There is a precedent setting case about medicinal marijuana and a state's right to allow it now playing out in California with surprisingly little media attention....Here's the scoop.
In November 2007 Steele Smith and his wife Theresa were arrested by federal DEA agents in Orange County, California for cultivating and selling marijuana. But the Smith's aren't your run of the mill drug dealers and the federal government has left them in legal limbo ever since.
The backstory: In the summer of 2001 Steele was a successful self-employed marketing man who was felled by a gut-wrenching mystery illness. He couldn't eat and quickly dropped forty pounds from his already thin 6 foot 7 inch frame. His doctors were stymied about what caused the debilitating condition. After four excruciating months a rare-disease specialist diagnosed a condition called Zollinger-Ellison syndrome which pockmarks a victim's upper gastrointestinal tract with multiple, painful ulcers. Morphine was prescribed for Steele's constant pain and he lived in that legally induced drug dependent state for the next three years eventually becoming an opiate addict.
In the summer of 2004 his devoted wife guided him on a journey toward detox. "It was either going to kill him or me," Theresa told me. "I was black and blue from his outbursts. He couldn't help it, of course, but something had to be done!"
It was an agonizing time but Steele finally found the strength to wean off morphine. But Z-E is a lifelong affliction and he was still hobbled by the lack of nourishment and the incapacitating pain. The Smith's desperate search for alternatives brought them to information about the benefits of medicinal marijuana, made legal in California in 1996. The Smith's sought and got a medical "recommendation" for Steele to try marijuana. (Under federal law an actual prescription isn't allowed for a so-called schedule 1 drug like heroin and, yes, marijuana.) They were directed to dispensaries in Los Angeles, an hour drive away. "All we found were drug dealer types. They were all long haired, tattooed ... basically drug dealers who got a store front - intimidating, like your typical head-shop," Theresa explained.
But miraculously the medicinal marijuana worked! For the first time in years Steele was able to eat and manage his pain. His marketing ideas flowed again and the couple decided to fill the void in Orange County and open their own medicinal marijuana dispensaries to bring relief to others. Their lawyer says they did everything right under California law.
"Mr. Smith set up a legitimate 501 non-profit corporation and he paid all applicable taxes," a legal brief written by Smith's attorney Eric Shevin asserts. "He issued patient ID cards, followed pharmacy labeling requirements. He even provided free medical equipment to his customers, like wheelchairs, walkers, porta-potties and wheelchair racks for cars. Mr. Smith allowed the Fullerton Police to document his grow operation thoroughly... and the lead officer even complimented him on the cleanliness and legitimacy of the operation." By 2006 more than 1000 patients were registered in the Smith's data base.
So why were the Smiths arrested and threatened with 10 years in prison? Because back then the U.S. Justice Department decided that the federal law against cultivating marijuana should trump the California law. The Smith's were caught up in a classic battle of a state's right to pass its own laws. Theresa spent 2 months behind bars. The ailing Steele was held in a maximum security jail for 10 months. Upon release he was 20 pounds lighter and again hooked on narcotics given to him for pain. The Smiths lost everything including their home, cars, their savings and they had to borrow money from Theresa's widowed mother who died a short time later. They've lived under a terrible cloud of legal uncertainty for three years, all the while still grappling with Steele's disease.
Today's Justice Department looks at the state's rights issue differently and the Smith's trial will surely be a landmark case closely watched by the 15 states that currently allow cultivation and sale of medicinal marijuana. It will be a milestone verdict because federal Judge Cormac J. Carney has made the unprecedented decision to allow a federal jury -- for the first time ever - to hear affirmative testimony about California's medicinal marijuana law. This won't just be about someone having been caught growing pot. The Smiths will be allowed to give groundbreaking testimony about why their interpretation of the state's law led them to believe they were acting legally.
In 2008 candidate Barack Obama told an interviewer, "I think the basic concept (of) using medical marijuana in the same way, with the same controls as other drugs, prescribed by doctors (is) entirely appropriate." Fourteen months ago President Obama's Justice Department instructed all federal prosecutors not to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they followed state laws.
So, now, the feds are left squarely between a rock and a hard place with their three year old case against the Smiths.
Perhaps because Judge Carney has a track record of ruling against prosecutors who he sees as overstepping their authority the feds decided late last week to ask for yet another delay in the December 21st trial, postponing it until late March 2011.
"It's the eleventh or twelfth delay," Theresa Smith said in a weary voice. She sees the fight as a state's rights issue but also, she says, "As a patient's issue. If it was meth or heroin or some opiate I wouldn't say that. But this is a plant that God put here for a reason. It helps people - so many people."
Diane Dimond can be reached through her web site: www.DianeDimond.com Her latest book is "Cirque Du Salahi" available at Amazon.com
Follow Diane Dimond on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dianedimond
Do we have to march on Washington DC and shut the defective Government down?
If the ignorance of congress and senate is at question here, maybe we should be investigating their individual educations and the institutions that provided them with the degree..
It looks like these institutions of higher education are not teaching the students about history, law, constitutional law, government and many other related subjects.
If the universities check out ok, then we must repeal all their degrees since they obviously did not graduate. Since we-the-people have been misrepresented by our elected officials, they must be forced to resign.
The only answer is legalize cannabis.
Cannabis must be removed from the list of scheduled/controlled substances.
6 months later, I am a believer. Helps me sleep and I take NO other drugs. BTW, I am a 52 yr old mom, and have no desire to just "get high"...I go to bed right away after vaporizing and it's a Godsend. If you want scientific proof, you've got to study the drug, but the gov't won't do it. It's a catch-22, they say they have little scientific evidence, but the won't do the studies. Huh?!?
Is it legal where you live? Do you worry about getting "busted"?
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/10/federal_marijuana_patient_safe_from_the_dea.php#more
I haven't seen a plain old investigative
journalist in years. Did they become extinct
with the election of Bush?
DD
HAHAHA. Nothing is more intimidating than a bunch of stoned out hippies at a head shop.
Imagine YOU are the sick one. You finally find something that allows you to function in your daily life - I mean, simple stuff, like eating and not throwing up immediately after. This "something" you find also FINALLY takes your pain away and allows you to sleep.
Are you telling me you need a scientific study to tell you its working? Really?!?
It sounds really glib and all when you dismiss it as a fodder for "a screenplay" - but there are some real folks finding some real relief with medicinal marijuana....too many for it to be casually dismissed as simply anecdotal. Just because there aren't studies to readily quote for your convenience doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Mr. Smith may have felt better but without a double blind test the evidence is anecdotal and is considered unreliable it does not warrant a conclusion that marijuana is safe and effective and nothing else will work.
Why don’t you blog about the real dangers of using marijuana that are well known instead of jumping on the medical marijuana bandwagon? The legal use of marijuana is inevitable and it should be legal but marijuana has some negative health effects. Because marijuana gets you high and people like it the legalization bandwagon attempts to downplay any negative information about it. Marijuana addicts are adamant about promoting marijuana because of their craving for it.
This nation is about to embark on a huge experiment with the inevitable legalization of marijuana and we should be looking at all the evidence with a clear mind not hyping marijuana as a perfectly safe panacea. The marijuana advocates and addicts promote marijuana as a harmless natural plant but just because a substance is natural does not make it safe ricin is a natural substance from the castor bean and 1.76mg is a lethal dose a baby aspirin is 81mg.
I read the post of a pregnant girl who said that she was feeling noxious and her boyfriend said to smoke some marijuana. Would you recommend smoking marijuana during pregnancy? Don’t you think it’s important to have the correct information about marijuana available?
What is that?
http://www.google.com/search?q=ca+sb+1449&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_464bdc0a-0b36-11e0-a594-001cc4c03286.html
I have Crohn's and use MM to control it's symptoms and pain, for over a decade now without any other medication. I can't imagine the pain Steele lives in. I've also suffered detoxing off morphine after spending over a month receiving it intravenously. MM was the only thing that got me through that while recovering from a 2 month hospital stay that topped itself off with a massive surgery.
Its getting to the point where I think MM patients need to band together and file a class action lawsuit for civil rights violations. I shouldn't have to chose between living a life full of pain, unable to work, with an incurable disease that's slowly destroying my digestive system or to become addicted to opiates and steroids just because the DEA refuses to recognize dozens of studies confirming the medical benefits of marijuana.
Keep your heads up Mr. and Mrs Smith!
Cannabis is not a drug. See above; it's a harmless plant.
ru scared?