Perversion of justice for medical marijana patients
This country’s drug laws are schizophrenic. Some drugs are harmful, legal, and closely regulated (alcohol and tobacco). Other drugs—harmless and in common use—get the full wrath and weight of the criminal justice system. It’s all terribly broken. Take a look at this report by Philip Smith:
After more than six years of litigation, and three years of appeals for manufacturing and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cannabis, Dr. Marion “Mollie” Fry and her husband of 25 years, civil attorney Dale Schafer, attended a hearing at the US courthouse in Sacramento Monday week, in which their bonds were revoked and they were given a the date of May 2 to surrender to serve five-year federal prison terms.
Fry and Schafer’s prior home located in the hills just north of Sacramento was raided in 2001, with 34 plants confiscated – what they believed to be well below the 99 plant limit set forth by local ordinances.
According to Schafer, the couple had never grown more than 44 plants in a given year. A little known fact, he explained, is that under federal law more than 100 plants grown in a five year period, accumulatively, is cause for the mandatory five-year sentence, overriding state laws.
Dr. Fry, who had gone through a radical mastectomy just three years prior, had made the decision to grow her own medicine, medicating through her illness, surgery and continued to medicate from myriad complications from chemotherapy until the arrest. Schafer suffers from hemophilia and failed back syndrome, is under constant care, and had also medicated with cannabis legally.
According to Fry and Schafer, prior to the arrest they had conferred numerous times with local officials, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, and El Dorado County Sheriff’s Detectives Timothy McNulty and Robert Ashworth, regarding the legality of their cannabis production for their own use and for Fry’s patients.
“We weren’t selling the medical cannabis to my patients,” Fry said. “We had staff and were charging $10 for delivery only, and that’s a common practice today.” . . .
