[Mb-civic] Token Justice

Wed Aug 25 18:14:54 PDT 2004

Token Justice 

By Steve Kubby, AlterNet
 Posted on July 26, 2004, Printed on August 25, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/19346/

The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February 2000
when researchers in Madrid, Spain announced they had destroyed incurable
brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the most psychoactive
ingredient in cannabis.

Most Americans didn't learn about the Madrid discovery. Virtually no major
U.S. newspapers carried the story, which ran only once on the AP and UPI
newswires, on Feb. 29, 2000. Why has this vitally important information been
suppressed while the media regularly trumpet any possible breakthrough in
cancer research?

The Madrid study wasn't the first time that THC has been administered to
tumor-bearing animals. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of
Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health in order
to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead
that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice  lung and
breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia. Since then, dozens of other
peer-reviewed scientific studies have confirmed that THC and other
canabinoids shrink tumors, cut off their blood supply and may even program
cancer cells to die.

Because news of such advances in our understanding of medical marijuana has
been ignored, serious opposition still exists within the law enforcement
community. They claim that the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 was some sort
of hoax, or worse, not a law to be obeyed because federal marijuana laws
trump state laws.

As a result, seven years after voters approved Prop. 215, sick, disabled and
dying people are still being arrested, jailed, humiliated and bankrupted. An
ideology of zero tolerance has deprived medical marijuana patients not only
of justice but of life itself.

Contrary to assertions by police and US officials, federal law ought not to
trump state medical marijuana laws, according to the 9th Circuit Court
decision on December 16, 2003. In that decision, the Court found that "the
appellants have demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on their claim
that, as applied to them, the CSA [Controlled Substances Act of 1970] is an
unconstitutional exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause authority."

On May 14, 2004, District Court Judge Martin J. Jenkins acted upon this
decision by the 9th Circuit Court and granted a preliminary injunction
against the federal government, thereby protecting the medical marijuana
rights of the two patients who are suing the government in this case.

Just one month later, in the case of County of Santa Cruz et al. v.
Ashcroft, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel issued a temporary injunction
barring the federal government from raiding the marijuana gardens of the
Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, or WAMM.

The ruling allows the collective to resume cultivation free from the fear of
further federal prosecution. This relief comes 18 months after a brutal Drug
Enforcement Administration raid on WAMM in Santa Cruz, and a year after the
collective's seriously ill members filed suit against the federal government
to stop the law enforcement harassment.

Law enforcement and prosecutors also claim that patients dragged before the
courts possess "too much for personal use." However, Prop. 215 set only one
medical-marijuana possession limit, and that limit is "for personal medical
use."

In 2002, the California Supreme Court affirmed this quantity limit in People
v. Mower. There, the court clearly held that the only quantity limit or
requirement in Prop. 215 is "for personal medical use."

But how much is too much? How much would be too much if your life depended
on it?

Most narcotics officers claim that more than a few ounces of marijuana per
month would be more than is necessary for personal use. In contrast, the US
government allows its legally licensed patients to consume a pound per
month. In Canada, patients such as myself are licensed to grow and consume
up to two pounds per month. Law enforcement refuses to accept these levels
of medical usage, but patients can and do consume these amounts of cannabis
and still lead productive lives.

If respect for the law is to mean anything in our society, our elected
officials must uphold California's medical marijuana law, exactly as it was
written and passed by the people of California. Elected officials should
begin tomorrow to implement the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 by taking the
following four specific actions:

    1.      Stop arresting sick people. Don't authorize budgets or federal
grants that will be used against sick people. Adopt and implement the Mower
Decision to protect sick people from arrest.

    2.      Stop treating patients like criminals. According to the Mower
Decision, bona fide medical marijuana patients are entitled to a special
hearing to establish that they have a recommendation or approval to use
medical marijuana from a licensed physician. Unless police have clear
evidence of actual sales, it is unlawful and immoral to arrest marijuana
growers who make claims of medical use.

    3.      Stop forcing sick people into the black market. Demand that the
federal government take action on the petition filed by Jon Gettman with the
Drug Enforcement Administration on July 27, 1995, and reschedule marijuana
from a Schedule I to a Schedule III. That action alone would solve many of
the problems and concerns voiced by law enforcement and allow patients to go
directly to their pharmacist to obtain their medicine.

    4.      Start prosecuting those who violate the rights of sick people.
Elected officials must provide legal protection for sick and dying patients
from illegal arrests and prosecutions. To uphold the law, officials must see
to it that police and prosecutors are held accountable for violating the
medical marijuana rights of patients, caregivers and physicians.

Make no mistake; this issue is no more about marijuana than the Boston Tea
Party was about tea. This is about sick and dying people who are living in
fear that the very people they pay to protect them have turned against them,
all because they use a medicine that the federal government's own IOM study
confirms, "there is no clear alternative for."