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Author Topic: Oh (big) Brother ...
Malnurtured Snay
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quote:
THE HOSPICE RAID AND THE WAR ON DRUGS

By Ethan Nadelmann
September 19, 2002
San Diego Union Tribune
Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

The war on drugs keeps getting bigger and meaner.
Just when you think the tide is beginning to turn, someone in charge takes it a step further.

Last week, DEA agents armed with automatic weapons raided a hospice on the outskirts of Santa Cruz because it grew and used
marijuana for its patients, most of them terminally ill. The founder and director, Valerie Corral, who uses marijuana herself
to control debilitating seizures as a result of head trauma following a 1973 car accident, was taken away in her pajamas. Suzanne Pfeil, a paraplegic patient suffering from postpolio
syndrome, was told to stand up and then was handcuffed in bed when she could not. All the plants were destroyed.

Of all the medical marijuana clubs, this was the one most true to the hospice spirit. It was a collective, run on a nonprofit basis. Valerie and her husband had created a place that brought peace, love and some measure of freedom from pain to those who came. Like the Brompton Cocktails found in British hospices, which can contain heroin or morphine, cocaine, alcohol and other
pharmaceutical ingredients, the medicine was unconventional but effective.

Valerie's hospice was legal under California law, a product of Proposition 215, the 1996 ballot initiative in which 56 percent of
voters endorsed the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes.
She was and is a member of Attorney General Bill Lockyer's 1999 medical marijuana policy task force. Her hospice was run openly with cooperation from state and local authorities.

The DEA's raid, and the clear directive from the Bush administration and its attorney general to assault and close this facility and others, is a travesty of justice - one that did much to terrorize American citizens and absolutely nothing to protect or improve their health, welfare or safety.

More than two-thirds of Americans believe that marijuana should be legal for medical purposes. Medical marijuana initiatives have won
in all eight states where they have been on the ballot, and would likely win in all but a handful. The Canadian government is taking
steps to make marijuana available to patients north of our border.

Federal drug policy now lies in the hands of those who might best be described as the John Birchers of the drug war. Like the Southern racists who blocked civil rights reforms in the 1950s and 1960s, today's drug war politicians are out of step with the public, but they don't care. They're on their own crusade, one in which
marijuana is as sinful as miscegenation was to the Southern racists or homosexuality is to today's religious fundamentalists.

They're also practitioners of the big lie. "On the face of it," says John Walters, "the idea that desperately sick people could be helped by smoking an intoxicating weed seems ... medieval. It is, in fact, absurd." Never mind thousands of reports by patients and doctors, dozens of studies and the National Academy of Sciences'
conclusion that marijuana is therapeutically effective for a number of painful, chronic and terminal medical conditions for which
pharmaceutical drugs are often ineffective or introduce negative side effects.

The hundreds of thousands of Americans who use marijuana for medical reasons, and the doctors who care for them, deserve a hearing in
which they can defend their use of this unconventional medicine. They deserve the opportunity to give sworn testimony, and to
confront the sworn testimony of those who persecute them. That's a job for Congress.

The raid on the Santa Cruz medical marijuana facility was, of course, about more than marijuana. It's part and parcel of the same insanity that drives the bigger war on drugs - one that now incarcerates more people for drug law violations in the United States than all of
western Europe (with a much larger population) incarcerates for everything; one that prefers to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives
and billions of dollars rather than make sterile syringes legally available to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.

More than that, it provides insight into the potential abuse of police power in another war without end on which we have now enbarked. The attorney general of the United States ordered a raid on a medical marijuana hospice not because he had to, but because he possessed both the will and the power to do so. A Congress and a country preoccupied with many other concerns barely noticed.

Is the Santa Cruz raid, and more generally the war on drugs, a preview of what lies ahead in the war on terrorism? Is the future one in which increasingly empowered and emboldened federal police agencies intimidate, arrest and even terrorize not just those who pose true threats to security but also those who challenge little
more than the moralistic convictions and political prejudices of power holders in the nation's capital?

I live for the day when our children will look back on the drug wars of today the way we now look back on Jim Crow and the Palmer raids after the First World War, the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, and the McCarthyite persecutions of the 1950s. That is my moral crusade, and one shared by more and more
other Americans as well.

Nadelmann is executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org), an organization promoting alternatives to
the war on drugs.

Well, so much for the myth that Republicans would rather states run their own affairs. They seem to be big fans of Big Brother, and Federal interference.

[Roll Eyes]

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www.malnurturedsnay.net

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First of Two
Better than you
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Believe it or not, I'm with you on this one.

REALLY @#$%ing stupid, when it comes to marijuana that's only being used for medicinal purposes, in a hospice environment.

If they were giving away or selling the surplus, that'd be another story, but there's no hint of that here.

I would like to know the actual origin of this "clear directive," though.

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"The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword

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Grokca
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http://www.salon.com/politics/comics/2002/09/19/protect/index.html

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"and none of your usual boobery."
M. Burns

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TSN
I'm... from Earth.
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"'On the face of it,' says John Walters, 'the idea that desperately sick people could be helped by smoking an intoxicating weed seems ... medieval. It is, in fact, absurd.'"

Ow, ow, OW! The ignorance makes my brain hurt!!!

Most likely, you could tell this guy that a doctor, instead of prescribing morphine or codeine, chose to prescribe tetrahydrocannabinol, and he wouldn't think anything of it.

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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
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Pharmacies prescribe methadon. Hospitals treat people with cocaine.

The absurdity!

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Ritten
A Terrible & Sick leek
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While states may say that they will allow it, a 2001 Supreme Court ruling said the states can not go against federal law on this. Hence the DEA raids in Cali...

This also goes along side the Canadian push to legalize THC. Here in Port Huron the police are beginning a propaganda campaign saying that if it happens people from here will get stoned over the bridge, then come back and cause more accidents....

I find this to be complete bullshit. When I was a drinker and my brother smoked we would go out driving around, stop the car, let me drink (no open intoxicants here), while he'd smoke. This was done for thousands of miles, and never 1 accident. The Sarnia mayor doesn't agree with it, but sees the plus side of being able to focus on the worst ones, coke, etc...

For the article

I hope you do legalize it, then these idiots, in all border towns, can eat their words about accidents...

Fucking idiots.....

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"You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus
"Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers
A leek too, pretty much a negi.....

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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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while i seriously dont advocate driving in any altered state, i have to say driving stoned is a lot safer than driving drunk, from experience.

BTW.. the state law allowed the hospice to do that.. then the state law was overridden by a federal law.

so why not issue a 'cease and desist' order, based on the date the federal law kicks in, superceding the state law. everything they were doing was perfectly legal, until the day the federal law came into effect.

rather than raiding them with weapons, the government could have given them notice that they needed to stop, and given them an opportunity to surrender their newly-contrabanded contraband.

oh wait, i forgot, the AG is an asshole. bring on the automatic weapons.

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"Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"

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TSN
I'm... from Earth.
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Well, there's also the fact that the federal law has no basis in constitutionality. But that doesn't seem to faze them, either.
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Ritten
A Terrible & Sick leek
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You know that the ruling party, either of them, cares not about the Constitution, if it doesn't suit their agenda....

I can now see that when you sign you liscense that you will also give them the right to piss test you on the spot....

Is any other state like that, signing for your DL is also signing a waiver of any rights you have regarding breath-alyzers?

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"You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus
"Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers
A leek too, pretty much a negi.....

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EdipisReks
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you are allowed to refuse a breathalyzer, or any other test administered by the police. at that point the police have to acquire a warrant to search you. a breathalyzer is like any other search and you are protected from an unwarranted search by the constitution (probable cause my ass, they have to have a damn warrant or i'd call the ACLU). this runs contrary to the claims that MADD (murderers argainst donkey dorks, or some such) that since the police can search anyone they want at any time without a warrant (which they can't) that they should be able to give breathalyzers to anyone even if they [the cops] don't have a warrant (which the can't because breathalyzers are like any other search).
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capped
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i couldve refused to allow the police to search my car too. of course i didnt know that at the time

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"Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"

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Saltah'na
Chinese Canadian, or 75% Commie Bastard.
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quote:
Originally posted by EdipisReks:
you are allowed to refuse a breathalyzer, or any other test administered by the police. at that point the police have to acquire a warrant to search you. a breathalyzer is like any other search and you are protected from an unwarranted search by the constitution (probable cause my ass, they have to have a damn warrant or i'd call the ACLU). this runs contrary to the claims that MADD (murderers argainst donkey dorks, or some such) that since the police can search anyone they want at any time without a warrant (which they can't) that they should be able to give breathalyzers to anyone even if they [the cops] don't have a warrant (which the can't because breathalyzers are like any other search).

Not here, in which you CAN be charged with refusing a breathalyzer test. But think about it, those who are drunk are the ones who tend to refuse while those who aren't willingly take one.

However, I do know that charges relating to refusing a breathalyzer test usually stem from accidents. I do not know of such cases of this charge stemming from random spot checks.

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"And slowly, you come to realize, it's all as it should be, you can only do so much. If you're game enough, you could place your trust in me. For the love of life, there's a tradeoff, we could lose it all but we'll go down fighting...." - David Sylvian
FreeSpace 2, the greatest space sim of all time, now remastered!

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EdipisReks
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any law that allows you to be charged criminally for refusing a breathalyzer test is unconstitutional. let them take you to jail and use your phone call to call the nearest ACLU chapter. after the ACLU gets you out of jail, sue the police officers and the police department for false arrest and unlawful imprisonment. you'll win.
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PsyLiam
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I'm glad that we have a legal expert here to clear that up.
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Saltah'na
Chinese Canadian, or 75% Commie Bastard.
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I don't think the ACLU would be called in to defend drunk drivers.

Have you been stopped at a spot check for alcohol? My friends and I were stopped several times after driving out of town on several occaisions. All they ask is a simple question: Have you been drinking? Of course the driver did not consume any alcohol, and answers with a simple "no". Good night, have a safe drive.

I think you have a very tight definition of "probable cause". Suppose someone fires shots into a crowd, and kills two people. The police on the scene find a person based on spot descriptions of witnesses in the area. They search his person and lo and behold, a gun, which of course, is the murder weapon. Of course, with what you are saying, the police must get a warrant to do a body search, and therefore, the gun is ruled inadmissible. Sue those bastards.

So, if a guy is really drunk then the police should let him go while he mows down a family with three children or something? That's called negligence.

Remember, I said that charges which are laid usually stem from an accident. I did not say anything about charges stemming from spot checks simply because I do not have enough data on this.

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"And slowly, you come to realize, it's all as it should be, you can only do so much. If you're game enough, you could place your trust in me. For the love of life, there's a tradeoff, we could lose it all but we'll go down fighting...." - David Sylvian
FreeSpace 2, the greatest space sim of all time, now remastered!

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