By Steve Kubby:

I should be dead. That's what doctors recently told me after completing extensive medical tests at the University of Southern California's School of Medicine.

According to Dr. Vincent DeQuattro, a USC professor and world authority on adrenal cancer, my blood contains deadly levels of adrenaline, more than enough to kill anyone else.

See
Prominent Medical Specialist Says Steve Kubby Should Be Studied, Not Jailed;
His Case Has Major Medical Implications.

That's really not surprising, since everyone who has ever had my disease has died within a few years. Except for me. Thanks to medical marijuana, I'm now entering my 23rd year of survival, something DeQuattro considers a "medical miracle."

Dr. DeQuattro even wrote a letter advising that I could suffer a heart attack or stroke if deprived of marijuana and that no other form of therapy is available.

Unfortunately, none of this seems to matter in Placer County, where 20 armed officers from four different agencies stormed our Squaw Valley home early on the morning of January 19, 1999. Armed with laser guided automatic weapons, body armor and a battering ram, a SWAT team from the North Tahoe Narcotics Task Force blocked off our street, raided our home and confiscated almost everything of we own.

Besides taking my plants, gardening equipment and medicine, they seized all of our electronic publishing equipment.
See
Court Refuses to Return The Kubbys’ Computers, Forcing Them Into Bankruptcy;
How Seizing Computers Undermines Our 4^th Amendment And Other Basic Rights.
That action effectively killed our on-line magazine, Alpine World, which had been rated as the 25th top electronic magazine in the world. This raid destroyed our primary source of income, forcing us out of our home and into bankruptcy.
See
Court Refuses to Return The Kubbys’ Computers, Forcing Them Into Bankruptcy;
How Seizing Computers Undermines Our 4^th Amendment And Other Basic Rights.

All of these officers believed that medical marijuana is a hoax and that we deserved to be destroyed. None of the officers had read or been briefed on the new medical marijuana law.

The Task Force confiscated our passports and social security cards.

They stole our company's petty cash and then went through our safe deposit box. They even took the cash out of our wallets. Then they arrested us, handcuffed us, and took us away to jail for three days.

After taking everything we own, they arbitrarily set bail at $200,000. Fortunately, our attorneys were able to persuade a judge to drop all bail and release us on our own recognizance.

When the invaders threw us in jail and deprived me of my medicine, my body went into the equivalent of diabetic shock. Without medical marijuana to protect me from the deadly effects of my tumors, I began to experience severe vomiting by the end of the day. By the end of my three days in jail, I was blind in my left eye and suffering excruciating painful bouts of high blood pressure. My wife told everyone that my life was at risk, but she was told only, "If he dies, we'll let you know."

During the entire three days I was incarcerated, my tormenters mocked me as a medical marijuana patient, going out of their way to punish me. For example, although I was in my cell vomiting into the toilet, I was forced to attend breakfast where my repeated bouts of vomiting could be witnessed by the rest of the inmates who were trying to eat their meal.

Although both my wife and I are legal patients with doctor recommendations we face a 19 count criminal indictment, just for the crime of using a medicine, which is not government, approved.

Absolutely none of our medical marijuana was ever sold or illegally distributed.

Those eight federal medical marijuana patients are doing very well thank you. They work, travel and even drive while using their medication and there are no problems. In fact, each of the federal patients is doing much better than their counterparts on conventional drugs, enjoying a productive and reasonably comfortable life.

Unfortunately, the Compassionate IND program was suspended years ago and no one, no matter how desperately ill can qualify. The program has become such an embarrassment to the Clinton Administration that they refuse to acknowledge that these federal standards for medical marijuana already exist.

While the Feds love to argue that federal law supersedes state law, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently disagreed. In a unanimous decision, a three member panel of judges found that seriously ill patients should be exempt from federal laws regarding marijuana. The federal court has sent the case back to District Court where the case is scheduled to be heard in November 1999.

No one can dispute that there are basic legal, medical and human rights issues at stake here. Sick, disabled and dying people are being dragged out of their beds, frightened, threatened, arrested, jailed and exposed to deadly opportunistic infections. Innocent, law abiding sick people, are being vilified and persecuted simply because they rely upon a politically incorrect medication. Worst of all, the police we pay to protect us against violent criminals are out raiding sick and dying people instead.

We hope our case will achieve in the jury box what we were supposed to have won at the ballot box -- the right for medical patients to not be treated as criminals. Medical marijuana is not a hoax. It's time to stop arresting sick and dying people.

Copyright: 1999 The Orange County Register
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THE POLITICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS; WHY MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL