it again.
The Clintons will say anything to stay in power and to stay in power they had to be against drugs.
Are you seriously going to tell me that the are not pro-drug?
Anyway, you can post all the reports you want, but the real world tells me that the Clintons find nothing wrong with drug abuse.
Oh to be young, stupid, and full of hubris again.
JMO, but you are going to be in for a big shock, if you ever enter the real world.
Because he couldn't for it would be political suicide. There is only one thing the Clinton's care about and that is power, they have no idealogical center.
JMO, if Clinton were thruthful about his views on drugs, he would be parrotting you.
And yet you didn't go over any of the meat of what I said, as usual.
JMO, but you are going to be in for a big shock, if you ever enter the real world.
And what exactly is this real world? Working full time? Yep, I work 40 +- hours a week. Paying for my own place to live? Check. Paying for my own car? Check. Paying for my own food, internet, cable, insurance, etc etc etc. Check. Pay for my own college? Check. So what am I waiting to do then to 'enter the real world' IYO.
Nonsense, he could have changed half of it the last week in office if he so choose, including pardons.
JMO, if Clinton were thruthful about his views on drugs, he would be parrotting you.
You are right, it is just your opinion, which doesnt mean much.
Yeah right, whatever you want to believe, but I don't think that you are getting to get much agreement with your contnention that the true political heart of the Clintons does not lie with the 60's radical pro-drug leftists.
Drugs should be decriminalized and a "don't ask, don't tell" ethos should be the centerpiece of social interaction. If you hold down a steady job and don't show up to work intoxicated, the government and employers should mind their own business. If someone's drug use (e.g., the weekend toker) is not obvious at the workplace or in other areas of public life, then he or she should be left alone. If on the other hand, someone is whacked out on goof balls or whatever and is making a scene, driving erratically, possibly endangering his or her self and others, then that someone should be hauled off to jail, charges forthcoming.
We can find alternatives to unconstitutional police tactics and tone down the violence and loss of innocent life associated with drug enforcement.
We don't need no-knock raids that recklessly endanger innocents. We don't need dragnet searches like road blocks with dogs sniffing our vehicles. We don't need helicopters flying at dangersously low altitudes looking for mj plants. We don't need drug court and we don't need to morph drug treatment programs into socialist institutions. We don't need the police corruption associated with drug prohibition. We don't need to confiscate property without due process. We don't need any more zero-tolerance drug policies and we don't need any more bold-faced lies from self-righteous bureaucrats. All of these things we don't need, but have; they need to be changed.
Still waiting to here what I need to do to 'enter the real world,' Mr. condescending. If it has to do with becoming a drug warrior, I was a few years ago. Not doing that again.
I fully believe that once your type passes away, drug laws will be lifted like no one's business. You people still cling to the anti-60s despite the fact that times have changed, and there is no more hippie movement. Although I also believe that before that we'll be forced both to pay for these people poor mistakes with our tax dollars and pay for your drug war with our tax dollars. Your war costs more but both cost a lot.
Wow if that is true good for you. You are an abberation of the typical college student, IMO. Of course you could be in hock up to your neck with debt with student loans, have fun paying those off.
Anyway talking about work it is close to 4:00 AM and I have to get to work in the real world myself.
Again JMO, have fun thinking you are the 21 year old, know all and be all, of the world.
Really? Take a look at the modern Democratic party.
Just had to say that in passing, gotta go.
Again JMO, have fun thinking you are the 21 year old, know all and be all, of the world.
It's funny that you say that. We both argue just as much, just opposite side of the coin and you try to act like I'm the one who is the know all, while you yourself are humble as Jesus himself.
I didn't think I'd need to post this again, but after reading the BULL EXCREMENT story about poor Gary Ross and then some of the posts on this thread, it left me no choice.
I live in a idyllic close knit little hamlet of about 50 homes and cabins nestled into the redwood forests deep in the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains between Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz. The nearest town is over five miles away and it only has a population of 7,000.
Recently, the sheriff executed a search warrant on a resident here for growing marijuana in his house. A day or two latter, this neighbor (a young man and single parent of two adolescent daughters) came down to the beach (a favorite neighborhood gathering spot along the river) and explained to his curious neighbors just what had transpired. To the best of my recollection, this is a true rendering of that exchange.
doper: (proudly) The sheriff didn't arrest me, confiscate my marijuana or even give me a citation because I am a registered medical marijuana grower.
neighbor: You have a medical problem that requires marijuana for treatment?
doper: Yes, my back hurts real bad and I can't work without it.
neighbor: What do you do for a living?
doper: I'm a carpenter.
neighbor: You mean to tell me you work all day with power tool like saws, drills and nail guns and the like, and you do this while stoned? Have you ever warned the people you work with that you're stoned?
doper: Yeah, I work with lots of power tools. So what? I'm real careful. I don't tell the others though, because my boss is real narrow minded about drugs and would fire me.
neighbor: So, you only use this for medical purposes and not just to get stoned?
doper: Yeah, just for my back.
neighbor: So how come when you were down here last week, you were so stoned that when someone asked you which high school you graduated from and when, you couldn't even remember?
doper: Uhhh..., my back was hurting real bad that day.
neighbor: So you only grow your marijuana for your own "medical" purposes and not to sell to others? I mean, you don't distribute it or anything like that, do you?
doper: Oh, I would never distribute it. That would be illegal. I grow it is just for my own use.
neighbor: Then how come, as you told us, you are growing 60 plants? Wouldn't that many plants be able to medicate your back for the next 60 years?
doper: Uhhh...
neighbor: Tell me something else, as a fellow father, do you really think going through life stoned is a good way to raise those little girls of yours?
doper: Uhhh, they're not that little you know, one is eight and the other is eleven. I even left them home every day this summer while I went to work and they never got into any trouble that I ever heard of. I mean you're suggesting that I'm an irresponsible father or something and that's not fair.
neighbor: It's not fair? Here you are on a beach with over a dozen children playing all around you and you're sitting here smoking dope in plain sight of them. What would you call that, if not irresponsible?
Medical marijuana? Hey sonny boy, don't piss on my boots and try to tell me it raining. Where I live, they grow the biggest baddest weed there is and I've found that 99% of the people claiming "it's medical marijuana" are lying through there teeth. Can't we begin to show at least a modicum of honesty and own up to the truth that its really just a scam?
Regards,
Boot Hill
Let's see the "prescription."
Or something like that :)
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