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War on drugs hits new low
The Austin Chronicle ^ | NOVEMBER 25, 2005 | JORDAN SMITH

Posted on 11/26/2005 5:10:56 AM PST by JTN

The federal war on medi-pot patients hit a new low last month when Royal Canadian Mounted Police nabbed 38-year-old Steven W. Tuck from his Vancouver, B.C., hospital bed, whisked him to the border, and relinquished him to the custody of U.S. officials, who wanted him on charges related to a 2001 marijuana bust in California. Tuck, an Army vet, uses marijuana to help treat chronic pain associated with injuries he received in a parachuting accident back in the 1980s (reportedly his parachute failed to open during a jump). In 2001, after his marijuana-growing operation in California was busted, Tuck fled to Canada in an effort to avoid prosecution, reports The Washington Post. For four years, he had been navigating the Canadian system, seeking asylum, but was abruptly, and surprisingly, denied that safe harbor last month, says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML.

Police arrested Tuck on Oct. 7 after he checked himself into a Vancouver hospital seeking treatment for prostate problems. According to friend Richard Cowan, Tuck was on a gurney, fitted with a catheter, when RCMP nabbed him, cuffed him, and put him in an SUV bound for the border. "I would not believe it unless I had seen it," Cowan told the Post.

Tuck was turned over to authorities and thrown in jail, where he remained for five days with the catheter in place and with only ibuprofen for his pain – pain for which he'd been prescribed morphine and Oxycontin, among other narcotic drugs, says St. Pierre. He was finally taken to court on Oct. 12. "This is totally inhumane," Tuck's lawyer Douglas Hiatt told the Post. "He's been tortured for days for no reason." U.S. Magistrate James P. Donohue re-leased Tuck, at least temporarily, so that he could be taken to a hospital. Tuck's trip to the hospital was waylaid, however, by law enforcement officials who immediately picked him up on a detainer issued by Humboldt Co., Calif., officials in connection with state drug charges related to his growing medi-pot for him-self and others. (Although Tuck is a California state-registered medi-pot patient – meaning he's authorized under state law to possess and grow marijuana for medical purposes – he was also growing for others. At the time, California law enforcers were working under a patchwork of local regulations that defined who could grow for dispensary purposes and exactly how much each person could grow. Tuck had been busted in two different California jurisdictions for growing more than the local law allowed.)

After a flurry of phone calls, Tuck was taken to the hospital, and since then his attorneys have negotiated his release from jail – with the promise that he'll make his various California state court appearances. Sources tell "Weed Watch" that given Tuck's medical condition and the current state of California's medi-pot laws, his supporters are cautiously optimistic that the state charges against him will be dropped. If that happens, whether Tuck will face any prosecution will be left solely up to the feds, who want him on one count of unlawful flight to Canada to avoid the California charges. Whether the federal narcos will exercise their right to bully the sick remains to be seen.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: bongbrigade; cannabis; marijuana; medicalmarijuana; medicalmj; warondrugs; wod; wodlist
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
There is no medical use of mary j.
Perhaps you should notify the federal government.
From...http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/ongoing/marinol.html...Medical marijuana already exists.

It's called Marinol.

The crowd on your side of the street is getting smaller.
Lots of new research is out further disproving your hypothesis.
41 posted on 11/26/2005 5:51:40 AM PST by philman_36
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To: Uncle Vlad

Yep.

Not much more one can say.


42 posted on 11/26/2005 5:52:23 AM PST by DB (©)
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To: mlc9852

Millions of people smoke pot who don't have accidents. Alcohol is much, much worse yet it's legal. Why?
>>

Because it doesn't make you nearly as stupid as pot does.

And pot makes you stupid even when you're NOT high. It takes months to get that stuff out of your system.

IQ is precious; there's a shortage of it in the world. Why waste it?


43 posted on 11/26/2005 5:52:30 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
I agree Man is not good by nature (observe a playground full of children). You in turn agree that the ones who make and execute drugs laws are men.

Does being elected to public office make a man good, or can greed, power lust and stupidity, evidence of the fallen, play a role in the genesis of statutes?

Is cannabis illegal because it's bad, or bad because it's illegal. And, if it's bad because it's illegal, which is the sum total of your reasoning, and man makes it illegal, what does that say about your ability to discern what is good or bad for your country?

44 posted on 11/26/2005 5:52:54 AM PST by William Terrell (Individuals can exist without government but government can't exist without individuals.)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
Ah, the standard libertarian fantasy. "Let people make their own decisions!"

Yeah..... How DARE we try to exercise that pesky thing called freedom!

Nothing like the taste of boot-polish in the morning, eh?

________________________________________________________

If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.
---Thomas Jefferson

45 posted on 11/26/2005 5:52:55 AM PST by MamaTexan (I am NOT a 'legal entity', nor am I a *person* as created by `law`!)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised

Fourteen year olds can easily find pot if they wish. They can also find alcohol or huff or any number of things. But we're talking about adults. Why can't adults use marijuana if they want to? Why is it the government's business? If the SC ruled sodomy is a protected privacy, why not smoking pot?


46 posted on 11/26/2005 5:53:15 AM PST by mlc9852
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To: philman_36

Lots of new research is out further disproving your hypothesis.>>>

Funded by those who would become millionaires once the lie is generally accepted.


47 posted on 11/26/2005 5:53:39 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: mlc9852

Fourteen year olds can easily find pot if they wish. They can also find alcohol or huff or any number of things. But we're talking about adults. Why can't adults use marijuana if they want to? Why is it the government's business? If the SC ruled sodomy is a protected privacy, why not smoking pot?>>

The SC also ruled that exterminating children is a protected privacy too. Next question?


48 posted on 11/26/2005 5:54:20 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
Yeah, life's a bitch when you commit a major felony and then flee the United States to avoid paying for your massively criminal behavior

Hey even professional drug traffickers need love.

49 posted on 11/26/2005 5:54:21 AM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised

Then all the more reason to legalize it - tax it - just like alcohol. Why are you so against people making their own choices?


50 posted on 11/26/2005 5:55:11 AM PST by mlc9852
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To: MamaTexan

If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.
---Thomas Jefferson
>>>

Your homework assignment, MamaTexan, is to go to GOOGLE and type in the word "thalidomide."


51 posted on 11/26/2005 5:55:20 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised

Okay - now I know you aren't seriously comparing smoking pot to abortion, are you? LOL


52 posted on 11/26/2005 5:55:50 AM PST by mlc9852
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised

My IQ is about 136-139. Not bad, really.


53 posted on 11/26/2005 5:56:55 AM PST by mlc9852
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
But the life of the individual without government is, to coin a phrase, nasty, brutish, and short

Thomas Hobbes said that, not some hysterical nitwit on the internet. You should credit those you quote, plagiarist.

54 posted on 11/26/2005 5:57:16 AM PST by A Jovial Cad ("If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting." -General Curtis LeMay)
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To: mlc9852

No, I'm saying that the Supreme Court has been massively stupid in the past; just because it says something is legal don't make it right.


55 posted on 11/26/2005 5:57:17 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
You're stuck on your own little merry-go-round...

You argue that it is all about drug dealers making money... Yet the last thing the drug dealers and gangs want is for it to be legalized. It puts them out of business... But you seem to be unable to wrap your brain around that simple fact.
56 posted on 11/26/2005 5:57:25 AM PST by DB (©)
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To: A Jovial Cad

I was complimenting my readership in their ability to recognize a quote without attribution. Are you so stupid as to require that I attribute "government of the people" too? Apparently so.


57 posted on 11/26/2005 5:58:22 AM PST by Appalled but Not Surprised
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised
By lead poisoning. Small led pellets injected at high speed in the back of the skull, when the skull is owned by someone who didn't pay the organization as much as the organization thought it had coming. Or when the skull is a Mexican policeman or a Columbian prosecutor.

You do know that this happens because marijuana is illegal, don't you? Or has Anheuser-Busch been cracking skulls, too?

He's not trying to relieve his own pain.

Apparently you didn't read the article, so let's try again.

Tuck, an Army vet, uses marijuana to help treat chronic pain associated with injuries he received in a parachuting accident back in the 1980s (reportedly his parachute failed to open during a jump).

You didn't vote to help sick people; you voted (whether you knew it or not) to make drug thugs rich and teenagers into burnouts.

The evidence shows that medical marijuana statutes do not lead to an increase in use among teenagers.

Also, "drug thugs" do not get rich off of legal marijuana. They lose their market when drugs are legalized. Seen any shootouts between Jack Daniels and Jim Beam lately?

58 posted on 11/26/2005 5:58:53 AM PST by JTN ("We must win the War on Drugs by 2003." - Dennis Hastert, Feb. 25 1999)
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To: Appalled but Not Surprised; Krankor
No, because (a) it still drops your IQ about 20 points or more and (b) because it makes drug thugs rich.

Again, I say to you, that you are talking out of your butt. You have no idea what it does. You are simply emoting your WOD mantras.

Drug thugs are getting rich because the stuff is illegal. If legal, they would have no market. That is simple economics.

marijuana works so well for pain, how come the guy needed prescriptions for oxycontin and morphine?

Actually, in my case, it has done a world of good for my blood pressure. I was already taking a lot of prescription meds, which caused undesirable side effects, without really addressing the underlying needs, within MY body.

You'll have to ask Rush Limbaugh about Oxycontin. I have no experience... I never needed to play golf!

I do not smoke it just for the medical needs. So friggin' what! I am not hurting you, and I have not seen any drop in IQ. I still am able to run my businesses, and make a good living.

You guys are pathetic. You ought to get a real life, instead of worying about what others are doing behind closed (and sometimes open) doors.

People like you are often called "busybody's"! I prefer the term "jack booted thug"!

Sig heil!

59 posted on 11/26/2005 5:59:18 AM PST by pageonetoo (You'll spot their posts soon enough!)
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To: DB

"You argue that it is all about drug dealers making money... Yet the last thing the drug dealers and gangs want is for it to be legalized. It puts them out of business... But you seem to be unable to wrap your brain around that simple fact."

Maybe she has smoked too much pot! LOL


60 posted on 11/26/2005 5:59:18 AM PST by mlc9852
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